Today is my birthday. I am twenty-eleven in twenty-oh-eight. And massive storms, preteen angst, and cold weather aside, January has looked pretty stupendous, for a change.
What A Long, Strange Trip...Christmas was nice. We went to
Apple Farm in San Luis Obispo. It was a little precious, what with the overly decorated, wooden ornamented, anything-in-sight-lighted, Someone's-Uber-Christian-Mommy-was-the-i
nterior-designer schtick... but that's kind of what I want at Christmas time. We hadn't even intended to go out of town, but around the time of our holiday party, Wee-Man started breaking out in hives in the apartment, so we thought we'd give him a break until we figured out what was causing the allergy. (Still don't know. It followed us to SLO, but it seems to be gone now.) Santa followed the poor little guy down there, which pleased and delighted him no end. He swore he saw
us Santa in the middle of the night, but I "must have still been asleep." (I slept not one wink that night, btw.)
My daughter (from now on known as Triple P, for Pretty-Pouting-Preteen) flew in the day after Christmas, so we held off on gift-opening until she got here. We played board games and card games and
reindeer video games for days, and then we went bowling. I hadn't done that since I was a kid, but it was super fun. We very stupidly braved Embarcadero for New Years Eve, where the fireworks were LOVELY but the people beyond stupid. I'm grateful that we made it out of there without incident; my New Years Resolution is to never do that again.
I guess I had some kind of premonition before the storms hit the Bay Area, and I decided I wanted to get out of the city.* I felt really anxious and itchy, so we went to Sacramento for a couple days to play where we did over the summer. (I guess I could have heard the prediction if I'd turned on the tv, but I hadn't. This is only interesting and lucky in that I am absolutely phobic when it comes to high-wind storms. Where I'm from, that means Tar-Nadas, and my entire nervous system says Noooo-oo-oo, Thanks.) So we spent a few days out there, and we didn't fully escape, but at least I did not witness any trees fall over and land roots-up. I saw plenty of that when I got back to San Francisco.
Since I've been back, I've been getting up every morning, working out for an hour at the gym, and then walking a mile or so down the beach. Ocean Beach looks NASTY from the oil spill and (worse, even) the assholes who tore it up on New Years Eve. There is trash everywhere-- bottles, plastic, fireworks detritus... and dead jellyfish.
Oh man, the jellies. God knows I have been stung enough times in my life to feel an aversion, but they were everywhere, their clear forms limp along the line of dark wet sand where the tide had been. One little guy was still kind of pulsing, so we put him back in the water, but I don't know if that actually helps. I hope so. Depressing. I've heard Ocean Beach derided as being disgusting, but this is the first time I've actually seen it look bad since I've been here.
Anyway, after my beach walk, I hang out and write for a couple of hours in a little neighborhood cafe, eating granola and milk or sipping hot peach tea. My stress level feels much lower than I can remember it being.
and THAT... has been a long time coming.
Happy 2008 to you, and I'm sorry, but Good RID to '07. The most I can say for last year is that I hope I learned some lessons.
*FTR, I do not think I was actually making psychic storm predictions.