| | Gingerbread HousesWe arrived in San Fransisco on Thursday night. We arrived in one piece, despite the fact that when we originally pulled away from the gate, the plane stalled. I kid you not. We had to wait two hours for a jump start. This turned the total time on a plane to eight+ hours.
We stayed with my lovely cousin Cori that night. The next day we went to my Aunt Gloria's house in Mountain View to borrow her Magellan (a Satellite controlled navigator). I had last been there when I was 13. What I remember about that first trip? My aunt served chocolate for dinner. She brought out a tray with four different types of chocolate and that was dinner. She hooked me up with some local kids who took me to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show. And, because Uncle Ari is a landscaper, they had a beautiful gardern.
We drove up, and where I the house should have been was a garage door completely surrounded by green. It was like a bit of the bayou had been transplanted to Moutain View, CA. Vines and tendrils came out every which way and the old swamp lady came out to meet us. This is not a fair description of my aunt, who is still very pretty, not very old (about 60) and was wearing a t-shirt and capris, not a black taffeta number with a whale-boned corset. She did, however, have us ring the gong to announce our presence to the house. The house was behind the garage door, it had just been hidden by the foliage.
The house had been built in the late forties and was smaller than you'd expect. It had three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a living room, kitchen and dining area, but all were just a little bit small. The bedrooms had been decorated in the famous "Lesbian Wiccan Tea Room" style, and in fact, all of the house borrowed from this genre. My aunt had hung a different chandelier every three feet. I do not mean just that there were a lot of chandeliers, but also, each one was a completely different style/color/shape. One of the bedrooms had been turned into an office. In this room the walls were covered by gold sunburst clocks, like these 2:
 
Only, not exactly like these. Like the chandeliers, no two of these clocks was the same.
The "Couples Room," as my aunt referred to the guest bedroom, had purple paisley walls spotted with mirrors and fabric swatches. There was an antique mirror on the ceiling, over the bed, which my uncle explained was fairly easy to put up. Various draperies completed the room. I later found out that my grandmother had helped two of my cousins to make these draperies. The hall was turquoise, rippled and polka dotted.
Surprisingly, their bedroom was painted white with a white comforter on the walnut sleigh bed. It did, however, have mirrors on the ceiling.
We were almost out the door when I asked "What's in the garage?" A cotton candy maker, it turned out. So we spent the next twenty or so sticky minutes making and eating far too much cotton candy.
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