Small Wonders

This is the last in a three-part series: Marguerite doesn't pray for snow anymore. "Let's just say for the past 25 years, the only time I pray is when I'm taking off or hit turbulence in an airplane. " It took years for Marguerite to reconcile the conflict between her feelings and her faith. In the end, faith lost. "I'm not sure what that higher power looks like, or if it only consists of finding the higher power within my own being. I may fall somewhere into the agnostic category these days.

I'm back. And I can now let you in on why I needed a break. Mercury was in retrograde. I knew you'd understand. A planet is in retrograde when its movement across our sky appears to be going in reverse of its normal path. This apparent shift in trajectory can be disconcerting and troubling to the observer. It happens with Mercury three to four times each year. And it happens with earthlings at least that many times each week. I leave it to street corner astronomers to explain the phenomenon, but astrologers (and yes, I did just this week learn the difference between the two)

It's not that I didn't want a puppy. Just that I was reluctant, concerned about the responsibility and nightly barking. And available space in our ever-shrinking house. And the mess. And what would happen if it ever got out the front door and into the big, scary world on its own. Yet we've somehow managed to survive human children despite these same fears. Besides, I am outnumbered in my home, three to one. So last spring during a temporary parental vacation from sanity, we brought home not one, but two, puppies; the thresholds for love and pain being sides of the same coin, who's counting?

With so much wrong in the world today — the Dodgers' disintegration and Arnold's improprieties, Weiner's lewd tweets and Sarah's revisionist history — I've been looking for something uplifting to read to take my mind off the dark and destructive forces swirling about us like tornados in Massachusetts. What better than the final words of a young father dying a slow death to pancreatic cancer? A few years late, but I am reading “The Last Lecture,” by Randy Pausch. As you may recall, Pausch was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University who was asked to partake in the school's “last lecture” series, wherein an instructor gives the hypothetical final lecture of their career.

Keeping the kids entertained is a parent's primary job. It ranks higher than feeding and cleanliness. In the throes of a good time, hunger and head lice are but minor annoyances. With a free day, where could the wife and I take the kids without passports, plane tickets or extended lines of credit? Hollywood. At least we wouldn't need passports or plane tickets. A day trip to the entertainment capital of the world is a perfect way to kill a few hours so long as we return with both girls.

I 've been a little tense lately. Could you tell? Maybe it's being home with the kids too much. Maybe it's finances or wondering when I'm going to figure out who I really am. "The Office," "30 Rock" and "Modern Family" are all in reruns, and everything else on TV gives me agita. I don't care why, how or when Lindsay Lohan is in court and wonder what ever happened to real news reporting. I'm sick of hearing people argue and blame each other, right, left and ambidextrous.

Third in an occasional series When Art Chudabala was a boy, his father took him on weekly fishing ventures off the Southern California coast. On one of these excursions his father caught a huge mackerel and hauled it on deck. His father immediately filleted it and took a bite of the raw, still-warm flesh. "There was blood running down his cheeks," he told me. "That was hardcore." Art, a Burbank resident, recalled this story as we left the fishmonger's stall at the farmer's market and perused the other vendors looking for his next meal's muse.

Like an unwanted holiday fruitcake, with funky bits, green cherries and mystery fruit, I offer you this year's Caneday Family Christmas Letter (with a little help from my daughters): Dashing through the glow, Of a year gone past with glee, O'er our lives we go, We're the Caneday family. Good friends came cocktail-ing, Making spirits bright, Oh what fun we had this spring, In San Diego a fortnight. Oh! Thing 1 yells, Thing 2 yells, We love to get our way, Oh what fun we had with friends, All 'round our block each da-ay!

I know I’m a week late, but I just had to chime in on the Rapture. Big disappointment, eh? I bring it up after the fact because, well, what if Old Harold was right? Hey, the Centers for Disease Control released their zombie apocalypse-preparedness tips before the big day. Maybe they knew more than we did. But Harold Camping sure didn’t. As proof that the world's latest apocalyptic prognosticator has apparently lost all semblance of the Christian humility he’s supposed to embody, Harold refused to admit he was wrong about his Rapture date.

What's that saying about lipstick on a pig? Or a new dress on an old… Well, you get the idea. Not exactly the phrase I'm looking for; neither makeup nor evening wear, pigs nor prostitutes are on my mind. But in hopes of adding to our lexicon, this is: You can put a fresh coat of paint on an old barbershop and it will still be an old barbershop. Thankfully. I pass through the intersection of Chevy Chase and Glenoaks in Glendale often. I went to elementary school just up the road; played Asteroids, Pac Man and other seminal video games at what is now a chiropractic office on the corner; bought candy bars for a quarter at Cañon Liquor while waiting for my mother to pick me up, too lazy to ride my bike home.

If you get the opportunity, I highly recommend letting your young children climb rock walls to dangle high above the ground, precariously shimmy across tightropes, balance beams and rope bridges suspended 40 feet in the air, wailing for help in fear for their lives. Panic and dread are great character builders. Or good laughs for sadistic parents. Either way, your little ones may surprise you. I was never a great Boy Scout. Most of my awards were given to me out of pity, or were pilfered from my brother's retired uniform.

I'd love to tell the story of your mother today. But I don't know her. So, I'll tell you about mine. She's a pretty typical mom. Darlene is a wife, career educator, retiree, volunteer and the epitome of a grandmother. She's a mom in the truest sense of the word. The only child to Cecil and Wilhemina, Darlene was born during the Great Depression. Her parents struggled to make sure their daughter would have more than they did. They sent her to college where she became a teacher, the only job she ever wanted.

There were times when I couldn't wait for them to get older. To be able to hold up their own heads. To crawl or walk. To eat with their own hands. To clean up after and dress themselves. Though they still haven't mastered the last one, they are quite proficient at the others. Heck, I still have trouble dressing myself. Spring, with all its rebirth, renewal and awakening, is upon us. It's right up there with winter, summer and fall as one of my favorite seasons.

Dear Kim, I hear you want to run for mayor of my hometown, Glendale, California. I'm sure by now you've discovered one doesn't “run for mayor” of Glendale. No. One first runs for City Council and then wins the annual intra-council rock-paper-scissors contest to become mayor. Or loses it. No one's really sure how it works. Though I now live in neighboring Burbank, as a son of Glendale (a “Glendalian?”) I felt compelled to write and say this: Run, Kimmy! Run! At this moment, all nine of my readers are angrily sending nasty-grams asking if I've lost my mind.

I am about to break one of the cardinal rules of modern mankind. I am going to tell you what happened in Las Vegas. This isn't easy for me. On the flight to Sin City, I told my girls they may see disturbing things that would seem evil and unnatural. But, no matter what they saw, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. And then I needed a spring break topic for my column this week. So here's “The Hangover, Part III: Caneday Family Vacation.” Though my youthful days of nocturnal casino carousing are long gone, the siren song of the craps and blackjack tables still beckoned.

Dear Frank, It pains me to write this. Last year I wrote to you, pleading with you to give us back our Los Angeles Dodgers and show yourself out of town. On behalf of all Angelenos who bleed Dodger blue, I implored you to do what you knew in your money-loving, American Express Black Card, bankrupt heart was best, and make a few hundred million dollars for yourself and your ex-wife by selling our team. And this week, you did it.* So here's the hard part. (deep breath)

Did you survive the storm last week? I'm not talking about a meteorological event, but a saccharine-sweet cultural tempest that just swept through not only our community, but the nation. I'm talking about Girl Scout cookie time. Though the eye of the storm has passed, you can still find them in front of Pavilions and Virgil's Hardware, Ralph's and CVS. After that frenzied first week cookies are released, things have settled down to a Tagalong-induced self-loathing lull. Thankfully, we only have a few spare boxes of Thin Mints left in our house.

Few places offer a more intense view into the makeup of the human condition than the elevator. Where else in our daily lives are we forced to spend valuable seconds - even a full minute - tightly confined with a group of fellow earthlings in the microcosmic journey to our final destinations? In my non-columnist life, I work in a monolith to a media giant. My cubicle is on one of the upper floors, so I spend a lot of time sealed in the suspended 6-by-6-foot vertical people-mover chronicling tips and observations about humanity and survival in my 10 to 20 elevator rides per day. Some might be valuable life lessons.

Dear Parents (and you know who you are), I would like to thank those of you who felt that the third grade was an appropriate age to give your child a cell phone. I'm sure you have every good reason for doing so. But thanks to your generosity, I am subjected to my kids' constant complaining and begging for a cell phone, because apparently “everyone else has one.” I am barraged daily by their incessant pining for a device that, until this decade, every human being on the planet was able to survive adolescence without.

My email inbox has been a little light lately. So I thought I'd bring up two things one should never discuss in civilized company: religion and politics. If you're still reading, count yourself uncivilized and, I hope, in good company. It's also my hope to end up in a place you didn't expect when you saw such hopelessly divisive subjects introduced. That said, I'd like to share a personal anecdote. I go to church. A Christian church. And I sometimes differ with the opinions and tactics of others who share my faith.