The jacarandas are in bloom.
I like the name jacaranda, but the tree is even prettier. Blue puffs of prettiness.
I have a lot of them near my house.
I’m glad they are in bloom because the pink puffs of rhododendron bushes have gone back to green.
it’s kind of a rainbow progression of spring.
I wonder if Summer here has as many flowers as spring. I suspect not. We’ll see. I will try to pay attention this time.
right now, it’s amazing, how great life is. I don’t know why, but all the pieces are fitting. I’ve got so many pans in the fire, but things are working.
I spent a week in Manhattan, pretty much on times square. I was working 12-14 hours every day. Then I would stagger out to find something to eat and write a little bit.
Every day I felt grateful. I felt like I was blessed. I am in LOVE with the man I”m with, and he’s in love with me. I’m working hard at work, which is actually a good thing. I can’t stand not to have a challenge. I have some good friends who are great to me. My creativity is very high right now, my writing is pouring out. My home is so comfortable, but I’m working on a bunch of improvement projects there too.
How great is this? Why all of a sudden? Maybe it’s spring. I hope this feeling stays. It feels like a good balance…Like riding a bike fast on a flat stretch. Maybe it’s what it feels like to fly.
Happy Sunday, everyone!
In the unrelenting asphalt and dressed stone of Manhattan, Central Park in spring appears as an ethereal Eden.
Looking at the old trees with thick, far-reaching branches, I think about the natural tress that were here before the conquering of New Amsterdam. Fitzgerald wrote about that, in Great Gatsby he talks about the green breast of untouched land that was here before the dutch landed. When the Dutch arrived, the came “face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. ”
Perhaps the ambitious conquerers in this great city come here to remember how to wonder.
I just got back from my trip to Canada, not long ago. I barely finishe unpacking, and now I’m called off again to New York city.
I went to Canada to see my Aunt Lola. Lola is my dad’s oldest sister, oldest of three. She told me, “I went to New York City once. For one day…It was a long time ago.”
“It’s probably not that different. It’s an old city.”
“Well, they didn’t have they Twin Towers when I went.”
“THey don’t have them now either! It’s exactly the same!…But there’s a big hole, so maybe not.”
My three aunts, Lola, Pat and Zelpha, AND my dad are having a reunion of sorts right now. They all decided to go see Zelpha, the youngest sister, in New Mexico.
Lola is a nurse, and Pat is a nurse-an R.N., and Zelpha was a stewardess. Zelpha told me that she became a stewardess because she wanted to travel and see New York City. She did, for sure.
I guess it’s New York where she met Uncle Bill. She told some good stories about it, just how it seemed to her as a small town girl.
So I’m going to New York again. This will be the third time I’ve been. All for work reasons, so it’s a little different. I’d love to go and live there for a while. I can tell it would be a very inspiring place to be.
One of the things I like about it is that you are powered by your own feet. I have a strong attachment to walking. MY feet can get me places, but machines are suspect.
Well, maybe this trip I’ll get to look around between all the work requirements. We’ll see.
I’m on vacation, which is lovely. A whole week, 5 working days, our of my usual schedule to get away and see new things.
I love seeing new things. It’s easier to see new things when you are far away from home. And I like to see new and DIFFERENT things, things that make me think different thoughts. It is not so different to see a new McDonald’s, for example. It may be new, but it’s not that different from the usual McDonald’s near my home.
I like to visit other countries, because they give opportunity to see different things. Chris has an incomprehensible attachment to America. Maybe it’s because he never wants to be too far away from a Coke supply.
HIS preferred vacation is to see Nature, some kind of natural phenomena or vista-that makes him happy.
Nature is okay, but I like to have a lot of people around me.
This trip was about seeing a North American rain forest. The only one is found near Seattle. Rain forests are cool, I was excited to see it, but it sounded like an excessive amount of Nature to me. Seattle is near Canada, so I compromised, and said it would be a successful vacation if I got to see a foreign country, and Canada would do in a pinch.
Also, my Aunt Lola lives in Canada, on Vancouver Island. We could go see her!
After a little more thought, I decided we should see more of Canada, and bop over to Vancouver.
Vancouver is where I am right now. It’s a beautiful city!
The rain forest was amazing, Vancouver Island and Victoria was pretty nice.
We giggled a lot about Victoria. “I wonder if they will advertise places as being ‘Victoria’s best kept Secret’?”
I was totally reduced when I saw an advertisement with a lovely woman in a bubble bath drinking champagne. It was for a motel: “Making Victoria Affordable”
But double entendres aside, the ferry was fun, and my Aunt Lola was so nice and hospitable. I was so glad I went, even though it was out of my way. We talked about family things, and she gave me a lot to think about.
And then Vancouver.
There is a Sun Run today in Vancouver. 50K people running 10K. Fifty thousand people is a lot. They will definitely clog up the streets.
But it’s a beautiful day for the run. Man! Sun is shining, but it’s a little brisk out there.
I’m not sure what we’re going to do today, I fell asleep before Chris figured out how to avoid the crowds. He hates crowds.
Funny. I love crowds, but I grew up with none. He grew up with all kinds of people, and can’t stand congestion.
You just never know.
I’ve already started to be sad, because tomorrow the vacation ends. I’m always sad when a vacation ends.
But I miss my cat, and I am full of plans for things to do when I get back.
The days are longer. We will have so much we can do with the daylight.
April has arrived.
Yesterday was april fool’s day. I wish I knew something about how April Fool’s day became foolish. But I don’t.
I am pushing onto my 12th day straight of working. All 12 days were GRUELING. ALL of them.
The first 5 days of the 12 were spend at home in Los Angeles. But man oh man. Hard hard days of work. On wednesday (or was it thursday?) I had so many fires to put out that I spent 12 hours rushing from one thing to the next. On the way home, my skull felt like I had a drill going through it directly above my right eye.
I was thinking of the movie “pi” as I drove home…It is not unusual for that side of my head to ache. I call it my brain tumor. But the reality is, I cracked open my skull in a car accident when I was a kid. That part of my head is the seam it healed on. And it aches sometimes.
But this was substantially worse than ever before. I wondered why it was so bad? Maybe I was hungry…When did I last eat, anyway?
I’d grabbed leftover catering in different rooms…A bagel here, a danish there. But I hadn’t stopped to eat any real food all day!
No wonder.
But then on Saturday, at 4:30 a.m. my alarm went off so that I could drive myself to LAX. Had to get to New York City.
Had a whole mess of work and a whole mine field of political pitfalls to avoid. People to please and appease.
Managed that, only set a few mines off. Well, I guess I’m entitled to one or two mistakes. As long as their are far enough between.
Then I went to the next stop, Washington D.C. This is the original war zone. Mine field, nothing. Dodge the live fire. “Friendly” fire.
But as my brother says, I’m nuetral like Switzerland. Smile and commit to nothing, that’s all I say.
But in addition to dodging political entaglements, I had to actually get some work done. Yes. I stayed here till nine p.m. last night. Still wasnt’ done.
I was staying 4 blocks away, and was looking forward to the walk. But no.
“I’ll call a car, ” the receptionist said. “It’s standard procedure. If you are from out of town, you don’t know what streets to cross to the other side.”
Imagine. Danger and harm does not cross the street. Amazing. Safe on the proper side, but you don’t know which side.
Danger lurks everywhere, but it won’t get you unless you walk within easy reach.
Maybe those who wish you harm are lazy.
So…last night I ate frog legs for dinner, which was marvelous. And I fell asleep at 11. Woke up this morning at 4:30
Worried about the last day in dangerous territory. Because this is that last last day. Today, I return to the my home, my cat, and the one person who makes sure I sleep very very well.
I have only a few more hours.
This weekend was really busy. I had a birthday party on Saturday night, but that afternoon I had to go shopping for a function later in the month.
Then I had my writing group, which met on Sunday, and a coffee shop thing in the evening.
Busy busy.
Which is QUITE unusual for me. I have been here a year and a half, a littl more even, and I have been having trouble making friends. THis is not new. I am understanding the rhythm of friend-making after a move.
You know, friends are a tricky business. I think army brats, the ones that have to move every two to four years understand this. When you go to a new place, you have to find a way to connect with the people there.
Data, on Next Generation Star Trek, once had a line that said something to the effect that Friendship had much more to do with just being around each other than emotion.
I think there is a lot of truth to that. And I think that sometimes people you spend a lot of time with, such as co-workers or bar friends, can feel like friends when in actuality, they are merely co-existing in the same space.
A friend is someone who will make an effort to come see you or have you see them. Because they want to. That means taking time to talk on the phone or go do an activity or something. Something that is personally for you.
That personally bit is the part I’ve been missing. I haven’t done very many one-on-one things since I’ve been here. Very, very few.
I have book club, I have writing group, I have movie club. I have church, I have open mic night at the coffee shop. I have work, and I have my sweet boyfriend.
I am actually very busy and very seldom completely alone. And yet…I haven’t had the personal time with a friend very often.
It’s a tough leap, that from being a member of a group to being an individual personal friend. How do you really manage it? How do you know it’s okay to make a move.
I find it much more difficult than a date. Maybe I’m pretty good at dating. But just getting someone to go out and play…
I admit, I’m kind of shy. If someone is not willing to email me, it’s hard. Phones are a little scary to me. I don’t know exactly why. I get shy about calling someone on the phone.
So that’s probably a handicap on my part.
And then, I get very tired after work. I just want to sleep. So that makes me not want to get up and do things with friends that I feel nervous about calling.
But to make friends with someone, you have to be around them a certain amount of time. You have to make contact, and keep up the contact for a period of time so that you get to know each other’s lives. If you don’t do that, it falls flat.
It’s a little complicated.
So…I’ve been pulling back from writing so much on my blog because I’ve been trying to work on a larger project. I want to write a whole book. I know what I want it to be about, too. It will be the story of how I went to Russia with my family in 92-93 to be a missionary school-teacher.
I personally think it’s a great story, one that a lot of people will be interested in. But I’ve never written anything so ambitious. Or so LONG.
I had been figuring that it would need to be 650 pages. That’s 650 courier font, double spaced pages.
But I just finished reading a book that’s 361 pages. That’s printed in the book.
I wondered how that would translate into my format. So I averaged out the number of words on the page. About 481.
That means the entire book had 173.641 words in it. Approximately.
I figured I had 216 words to a page. That means, if I had 650 pages, I would have 140,400 words.
That’s a bit shy.
I would have to write 800 pages to get close to the length of the book I just read.
That’s very daunting.
It makes the fact that I will hit 100 pages today a somewhat hollow celebration.
..yay…
only 700 pages to go….
gulp
My friend Kisa has this to say about living life to the fullest. I definitely give her credit for living by this credo.
But I’d also like to posit the idea that life is long. Yes, life is short, and grab the moments.
But life is also very long, so don’t forget the long things too. Long friendships, even long love relationships (marriage?). Living for a long time in one home, one that you spend a long time making into a beautiful for yourself to live in.
After a while, all the fleeting moments can add up to one long evening at home wishing for something else.
So yes, live like it’s your last moment, and cherish each moment you are given.
But many things that are worth doing take more than a moment to do. They take consistent effort. A “body of work” for an artist takes a lifetime to build up. It takes commitment and consistency to do a large project.
If you don’t embrace that life is long, you can overlook the big things that might be worth doing.
So, I’ve had this condo for a little while. I bought it last august, and being a home-owner has allowed me to contemplate things that I could not when I rented.
I said contemplate, not do. I COULD do them, but I pretty much haven’t yet. My home improvement have consisted of painting one wall. That turned out to be a failure.
Except lately, I have decided to attack the kitchen cabinets. The cabinets are what I like least about my home. They are a black walnut color, very very dark. I like wood tones to be more reddish, and lighter. Not too light, but not a black hole.
So, after I had run out of other things I felt like doing, I unscrewed one cabinet door, and looked at it. I bought some stripper and stripped the stain off it. The wood underneath looked pretty good.
Since I had the stripper now, I took off two more cabinet doors. I’ve been working on stripping them, too. It is not an effortless task, stripping the stain off wood. But I’ve been at it.
HOWEVER, the proof is in the finished product. I bought some stain. I wanted a reddish color, so I bought a reddish stain. I got a good hardy one, that would stand up to the abuse a kitchen recieves.
According to the direction, I sanded it, I washed it and I let it dry. But as it was drying, it occured to me that I had a problem.
How could I paint this cabinet door without leaning it against something? And if I leaned it against something, it would mess up the wet finish.
There are two little square cut-outs on the side of the cabinet. I realized that PROFESSIONAL cabinet makers probably use those holes in a special device that suspends the door in the air to dry.
I did not have a professional cabinet making device. I had to improvise.
I cut two clothes hangers and pushed them into the holes. THen I suspended it between two chairs. Voila! the door is suspended.
I let it finish drying, and with great excitement and trepidation, I applied the stain.
It looked fantastic. A lovely rich, but not too dark, red color emerged.
Hooray!
I left it to dry and went to see Chris. I was telling him all about it, and then I said, “You know, this really is going to be a lot of work. Maybe this is an example of my usual M.O., figuring out the hardest possible way to do something. Maybe it would be easier to pay someone to do this for me.”
Chris looked it up. “It says here in the expo catalog, that they will do your cabinets for $267 a linear foot.”
Holy crap! He looked further. “THis kind is $543 a linear foot”
Well. “I guess it’s not such a bad thing to do this work myself.”
We both agreed that Expo is not the cheapest way to redo your cabinets, though. But as Chris said, “You pick the evidence that suits your argument.”
I’m fine with that. The cabinet really does look beautiful.