Paul chided me last night for not having written down a single thought so far this week. I told him I was letting it all steep in my head for a while before putting it to paper, but of course I've just been stalling. Although I certainly have been letting it all steep. I've got a damn strong pot of tea in there ready to start leaking out of my ears, if I'm not careful.
The Rodeway Inn I'm where I'm sleeping has little to recommend it other than the $42/night price tag and the mysterious but appreciated second shower head above the tub. No mouse turds under the pillows, I guess that's a good thing too. But since I'm not here to sit in a hotel, it's been just fine with me. After a late breakfast at Henry's (waffle with the bacon on the outside this time, alas) I'm in a bagel shop on Church street that offers free wireless internet, watching people walk by and enjoying the smell of melted butter coming from the bagel at the table behind me.
Continued...click the link below to read more.
The day is gray and brisk, but warm: 46 degrees warm. I've seen several pairs of shorts already this morning. Sunday was a fantastic day: clear blue sky and sun all day long. Church street was thronged with people and their dogs drinking it in, recharging their solar batteries. I spent the afternoon wandering from bookstore to coffee shop to bookstore and watching the people. So many really nice looking beards, one of my favorite parts of the cold weather here! I stopped by the local tattoo studio and they've half a dozen artists there, one in particular really suits me. Not that I'm looking right now, but it never hurts to know what's out there...
Got a great $11 haircut yesterday and talked with the barber about our move. Everywhere I go, the people I meet are friendly and enthusiastic, and they tell me we're going to love it here. They also tell me, gosh, you're really brave to be doing this. But the more I hear that, the less brave I feel. I made a new friend last night who told me he was more impressed by my faith that things would work out than by my courage. Just where is that coming from? What's the difference between a brave sense of adventure and naive stupidity? Mom and Dad moved us half way around the world, but they knew where the next paycheck would be coming from. I'm so attached to this perceived sense of security that walking away from it is more difficult than I would have thought.
Ah, the excitement/anxiety roller coaster ride continues. The fact that I have a well developed sense of drama and a need to always prepare myself for worst case scenarios doesn't help. But then again I've been prepping for the worst for the past six months and have gotten nothing but the best outcomes to show for it. So there is that.
I am so very sure of this place, that it will so easily feel like home. I am sure I can thrive here, even through the winters, with each season bringing changes to what I see around me, to how we spend our time, to what we anticipate coming next. While I can't complain too much about year-round summer, I miss having seasons to divide and mark the years, and I'm still startled by how much this is starting to mean to me, now that this is really going to happen.
I stopped at the post office yesterday to rent a box, and the woman there spent 25 minutes working with me to make sure I had absolutely everything I needed. And when she saw how unprepared I was for the morning's driving rain she insisted that I have the rightly abandoned, hideous umbrella that had langushed in the lost and found box for the past year. No offense to the civil servants in our family, but I have NEVER received that kind of personal and well-meant attention from a postal employee. It was astounding. And I've experinced that kind of thing time after time the past few days. Drivers are so considerate as to catch me completely off guard. If I stop someone on the street to ask a question, they make eye contact and smile, and don't rush away the moment the they've spoken their answer.
These little things have been jumping out at me all week, and it feels great. I actually am finding myself behaving differently, looking at people differently and going more out of my way to interact. Paul has always observed how sterile and isolated people are out in public back home, and while I understood what he meant I've never really seen it so clearly because I was right there with everyone else. And it's not that there aren't good people out there, but our expectations of each other are so damn low that nobody bothers to exert themselves. The first time I saw Paul physically reach out to help a woman with an armful of parcels about to get the better of her, my immediate reaction was one of what were you thinking, do you want to be slapped with an assualt charge? I'm so used to thinking that way, I don't make the effort to try to connect any more. And it's exciting to realize that and think that it's something I can change.
OK, time to put this computer away for a while and go get chocolate. Then I'm going to drive out to an island just off the lakeshore to see a house that the agency probably won't rent to us, but it will be fun to see it. (What a trip filling out a rental application for the first time in 9 years. How strange and vaguely humiliating it was. I felt less put upon applying for our half a million dollar mortgage.)
Woo-hoo! No mouse turds under the pillows!
Mmm... Marble Cake
The folks at Pete's call it Marble Bread, which is a complete farce. Any baked good with that much oil and chocolate in it is clearly a cake. However, I do not quibble. It tasted great. Tasted even better because I enjoyed it at 10 am on a Tuesday. Just because I can. Yes!
I wanted more chocolate in my slice, though. It was mostly yellow. But if it were a slice of all chocolate, it wouldn't taste as good. Funny thing, that.
So, two days ago the longest truck I've ever seen up close came to our house and drove away five hours later with almost everything we own in the world. (If that doesn't make this all seem real, then nothing will.) Truck Driver Ted will meet me in Burlington next week and we'll pack it all into our storage unit.
The house is M.T. And that spells empty.
Awake, 1:39 am
"Hey, hey, big-boned gal
Ain`t no doubt she's a natural
Shakin' and a'snakin'
And a breakin' up across the floor"
k.d. lang won't get out of my head. Go home ms. lang!
THE SHIVERS
Coraline's other mother really gave me THE SHIVERS. Print and keep a copy under your pillow for especially creepy dreams.
Click the link below for a few other images that are sure to provide a good fright.
Napa MINI-Break
Simon and I took ourselves on a little vacation this week to celebrate my unemployment. Left Paul at home (he got to travel to Tahoe for a weekend last month, so it was only fair), hopped into the MINI, and motored on up to American Canyon to stay with the Wellers for a few days. No email, no internet, no computer - just lots of time lazing around the house with the dog, the Food Network, and too many Girl Scout cookies. Shane and I played with Simon in the back yard for hours - he loves having that extra space and ran like a loon.
Continued...click the link below to read more.It was great. Gave my mind a chance to really disconnect from work (I was still dreaming about it all weekend.) Read a couple of short but wonderful books: Coraline, by Neil Gaiman (the button eyes gave me THE SHIVERS), and Boy Meets Boy, a marvelously silly and endearing addition to the growing genre of gay teen romances. Really sweet.
Tuesday morning I enjoyed a greasy breakfast at the Canyon Cafe and Simon caused quite a stir sitting bolt upright in the MINI driver's seat the entire time I was inside. He looked like a canine version of Toonces, always moments away from putting the car in gear and burning rubber out of the parking lot. People were taking his picture, for Pete's sake. Anyhow, after that the celebrity and I headed north to Calistoga and back, up Hwy 29 and down the Silverado Trail. It was a clear, sunny day and the dog rode in the back seat with his snout out the window sniffing all the good snouty smells. Did a little wine tasting along the way, of course, stopping at St. Supery to pick up a couple bottles of Sauvignon Blanc for our anniversary in June. I also tried a couple of new spots (new for me, I mean): Elyse Winery in Yountville, and Miner, who had a really tasty Viognier.
Mom arrived today, so real-life kicked in once more as I shoved the boxes around in the spare room to give her space to breathe. She's going to hang out for a week to help pack, give advice, and keep me on my toes at Rummikub and Upwards, and we're so glad to have her. Tomorrow morning we head to the nursery to buy some flowers to plant and lots of attractive bark to cover all the weeds in the flower beds. Why pull them when you can just cover them up? Then, as we get sick of packing throughout the week and want a break, we can have a glass of wine, go outside, and plant a few zinnias here and there. Sounds like a plan to me.
The Time Has Come
"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing wax--of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--and whether pigs have wings."
Isn't that nice? I can't say that it has any bearing whatsoever on today, or is at all relevant. except maybe for the "the time has come" part. I mean, the walrus and the carpenter make friends with a whole mess of oysters, a whole sea-bed of them, take them for a walk along the beach, talk philosophy together, and then they eat the oysters.
I don't even like oysters.
Continued...click the link below to read more.But, this is what ran through my head this morning as I was lying and thinking that after today, I would be unemployed. So I thought I'd share it with you. There it is. (You can read the poem in its entirety here, I highly recommend it.)
So yes, the time has come. And not that I want to go all sappy and weepy or anything, but I do have many things about my time here at FileMaker to be truly thankful for.
To start, I'm thankful that 10 years ago, some guy with hair on his head called Terry Barwegen phoned to tell me I should think seriously think about leaving my hot phone center job to become something called a "software tester" at a thriving company called Claris. Hundreds of bugs, 7 FileMaker releases, many v-revs, 8 managers, 6 cubes, 5 Windows logos, twenty-five pounds, more meetings than I care to count, and half a Gluon later, I think I have more hair than I started with, if you count the beard. Sure, it's going grey awfully fast, but that only adds character. At least, that's what Simon tells me.