Eda's World

My husband and I are fools for the holidays. We are all about the lights, the cheer, the music, the trees and the gifts. But we love, love, love Christmas lights. The day after Thanksgiving we start roaming the streets, looking for the pretty lights. We think nothing of hopping in the car after dinner and spending a good hour and a half circling local neighborhoods looking at lights. We've gone to Sleepy Hollow in Torrance. The Christmas Village in Cambria. Hearst Castle Christmas Tour. The Enchanted Forest light show at Descanso Gardens. A Christmas Village in Cologne, Germany. We have our Christmas lights street cred. We have serious discussions over the merits of a home's display. Classic vs modern? C-7s vs. LED. Primary colors vs black light colors? Wire frames vs blow ups? Good use of lights? Foliage utilized adequately? Last night, we went next level. I found some WINNER ribbons at Allin Party Supply down the street. For $5 and some change, my husband and I had ...

This isn't a funny story. It's a cringer. I had just left my therapist on an up note and was cruising down Los Coyotes Diagonal to go shopping at Pavilion's. Movement in the bike line caught my eye. I'm giving you until the first line of the next paragraph to step off this ride. You still here? Fine. What I saw was a possum. Its head was on the ground. Its body was cringing and whipping around. It looked like it was trying to get up. I knew it had just got hit. I was past it before I could think. I was on the far side on a five lane road. I couldn't whip around to go back easily. I drove on and tried to reason with myself: It's already dead. I'm not taking it to vet. There is nothing I can do. I pulled into the parking lot. Killed the engine. I sat staring at my hands. I couldn't shake it. The primordial empathy of seeing something writhe in pain. The idea of laying there listening to the last fading whine of its nervous system shutti...

Much like the Summer of Love, the 80s LA punk scene, Britain in the Swinging 60s, or any other seminal moment in time, if you weren't around for The Compound from 2004-2016- YOU DON'T KNOW! You can't. It was magical. Sometimes a group of people find each other and a family is formed. That was what happened to me and my husband Scott in 2004 when we moved into the front house on Coronado Ave. There was a mother-in-law house behind us with it's own backyard, and a small apartment above the double garage at the end of the driveway. Pete and Josh lived in the MIL house, and a supremely grumpy guy named Johnny English lived in the apartment. P & J were cautiously friendly for a bit then warmed up to us when we all realized we were total dog people. Johnny would scowl every time he saw us. It took the supreme flirting skills of our 20 pound cat Liam to finally break him. We found out he was a custom guitar builder for Fender guitars. I took to calling him ...