Nook & Crannie

Grateful

Grateful for the morning sunrise that proceeds so brilliantly and uniquely, each day to start. “Very simply with hope, good morning,” Maya Angelo said. And past the day break, when the sun is higher, and the birds have quieted down, or rather the world has woken up: “I thank you God for this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes,” E.E. Cummings so magically put. 

Grateful for the love letter and the perfect gold leaf accompanying, for the flowers and the thoughtfulness, for people who show up and for time well spent.

Especially today, grateful for him. As Story People puts it:

He loved her for almost everything she was & she decided that was enough to let him stay for a very long time.

Tis The Season

Tonight’s Declarative Mission: Caramels.

Tonight’s Resulted Mission: Failed. 

The beginning, let’s start there. Birth, Education, Finding God, Turning 21, Making Money, Spending Money, Engagement, Marriage. 

For the first holiday season ever, I’m a wife. I don’t have a snowman apron, I didn’t buy nearly enough ornaments for our fake, hand-me-down, smallish-sized Christmas tree and I continually forget to water the freaking poinsettia.  As you can see, I need all the help I can get to verifiably prove my domestic self.

I can bake. And onetime, when I was eight, I made homemade caramels with my grandma.. but mostly, she did everything.  WIth this thought process, I figured this caramel mission was both doable and challenging. A nice little accomplishment, complete with a pat on the back and fluffy words like peachykeen.  Nice thought, but in reality, just another endearing Annie fail.

Before tonight, we were a Candy-Thermometer-Free household.  Now as I write this, we are still. Earlier, I went to the store to get the ingredients for the goods. Later, I went to the store for the beloved thermometer, which apparently is not interchangeable with a meat thermometer. Politics.

I opened a festive winter ale and opened the plastic bag, which held the cardboard package, which held the prized tool that would make me a successful, reindeer sweater wearing wife. Excitedly, expectantly, I clumsily opened the package. This was better than Christmas day, my friends. This was it. And as the glass thermometer, which was the last in the store, shattered on the floor, that was that.  

And tonight, that’s surprisingly okay.  Cheers with what’s left of this beer to friends that are, family that loves, work that satisfies, a home that warms, and the best companion for all of my coming days. Cheers to this year, for all it was, and for whatever it remains to be.

Cheers to being home, and whatever that really means. Cheers.

Whirlwind

I sit here in the dark, void the generational light of my computer screen. Sleepless, and dizzy from the four pills I must take per day, for the next nine days. Spider-bite gone awry, but then again – are such things ever on course?

Over a 36-hour period, the bite became irritated and swelled in an odd and heated shape. The bite mark cared not that my best friend was visiting for less than 48 hours, and cared not that we’re probably too broke to pay for the ER bill. We’ve been here three months, and the bite tipped the scale: we’re moving back.

In love as ever, yet finding it difficult to find friends with a four-hour commute added on to our workday. We didn’t anticipate this decision (especially so soon), nor did we expect the hours he maintains. Cost of living, cost of relationships, quality of time all factor into this move. This jump. This humbleness. 

“One foot in and one foot back, but it don’t pay to live like that. So I cut the ties and I jumped the track, for never to return,” the Avett Brothers sing.

These lyrics resonate:

In Ames, I waited for the next thing.

Here, I waited for time to really spend in the city. To meet people, to learn something new, to experience a different kind of life. But time we don’t have, and the people we really care for are elsewhere. 

So Des Moines, we’re coming. I’ve never been more ready to set roots down. To engage with all a place has to offer, as well as soak up people old and new. Because lessons we’ve learned and faces we’ve missed, there’s no time like the present and there’s no time to waste.  

Yes, yes - we make rash decisions (we’re well aware), and we’re working on it. Wanting to throw restlessness out the window, because there is little richness of life in that notion/motion. We tried it, as we always wanted to, as we always would have questioned, and it didn’t pan out. So we’re going back where seasons change and stars evidently persist.

Joel will return to the Ames office, and I will tentatively begin grad school for school counseling next summer, admission pending, of course. Date not definite, but our apartment is listed for sublease and packing concurrently begins.

Taking what we’ve gained from the city, we’ll go. Until then, I’ll rest easy here. I’ll join Joel in bed, he’ll wrap his arms around me, and we’ll know we’re right where we’re suppose to be.

babysitting, a house

The dog that inhabits this house just killed a FedEx package. Brutally. In the front yard that is probably professionally groomed by a gardener. Four bottles of pills disheveled across the dry peninsula grass  - one severely gnawed and opened through his doggedness. Oh dear.

Apart from this mishap, housesitting has gone fairly well. Joel has given me several swimming lessons, each one including water up my noes and eventual hiccups. We’ve jumped on the trampoline, grilled poolside and ran through the winding roads of Los Altos Hills. We went to our first movie ever together on Saturday night,  and we decided to forego the hand-scooped ice cream for peanut m&ms and sour patch kids.

Things are much different here.

In our sweet little San Francisco studio, we have 3 rooms: a kitchen, a bathroom and a livingdiningbedroom. Here in Los Altos Hills, we have 10 rooms, at least. The Options, Imagine, The Space!  The first few nights we feared the creeks, soft growls of Zeek and our own imagination. Here, we cannot see the entire contents of our home. Here, we take a frying pan to bed and giggle about our paranoia in the morning.

Joel’s busy season apparently ends Friday. I hope so for both of our sakes; he’s been working like a dog. Averaging four hours of sleep a night the last week, and working through the weekend for more than a month. The lack of commute has been helpful in this regard, giving him time to work and eat and spend some time with me, and work, and work. Bless his heart. 

And bless his compassionate heart that gave sulking, “BAD DOG!”, Zeek a stuffed animal after making him think about his actions. May the stuffed ladybug, who died an awful, fluffy death, rest in peace, and may our numbered remaining days here go well.

Time to clean up another mess. Thanks Zeek.

A Day in the Life of the Modern San Franciscan

Bed Bugs

Now, a note on bed bugs. They suck. They’re sneaky. You know hide and seek, they’re terrific at the former. Big cities are full of them, and they easily transfer via public transportation, hotels and the like.

Hopefully, this explanation gives our cleanliness more credibility. If not, I never liked you anyways.

The exterminator came on Friday, looked around, and was unable to find any sign of bed bugs. The two reddish/brownish mite looking bugs we found, paired with the noticeable bites upon waking would suggest otherwise.

Later Friday afternoon, Joel met me at a Caltrain stop to buy the necessary goods at Target. Two plastic ziplock covers for our mattress and box spring (think bedwetting), three cotton ziplock pillowcases, a can of Pringles for the ride home, and drum roll please…. Our First Vacuum, a (cheap) Hoover no less.

I quickly made dinner while Joel worked, we ate, and tromped uphill to the laundromat with our bed skirt, mattress pad, sheets, bear blanket, quilt, decorative pillow cases and a load of clothes. Fun. I beat Joel at three games of War. We watched ABC’s “What Would You Do,” on the overhead television, and watched the woman who dried her clothes for the entire time we were there. Exhilarating. 

Passed the stop lights, the homeless, the bar goers, Down the 55 degree slope called hill, Up the cute rickety old elevator, and we made it home. 

Joel vacuumed. I made him cookies, and wondered how many batches of cookies I’ll make him in our lifetime (2,600 batches, if you wondered). I whined and collapsed. Joel vacuumed. I put away clothes. You guessed it, Joel (say-it-with-me-now) vacuumed. Then we diapered the bed and the pillows, put our fresh sheets on and slept ever so soundly, with only the slightest crinkle of the plastic below us.

Bookbags and Bus Stops

Public transportation has always been a matter of segregation. Rosa Park anyone? I rest my weak case.

Or take the school bus, with Kings and Queens crowned with popularity and good looks. The elite take the back four seats of the school bus, no questions asked. The bookworms, the braces and the glass-wearing dweebs are designated to the front two seats. Directly behind the bus driver, they’re as safe from spit wads as they’re going to get. Though the grumpy “HEY! I’M WATCHING YOU,” followed by a quick glance in the rearview mirror only deters the bullying for a minute, that Driver-Given-Minute is gold for those dweebs. They’ll take anything.

On Giant game days, Caltrain in much the same. 

You have the daily commuters, who dart to the single seats on top. Sitting beside someone? No thanks, I have work to do.  The Silicon Valley Slaves drone on past 6 o’clock, and go home only to work more. Their glazed eyes are telling, as they stare at their computer: click, analyze, type, click, work, keep working, must work.

And then the Giants fans get on. Beer drinking, mixer passing, shot taking, laughing, yelling, rowdy as all get out. 

The Slaves work on, seemingly un-phased by the party bus, which was the Caltrain yesterday, and will be tomorrow.

Back on the school bus, the kids like their high-level book, sure, but they’d love to know the latest gossip. Did Ryan really just moon the car behind them, and what’s so funny now? To be apart of the fun would be nice. Probably even better than this book.

Curious envy resonates with the Slaves. To drink on a Wednesday night, go out with friends and not get home until after 11, non-work related? I couldn’t, I must finish this, start that, and get ahead for next week. I want to go, but I just couldn’t.

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This weekend my parents visited, and we rented a car. It was bliss. Stopping on a whim in Napa and Sonoma, finding our way through gravel roads, having a cooler between us, and a trunk to store more than we’re able to carry on our backs.

Having a car in the city is much too bothersome, and Joel and I are so glad to have sold both before we came here. Still, the scheduled stops get old; the crowded, chaotic buses leave something to be desired.

We had a perfect time with our parents, wining, talking and show-and-telling. So grateful to have a break from public transportation, but so much more so that they visited.

Well, this is my stop. Mountainview.