Home

There's nothing like a good road trip to make you realize how great home is, and more than that, what home is. The whole time I was planning to go, I kept telling people I was going home. The closer the trip got, the more I felt like I did not really want to go. I wanted to see everyone and collect some much longed for hugs, but I did not want to go to LA. I knew I would go and focused on feeling into the source of my discomfort in order to understand it. Clarity never really materialized before I left Reno nor while I was gone, despite my best efforts to be open. But I am clear now.

I got back from LA/San Jose/Oakland Wednesday night around midnight. Was going to blog yesterday, but found out that my landlord, Vanessa, was coming over for a visit, so cleaned my house instead. It was tidy, but the kitchen floor needed some work and the bathroom. Plus, I was in the middle of doing laundry and unpacking the truck. After she left, I took a nap that lasted till three in the morning. Now after a few Windows errors and computer restarts, I am getting down to it.

It had been a long drive, after work and with very little sleep, and while I gave it my best shot upon arrival, my afternoon nap refused to happen. It was ridicuosly hot in Raym's apartment, and I was too wound up from the road. I did lay down and rest, mostly to be in front of the fan and stop the sweating.

Josh and I met Raym at Mom's around 4:30 and headed to the beach to have dinner and watch the fireworks celebration in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Santa Monica Pier. Mom and Ginny had parked the car at the beach earlier in the day to insure good parking and taken the bus home. We all took the Blue Bus down to Pico and Main, which was actually really fun for me.

Dinner at Shutter's was lovely, and afterwards we strolled to the car to get the chairs and jackets and such. The weather was perfect, and it's hard to beat a magnificant sunset at the beach when I am thinking about how to enjoy myself. Being with Josh, Raym, Mom and Ginny was icing on the cake.



Mom took this one.

And this may become my new favorite picture of my sons.

Ginny was only at the beginning of dressing for a blizzard as I took this one.

Mom was good to go with her cute little hat and jacket.

Greta came by later, just before the fireworks started. The fireworks show was just great and we swooped out of the parking lot with the greatest of ease. I hated to unbury my feet from the sand slippers I had created and go, but alas, it had to be done.

Raym and I sat and talked until almost midnight before we went to bed, which is really no surprise, but we were both beat and had to force ourselves to stop yakking and go to bed.

Thursday, I did not do much. I had started my period at the beach the night before, and I will spare you for now my menopausal details, but I woke up Thursday morning feeling less than great. I laid back down and watched a movie. That was my plan for the rest of the day. I did go to the grocery store around 3:30 to get some stuff to make stroganoff. Raym is the one person I can count on to be happy about stroganoff and I had been looking forward to making it while I was at his house. We had dinner and looked through a box of photos I brought. It was the perfect relaxing evening to go with my perfectly relaxed day.

Dustin stopped by after his HVAC class, and the three of us laughed pretty hard while we looked through that box.


Friday, I was busy. I spent the morning with Josh and we walked in Venice Beach and ate lunch at Rae's, still as cheap and satisfying as ever. I went by Mom's in the afternoon and hung out till it was time to meet Raym after work at Ah Young's house to see Emma. I left my camera in the car, duh. After indulging in the cuteness of a trying to crawl baby, I met Greta for dinner at our usual place, The Soup Plantation. Greta had a buy one, get one free coupon, which made it even better for me! I was exhausted when I got home. I fell asleep watching a movie, Raym was still at a birthday celebration for Shareef.

Saturday I really did not feel well. Raym and I had planned to go to Costco in the morning, but that never happened, I slept until noon, I think Raym was up before me. A plan was hatched to hook up the Direct TV and watch the USC/Ohio State game. Raym instantly went into cruise director mode, and the preparations for company began. His house was in pretty good order, so it was really just tidying up the place.

Here is the whole crew after the game.

It was a good game with lots of whooping and hollering, plenty of beer and snacks. The group had a good mix of fans for both sides, so there was plenty of banter back and forth as the game progressed. Afterwards, everyone was worn out.


Except Raym, of course, who was going out later.

It seemed like they hooked up the satellite dish with a minimal amount of problems, but apparently, it is not always that easy to find a signal with this portable contraption. They asked me to take a picture of it. I thought they were kidding, but as I would find out Sunday, finding the exact position could be a challenge.

This is a kid Raym met in Waltham at the Regal Players gig. I am pretty sure his name is Tim and he was quite adorable. goofy, but adorable.

I was longing for the quiet of my little house and at the same time pleased to be in the company of such fun. This kind of describes my feeling the whole trip. Happy to see people I hold so dear to my heart, but really wanting to be in my own space. Home. The realization that LA was not home spread over me slowly.

Sunday was another day similar to Friday. Raym and I spent the morning with Dustin and Frances eating breakfast at Farmer's Market and discussing baby names and health care. Then we went to see Jeremy and Maryke. They have a nice place, good space and location in the building. I am so pleased that they are settling in and happy. Josh and Raym see them fairly often and that warms my heart. When we got home Sunday night there was a long session of trying to find the connection to satellite and eventually more football. Josh came over. I played video games on my phone while they watched football. I was leaving in the morning.

OK, I am tired of sitting here. I will share more later about my departure form LA, San Jose and Oakland. Have a great day!

Summer is Coming to an End

The days are cooling off to the reasonable 80's, but the evenings and mornings are down right chilly. I had to close the bedroom window last night, so sad. I am looking forward to the fall colors, but I cannot say I am looking forward to the winter cold. Ah well, such is life. I will search every day to find the beauty in my world, even if I am wearing a coat.

Have a great day!

The Birds

The birds in this neighborhood are amazing. I have never lived where there are such beautiful birds. Red ones, blue ones, black ones, just incredible. They rarely come close to the house or even stay in one place for any length of time, but I got lucky the other day when this fellow sat outside the window long enough for me to take his picture. Even though the photo is terrible through the window, this bird is the most beautiful blue with some charcoal gray on the tips of his wings and on his head. He sat here in the fence calling for his mate for a good long time. I am keeping my eyes peeled for some really cool bird feeders to put in the yard next year. There is a store just down the street that specializes in food and care of wild birds, imagine that.

Cooking Fool

Before Willie got here, I was eating Trader Joe's frozen food. Fast, easy, delicious. But with the garden exploding in fresh produce, I have been trying to find new ways to cook tomatoes and zucchini. This week I decided to make my own version of stuffed zucchini. I talked to Bill and he said by all means, take anything I wanted out of the garden...please!

I laughed out loud when I went outside and found this zucchini!


I had decided to stuff it with organic wild rice, bought in bulk at Whole Foods,


I would add some tomatoes, but I also made caprese with the cherry tomatoes.

Some yummy roasted garlic chicken sausage plus fresh garlic,

and pine nuts,

The zucchini was too big to use all of it, so I opted for zucchini bowls.

Pine nuts, garlic and sausage sauteed nice and brown.

I mixed this with the rice, filled the zucchini, topped with Mozzarella cheese and baked in the oven for about an hour. Delicious! I was even impressed with myself.

The caprese was easy. I got some good buffalo mozz from Whole Foods, added the cherry tomatoes and Maryke's basil plus a splash of olive oil. I have been eating this all week.

Willie has also been doing alot of cooking. While we were at the cabin in Tahoe, the subject of eating as children came up. I told him about Hamburger Helper and he told me about all the things he ate growing up. One thing was fried cabbage and bacon. He made it one day last week and I just had to have it again - it was so simple, but so delicious.

Late Summer Spring

I know I am getting a late start, but I have been feeling like all of my outside work is really prep for next year in the yard, when I can start as soon as the freezing weather is over and save some money for plants and such.

One of the things I did recently was to clean out all the white rock in this planter bed. Maryke left a package of wild flower seeds and I just threw them in there to see what would happen. Much to my delight and surprise, the seeds are sprouting!

Lake Tahoe

I have been wanting to drive up to Tahoe since I got here. I especially thought about it to and from Oakland. I had wanted to go see the cabin, as an adult, someone who is centered and clear about who she is and has put where she came from in the past. I was deeply shaped by my experiences here. Lake Tahoe is breathtakingly beautiful, and I have been there many times since those days in the cabin and loved the beauty and magesticness of this place. But I have not been back to the cabin. I drove past it very quickly once when I was camping at Emerald Bay with David and the boys a very long time ago.

I have been wanting to drive up to Lake Tahoe, but I have not wanted to go alone. Willie was more than happy to make a day out of this little adventure, bless his heart.

As we drove up Highway 50, I was telling Willie all I knew about Lake Tahoe. I was kind of surprised how accurate I was when we found this little sign. He was in the passenger seat and took this first shot when he saw the lake for the first time. The view really is quite stunning.


Coming up on South Lake Tahoe...

Entering California. I found it interesting that there is no agricultural check point. Fruit and veggie smugglers could have a field day on this route.

We found the Bottle Shop just as it had been since 1971.

The Pioneer Inn looked small and quaint. It seemed much larger as a child.

We parked right in front of the cabin. It was vacant, so I was able to look around.


This is the bedroom side of the house that used to look out over a wide open empty lot, now there is a big motel on the other side to flank the Pioneer Inn leaving the cabin in the valley of some weird motel canyon.

This is the kitchen side, and I was pleased to see a side door. As I have been writing about those months in the cabin I have questioned my memory and my description of the property. Everything inside was exactly as I remembered. But now there is a nice deck out back and a fence marking the property line.

I tried to take a few in the windows, but the reflection was pretty bad. It is funny how small this place looked to me now. I tried to see a man and five children living here, but it was too far out of my realm of reality, even though I know it happened once upon a time.

For some reason there were padlocks on the bedroom doors, which is kind of hard to see because of the reflection in the window pane, but somehow felt appropriate to me. I wondered if the toilet flushed and the shower worked.

After saying goodbye to the cabin, wishing I had thought to bring sage for burning, I wanted to go to Harvey's, which has been fixated in my head as my favorite casino in South Lake Tahoe. Probably because this was the first casino I was ever in and would have been quite spectacular to a ten year old child. Willie was pleased with the inside and took this shot while I used the bathroom.

We hung out at Harvey's for a short time, enough for me to know there is not a gambling bone in Willie's body. We put a dollar in a penny machine and Willie was thrilled to cash out when he had doubled his money. I talked him into putting his winnings in a quarter machine and in two spins he hit for $17 and cashed out, refusing to put another dime in. We laughed the whole time.

Willie packed a lunch for us and we looked for a place on the lake shore to picnic, but everywhere we went they charged $8 to park, which we refused to pay. We cruised along Highway 50 turning into neighborhoods to see what we could find. No lake access, but we did find Ray Way, which made me smile for obvious reasons.

We finally ditched the lake shore idea and headed up to the view point we stopped at on the way in. Turns out off of the highway there was a little trail, some nice benches in the shade and bathrooms, score! Here I am munching happily on my current favorite food, granny smith apples and fresh ground almond butter that they sell at Winco.

A few other people wandered into the area. All of us had cameras at the ready, so we took pictures of them and they offered to take one of us as well. Willie, much like Jenn, has a hard time not goofing off for the camera.

Lake Tahoe, forever beautiful, now cleansed of tragedy for me, will always be one of my favorite places on the planet.