Room Additions

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Share a little secret with you: I color-code my months. I've done it since college. What this means is, when I have a choice of colors (highlighting pens and ink color of other pens, kitchen sponges, file folders, etc.) I pick a color that corresponds to the month -- at least to me it does. Some months are obvious: October = orange. In the spring and summer I have to pick from the palette, but I worked this out years ago. See the Carmel-by-the-Sea above? September = blue. I'm not sure why. Maybe because I always had the blues when summer was coming to an end. Or maybe as the days shorten, I want more of that blue sky. But if you look again, you will see that the blue above is getting lighter and fainter. And my stay in Carmel is nearing its end. But, I'm not going to write about that. I'm going to write about . . . room additions.

Don't run and get the blueprints and the tool box yet. This construction is metaphorical. It started with something that I read in the newspaper recently, which reminded me of something my friend, Joan, had said about therapy. She said that engaging in the process of therapy allowed her to live in all of the rooms of her house. I knew exactly what she meant, because I have known people (and siblings) who could only live in one room, sometimes with the doors and windows fastened shut. Ending up much like Nanny Hawkins in Brideshead, Revisted, it's not unusual to slip into this as we age. Expanding and meeting challenges in life, even developing new interests can be daunting. But if you have a large, or even medium-sized house, who wants to hole up in only one room?

The genesis of the article was that marriages can suffer from one of the individuals adding on a room and denying the other access. You see this when someone develops a passion or interest which excludes their partner. So you get football and golf widows; or one person getting more devout in their religion while the other does not; or involvement in a book club and their fellow members to the detriment of the time spent together with your partner. But that's a relationship issue. What I was interested in was the concept of room additions as a metaphor for personal expansion. In recent years, I've found this concept of expanding your life, well, fascinating. I think because, in many ways, I was fearful when I was younger. And as that has dropped away, I've been able to push out in areas that are both healthy and gratifying to me, but, more importantly, this has given me more courage to push out in other areas.

I'm not going to make your eyes into pinwheels by reiterating my three-things mantra which is on the mission statement, if you will, of my blog. But I do want to attempt to convey just how important, how much it has changed my life to rediscover dance, to risk my fragile creative vulnerability by putting up my writing here, and to up the ante on a life-long culinary adventure by discovering more innovative ingredients and new trends in cooking. These are my room additions.

And btw on the marriage front, for those of you not following along, Billy cooks alongside me. I've even recently caught him perusing food magazines. He reads every post I write, and even accompanies me, albeit very occasionally, to salsa clubs. So, no locked doors on any of my room additions.

I really had to reign myself in to pick those three activities. I wanted to try to get better at them through concentration and practice. So I winnowed out all those other things that I had tried: calligraphy, knitting, baking (for the most part), though I do still garden. Book club? English majors don't do that. We did it with our professors and a whole room of other English majors all through upper division literature classes and senior seminars. No one is going to pick what I read right now, and I'm not much for the ubiquitous thriller/intrigue authors. But that's just me. Sports? I suppose I could revisit golf again, in spite of the carpel tunnel affecting both my hands -- that's why God made Advil. Art? My real weak link. I'm neither talented at visual art, nor interested in looking at it. I will walk through galleries with Billy, but I get nothing out of it. Art museums? I might as well be walking through Ikea. It's just something missing in me.

So if I were to begin to think about, let's see, bumping this wall out and adding a, let's say, small sunporch off the dining room, what would that room contain? And I paused for a long time before writing this list: volunteer work, most likely involved with reading/reading disabilities; studying Spanish (yet again) though I'm hopeless with languages; spending a month somewhere that isn't located in either California nor Hawaii; raising a puppy, but not yet. Before you start construction, you should have a pretty darned good idea of what you are doing. But, I also think it's a slippery slope where you get complacent about living in the quarters you already have, or worse, closing off some of those rooms.

I suppose the constant construction of room additions could also bring new relationships -- new friends. As my family dwindles, my friends have become even more important to me. They are truly my family. But they don't live together in the family room. They are spread out into different rooms all over my house -- my salsa friends in that room over there with the music and dance floor, for example. I am always open to welcoming new friends, but the friends I have carried through my life or at least through the last decade or so mean everything to me. You know who you are!

So there you have it! Room additions. And I don't want to get all new-agey about this, but it is interesting to ponder. If you were going to build on a new room, what would it represent and contain? How would you furnish it? I'm just asking . . . Gracias for reading my blog in whatever room in your casa.

Away We Go

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Billy and I are packing up and will leave Carmel tomorrow. Every trip takes on its own sense and flavor. This trip is no different. We haven't spent any September time in Carmel in years, and it is somewhat different than the time we spend in January. First, there's the weather. It was foggy here for the first week. Then the sun came out and stayed out for almost two weeks. Then it got foggy and pretty cold. House guests who were coming out of 90 to 100 degrees at home were pleased. But I brought more long-sleeved tee-shirts than sweaters with me. Still, you make it work. Layers, layers, layers . . .

Second, we spent most of our time here alone. Las Chicas came in for a visit, and so did Sandra and John. But we often stack three or four sets of house guests while we are here. It's a way and time to get together with our friends who live in Northern California. And a good time to get Billy's mom out of Arizona. Except that she was in Washington with Billy's brother. John and Sandra hadn't been to stay with us in Carmel since January 2010, due to Sandra's health issues. And we no longer have Kona Village to reconnoiter each October. So their visit was a given.

We were going to invite other friends who live up in the bay area, but we learned he would be traveling a lot through the month. And, in recent months, she has dropped off on our email communication. I think she isn't currently interested in maintaining a regular dialog. And that's ok. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something else going on. I gently questioned her about this; asking what was going on as she seemed a bit down. But she didn't respond to the query, and came back with a cheery email, so I let it be. You want to be there for your friends, and especially for the fristers (she is one). But, you can only do something about what you can do something about. I am kind; I stay in contact; I wait. While I have been known to jump in with both feet, sometimes it is better to give friends the time and space they seem to want. Hopefully she will know I am here, when I am needed.

When I talked to Lydia about this, and about the trip, she suggested that Billy and I should not have house guests on the front end of the trip. Billy was here for ten days at the beginning of our stay. He returned twelve days later and stayed until the end (ten more days). I talked to him about Lydia's advice. She thinks we need this, I said. Billy agreed with Lydia. So we went short on house guests and spent our first ten nights here all by our lonesome. It was better. It was something we needed after the strain of recent hectic and stressful years. We walked; went out for drinks and/or dinner; drove the 17-Mile Drive (yet again); relaxed and slept well. Batteries were running low on juice, but we didn't know how to recharge them. Lydia did.

And so we go. It's always hard to leave, but, perhaps easier this time, as we will be returning in late December. Billy worked straight through from late January to September 1st without a break or vacation besides Fourth of July. It was too long. Having the two one-week periods off this September was good for him. But not enough. We both know that next year he will take a few more shorter breaks, and we plan to recreate a bit more. We are getting older, and all work seems harder to do. Billy wants to work another five years, but I hope to shorten that (financial wizard that I am) by at least a year.

I return to Los Angeles to attend a Dodgers game with my frister, Lydia, the next evening. It will be the second to the last game of the season, and the Dodgers hang on by a very slender thread to the possibility of a wild card spot. I have to accept that for Dodgers baseball, the season is most likely ending. Dodgers baseball became a true respite over the past six months, even when they were nose-diving. I've learned to love baseball again, and I've been grateful for the distraction. But, its season is coming to a close with no other sport to replace it for me. Football, ugh. Basketball? Lakers are getting pretty long in the tooth, and it's so frantic. I think I will just need to hang on until April. After all, next year is a new, clean page yet to be writ. And people have invested over a billion dollars in this team! Which is crazy. But. Let's go, Dodgers in 2013.

And so, home. But again, Carmel feels more and more like home, so I get confused. Better to say that we will be returning to Los Angeles, where everyday life including our business and gardening chores await. Oh, and we will be having a new roof put on our house. That's what you do in between trips to Carmel. You take care of business. Carmel will be here, and I will think of it in the way I always thought about the Kona Village when we weren't there. Daily life goes on whether you are there or not. You just can't see it. It's like Brigadoon. Only without that 100-yearlong siesta. Wake up, and thank you for reading my blog. See you soon in Los Angeles!

Serendipity

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

I like John Cusack. Do I like him, like him? Is he equal in stature to other members of my I-really-like-this-actor club, like Daniel Day-Lewis or Colin Firth or Sam Waterston? And, is that last question reminiscent of those on tests where you have to pick the one name that doesn't fit in? Anyway, no, he doesn't get to join that club, but I like him in most of his movies that I've seen. He started out with that young, quirky face -- the wry smile and sad eyes. Then, he grew into that face. His young face was in the scene with the boom box in Say Anything. Love that scene.

So, John Cusack came to mind when I entitled this post Serendipity, because he made a movie by the same name. Actually, Billy and I kinda know the director of this movie, Peter Chisholm, as he is a customer of Billy's. I like the idea of the movie, and it is a solid chick flick, but not a favorite of mine. So, moving right along . . .

Last week I was tooling along on my morning walk in Carmel. I rarely take the same route. Carmel is like a lot of places which, unlike the neighborhood where I live, is pretty much laid out in a grid. The streets get a little wavy as you get near the point, but you can rather easily truck along in a chessboard pattern. And I walk them more or less like a knight moves across the board (kinda funny -- in a town like Carmel with a renowned Mission, you would think I'd walk through it like a . . . wait for it . . . bishop! Hahahahahahahahahaha! Oh dear). Anyway, I tend to move a block over, then a couple of blocks down, and vice versa, hitting the pattern in which a knight moves, as I recall. I don't play chess much and I'm having difficulty remembering, as well as staying on the subject. So, the walk . . .

I came down a street that Ts into Bayview, which is where the house that Sandra and John used to own is located. They lived in Carmel before we knew them, but I would bet that we crossed in a store or on the street during that time. I took a photo of the house, texted it to Sandra, then walked the remaining yards down to Scenic, which is the street that runs along the ocean. I hadn't walked too far before I came to a curve where there were a few cars stopped, and a small group of people standing around. From this point you can see all the way up Carmel beach and to Pebble Beach beyond. I had my head down, doing my version of power walking, when someone said to me: See the space shuttle? And there it was, flying low across Carmel beach. I had forgotten that it was going to fly over Monterey, but had managed to hit the best spot to see it at just exactly the right time. It flew along Carmel beach, then cut in, flying right over our heads. So close! We were like kids chattering and cheering. It looks so small, I said. No, a guy with a Carmel Fire Department tee-shirt said, It's not small (you stupid, blonde bimbo). But in contrast to the jumbo jet carrying it on its back, it looked rather, well, petite. And sleek. Wow.

I had grabbed my phone and snapped a few pics of it as it was going over, and they probably would have turned out quite well, except that I hadn't charged my phone that morning and the battery was running low. Low enough that the camera couldn't operate. As I walked on up the beach, I was supremely disappointed. But then, I thought, wasn't it enough to see it? I almost missed it, but it was serendipitous that I was right there at the beach, in the best place to see it. I was lucky. The odds of seeing a whale in the bay are pretty good (see post entitled Thar She Blows, available here right now at a close-out price), but the odds of seeing the space shuttle fly by? Well actually, pretty good if you remember that it's going to do that. In my case, I was working against the odds, but it still worked out. So I shrugged off the misfire of the camera. Not meant to be.

As this trip comes to a close, in a week, I think about serendipity. We had a perfect trip to San Francisco, and the Dodgers won the game we attended at AT&T Park. That will stay in my memory with a residual glow. I heard a homily at Mass at the Carmel Mission that made me think about something in my life in a new way. And, the space shuttle flew right over my head. Being in the right place at the right time. My friends who speak yiddish call it beshert -- meant to be. And, as I've written in my blog, ad nauseam, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about (paraphrase alert!) moments when everything goes all glimmering. Serendipity. Just when you get complacent and begin to take life for granted, it may come your way. Or fly over your head. And, in case there isn't a fireman there to remind you, here is my last bit of advice on this subject: Don't forget to look up! And, thanks for reading my blog.

The Girls Are Back In Town

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Sung to the tune of Thin Lizzie's The Boys Are Back In Town:

Guess who just got back today?
My bff fristers who can't stay away
Haven't talked in about half a day
Run out of words? We will just have to see
We know Lydia's here to shop
She does it so much we can't get her to stop
From the bottom of Ocean Avenue all the way to the top
Run out of stores? We'll have to see . . .

The girls are back in town, the girls are back in town
The girls are back in town, the girls are back in town
The girls are back in town, the girls are back in town
The girls are back in town (are you kidding me, this 
is the chorus? My apologies to songwriters Ynott &
Parris, but. Really?) The girls are back in town.

The girls, Debra and Lydia who are better known here as DG and LOL (see a whole bunch of previous posts including The Monogram, available here until 8:00 pm today EST), were back in town. They left Monday afternoon to drive back to their respective homes in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Their January visit to Carmel has become a ritual, and luckily they were able to come for a three-nighter on this September trip.

The three of us have been friends for a long time, since we picked spots near and/or next to each other in an aerobic dancing class. To say that we've seen each other through a lot is an understatement. And there was a space in time when we almost lost contact with Lydia. But somehow we maintained a tenuous thread through holiday and birthday cards, a call now and then. Internet made it easier.

The great thing about our friendship is that it is a successful triad. My experience with triangles (and let's not even touch upon that disasterous episode with geometry in high school, lest I confess that my best experience with angles, at that time, was playing pool) hasn't been all that stellar. But with us it works. While two of us might share something that the third doesn't, there is always another thing that shifts the conversational balance around: Debra and I are both readers; Lydia & I are both Dodgers fans; Debra and Lydia are both moms; Debra and I see more films that Lydia; Lydia and I shop more than Deb; Debra and Lydia both work in education, Lydia and I have been known to enjoy a cocktail or wine; Debra and Lydia both have kids who went to Cal; Lydia and I have identical red purses; Deb & I just purchased matching blue skirts . . . oh you get the picture . . .

There are a few rituals that we do on each trip: I cook their first-night-in-Carmel dinner; the next day we walk up and down Ocean Avenue popping into shops; on Sunday, Lydia accompanies me to Mass at Carmel Mission Basilica, after which the three of us spend the afternoon at Pebble Beach Spa getting the knots and kinks of life smoothed out of us. We also make a pilgrimage to Jan de Luz for gifts and, this time, another apron for Lydia. And we often hit a couple of other shops on our way, including a we're-closing-in-fifteen-minutes spree at Anthropology, which turned into a feeding frenzy.

We spend most evenings curled up in our same spots (much as in the old aerobic dancing days, we are creatures of habit) on the sectional sofa in front of the fireplace talking and watching Lydia drift off mid-sentence when it quickly becomes late in the evening. After she goes to bed, Deb and I natter on into the early hours. This gives us the two of us a chance to catch up; they had that opportunity during their six hour drive up (until that pesky speeding ticket, Billy used to make it in five); Lyd and I have that during our almost-daily, hour-long, afternoon drive time conversations.

I think my favorite time during their visit is the mornings. I have always felt this when I am a house guest or have house guests in my home or vacation home. I love the luxury of lounging; everyone awakening at their own pace; wandering out in their pajamas or whatever; basking in their own varying degrees of vacation bliss or vacation exhaustion. Each grabs a cup of coffee or brews a cup of tea and finds a spot to settle in for conversation and laughter. It's so companionable to relax in the morning in this manner with good friends. And if you don't get this, please watch The Big Chill.

Our Las Chicas weekend always goes by way too fast. I try not to see the movie visual of the calendar pages flying off each day, but I am aware that the time is fleeting. And then the day of reckoning comes and I hear the wheels of suitcases bumping down the hall towards the front door. Saying goodbye is hard. We all wave until we can't see each other anymore. And the first evening is too quiet and still. But I know that they will be back in January; hopefully for a bit longer.

And Lydia will soon be leaving her job and taking an early retirement. I am both happy for her and excited about this prospect. I look forward to seeing what this next part of her life will be about; what activities she will embrace. She is the hub of an extended and growing multicultural family, with a son in his last year of law school. He has a lovely girlfriend who is soon to commence dental school. LOL's life will be full, but I hope neither of these two fristers of mine will ever have a life too full to spend this time with me in Carmel. I'm campaigning for a four-nighter frister weekend during the time I am here in January. There is more to do here: more conversations and fun to have; more restaurants to try; more stores to shop. And, of course, for LOL's sake, there will always be more aprons to acquire. I thank you for reading my blog, and thanks for the memories, fristers!

Losing My Religion

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Billy and I left Carmel last weekend and drove to San Francisco to see a Dodgers/Giants game at AT&T Park. We had talked about doing this for awhile, and I kept eyeing the tickets on the Giants' website. Giants were not doing well when I first started looking. Then they started winning, and the tickets disappeared. Seriously, standing room only at a stadium! Although, having now been to that stadium, I realize there are a lot of pretty cool places to stand -- like by the giant Coca Cola bottle, or over by the cable car. Or anywhere along the terrace that runs above the part of the bay, now known as McCovey Cove, where there are fanatics in kayaks and boats hoping to fish for a home run ball. And, by the way, I don't hesitate to admit that this is a beautiful stadium. But that doesn't mean I'm willing to stand around in it for nine innings. So, I bit the bullet and purchased exorbitantly expensive tickets on StubHub -- this after my friend and dentist (yes, my dentist is my friend) said, oh, just do it! Somehow that admonishment, as well as increasingly thinking that we can't take it with us, enabled me to purchase two pretty darn good tickets on the first baseline. They were on an aisle, and under the overhang. It was a day game.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Billy and I left Carmel on Friday morning, and drove up on the coast road to Half Moon Bay. It was a blindingly stunning, bright and sunny day. We had lunch at Half Moon Bay Brewing Company -- splitting a red snapper sandwich and each enjoying a pint of ale: Billy's pale; mine amber. We checked into Hotel Vitale at the Embarcadero around 3:00, dropping off our one duffle in the room, and crossing over to The Ferry Building, which was almost directly across the street.

The Ferry Building is where the commuter Sausalito and Vallejo ferries dock. It's also a collection of restaurants and specialty food emporiums. After buying one(1) kitchen towel, and splitting a coffee gelato, we arrived back at the hotel and were plunged into one of the most outrageous bar scenes I have ever encountered. Evidently, all those in their thirties, mas o menos, who work in the financial district collect on Fridays at the indoor/outdoor bar at our hotel. There were packs of youngish men in suits with loosened or pocketed ties, and women wearing grey or navy dresses or skirts-with-jackets and achingly high heels. Luckily, we nabbed a table, ordered martinis and enjoyed some very good tapas, including the Stone Fruit Bruschetta. It wasn't Kaya Toast (see: The Acid Test, available here while supplies last) caliber, but it still achieved light-up-your-eyes tastiness.

Back in our room, we discovered, with NO END of chagrin that the Dodgers/Giants game was blacked out. So we set out in a panic to find a local bar with a TV feed. Some kind soul at Perry's (which would have been the best choice for viewing, but they were closed for a private party) sent us down the road to Palomino, where, in the company of Giants' fans, we watched the Dodgers lose. Again, they were all Giants fans --- all except us. We maintained fan allegiance anonymity, spending a lot of time whispering (me) and muttering (Billy).

The following day, we checked out of our hotel, leaving our duffle and car in their care, and walked along the waterfront to the stadium. It was another crystal clear sparkling day with temps around 65. Stadium was amazing -- right on the water. We ended up in a little knot of Dodgers' fans, where we could see Vin Scully in one of the press booths. The Dodgers fans in front of us, two couples, were c-r-a-z-y. They snuck in a pint of Malibu Rum which the two women were liberally using to spike their Coke. The guys were more mellow and drinking beer. At one point, one of the women (we'd all made friends, Dodgers fans that we are) turned around to me and asked: Are we going to have Victorino for more than this year? I responded that I believed he would be a free agent after this season. Good, she cried, Because I HATE his ass! Harsh (and a bit rum-fueled), but they were actually a lot of fun. They would shout Let's Go Dodgers, while all the Giants fans nearby would wait until the last word then yell GIANTS in a relatively good-natured manner. Meanwhile we sipped Sierra Nevada and cheered. And the Dodgers won. We drove back to Carmel that evening, stopping for dinner on the way at a Mexican restaurant in Moss Landing.

The next morning, I got up, and went to Mass at the Mission. Among my serious prayers for my mom, Billy, Sandra, and our friend, Keith, who just lost his father, was one for the Dodgers. More of a brief fleeting wish that our boys in blue would continue to win in a streak; something we haven't seen for awhile. This went unanswered, as they have lost more games and are now dangerously close to being out of contention in even the wild card race. I'm beginning to feel much like my friend Susan who has been saying for decades: I'll give them one more season, but if they break my heart again . . .

Meanwhile, I decided to redirect my energy and throw some more money at this. I paid twenty-five bucks to MLB.TV so that I could watch home and away Dodgers games (which are not televised here in Carmel) on my MacBook, with Vin Scully  announcing all of the games where he is available. If my hopes and dreams for a wild card triumph disapparates in a continuing downward spiral created by their serious lack of offense, they will owe me twenty-five bucks! Although, seriously, I'm still grateful for their winning game in San Francisco, even if our twenty-four hours there cost us about a grand. Seriously. It was well worth it, as it was a Visa experience: A Dodger win in San Francisco? Priceless. Whatever baseball colors you are flying, I thank you for reading my blog. But, Go Dodgers!

One Hundred Hours of Solitude

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Billy caught a plane at Monterey Airport this morning, and returned home to Los Angeles for ten days. I am probably not the only person in the universe who feels that every time someone I love boards a plane, I may never see them again. I particularly don't like saying goodbye at an airport on September 11th. And I am certain that on that front I am not the only one who feels so.

Eleven years ago, I was getting ready to go to a pilates session when I switched on the radio in our master bathroom. It was tuned to 89.3 KPCC, one of our local NPR stations which is based at Pasadena City College. Like everyone else who turned on the TV or radio that morning, I knew almost instantly that something wasn't right. I called out to Billy who was in the kitchen, inquiring whether he was watching the TV in the kitchen. He was not. Turn it on, I called out. Something's going on.

Within minutes we each knew something had happened in NYC. And within the next few minutes I emailed my friend, Max, who had begun a new job uptown in Manhattan just the day before. Max, Check in, was what I wrote. How many people emailed, texted, and left voice mails like that on that day? Max emailed me back that he was safe. Then, I sent similar emails to all of our friends who travel for business. Where were they? Were they safe? They all were.

I never did pilates that day, though I did drive there. In most crises in my life I have initially operated under the delusion that if I act like everything is ok, everything will be ok. Though this has never proved true, I still seem to fall under the spell of that failed magic -- that staying on track will turn back the hands of time and reverse the damage. I have a strong belief that this will work. This never works.

I was probably acting under a similar impulse after I left Monterey airport today. I went about normal business for the next two hours until I got Billy's call that he had landed safely: I drove back to Carmel, stopping at Bruno's for a Monterey Herald; I returned to our home-for-the-month, and made myself my second mug of Scottish Breakfast tea; I read the paper. Then I walked into town and went to Carmel Belle for breakfast. Erin, who works there, greeted me and I told her that Billy had just left. We'll take care of you, she said, and I believed her. Billy called. I celebrated his safety with one more cup of tea, a poached egg, and two huge slices of toast with butter and a lot of very good blackberry preserves. I ate it all. I deserved it.

I have about one hundred hours of solitude ahead of me until my two fristers, Lydia and Debra (known here as LOL and DG - see blogpost Sisterhood of the Traveling Scarves, available here and now!) arrive on Friday. Being on my own is a mixed blessing -- the most challenging part being that you have to be open to what it feels like. At times it feels lonely; at other times I feel absorbingly self-centric in my own little Carmel universe -- like when I indulged in the toast this morning. Days are productive and fun. Nights are, well, dark. The house creaks, then is deafeningly silent. I still sleep only on my own side of the bed. When I wake up in the morning, I just have to make the bed on my side. It's weird and a bit ghostly.

But this time alone allows me the luxury of undisturbed reflection; time to ponder some personal issues. It provides the focus that I usually lack in my hurried life in Los Angeles. As my pace slows, my mind clears. Then time moves much the way it is supposed to, and so does life; neither getting away from me as they often do when I am at home. Here, I shop daily for the ingredients that will comprise my dinner. I walk to the beach and into town, and I write a lot: in my journal; emails to my fristers and Max; here on my blog. I breathe. Tomorrow, I will begin to make plans for the upcoming weekend with Las Chicas. But before their arrival on Friday -- one hundred hours of solitude, mas o menos, commencing on this day of remembrance for us all. Thank you for reading my blog. Pray, love, remember . . . Shakespeare.

Three Thousand Hits

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Here we are, back in Carmel. While September is not a usual time for us to go to Carmel, at least not in a decade or so, the past few years have been so different and complicated in so many ways, that we find ourselves not traveling afar as we have in the past. So this year, we are once again spending extended time in one of our favorite places. And that's ok. While we listen with some envy to stories about our friends' travels; while I eye the Silversea and Radisson cruise line brochures that come to our home with a small sense of yearning; while I long, long to feel the way I do while we have spent time at The Kona Village; it's just not our time to do that. It's our time to stay fairly close to our Los Angeles home, close to my mom, close to our business. And so here we are.

It does feel like home to me, even though we're not in the same house we rented for so many years. It's our second stay here at this house, and it is a really nice one. I've gotten used to being on the opposite side of town from where we have always rented; I've gotten used to the odd fact that this house doesn't seem to have a name (no street addresses or mail delivery in town so all houses are named, or so I thought); I've gotten used to the push-button fireplace which altered my opinion that those things are cheezy. It looks very much like a real fire-in-the-fireplace. And if we need what Billy calls a true Carmel smell, there is a wood-burning fireplace in the living room.

This house has an outside patio with a table surrounded by flowers and trees. It has a barbecue. But the weather has been foggy and cool since we got here on Sept 1st. I remarked that Carmel doesn't know it's September yet, as the foggy days of summer seem to have lingered on. But the house is warm and cozy, and the town is Carmel. And so we begin our process of winding down and getting recharged up for the rest of the year.

Lest I lose you all (all one or two of you reading this), I should try to refrain from listing the reasons why the past couple of years have been hard. Last year, at this time, we were rehabbing our rental property after it was trashed by a tenant. Billy was doing all the grunt work and heavy lifting, as he has done two other times in the past three years during which time we have twice moved my mom. Then there was that pesky economic thing which reigned terror on all small business owners, which is what we are. But life is more stable now. It's just that we're both a little older and a little more spent.

I commented to many people, and probably wrote it in a previous post (available here in limited quantities), that I got through this past year with the help of salsa dance, an unseasonable taste for Guinness beer, and baseball. That's Dodgers baseball. The Dodgers helped me along by coming out strong at the beginning of the season, after the heinous McCourts sold them to a consortium which included Magic Johnson. Our boys in blue played with verve and joy through April and May. Then there were injuries. They dropped a lead which I will recall (without checking) was about nine games. They were barely at the top of their division going into the All-Star break. After much back and forth, they had regained that slim lead, and then. And then. The Giants smoked us through a three-game series last month. Now we are 4.5 games back of the Giants, and Billy and I are heading to San Francisco today to watch tomorrow's game at AT&T Park. Looking forward to it. Nervous. Excited. Go Dodgers (like win, before I have a heart attack)!

Meanwhile, my blog is nearing another pinnacle, and once again, it is occurring while I am in Carmel, where it began. I will pass 3000 hits this weekend, which should make me feel a little bit like a blogger all star. I just looked at the Dodgers' stats and, they have a combined 1167 hits this season as of Sept 4th. And I want to guess that I've seen about 1100 of them, either on television or at Dodger Stadium. Looking forward to a few more over the weekend, before we return to Carmel and I settle in to write a boatload (a McCovey Cove reference, get it?) of blog posts. In the meantime, in-between time, ain't we had fun? Ok, maybe fun is too strong a word. But I do thank you for joining me on my writing journey by reading my blog -- especially if you've looked at it more than once. I implore you to leave a message on any post that speaks to you. And I hope you will enjoy the next three thousand. I haven't said it all yet. You must trust me about this.

I do need to repeat the comment that I'm not sure if there are three thousand of you who have each read my blog once, or one of you who has hit on it three thousand times (you know who you are, LOL. For the rest of you: see post entitled The Monogram available here at newly reduced prices). Regardless, I thank you, one or all. And for the love of heaven, GO DODGERS!!!