cabriOlet

that's how guy says it, "cabriOlet." it's my first car ever. we bought it last thursday night from a librarian named judy who lives on russian hill.

today i drove it for an hour and a half on curvy roads. it's the longest i've ever driven. i'm getting better at it already. i didn't clutch the steering wheel in a death grip and i didn't kill us on the one lane mountain road.

guy and i got sunburned today in the car. it's so breathtaking here. a drive to the ocean gave us eucalyptus, grasses and redwood smells all around.

sun-splashed dash.

Sandwiches and Layouts and Snorting and Peeing

our friend J. says we could both have our own shows here in this house because it's so big and beautiful and new and so like a tv cooking show set. the shows would be based on two things at which we are very very good at.
guy says mine would be, "Sandwiches and Layouts" and asks J. what his would be, J. says, "Snorting and Peeing."

where it's hippie day every day

hippie fest in fairfax last weekend made guy and i realize we have what may be years before we acclimate. ties dyes. those sticks boys throw around. hacky sacks....met our neighbors, the grateful dead ones last night. turns out the people we've been seeing walk around naked were housesitters, "housesitters from hell" to quote the GD people. the real neighbors seem very nice and fun. we were on our upper deck last night and it looks directly into their living room. the wife saw us and opened the windows in total Beverly hillbilly style saying, HEY!! and we chatted. she said "so, my husband (husband comes to the window. he's the dude who plays jerry's parts now), is a pro musician and sometimes his guitar playing gets loud. if it's ever too loud, just let us know. some people around here... (she points up the hill and sticks her tongue out) ...prefer to call the COPS (roll of eyes)."

we're like "SURE! sometimes we're loud too, so we'll just stay in touch!" and grateful dead guy is standing right behind her smiling, maybe waiting for us to ask what "pro musician" means, but we don't indulge him. we say nothing. even though i'm thinking "backstage passes, possible music connections for more music funtime (not the dead)," we stay silent about it. she says, "Cool, we'll have you over soon and we can swap numbers and stuff!" i like them immediately. i imagine us being greeted with deliciously aged scotch, eating sloppy food and smoking joints right after dinner. i imagine being able to arrive at their house barefoot, and being very comfortable.

Commuters

ah, the ferry, and the old ones who ride it.

so, i'm kind of a suburbanite now, i guess. it's not just that that would be very difficult to admit considering my lifelong hatred of all things determined mediocre or cookie-cutter, but it's that the place where i live just feels like a small town, not a suburb.

that said...

everyone who rides the ferry is over 35 and all the guys wear wedding bands. these ferry-riders are people who have done their time in the city getting the job that will make the money and then they escape straight north, to the most beautiful part of the bay area, and the naturally least accessible. if you weren't born there, i have a feeling doing the time is necessary, or at least should be. opposite of my parents, i would encourage my child to go live in a city, in the hopes that he/she will learn the hard but life-rounding lessons i did, see the art i saw, hear the music i heard...but i'm getting off topic.

i have become a part of a new demographic just in time to see my own disappearing rapidly off the landscape of "new" and being placed on the back burner of "retro", at best. when's the last time you saw "Gen X" anywhere? we're done, and it's ok, because i am done. done doing the hard time and now, living with these people in the "suburbs" with their wedding bands and pricey jobs. it's shocking, like a slap. but in a good way.

although our small town is filled with wiccan stevie nicks types, and actually, ponytailed john phillips types...

guy and i still can't believe it.


ps. it seems that we're not allowed to smoke cigarettes anywhere on the premises of our new house. certainly, an even bigger slap in the face, "wake up! you have definitely left the City! we can now tell you not to smoke outside!" even though i'm technically not allowed to complain while also being served such fortune...i really find that to be a huge bitch. and i rebel. shhh.

her name is louisiana and she's 120gigs

got a new mac, yessir.
takes pitchers and has a camera.
makes music and dance.
writes words more often online than in the last few months.

supra happy, yippity yay.

Flair

interview dressing
"journalism, publishing, multimedia, advertising, graphics, art galleries: your own style is more important here. you are being hired for your creative talents, so show them off in a subtle way, by dressing with personal flair."

Guy and I

can you find my eyeball in the picture?

final cleanup

in our old apartment tonight i had to yank fat thickets of the yeti's fur from an area of the carpet that had previously been under the bed.

So, we moved...

“I feel like we escaped,” I told him. we were sitting outside in the lovely marin county sun at the crepevine waiting for our first meal in 36 hours. I looked across the table at his blue eyes, looking straight at me. “Yep,” he said.

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” I told him, with a huge feeling of gratitude and luck. he looked at me for a while and said, “I couldn’t have done it without you either.”

his arm reached for my leg under the table to stroke my knee, but my legs were crossed in the opposite direction and he couldn’t find it.

“my leg’s over here,” I told him, and he moved his arm.

Remembered

today i got a card. a condolence card. there was a name...i didn't recognize at all. the note written inside was from a nurse at a hospital where bio-dad had a leg injury treated in 1983.

so, that's 24 years ago.

the nurse said he was a "staff favorite" that he was an entertaining conversationalist, "never telling the same story twice." she said she was saddened when she read the obituary in the baton rouge advocate.

i really don't know how to express what this means. to me and otherwise. i don't think i totally know everything it means yet.


(The image above depicts a close up view of the minute fingerlike processes on the surface of the mucous membrane of the small intestine that help in the absorption of nutriment.)