Skipping Town

With our departure approaching fast, we loaded up the car this weekend for a whirlwind goodbye tour of some of our favorite places in California. We set out late Friday afternoon and drove up through Clear Lake, a down-at-the-heels community full of trailer parks, diners, RVs, and a huge, gorgeous lake, which always seems to us like a place you’d go if you were in the witness protection program—in the middle of nowhere, an easy place to disappear. Our destination was Ukiah, a small town we stumbled upon on one of our very first road trips three years ago. There isn’t much in Ukiah except a great restaurant, the Ukiah Brewing Company; a cute bakery; and a farmer’s market. But there’s something peaceful about the place, and School Street, the main shopping street, is full of cute shops. Dinner Friday night, breakfast at the bakery Saturday morning, and a stroll through the farmer’s market kicked off our weekend tour. Next stop, Saturday afternoon: a market in Boonville for sandwiches, an...

What a strange in-between state we’re in: knowing we’re leaving, but having no idea when. We assume it will be by the end of June, but that’s pure speculation. There’s such a big move coming…but, for now, life goes on as usual. I did do one immensely satisfying project in preparation for our upcoming downsizing: I bought a CD book, filled it with my CDs, and threw away all my CD cases. I may be the last person on earth to have done this, and I probably should have just thrown away the CDs, too, but at least now they’re contained and take up only a fraction of the shelf space they had before. It was, like wrapping coins, the sort of pointless organizational project that I love, and which I have far too little time for in these baby-days. A big move forces these projects to get done. Next up: going through my filing cabinet! I’m giddy with anticipation! Last night, Lucia, uncharacteristically, woke up at 9:30, 2:30, 4:00, and, ultimately, 5:00. Andrew soothed her quickly back to sleep th...

So, we’re moving cross-country. There are plans to make, preparations to undertake, drawers and closets to purge, logistics to iron out. But all I really want to do is wrap coins. Over the past few years, wrapping coins is what I’ve turned to during large, life-changing moves, when much messier, more complicated activities should warrant my attention. But wrapping coins is a way to tackle one small mess—a few mugs and canisters of loose change. Certainly, one can’t move loose change, can one? I’ve managed, along the way, to convince myself it’s among the most crucial parts of any move. It even made it onto my current, preliminary to-do list. Figure out where to live in NYC. Sell car. Wrap coins. This move is different; for the first time, we’re being moved, which is both a better way and a somewhat unnerving way to go about it. We’re moving cross-country—but there’s absolutely nothing I can do to get ready for it, at least not right now. Aside from wrapping coins, my instinct is to sta...

“We’re getting to like it…but we miss New York.” I can’t count the number of times we’ve said this over the past three years to people who have asked us how we like California. It’s changed slightly over time—we’re more likely to say we actually do like it, now that we’ve made a place for ourselves in Roseville—but the last part, the missing New York part, has stayed the same. It’s something we’ve been saying to each other and ourselves and other people for the past five years, ever since we left to move to Barcelona. But now that we’re going back—now that we’ve had almost three months to wrap our heads around what that might mean—I realize that although the phrase still may be true, its unspoken implications are not. All along, by saying we missed New York, we meant that we missed living there and hoped, even planned, to live there again. Now that we actually are going back, we’re excited—but our excitement is equaled by nervousness and, I think, even a bit of reluctance. We’re happy...

Brace yourselves. I’m going to say something that will take many of you by surprise. It took me by surprise, too, when it hit me: I like it here. I like our life here. I like having Andrew work just five minutes away from home. I like our house, our enormous house, with so many closets I have one just for empty boxes. I like being five minutes from Target. I like having a car—two cars. I like feeling for the first time in my life like we are in a settled family home. Aside from the convenience, I do not like Roseville itself; but that convenience, and the low cost of living, count for a lot. I did not like Sacramento. However, I do like California. I like Tahoe and wine country and San Francisco. No, I love those places, and I love the experiences we’ve had there—discovering the Nob Hill Café; seeing Shakespeare by Lake Tahoe; tramping around Jack London State Park and having dinner at the Fig Café and sleeping at the Jack London Lodge. I love the winery we belong to; I love the member...

Driving this week, I saw a white SUV with writing scrawled over its back window with white paint, or soap, or something. BOYCOTT ARIZONA, it said. I was surprised and pleased to see such a message. If I had any dealings with Arizona, I would certainly be severing them now. But the next part gave me pause: SUPPORT DRUG DEALERS, MURDERERS, AND CRIMINALS. What a strange invitation , I thought, and how strangely it contradicts the other imploration . Then I realized that this person was attempting a kind of cause and effect: “IF you boycott Arizona, THEN you’ll be supporting drug dealers, etc.” Why, pray tell, are right-wingers so terribly, terribly bad at grammar? In line at a shop today, the woman behind us remarked on how cute Lucia was. “I miss that age. Mine’s a monster!” she said in a near-shout. “A monster!” “Well, she can be a monster at times,” I said with a smile, trying to follow the gracious-mama script. “Mine’s five, and he drives me nuts!” she said. Then she said it again: “M...

I need a clone of me. Lucia is a precious cherished baby whom I adore etc. etc. etc. But today was frustrating. I unwisely took on an additional freelance project, intensifying an already full workload for the next week and a half, and the lack of work time I have these days just seemed more pronounced today. Lucia got up much earlier than usual, setting her on a Fusskins path she never managed to snap out of; she took a good nap this morning, but a much-needed nap this afternoon—which was hard-fought—lasted for…twenty minutes. Another good nap later on helped, but not much. An orderly person like me sometimes feels overwhelmed not only with the unfinished work hanging over my head but with the sheer chaos that is my house by the end of a typical day. Dishes are everywhere. The dishwasher may or may not be unloaded. Pans of tepid water from heating milk for cereal and for the bedtime bottle of breastmilk clutter the counters. Newspaper sections cover the table. Laundry, if there was ti...

Saturday morning, we set out for Lake Tahoe—our first trip of the season. Tahoe is my very favorite place in NorCal—a place I can actually imagine us returning to even when we’re living back East one day. We were very excited to introduce Lucia to the lake and the mountains and pines surrounding it. And to snow, it turns out—the Sierras are still snow-covered, and hard-packed snow covered the forest floor by the side of the highway as we inched up in altitude. The temperature was pleasant—high sixties, low seventies—but the snow seems to be sticking around for a while. We arrived in late morning and went straight to King’s Beach, our favorite part of the lake. We ate the sandwiches we’d packed and then sat for a while on a blanket in a shady spot under a tree, just taking it all in and enjoying the alpine peacefulness. Around noon, we drove to Incline Village, Nevada, and checked into the Hyatt—a luxurious resort with a private beach and fabulous swimming facilities. After hauling our ...

Little Lucia, According to the right, logical calendar, you’re seven months old tomorrow. Seven months! That’s a real baby! And what a baby you are these days: sitting, playing, trying to crawl. You get cuter every day. I feel certain that’s an objective observation, not just your mama’s. There’s something about you sitting on your play blanket, playing with little toys, that just overwhelms me with adoration. A baby! We’re made some important steps this month. Perhaps the biggest is that you now sleep in your own room, in your crib, instead of the bassinet in our room. You took to it without even a blip, and you now sleep reliably from 7:30pm to 5am. After I feed you at 5, you almost always will sleep at least another hour or hour and a half in bed with me and Daddy. This is my favorite part of the night—having you snugged in right next to me, sometimes sleeping with your forehead touching mine. Though you started off as a champion eater, devouring every new food with gusto, you’ve be...

Yesterday was my first Mother's Day. Last year, I was pregnant; but this year, there was a squirming, squealing baby greeting me in the morning, and I realized with a shock that's a bit absurd considering I'm with this baby all day, every day, that I'm her mother . Mother's Day belongs to me now. Andrew and Lucia gave me a gift--a kit to create a paving stone with my and Lucia's handprint in the cement, which we made in the afternoon--and then went to get donuts, which we ate in bed. We spent the rest of the day relaxing around the house as I tried to wrap my mind around the fact that Lucia is not just a baby, but my baby.

I feel techier today. We spent Friday and Saturday in Silicon Valley—our first time in the area—and perhaps something rubbed off on me as we made our way through Mountain View. (Or, as our GPS said, “M-T-N View.”) TechLink, Gemfire, Force Networks, Brocade—the techy names on the sides of glass-sided office buildings flew by as we made our way into the city. Behind those walls, something was being coded; something was being engineered; something was being data-warehoused. I don’t know what those things mean, but somehow I could feel them going on around us. It was a gorgeous Bay Area day—low 70s, not a cloud in the sky. It felt like we were in California , the California of myth and icon, not the one of strip malls and electric wires. Our hotel room promised, according to the website, to stimulate both the left and right sides of our brains; in one desk drawer were standard office supplies (stapler, scissors, Post-Its), while the other held a Rubik’s Cube, an Etch A Sketch, a deck or ca...

Yesterday, a woman from a gutter cleaning service called me to arrange a time for our gutters to be cleaned. She'd spoken to our landlord, and he specifically told her to arrange the cleaning with me so I could make sure they didn't come during Lucia's naptime. This was so thoughtful, and it wasn't the first time--he always calls before doing lawn work, etc. to make sure he comes when she's not sleeping. I had to write about this since it's such a far cry from my landlord in Brooklyn, who surprised me on moving-out day by a) driving up from his home in Florida and ringing my buzzer early in the morning wearing a fishing vest and gangster-style sunglasses, b) bringing with him a bowie knife and a whole lot of crazy, and c) proceeding to go into all the shops on my street while I loaded my U-Haul, telling the workers he owned the block and taking pictures as "proof" of who knows what. I don't think he would have cared about Lucia's naptime. In fa...

Now and then, all the stars align and Andrew and I find ourselves on the receiving end of a ridiculous number of new books, all given to us for free. It helps that Andrew works in publishing; three or four times a year, he can select five free books. The latest five arrived yesterday. We also write book reviews for a local publication and greedily request as many books each month as they're willing to give us; nine books arrived yesterday. In total, yesterday we received 2 paperbacks, 7 hardcovers, and 5 hardcover children's books. It was truly a great day for books.

Lucia and I take much the same route every day on our walks, and each day I pass the same large vehicle on a street near our with the following decal on the back windshield: I’ll keep my money, guns, and freedom You keep “The Change” Today I noticed that this person liked this decal so much that he got one for a second vehicle parked near the first as well. I’ve seen this before and, as always, I discreetly rolled my eyes. (Very discreetly, since the presumed owner of the vehicles was tinkering with his large motor home in his driveway. Such a person would tinker in a driveway, and would have a motor home.) But today it struck me how very, very annoying this decal is. The problem isn’t the first part. Fine; let this lovely person keep his guns. The problem is the quotation marks. I don’t think Obama ran with a slogan called “The Change.” Change was, indeed, his hook. But “The Change”—this is much too menopausal to be a political slogan. To put “The Change” in quotation marks—and to cap...