¡Marianísima!

We celebrated the Solstice on Saturday with our fifth annual Summer Solstic Barbecue. Horrible photographer that I am, I took exactly one photo…and the gracious subject flipped off the camera. So that just won’t do.

I’d post a picture of something beautifully evocative of summer. But it’s rainy and gray, almost as if I never moved out of Daly City!

I’d show you a belated Springtime photo of my favorite sign of Spring – ducklings! – since I saw them for the first time just a few weeks ago. But the Petaluma duckies are quite camera shy.

Instead, on this gloomy Tuesday, I give you proof that everyone’s a kid when it comes to baby cats.

They really wanted to pet him.

She squealed!

We’re moving. Our landlord has decided to sell the house we’re in. Moving is a drag, but it will give us a chance to test-live Petaluma before plunking life’s savings into a house.

To keep the packing and moving crankies in check, I’ve taken to calling out the things I will not miss about this house.

“Charming vintage cottage”

So very cute from the street. But don’t get too close. If you do, you’ll see:

• The peeling paint

Painting is hard!

• The garage that my brother-in-law dubbed “The Hobo Shack”

Picking paint colors is harder!

• The long driveway. I have to back down it, then parallel-park against the house. The long driveway ends in bricks that are even more ramshackle than the Shack.

It was only a matter of time before I got a flat.

• The sloping floors
• The crooked windows
• The leaks in said crooked windows
• The leak in the roof
• The clawfoot tub and the magnets needed to hold the shower curtain in place
• The creepy Harry Potter’s closet
• The dishwasher and fridge

And I most certainly will not miss the squatters in the shack:

The close-up

Step a bit farther back, and you get the full story

Last night, Derek walked up the garage stairs to the attic to get moving boxes. He asked me to shine the flashlight up there. I did. He asked me to get closer. In the dark with just a keychain flashlight, I came face to face with a rat. I screamed. After I realized he was dead, I was mad at Derek for not noticing and thus protecting me from the rat. But all that is mitigated, I guess, by the fact that today I climbed back up there to take photos of a dead rat. I tried to get the lighting right, until I started hearing – or imagining – noises. Then I scurried down faster than, well, a rat.

What WILL I miss about this house? Only a few things:

• The proximity to friends
• The fact that we spent our first years of marriage here
• The fruitful plum tree and the resulting plum wine
• The calla lilies

A bit of beauty. Too bad we’ll be gone before Easter.

• The horsie-door at the front of the house. It’s cute! Even if it is, as one friend called it, a one-kick door. And even if we never had the key to the front door and always had to enter or leave through the back.

I know there will be things to love and hate about the new place. But I’m excited for our new adventure. Now, if only I could get the genies to come and magically pack all our boxes…

It’s Monday morning. If that weren’t bad enough, the skies are so gray I fear the sun has abandoned us. But I know it hasn’t, know that today calls only for some non-caloric blues-busters.

Here are a few of my favorites:

• Calvin & Hobbes. Impossible to read more than a few pages without laughing out loud.
• Happy, some may say cheezy, music. Don’t judge me because I can’t resist singing along with Sammy Davis Jr. whenever I hear “The Candy Man.” (It may be on my iPod in case of emergency.)
• Dancing to said music. Yes, I dance around my house, and I’m that crazy woman rockin’ out in my car while I wait at stop lights. The dancing and music loving are inherited/learned traits. My parents bust out into song all the time, and there were many impromptu dances in our kitchen.
• Baby animals. Just thinking about zooborns.com floods me with endorphins. Looking at a baby echidna, how can you be sad? Seriously, this site makes me squeal with joy. I save it for when I really need a boost. It has never failed me. Derek also knows to email me articles about animals if I’m cranky. (Recent winner here.)
• Though not always possible, get-togethers are the best. Better still if they include age-defying silliness such as sock-skating hardwood floors or building pyramids.

Wow. Just writing this made the sun come out – both literally and figuratively. Time for a celebratory dance break!

Cast aside

2013 started with a surgical improvement. Once again, I am amazed by modern medicine. With three tiny incisions, my surgeon was able to insert a camera and tools into my knee to fix a torn meniscus that’s been nagging me for years. Within days, I was up and walking.

If only it were all so easy. Three scars and cut out my overeating tendencies? Sign me up! Three more to implant a habit of regular exercise? Yes! Just three more for a procrastinationectomy? Please!

Alas, there’s no magic trio of scars to trade for my flaws. Or is there? Hard work, diligence, patience – not literal scars, but they’ll certainly leave their marks. Just as my knee surgery wasn’t really magic (I need to do ~ 6 weeks of physical therapy), changing habits won’t happen while I sleep. That’s fine. I want to be awake and moving forward as steadily as this scarred vehicle will endure.

In addition to exercise, eating, and procrastination (quite a trinity), I’ m aiming to read better in 2013. For the past two years, I’ve kept a list of every book I’ve read. Seems like a natural item for a blog post, right? No. The preponderance of chick-lit vampire stories is a little embarrassing. This year, I want to read at least 30 books, and have my guilty pleasure reading better balanced with well-written, maybe even literary, books. If I want to be a better writer, I need to be a better reader.

So lucky 2013, welcome. Bring it on!

Thankfully, I’ve Got Flowers!

I’ve resolved to buy flowers more regularly, especially during the fall/winter when gray skies can leave me feeling gloomy. Today’s actually sunny, but I still decided to bring sunshine inside. I know some people argue that cut flowers are a waste a money, “because they just die.” I could not disagree more. Flowers are an inexpensive way to bring beauty into your home. (Beauty that I could not manage to adequately photograph, though I tried.)

And in the time it took to write this minuscule post, take pictures, and post them, the weather has returned to glum. Yay for yellow!

I’m giving up swearing for the month of October. I know, it’s not even Lent.

A former coworker named Michael once said, “Profanity is the refuge of the inarticulate.” He was referring to a ranting customer, but the quote has stuck with me through the ensuing thirteen years. I’m a writer, and I spend inordinate amounts of time trying to find just the right word or turn of phrase. Anyone who knows me knows I am a word nerd. I admire people who are well-spoken. I sometimes mock those who use “like” all the time. For example, “You know, it’s like we went like to the the store and it was like so crowded.” I had a boss who spoke this way, and it made her seem young and hesitant.

Could others react to my swearing the way I react to their likes? Does my frequent f-bomb dropping irritate people or make them tune me out? Can I stop? (To clarify, I do have a filter, thanks to many public-facing jobs. Nobody wants a teacher or fundraiser swearing at her audience.) October is an experiment to find out.

When do I fail in my experiment? While driving! I swear at crazy motorists around me, but with the windows up nobody hears (it’s just like a tree falling in the forest). I swear when I drop things, and I’m a klutz. But only once since I started have I sworn in conversation. I might start keeping score. Yesterday, -5. Today, zero.

My name’s not that hard — especially not when I spell it for you. Yet somehow, this is what was handed to me this afternoon. I guess I should be thankful they didn’t call it out.

"Moron! Large iced latte for Moron!"

Helping out parents usually means running errands, going shopping, or cleaning around the house, not grooming giraffes. But I’ve never claimed my family is normal. The  last time I went to their house, I noticed this:

It looked like a horror movie Swamp Monster, not like the stately giraffe my mom designed. Something had to be done, so I went to work, shearing the topiary of its excess ivy (which grows like a weed, in case you didn’t know). My mom was delighted until I accidentally trimmed part of his nose. “Relax, Mom, it’s ivy. He’ll have a nose again in no time.” I continued channeling my inner Edward Scissorhands, realizing that the beautiful topiary animals you see in parks and castle grounds are not so easy to keep perfectly lush. Gardeners are tending those meticulously.

I, on the other hand, did a hack job. Gerard once again looks like a giraffe, but a modern art giraffe out of a Picasso painting. Plus, he’s bald in a few spots. Then again, it’s ivy. He’ll be handsome and verdant in no time.

Where am I? ¿Dónde está Guernica?

Since I’m still/once again aiming to get out of the basement, I decided I need some number-specific goals. Here we go, in order:

• Weigh less than a male Olympic water polo player
• Ride in a hot air balloon without paying the fatty surcharge
• Weigh less than my husband (tricky because as I start losing, so will he, making this a moving finish line)
• Lose an Olivia’s worth of weight (Yes, my slim goddaughter is growing, making this another moving target, but truth is I could stand to lose an Olivia-plus-brother.)
• Weigh less than my nephew (He’s growing, so as I lose and he gains, we may meet somewhere in the middle, hopefully an ideal middle for both of us!)

Like how I announced my number-specific goals without any numbers? I’m tricky (or maybe just neurotic).

What’s your goal?

Figures that the first art I buy and actually frame for our house is food-related. For years, I’ve searched for old-school butcher posters identifying cuts of meat. I don’t remember if I first saw one in a book or on TV, but I remember thinking it would be a cute decoration for a kitchen.

Little did I know how difficult it would be to find one that wasn’t ugly. (I suppose trying to find a cute poster about slaughtering animals is a little ridiculous.) Then a few weekends ago, at San Francisco’s Renegade Craft Fair, I walked up to a booth with these:

crappy cell phone photo

I think I squealed! My friend Jenny came over to see what the excitement was, and said, “You’ve been looking for those for like three years.” Yes, yes, I have. Sold to the woman on a mission!

What could be better than meaty art for my  kitchen? Art from a local artist! Even better than that? The prints came in tubes labeled “Moo,” “Oink,” and “Baa!” My husband moos at all animals (and it’s contagious), so it’s perfect that our first hanging art is titled “Moo.”

PS – Note there is no picture of said art actually hanging, because our kitchen is ugly. See Dishwasher Diaries 1 & 2. It’s like pearls on a swine (where the pearls ARE a swine, and the swine is our kitchen).