Skipping Town

Andrew and I spent yesterday in San Francisco—Andrew had a conference to go to, and I got to spend a day in a big city. Win-win! When it was finally time to leave last night, however, and Andrew said in resignation, “Well, we should probably get back,” I gave my usual response. “Alright,” I said with a sigh. “I’ll go— if you can find me! ” In my mind, the scene that plays out from there is me suddenly sprinting away, disappearing into the folds of the city at full speed; with a shout, Andrew runs to the car and veers onto the streets in a desperate quest to find his wayward, running wife. The scene varied a bit in New Hampshire. “I’ll go— if you can find me! ” I announced—imagining running deep into the woods, never to be seen again. (In Sacramento, that is.) It’s become a running joke between us, though Andrew finds it only mildly amusing. Alarm is probably a more accurate reaction. He always does hold my hand a bit more tightly as we make our exit from wherever it is we are; admitted...

Last night at Zelda’s, where Andrew and I took refuge from our oven of an apartment, we overheard a woman in the booth behind us say the following in a loud voice: “I have a theory,” (she told her companions). “You know how everyone always thinks their city is the center of the world? Well, I think Sacramento is the center of the world. No matter where you go, you always find someone who’s from Sacramento or knows someone who is.” As someone who’d never heard of Sacramento other than linked with references to Schwarzenegger before arriving, and who regularly fields questions like “Are you near the beach?” or “Is that near L.A.?” when I mention Sacramento in former stomping grounds, I have to disagree. However, as we drank our beer and ate our pizza, Andrew and I decided that this woman is literally correct. If Sacramento is the center of the universe, and the center of the universe (our universe, anyway) is the sun, then Sacramento is the sun. And that feels 100% on-target. With...

So, I’m back from a more or less unplugged week. I say “more or less” because, unfortunately, Andrew’s BlackBerry worked in New Hampshire, which means I was able to give in to my email addiction. However, I checked only two times in seven days, which I consider pretty good. Bizarrely, we wound up using the BlackBerry to look up Scrabble words, which seems somehow ludicrous, almost blasphemous; but we couldn’t find a dictionary. Also, there was a degree of comfort in knowing we could make a call if we needed to, if an intruder were to somehow find us out there in the woods. Ah yes, the nerves that come with being secluded. Andrew and I had only one night alone at the house before the rest of his family arrived, and having so many people around seemed like it would be excellent insurance against a galloping imagination. This was not the case. Early in the week, we all spent some time rearranging the living room, replacing some furniture that had been moved and rehanging some pictures on ...

One year. As of July 3, Andrew and I have been in California for one year. It seems hard to believe that just twelve months ago we arrived at SMF with bags in hand and holed up at the Hyatt for a week while we tried to figure out where to live. Our first Sacramento dinner? P.F. Changs, the only place we could find that was open when we arrived that night. We sat in the nearly-empty dining room (it was well after 9pm) and wondered just what we’d gotten ourselves into. We wondered it even more once we signed on to a short-term rental in Citrus Heights and found ourselves surrounded by more strip malls and fewer sidewalks than we’d ever seen in our lives. It took a move to Midtown to make life seem normal again; and it took a Relo-Cube of our belongings a few months later to solidify that fact that we were no longer nomads.  One year later, and we have plenty of California to show for it. The list of our weekend trips stretches to an impressive length: San Francisco, L.A., Montere...