November Morning

Conversation with the husband this morning:

Me: Yikes, it's cold upstairs this morning.

Him: You should have seen this sky earlier -- it was a really pretty pink.

Me: That's because it's the dawn of a new day, my friend.

*Image from the NY Times
*Design week around here will resume tomorrow. I'm sure y'all understand.

Nesting Week

Besides falling way behind on posting in general, I'm also sorely lacking in nesting posts here. (I've also been sketchy on the "reading" part of my blog name, too, but that's another subject.)I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone by posting every day this week about some design element or decision in my house.

Fall finally (finally!) has arrived here, at least for today. It's breezy (but not a hot wind) and a little cloudy, and when the clouds cover up the sun, I could almost pretend it's November in some other state or county where the average daytime temperature in October was not 94 degrees. So what a perfect time to nest, or focus on it. Also, tomorrow's election has me so nervous and sketchy, I think I might need to go buy a pack of cigarettes or something. Depending on how it goes, I may just have to turn my home into My Own Private Canada -- another good excuse to focus on the interior.

For today, above is a shot of my entryway table, as stylized for Halloween. It was fun for the kids to look at, but not too childish, either.

Enjoy, and come back tomorrow for another nesting post -- since I can't post video of me chewing on my fingernails and flipping around the news channels for early results.

Fall Is Here (It's In My Hair)

It's fall here in Southern California. I can tell by the arrival of the Santa Ana winds, the hot dry days, the crystalline-clear air. And the smell of fall is here, which for me, during a Santa Ana event, is not the smell of apple cider or fallen leaves, but the smell of my own hair.

For years and years I've noticed that when the Santa Ana's come whipping in from the desert east, my hair gets a very specific scent -- not unlike the creosote of the desert, mixed with a flat, metallic tang that lasts for the duration of the wind. I think I've read that something funny goes on with the ozone level of the air during the windy days, and perhaps that's what I smell in my hair. (I should point out that I have extremely thick, curly hair, that easily traps strong smells anyway. I need to tie it back when flipping pancakes or bacon, or risk smelling like a Denny's all day.)

Like any good little bookish L.A. girl, raised on Joan Didion and The Doors and Dr. George Fishbeck hopping up and down with glee over the weather, I can't help but get excited during a Santa Ana. Well, excited isn't quite the word. Restless, is more like it. I'm always about 2 heartbeats away from "restless" most days anyhow, but during a Santa Ana, it's more urgent, and irritating, too.

Dig it:

Those hot dry winds that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. (Raymond Chandler)

Or,

Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.

Thank you, Joan.

Perhaps that's why I've been feeling that bitter mix of wanderlust and trapped-out-here-in-the-godforsaken-Inland-Empire discontent so keenly this month. Growing up so close to the heart of Los Angeles, I sometimes miss it terribly. I miss feeling part of the action, part of that "scene." I'm a born and bred L.A. county native, and it's home that I miss right now.

I've leave off with Mr. Mojo Risin' himself. It always felt like he was singing this part straight to me, as I cranked up the radio and sped down the freeway in my primer-gray little Nissan, a cigarette clenched in my left hand:

I see your hair is burnin' /
Hills are filled with fire/
If they say I never loved you /
You know they are a liar.

Oh, it's all such a cliche! And yet, that doesn't make it hit any less close to home.

Ding Dong, September's Dead

October 1st. And my first blog post in well over a month. Shame on me, you say? Where was I?
I was deep in the mire of September, a month long bad spell that literally started on the first day of the month, with a fever and chills and bad things going on in the plumbing department, and literally ended yesterday, the 30th, with a doctor's follow-up visit with good blood test results and the assurance that I would likely live for at least another few months. Kidding on that very last part, but you know what? Not by all that much, when the blood work was for a CEA level test...also known as a tumor-marker test, tumor as yes, in cancer, and, well fuck.

That was September. All bloody month long of it. Now, on October 1st, I exhale: breeeaaaathe. In. Out. Slowly. Repeat.

Somewhere in September on an afternoon while trying to distract myself from dark thoughts, I tuned in to "Oprah." Oprah was featuring Gwyneth Paltrow, long lean and blonde Mrs. Chris Martin herself. In between talking about how much she just loved to eat and scarf and eat some more, Gwyneth talked about her mild post-partum depression after her second child (Pear? Kumquat?) was born and how a long, wine-soaked dinner with Madonna helped her to get better. Madonna says (and you know how I myself love to just throw that phrase around in mixed company: "Madonna says..."), anyway she believes that when this sort of psychic or emotional break occurs for whatever reason, the universe is trying to tell you something. (That Madonna! She's a wise one. And we should listen to her, because of, y'know, that cabalah stuff, and also the dedication shown in those very, very lean and sinewy upper arms.)

Which of course gots me to thinking...what the hell, universe? WTF? What do you want me to do? I've already had enough illness and hospitals and death and grief over the last couple of years to teach me the whole "every day is a gift," thing. Universe, I am SO down with that part. I get that.

But no, it turned out, over the course of several days of deep thought, that this time the universe is whispering a different message. And you know what that message is? The Universe says....



Grasshopper, it is time to write.

To which I responded, "ah, shit, Universe. Not that. Nope. Can't. Do. That."

And the universe retorted, "Can't? Or don't want to?"

And I was all like, "No, really. Can't. Just....no. How about....yoga? I think increased flexibility and stamina as I turn 40 would be very beneficial. Yes?"

The universe only crossed its arms and gave me that look.

"But, but, but..." said I, and I admit, it came out a little whiny.

This is what you are meant to do, the Universe intoned, and walked away. Discussion over.

Aw, man. I hate losing an argument. And don't think I still don't have my stockpile of excuses and protests at the ready. Still. I'm giving it some thought. I have some ideas, some thoughts, that have been kicking around up there for a long time. There is a lot of ice to break up with my ax, to steal the phrase that writing should work as "an ax to break the frozen sea within us."

But where to start, and how, and lord, most especially, when?

And the universe pops around the corner where he was probably hovering, to reply, and not a little smugly, "please, how many times have you read that book? You remember what the lady says:

Bird by bird, sister. Bird by bird.

(And a quote from the same lady, which seems particularly apropos in this dicey, freighted political climate: "You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.")

Palm Springs Print

Once again, I've fallen behind on the "nesting"-type posts. Although, really, when I think about it, the kitchen overhaul was such a major, major thing that maybe that makes up for all nesting posts through the next year or so.

Speaking of the kitchen, we're right now in the midst of tiling the back splash with our aqua glass tiles from Susan Jablon. Hoo-boy. It's a job, and I'm sorry to say that it's hardly been "my" project at all, like it was supposed to be. No way could I be doing this without Myk's help -- the measuring, the scoring & cutting the glass tiles -- but it looks good so far, and I'm proud that at least we didn't have to pay a contractor to come and do it. Pictures to follow soon.

Anyway, back to the P.S. print -- I bought this straightaway the moment I found it after following a link to Jason Hill Designs on Etsy. Love it -- love the colors, which really pop, especially that orange. It's going to look really good when that wall below the cabinet also gets tiled.

Also, those blinds? Hate 'em. I meant to buy the lighter-colored, slightly patterned bamboo matchstick kind that you see everywhere in design mags. But Myk made a bit of a face at them, and swayed my mind -- and also, I was a bit desperate to throw up any blinds on the bare windows. These need to be gone though, and soon. They're almost completely transparent at night, too. Luckily, they didn't cost much at all.

So many things always on the ever-shifting design to-do list!

Less Than 2 Hours

One of the things that I like about living here in southwest Riverside County is that we're so close to many other locales and getaways. In just about over an hour (depending on traffic), I can get back to Orange County or out to my family in Whittier, or down to San Diego. This helps to make life a little more interesting, for as nice as it can be here, it still often seems that there's precious little to do on the weekend. (I've been told a good fix for this problem is to get the children very involved in a sport, and then my weekends will be claimed and accounted for through the next 10 years. )

Add another hour to the trip, and things can get truly interesting -- for in just about 2 hours or less, we could be in Palm Springs, or up in the San Bernardino mountains, or out to the apple orchards of Julian, or even, I suppose, down south into Mexico.

2 of our getaways this summer were to Palm Springs, and up to Crestline/Arrowhead, in the S.B. mountains. The Palm Springs trip was a rare adult getaway, to celebrate our 11th anniversary. The mountain trip was just last weekend, and we camped with 3 other families at the Dogwood campground, between Crestline & Arrowhead.

This is where we stayed in Palm Springs:
The photos above were taken when my camera was accidentally set to this 1-color mode, and so half of our P.S. pictures look like this. Sort of cool and artsy, I think. But here's a shot of the true colors of the desert, and of our stay:

And this is half of me & Lily, up in the mountains:
This is actually part of a nice family shot, but I wanted to focus on the scenery itself -- here, we're up about 8,000 feet in elevation, at Keller Peak. There's a fire-lookout tower there that we climbed, and at the top, in addition to the awesome views, was a flock of very active hummingbirds, darting and diving for the feeders hanging way out there on the edge of the world.

Tomorrow begins the first day of the school year here in our district. I can't believe I'm the mom of a first grader. The summer flew -- well, summer itself will technically still be here for a good while -- but you know what I mean. We did parks and beaches and Las Vegas and tent camping and a sleep-over or two, board games and computer games and even a trip to the dreaded Chuck E. Cheese.

Busy days. But sometimes it was nicest to stay and play in our own little plot of backyard.
Despite everything I've written here, I'm still a might confused as to how we've blown through half of August already. I'm hoping to post a wee bit more often -- I'll have 2 days a week nearly completely to myself, what with Tucker in preschool -- and somewhere in between all the bon-bons and afternoon trysts and soap operas, you'd think I could squeeze in the blog now and then.

We'll just have to see.