(Six-year-old Gabby was one of the hundreds of needy folks who got a pancake breakfast courtesy of Newport Beach-based Daddy Cakes Saturday at the Lighthouse church in Costa Mesa).

Some time ago after I went homeless for a day in February in Costa Mesa to get a more first-hand view of the issues I got a call from Mona practically demanding that I attend a cooking demonstration she had organized for one of her clients at Bloomingdale’s in South Coast Plaza. We had chatted a bit here and there up to that point and I had done a couple of little things on some of her clients, but we hadn’t met yet. It was a Friday night, the busiest night for me when I was the Daily Pilot city editor. Plus, I had to write my piece on going homeless for the Sunday paper. I had zero time to run down to South Coast Plaza, no matter how close it is to the Pilot office. But something told me to go anyway. It might have had something to do with the eager reception she gave my initial blogs on the homeless experience.

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I would have posted this earlier, but it’s been a heck of a week. Between settling into my new job and my new home, Mona got sick. Last weekend, Mona served as judge for the Brand Model talent search contest at the District shopping center in Tustin. And let me tell you in retrospect it was a gutty performance. She was not feeling well at all. And it just got worse, enough so that I insisted Monday night that she go to urgent care in the morning. So she did, but got turned away by two before she wisely went to the emergency room where she was diagnosed with an infection. She’s feeling much better now, thank God, but it sure scared us.

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Late one night I was making tea when I accidentally knocked over a freshly poured cup on my leg. When I say the scalding hurt I mean I debated whether to drive to the emergency room. I wasn’t sure it was that serious, though. Then I thought, maybe an urgent care. But while paging through the phone book I started to get the impression there wasn’t one open that late. Maybe I could ride it out until the morning and then go to the urgent care office. I finally decided to just take some painkillers and lie down. By the morning the scalded skin still stung but I could cope. The worst part of the whole episode, though, was that awful feeling of loneliness. It was the middle of the night so I didn’t feel I could call anyone, and most of my family’s in Chicago so they couldn’t come over to help right away.

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