Landscape

This last weekend was beautiful, the weather so warm and perfect. Even on the coast, it was warm in a way that it rarely is here in Northern California, a heat so perfect that even the cold of the water couldn't quench it. Driving to work, the hills are hazed in a mist gently glowing from the rising sun. What could be better than fall in California?

The other side

Got a taste of how the other side lives last Friday. The husband's employer threw a party. Sent a town car to drive us around for the night so we didn't have to worry about drinking and driving. Limousine, Dom, the works.

Partying like a rock star

Vegas was great. It took me two days to recover. I must be getting old. I think I got more sleep last night than I did the entire weekend. We stayed at the Venetian; they'd done a nice job re-creating a little bit of Venice. I think our favorites were the Venetian, Bellagio, Caesar's Palace, and the Wynn. Saw some pro-basketball players at the Wynn. They were both taller and skinnier than I'd expected. There were also a lot of model-types, many women with abs I can only dream of. Oh well.

In other news, we're really excited that some of our friends will be moving from Chicago to the Bay Area. They're coming to stay with us tomorrow, and bringing their new baby!

Urban Dwellers

Living in the suburbs has a lot of advantages (e.g., space for a garden, streets that don't smell of urine, etc.), but sometimes I really miss being in a city. I've been spending a lot of time in the city lately, and a considerable amount of that time walking around. Today I was stopped twice by French tourists, looking for directions. I love tourists, maybe because I spend so much time traveling and being a tourist myself. They struggled to ask for what they needed in English. I considered talking to them in French (my French, sadly, was probably better than their English). One of my good friends is from France and she's always trying to get me to practice. Given the poorness of my French accent, however, coupled with the sensitivity of French ears, I decided it would be less painful for all of us if we stuck to English. But - it was fun just running into them. You never run into tourists in the suburbs.

I also really miss public transportation. Today I got from the Mission to the Marina for $1.50 on the bus. Cheaper than the gas it would take to go that distance. I didn't have to worry about traffic or parking or anything, just hopped on and hopped off. Easy-peasy.

And people are a lot more interesting to look at in the city. More different kinds of people, more different kinds of clothes, etc. At the risk of sounding frivolous, I have to admit that I'm very much into clothes (although you may not be able to tell by looking at the way I dress). I love fashion magazines and fabric stores and all that sort of thing. When I was younger, I used to draw clothes constantly. So it's fun to see what people are wearing when they're not all buying their clothes at J. Crew.

That said, I realize that I'm probably the worst offender in this respect. As I was getting dressed today, I noticed that I was head-to-foot J. Crew. Some days, it's all BR, or the Gap. It's all about comfort, man.

Back to Reality

Went surfing here in California yesterday. It's hard to believe it's the same ocean as the one I swam/surfed in, in Hawaii. The water is about forty degrees colder here. The waves are bigger and meaner. Whereas the water in Hawaii was crystal clear, the water here is murky and seaweed-filled. It was one of those days where it felt like I couldn't do anything right in the water. Huge clumps of seaweed kept getting tangled up in my leash, impeding movement. The currents were strong, and I felt like I spent most of my energy just trying to stay in the same spot, so I didn't have much left for paddling for waves. And the waves were closing out. I stupidly paddled into a couple of bad closeouts. That's one of the worst feelings, being washing-machined. The waves tumble you. If you're lucky, you're just disoriented when you come back up. If you're unlucky, the force of the wave throws you toward the bottom of the ocean, where you can hit your head on a rock (which has happened to me), or get your leash tangled on a rock and get trapped. If you're lucky, when you come back up the coast is clear. If you're unlucky, you might come back up to see a surfboard (your own or someone else's) hurtling at you. Or, as happened to me yesterday, you come back up just in time to see the next wave - a wall of water - coming at you and you have to dive back under before you have time to really even catch your breath.

Counting Blessings

One of the unexpected benefits to not working - at least, not working a regular job, or maybe just a law firm job - is a renewed appreciation of what a beautiful place this is. Seasons had always escaped me before: no matter what month it was, what the weather outside, my office always looked the same, and my office was all I saw. Now I actually get to go outside during daylight hours, and it's pretty amazing. I'd forgotten how blue the sky is here. It's full-on spring now, and the trees are budding, plants are flowering everywhere. Even just driving down the street to the grocery store is a pleasure.

On an unrelated note (although this could still fall under the category of blessings), I am so happy that we didn't get rid of our stove. It's one of those electric, ceramic ones. When we first bought the house, I was adamant that it had to go (as I've mentioned before, I'm something of a Luddite in the kitchen). I wanted to replace it with one of those hulking gas Viking stoves with the roaring flames. In the final event, though, there was too much else to do, we didn't have a gas line running to the stove and would have had to have someone out to put one in (and I have no success with contractors), so we just left it. I'm glad we did. It is SO easy to clean, it heats up much more quickly, and, I think for that reason, cooks just as well as a gas stove.

Phasing Out

above these walls of concrete and glass, these cars, these people, and me, the sky is a cotton-candy blue pulling apart in wisps of white cloud, close enough to reach it is tasteless. i sit in the car in the cold with the engine off and behind the strip mall i see hills green from winter rain, peaked with radio towers like the spindles of a magic loom to put me into a deep, deep sleep from which i can only be awakened by magic. safe in here and people's voices only come at me muffled, their faces through the glass like animals in a cage at the zoo with me safe on the other side. bright morning california morning but it all feels the same.

Procrastination

Last night's dinner: baked mahimahi breaded in a mixture of ground macadamia nuts, coconut milk, flour, and bread crumbs, and an artichoke risotto. I used rice vinegar in the risotto, which added an interesting flavor - I kind of liked it. I'd had an artichoke risotto in Rome, and was trying to re-create it. Ditto with the mahimahi, although that was not in Rome but somewhere in the U.S. I was winging it and a little nervous about how everything was going to turn out, but it worked.

These are the things I think about while I should be writing.

Heavy Bass

We listen to hip hop while changing into our wetsuits, the car radio blaring, the doors open. It's almost time for a new wetsuit, but I'm reluctant to give it up just when it's gotten stretched out enough to make it easier to put it on and take it off. I've learned how to change faster, to keep up, even though I was never good at deck changes. Once the wetsuits are on, we pull on our booties, pick up our boards, and head down to the ocean. If we surf on the south side of our usual spot, the walk down to the ocean is covered with rocks. They prick our feet through the booties; walking without the booties would be miserable. If the waves are good, we're excited, practically running.

We've seen a lot of things while surfing. Dolphins, sometimes. Seals pretty frequently. Once a large crab, Dungeoness maybe, trying to dig a hole in the sand by doing the twist. We were heading down to the water one day when we saw a starfish, big and orange, lying on the beach. It had been washed in by the waves, and it had been lucky - we had found it before any predatory birds had, or a curious dog. My husband put it on the deck of his surfboard, by the nose. He paddled out with it past the waves, only letting it drop into the water once we were outside the break. Why paddle it out? I asked. Why not just toss it back into the water? I wanted to make sure it dropped into the water somewhere deep enough so the birds wouldn't get it, he said.

In an aquarium in the Bahamas I watched a starfish lose an arm to a crab. In Norway I watched a crab lose a leg to another crab; the losing crab skulked to a corner of the tank. The winner proceeded to eat the leg. Animals are cruel by nature. But then, cruelty is subjective. Maybe it's a term that only has meaning when survival is not at stake. When I was younger, I had a fish tank, fairly large and full of fish. But one day I woke up and all the fish were on the floor. They had jumped out somehow, my father said. I was only six and this haunted me for years, that my fish had committed suicide.

Although maybe it was foul play. Around that time we'd had a cat. A fat, fat cat who was meaner than mean. I had long scratches up and down my arms. We named the cat Doughnuts, because he liked to eat them. He would steal them from our plates, scratching his way to his prize. My parents were disturbed by his bad nature and gave him away. Years later, on an island in Greece, I would be scratched by yet another cat, this one black, that I had been feeding bits of fish off my plate. And I still wouldn't understand, why something I loved and was trying to care for would want to hurt me.

Cats, starfish, dogs, birds. And the world keeps turning round.

Nesting Instincts

The house hunt continues, but proves to be difficult, time-consuming, and, at times, heartbreaking. Housing prices have fallen all over the country, but not so much in the Bay Area, where crazy people continue to bid up prices. The crazy-people factor is compounded by the paucity of available houses. Most of the houses that are on the market now are not ones that we would seriously consider.

Except for one. It was a beautiful house. The master bedroom was enormous, with a huge walk-in closet and another large regular closet. (For a total of TWO closets! Two!) The master bath was similarly large, with a beautiful tub, and was connected to a room that would make a perfect (hypothetical) baby's room. These two bedrooms and the bathroom formed the upstairs. Downstairs were three more bedrooms and two more bathrooms. The bathrooms were well-appointed; I can't stand ugly bathrooms. Oak floors, recessed lighting. The kitchen was the masterpiece: cherry-wood cabinets, granite counters, including a large island, and by itself was about the size of most of the other houses we've seen. To top it all off, it was, unbelievably, within our price range. (A stretch, but still...)

Of course, it sold before we even got close to making an offer. Heartbreaking. I doubt we will see another house like it within our price range. Our price range, which already puts us in the frightening position of mortgaging both of our futures, seems laughably small for the Bay Area, although our broker has been kind enough not to say this explicitly. For a gal with a hankering for a place to call home, it's almost enough to make a person move to Texas.

California Dreamin'

On a sunny day like today, I can't believe how blessed I am to live here. Even on rainy days, I usually feel pretty blessed. There aren't too many places on this planet that are more beautiful than this, or more filled with things to do. We can surf one day, and the next morning drive to Yosemite to go snowshoeing with friends. But I can't help envying one of our friends (really more my husband's friend), whose life somehow always seems more exciting: moving from one country to another, living in China and eating bugs, jumping out of planes on a regular basis... They spent New Year's in Hong Kong, went on safari in Africa over summer holidays, and those are just the trips I know about. I've been obsessed with buying a house, but today I wondered, What if we didn't? What if we just took the money and ran (traveled the world)?