Skipping Town

Tonight starts a grand adventure: our first-ever Unplugged Week. We’re heading to New Hampshire for a full seven days—and we’re leaving our computers behind. We’ll officially be off the grid: there will be no internet access, little to no cell reception, no TV, and not even a landline phone. There’s one neighbor in sight, but no more. We’ve packed a stack of books and games, have plans to go canoeing and hiking, will have plenty of cook-outs, and…that’s about it. Bliss. Andrew and I haven’t been to New Hampshire for a few years now, and I’m excited to go back. For all my agitating to move back to a big city, there’s something almost equally appealing about just heading off to the middle of nowhere, with only the frogs and crickets for company. One small problem with being in such seclusion is that Andrew and I both have very over-active imaginations that tend to overwork themselves at night in isolated conditions. My very first time at the house, we went for a walk late one night, thro...

Well, it was just another Sunday here in NorCal: spring cleanin’, fixin’ screens, strugglin’ to finagle a “cross-breeze” from our bedroom through to the living room. Andrew, with a desperate zeal, moved one of our screens (we only have them in a few windows) to a window he thought would provide that cross-breeze; and then we stood in the hot room, unsurprised, really, when the air was just as stagnant as before. It’s so hot here that yesterday we saw a woman walking down the street in what I can only describe as a wall tapestry wrapped around her body like a towel. It was bizarre. She may also have been barefoot, and perhaps a bit insane—we get a lot of crazies wandering past this apartment for some reason. Then again, if this was my real home, with year upon year—a lifetime—of temperatures like this, I’d probably be crazy too, perhaps walking around wearing my own hippie wrap. It was a startlingly hot weekend, with temperatures in the 100s. We spent Saturday afternoon in Suisun City, ...

Before going to bed each night, Andrew and I brace ourselves for The Hunt. With a bottle of Windex-like liquid and a box of Kleenex, we advance into the bedroom and begin a thorough study of the walls and ceiling of our bedroom. “There’s one!” we begin shouting, and The Hunt is on. “There’s one! It’s there! At the ceiling! It just flew towards me!” The tension is thick enough to cut with a knife. I scream, and scream, and Andrew blasts me in the face with Windex. “Did you get it?” There is desperation and pleading in my voice. “It fell,” Andrew says. “But I can’t find its body.” Spot it, spray it, squash its writing carcass with a tissue. Lovely. This is our nightly ritual. Sometimes it lasts for just a few minutes; sometimes for an hour or more; sometimes it recurs, again and again, throughout the night. Last night, for example, Andrew engaged in The Hunt for about an hour at midnight, then again at 3:00am. What are we hunting, you might wonder—we’re hunting mosquitoes. Mosquitoes tha...

A week in NYC always makes returning to Sacramento more than a little difficult. One thing I forgot how much I missed about a big, bustling city is the inevitability of eavesdropping as you go about a normal day. At MoMA on Friday, while looking at photographs by Berndt and Hilla Becher, which I like very much, I overheard a woman saying to a man beside her, “These are boring. These are insulting to me as a viewer.” You just don’t hear stuff like that around Sactown. It reminded me and Andrew of two of our favorite comments we overheard American tourists saying abroad: In a Madrid shop full of knick knacks: An American man entered, glanced around, then announced loudly to the entire store, “Well, nothing here I can’t live without!” then left. In a Krakow shop full of handmade wooden crafts: I was selecting a few small wooden birds when I overheard an American man talking to the salesclerk in a slow drawl. “Y’ever see an American dollar coin?” he asked her. I could only pray that he did...

If you travel a lot, then you know what I mean when I talk about travel karma. I’ve long since given up yelling at airport counter employees—the last “episode” of extreme travel rage for me was in Miami in 2005—but stuff still happens, good and bad, for reasons that remain unclear. Our trip to New York last week seemed absolutely blessed. We were sitting in the Sacramento airport, having a bite to eat, and Andrew got a free beer from the waiter because he’d delivered the wrong kind. Then, after Andrew struck up a friendly conversation with the gate agent for our flight, she gave us free upgrades to Business Class, just because she thought we (well, probably Andrew, in all his garrulousness) were so nice. After good travel luck like that, it was somehow not surprising that our return trip was a disaster. We were stuck on the runway for over an hour at JFK, unable to take off because of air traffic control problems. When we arrived in San Francisco, we had, as we’d feared, missed our con...

As Andrew and I prepare for our trip to NYC next week, I find myself facing the alarming realization that if I descend upon NYC wearing pretty much anything I currently have in my closet, I will be marked instantly as a Tourist from Sacramento. Let’s get this straight right off: I am NOT a tourist from Sacramento. I’m a former New Yorker who just happens to be temporarily living in California. My current wardrobe suggests otherwise. For example, I’m currently wearing a cotton skirt from Target that looked ratty when I bought it (lots of rough-cut, unhemmed layers; strategic pilliness) and that now, two years later, actually IS ratty. I’m wearing it with a tank top that does not fit. Perhaps I could select a tank top I bought at Gabe’s last time I was there, or perhaps not: it’s printed with psychedelic rabbits (oh, the wonders of the clearance rack). I really like a new Anthropologie dress I bought at Gabe’s, but I think it’s a little Earth-Mothery for New York. The new clothes I have ...