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October 1
Our Oktoberfest began with Mass at St. John the Baptist in Chico. It was the feast day of St. Therese of Lisieux. Fr. Berg read the Gospel about being like little children and reminded us of Therese’s simple faith. In looking over Therese’s short biography I was reminded that she died on September 30 even though her feast day is celebrated on October 1. Perhaps her feast day was moved because September 30 is St. Jerome’s feast day so hers was moved one day. The other thing I noticed was that she was born one hundred years before Rachel in 1873. I think Grandma Collins had the Carmelites praying that Barbara would give birth on a special day in 1973.
After Mass we loaded the car at our one bedroom apartment in Chico. As we headed for the bakery on Main St. we waved to Joe as he was apparently headed for subbing at Chico High. As we enjoyed the great cranberry orange scone and coffee, we drove south to Maggie and Jason’s in Yuba City to drop off some DVDs. Then we swung east to Auburn to pick up some prescriptions at our old pharmacy. That took at least an hour to convince the doctor, pharmacy, and insurance company that we needed extra pills since we would be in Europe for about a month. We saw James (fellow who needed work time raking leaves at the monastery) and his wife with their three week old baby in the parking lot. After a quick chicken salad lunch at LaBou we went up the mountain to Georgetown to pick up our mail. We felt a little older, as we opened our mail and discovered our first Medicare cards, and a little poorer as we paid our final monastery PG&E bill. We ran into Jerry, our daily mass friend, and Dennis, LaVerne’s son, who had helped us move into the monastery.
Our next stop was Steve & Jenny’s in Valley Springs. We were dropping off DVDs and checking on Sienna and her broken arm. She was in great spirits and was busy piling toys on Steve. Jenny and Steve looked a lot more rested than when we were with them a few days before getting through the trauma of taking Sienna to UC Davis Hospital in Sacramento where Steve spent the night waiting for the operation on Sienna’s arm. It’s amazing that she will only have her cast on for three weeks.
By now it was about 3:30 so we headed southwest to Pismo Beach. By 9:00 we were soaking in the Jacuzzi at the Best Western Shore Cliff lodge. I can hear the racket of the seagulls this morning and see the pool and ocean from our third floor room—not a bad place to start day two of our Oktoberfest.