The Curtis Clan - Winter 2019
Winter Solstice to Spring Equinox
Winter Solstice came with Randy’s return from a work trip and the start of a couple weeks off. The next night Randy and Bethany celebrated 19 years together since their first date with a movie at the Hi-Pointe Back Lot: the 2019 Best Picture Oscar winner: Green Boo. While a good film, it is not going to hold up and be recalled as a relative highpoint of cinematic achievement (the problems with voting by committee. A ranked choice voting system might improve the outcome).
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RnB together for 19 years
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Holiday Visit with Kent (Greg & Sally took the picture)
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| Sunggling with Gussie on the couch |
Happiness is a Warm Puppy |
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Christmas Holidays
On Christmas Eve mass, Bethany and Jane celebrated at Holy Redeemer and Randy and Cate at Elliot and got quick battery jump start afterwards having left the lights on. We then gathered Sagemas Day 1: soup dinner at the Sages, singing Christmas Carols and the goofy Chair of Knowledge for the kids after Alvan and Amy departed for Christ the King for Midnight Mass.
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Townie Cousins ...considering what questions will come on the Chair of Knowledge
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| The girls with Cousin Lucy |
Upside down Lucy because she still thinks that fun |
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Christmas Day was a pleasant, low key affair where we had Amy and Alvan over for spaghetti dinner and watching White Christmas afterwards.
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Jane and Cate waiting to come down and see what "Santa" has brought them
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| Gussie wearing an ice scrapper hat |
Guss and Pepper holiday hats |
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Bethany "loves" her racoon socks (#FakePresentSmile)
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On Thursday, December 27 we made a pilgrimage to an unvisited local land mark: the Kraus Frank Lloyd Wright House in Ebsworth’s Park Kirkwood with the family and Amy and Alvan. An architectural treasure in Kirkwood preserved by the former owner’s dedication to FLW and some generous funding by Barney Ebsworth. It brought to mind the night a couple decades ago with Kent Lynn when we got to see Barney Ebsworth’s private art collection, including Edward Hopper’s Chop Suey. I don’t need a $92 million Hopper; I just need a friend with a friend house sitting with one.
| Family Selfie at FLW House |
Kraus Frank Lloyd Wright House in Ebsworth’s Park |
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That evening was the main Sagemas gathering with Bethany’s other siblings, the niblings (a.k.a. nieces and nephews) and the gift exchange
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Curti Women
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| Jane, Cate and Lucy chill-axing |
Sagemas Gift exchange anticipation |
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| Inspecting Joe's cool present |
Aunt B and Logan |
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Friday night was the annual St. Peter Sages gathering and Rob Your Neighbor gift exchange that is always fun.
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Sage Cousins at St. Peters Sages
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Auld Lang Syne
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Skyline En Route Pilgramage
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We ended 2018 and started 2019 visiting some or our favorite people: Katie and Don Ciccone. On Sunday, we made the road trip to Pittsburgh to spend New Year’s Eve Eve, Eve and Day with them. On morning one, Randy got to enjoy a rare smug fashion superiority at the Neville Island (Pittsburgh) Fairfield Inn at the 9 am breakfast buffet in a room full of jammie pants, slippers and Steelers spirit wear. Although never anyone’s definition of a fashion maven, sometimes you can win the honor of Best Dressed by simply bathing, wearing a collared shirt and shoes with laces.
We rang in the New Year literarily watching Jane and Cate as 10 and 8 year-olds singing Mele Kalikimaka (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEzcvokf9HI) along with the another viewing of the 13 Days of Sagemas 2018 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0Fn76-sZRs&feature=youtu.be).
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New Years count down watching 6 year old YouTube videos
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New Years poppers
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The trip also provided a brief “free time” respite of not working on getting Randy’s Grandparents’/Mother’s/Sister’s home at 7320 Goff ready to sell but we did start in again over the winter break and took out a $100K home equity loan to start paying for the bigger repairs. That was WAY more than we thought we would need but it was at a better rate than the amount we anticipated so what the heck. Foreshadowing.
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WGHS Swim Team (Jane is in back at #1)
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Smowmagedon - 2019 Edition
January 11 was a pre-Smowmagedon Friday with the St. Louis metro rushing home early to beat a projected heavy snowfall that began about lunchtime. It wasn’t all hype as Randy was forced to go around south bound Laclede Station Road traffic which was a parking lot of Clayton workers heading south. Saturday was a SNOW DAY with most people hunkering indoors but Jane and Randy got up early to find some unplowed snow to give Jane some 4WD driving experience in the Glowworm (she’s totally hooked). We then headed over to Suicide Hill to get some sledding in before it became inundated with grades schoolers and their protective moms. Later Randy made pirouette doughnuts in the unplowed Steger parking lot when dropping off Cate to go sledding and goofing off with friends (albeit modeling poor driving behavior to the unexperienced future drivers.
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Jane doing doughnuts in the Glowworm
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| Jane atop Suicide Hill |
Randy's ready to go fast |
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Cate throwing snowballs (in bare feet, not shown)
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7320 Goff in snow
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On 19 January Cate came out to her parents as bisexual with a Schnucks cookie cake that read “I put the “BI” in bitter” and a note that said “I told you I wasn’t gay; never said I was straight either… Cate – Your Favorite Daughter” While the lead up to this revelation wasn’t as obvious as Ellen DeGeneres’s public reveal, we weren’t exactly surprised at her announcement either, having seen subtle signs since at pre-school. Her breaking with Catholicism before confirmation last year was in no small part related to the mainline church’s views. We’re proud of our strong-willed, fierce child and are glad she had the courage to openly avow her non-dualistic nature in a world that still harbors people that believe something is fundamentally wrong with her, she needs to be fixed, or wish that it’s just some silly misguided teenage phase she’ll grow out of (…denial springs eternal). Fortunately, these thoughts weren’t ones among her peers at school who took the news with a “That’s cool” and a “Meh” shrug of acceptance. Happily, it’s no big deal and our community and Country has made epic strides since I was a kid as I’m certain that would not have been the reaction one would have received at WGHS 40 years ago. When I reflect on it, 40 years before I was at WGHS, racial integration was not accepted and there remained a separate high school for African Americans in our community: Douglas High School, the only accredited HS in St. Louis County until end of segregation in 1956. What will students 40 years from now accept as normal and right that we don’t now? Hope…it is the most important one.
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Cate puting the Bi in bitter
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At the end of January, Randy was asked to participate at a meeting for work in Honolulu and was able to stay at the historic and beautiful Moana Surfrider hotel, the oldest on the beach at Waikiki. Long days of work and schmoozing but a good trip that also netted a call from American Airlines offering a $500 voucher to take a later flight with window seats instead of the booked middle seats on the flight from Honolulu. That was an easy yes.
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Randy at the Moana Surfrider beach
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Meanwhile back home, Jane and her friends went to a dance and the family kept up the tradition of Ice Cream for Breakfast
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Jane and friends at the Homecoming Dance
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| Waiting in line outside Serendipity in WG |
Cookie Monster cones and mugs of hot choclotae |
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The movies for the quarter included: Into the Spider verse; Bohemian Rhapsody, WWI colorized documentary They Shall Not Grow Old; Mary Poppins Returns (a faint echo of the original); The Little Mermaid on the big screen (Zut alors! I have missed one.); The Umbrella Academy; The Quiet Man on St. Patrick’s Day; and finally, Captain Marvel over Spring Break.
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Little Mermaids
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7320 Goff
Weekends during the winter frequently meant one or two workdays at Goff for the family with frequent help from our Tuxedo neighbors Britt and Tina. The work surrounded painting the entire house but there was LOTS of plastering that occurred before that; over 10 gallons of joint compound which is hard to believe even for us as the cracks weren’t gapping but making them disappear in the ceiling and from past poorly done repairs took a significant amount of feathering out. After the plastering, there was sand texture painting to blend the smooth repairs into the existing wall and ceiling texture before we could actually put the desired paint color on the wall which began in March but would continue for another couple months as we worked our way through the house. A single paint color for the walls helped.
| Cate painting the basement |
Jane painting the old coal room closet |
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| Bethany stripping...the wallpaper |
Britt sand texturing a plaster repair |
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Cate providing scale to the attic (note the cotton batting and nob and tube wiring along the roof rafter and ceiling joists. Getting rid of the nob and tube in the attic alone made a few more car payments for the electrician)
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2019 bought the arrival of the vegetarian Impossible Burger to fast food restaurants in St. Louis first to White Castle with only notice but Cate and Dad enjoyed them a couple times for a Goff lunch break. More significant was Burger King which used the metro area as their test market for the Impossible Burger Whooper. The vegetarians were quite pleased by the significant taste improvement of the Impossible Burger over the standard BK Veggie Burger. Bethany noted she wouldn’t have noticed the difference if she wasn’t conducting a taste test.
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Trying the White Castle Impossible Burger
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Back for MORE White Castle Impossible Burgers (and teaching Cate the importance of building the tower of boxes to display your balancing skills, mighty appetite and all round White Castle POWER! And yes they put them in regular boxes instead of the Red Imposible boxes in case you're thinking you caught Cate cheating.)
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Whopper Impossible - Trifecta of Goodness
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Jane hanging out on the Delmar Loop
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Jane and Cate after the 5-12 grades pop concert at WGHS
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WWWWW
Bethany and her friends Lisa and Laura returned to the Women’s Wellness Weekend in late February at YMCA Trout Lodge in Potosi. As usual they attended the seminar at Edge-Cliff Winery leading to a more apt moniker of WWWWW (Winter Women’s Wine Wellness Weekend).
| At Edge Cliff |
WWW at Trout Lodge |
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Also, in late February, we got the announcement that Cate was a semifinalist for her poem "My Wall" in the WGHS Jonathan Franzen Excellence in Student Writing contest. We had to find out when it was publicly announced as she didn’t share with her parents that she entered the concert. Cate was a bit chagrined that she was expected to read her poem in front of her classmates. First rule of writing angsty deeply private poetry about your fortifications, safeguarding your personal secrets, demons and concerns is don’t let others read it and certainly don’t enter them into a contest or let your parents read it, which she succeeded at preventing. Given her protests to share it with us, we came to the conclusion it’s about how awful her parents are, forbidden/secret love, fears about the state of the world or likely some suffering teen combination of all the above. Since we weren’t contacted by a panicked school counselor, we’re not overly worried about it being too dark.
| Cate reading My Wall at WGHS |
Cate at her 1st Grade Poetry Cafe |
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Shaun Cassidy is still so dreamy (Replacement LP gift from Van 4 decades latter)
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We celebrated the first night of spring break for the girls, Thursday, March 14, with a $3.14 Pi Day special at Blaze Pizza. Though we love many pizza locations in town, the arrival of the Blaze chain to St. Louis in the last year was a terrific addition. Blaze quickly became the family favorite for being excellent wood fired pizza at a reasonable cost (at 9 times the Pi day price) but what really sealed our collective affection was it allowed everyone to tailor their pizza to exactly what they wanted including loading it up with heaps of vegetables which Randy never got when sharing a pie with the family.
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$3.14 Pi Day at Blaze
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St. Patrick's Day at Goff
On St. Patrick’s Day with the Kennedys help we got textured paint on the dining and living rooms ceilings along with the rooms being mostly one color which made a huge difference. Turning green rooms grey at the Sullivan family home on St. Patrick's Day might seem like anti-Irish but family and friends helping each other in need is very Irish. Fourth Wall Aside: yes, yes each ethnic culture is known for helping their own and we are mutts but that didn’t fit as well with the narrative. Anyway, with apologies to Lennon and McCartney, we get by with a LOT of help from our friends.
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Lunch Break explanations (Note differences in paint on the clothing. Three Curti are fast but not particularly tiddy)
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| Britt and Tina work on the foyer |
Jane posing while Bethany paints |
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| O Danny Boy, the paint, the paint is calling... |
I see a green wall and I want to paint it grey... |
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The family that paints togehter, stays together
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Spring Break
For Jane’s Spring break this year, she did a WGHS approved internship with Randy at the National Archives in College Park to help with scanning material previously identified. The American Airlines voucher for the Hawaii flight delay in January came in handy to pay for her ticket. By doing the paper work and Vlog describing what she did and reflecting on the experience, she earned another semester experiential learning Social Studies credit like she did for working during the summer of 2018 on Senator McCaskill’s campaign. Jane was excited to have her first plane ride in a number of years and the idea of being away from home was a treat. She also enjoyed being treated like an adult and going out to eat all week at TGIFridays, DMV Pizza , Shake Shack and the momentarily famous Comet Ping Pong Pizza (during the 2016 Presidential election it was the location of the “Pizzagate” human trafficking / child sex ring by Hillary Clinton election officials rumors that circulated on Alt-Right social media, A wing nut thought the stories were true and brought his guns to clear it out, because you can’t trust the police….). On Wednesday, we made our way to the Mall and visited the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and the Washington Monument, just as the cherry trees were budding. By Thursday, we were both happy to spend a cold rainy evening in the hotel room watching Netflix (Episode 6 of The Umbrella Academy). By the middle of the week Jane found her groove at the archives and on Friday, Team Curtis were a well-oiled machine of efficiency, wordlessly helping each other complete tasks and pack up our gear to head to the airport. It was a good trip as Jane got to see that her Dad’s trips for work weren’t all that glamorous and that the 9 plus hours days were draining. She also gained an appreciation for NOT wanting to go out to eat after a week of dinning at restaurants, a position she never understood when Dad got home on Fridays with little enthusiasm for going out. Dad looks forward to repeating the experience with Cate sometime in the future.
| On the plane making out pull slips |
At the Textual Research Room |
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| Still Pictures Branch of NARA |
Matching USACE sweatshirsts at Comet Pizza (So when do we get to see the basement?) |
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