Where somebody knows my name

I was excited to move back to California last year. I knew I would miss our life and our friends in DC, but California was home and I was glad to be going back. But as much as I thought of California as home, it has taken some time for Mountain View to become home. The home in California in my mind, my heart, was our little house in Santa Cruz, our friends' home in Berkeley, my dad's house in Martinez. It was all the places I used to go to and the things I used to do. Mountain View was...Mountain View. It was nicer than I expected it to be, but it wasn't what I knew. It's been nearly a year now, but at last it is happening, at last I feel at home. It's not that I'm any more settled into our apartment or that I've finally found a routine--those things happened ages ago. It was just one simple thing: at last month's Thursday Night Live, I ran into someone I knew.

It's funny how that has made such a difference to me, and how happy I have been since then to wave to people I know at the farmer's market or have a friend suddenly sit down beside me while I'm watching Adriana play somewhere. When we moved here, I knew exactly one person in the area. I joined a playgroup and La Leche League and attended yoga classes. All of those things were hard for me. I'm an introvert. I joke with Brian that the reason I keep friends so long is that I'm terrified (and too socially inept) to make new ones. And while that may not be the reason that I keep my old friends around, the fear is certainly real. But being lonely is worse. It's not as though I've forged a lot of close, personal friendships here. Those will come with time (would they come sooner if it weren't so easy to maintain older friendships in this world of cell phones and email?), but seeing a friendly face and stopping to chat at the grocery store or the mall or the farmer's market or the playground has made an important enough difference for now.

Moving in

We are settling in at our new apartment. Movers came with our furniture and 82 boxes on Thursday, and we've been unpacking ever since. Well, sort of. I may have taken a bit of a break to read Harry Potter. But Brian was unpacking (and very understanding of my lack of willpower)

Incidentally, the last time we were moving apartments? A new Harry Potter book came out. What's up with that? Last time I attempted to alternate unpacking with reading, and gave up pretty quickly and just read the book. This time I wasn't even going to open the book when it came, but yeah. No willpower. That's also why I ate an entire bag of Trader Joe's molasses cookies in two days. But that's better than eating them all in one day. Right?

So. Anyway. We are in our new apartment, after about three weeks of floating between hotels and my dad's and corporate housing. And it's good to be here, in our own space, even if that space is full of boxes and stuff that doesn't yet have a home. Even if we haven't found the energy (or space) to cook actual food for ourselves beyond veggie burgers. The cat isn't quite convinced we aren't going to put her in her carrier and tote her off to yet another location, but she is spending a bit less time hiding out in the box spring.

Unpacking boxes that the movers packed for us is a little weird. I'm not complaining. I'd rather have movers than have to pack everything myself. But there are some surprises when we unpack boxes--they are labeled with their contents, but sometimes random stuff also was thrown it because it fit. And I would have done that myself, I'm sure, but I would also have had some memory of doing it. And when I packed up my books, I would have packed them by shelf and then labeled the boxes by subject. But books were just packed, and in order to get boxes out of our house, we just put them on shelves, to be sorted later. It's probably not the most efficient way to do things, but it seemed best, although it was causing me some anxiety to have a Tennessee Williams anthology, a Michael Moore book, the Bible, The Politics of Fertility Control, and a public finance textbook all in a row on a shelf. I don't think of myself as a highly organized person, apparently my bookcases are an exception.

Although there are still boxes to be unpacked, I've stopped and instead am focusing on organizing and cleaning up a bit. I think that's good for my mental health. Sitting and reading Harry Potter (which didn't suck!) while Brian did the work was even better, but I don't think even I can rationalize a reread of it already. But I bet I could find a way to justify another trip to TJ's for some cookies.

Home again, home again

Last night as we drove from our dinner in Arlington with friends down to our hotel near Dulles, I looked out at the monuments across the river and wondered if I was going to cry. I am ordinarily someone who cries very easily, so you would think that leaving the place I'd been for five years would be just the thing to set me off, but instead I'll be adding last night to the (short) list of times when I expected to cry but didn't.

It was a full week: a few "one last times", like a free concert at the Kennedy Center*, dinners at favorite places**, visiting with friends; a couple of sightseeing trips to the National Cryptologic Museum and Tidal Basin; and that crazy business of getting all of our stuff weeded through and packed and out of the house. It wore me out considerably, which is odd, considering that there were guys who came to pack up our stuff*** and put it on a truck, and my dad was in town to help with the baby while Brian and I got stuff done, so it wasn't as though I had to stay up until ridiculous hours to try to finish things after she was asleep.

Anyhow, we survived getting our stuff packed up and managed to make it through airport security and deal with a cross-country flight with both a baby and a cat. Now we're in California, and I am definitely not crying now. In fact, I'm smiling a lot.

*Erin Mckeown, who did a great show, and sang a lot of my favorite songs that I hadn't heard her do live before. I even have a picture of her and Adriana after the show, but it's on my cell phone and hell if I know how to get pics off of there.

**Brian really wanted to go to El Tamarindo. I told him that parking would suck on a Friday night, that the food and drinks there weren't as good as he remembered, and that he liked it so much because of fond memories of getting drunk with Becca there. But the food was actually quite good, as were the drinks, and we found parking almost immediately and only about a block away.

***One thing about the guys who handled our move on the Alexandria end: our stuff has to go into storage because our place isn't available until mid-July. For some reason, this means that the contents of our dressers had to be packed into boxes. When the packers left at the end of the day on Thursday we discovered that they'd packed up everything but my underwear drawer. I don't know what that's all about but it cracks me up.

No place like home

On our house hunting trip, we flew to Oakland and headed straight for Santa Cruz. We weren't meeting with our relocation agent until the following morning, so we wanted to take advantage of some of the free time we would have during the trip to see friends and maybe ride a roller coaster or two. I was prepared to enjoy the time in Santa Cruz. I didn't expect it to make me so sad.

At first it was just the pleasant nostalgia I always feel as we drive into town. On our first trip back to Santa Cruz after moving across the country, we turned onto Mission Street and pulled up beside a hybrid car with Nader and rainbow bumper stickers. It made us smile and feel at home. As we drove along Mission on this trip, I commented to Brian that everything always looked pretty much the same and that no matter what the restaurant was at the corner of Mission and Bay, I'd always be stuck calling it "that place that used to be Marcelo's." I was smiling and felt at home once again. It's kind of like seeing a beautiful young woman on the street as opposed to seeing my sister: when I see the beautiful woman I don't know, I'm struck by her appearance, but with my sister people tell me she's pretty, and of course I think so, but when I look at her, she just looks like herself to me. When I came over a hill after getting off the freeway in Laguna Beach in April, my breath was taken away by the sight of the ocean, but Santa Cruz just looked like itself to me as we drove into town. Santa Cruz in comfortable and familiar even after five years of being away.

(I'm sorry, did that simile not really work? It's the first thing that comes to mind and that's the best I can do on a Sunday morning, I'm afraid.)

Later on in the day, as I walked into Natural Bridges from the park's back entrance on Delaware, enjoying the mingling scents of the ocean and the eucalyptus trees, I suddenly wanted to cry. That was when it hit me that we really weren't going to be moving back to Santa Cruz. I've know that for some time, and I also know it doesn't make sense for us to move back: houses are expensive there, there aren't really jobs for either of us, and pretty much all of our friends have moved on. Still, that knowledge didn't really hit me until I was walking down a path to my favorite beach, a path I'd walked countless times in the past: to go lie in the sun with Brian on the weekends when he lived on Beachview; to have picnics and fly kites with friends on holiday weekends; on long walks from campus to home as I was training for my marathon. Then I realized that that path, that beach weren't going to be part of my day-to-day life the way they were five years back. It was somehow easier to accept the loss of that when I was on the other side of the country.

I know we're making the right decision with where we're moving, but it's hard to realize that moving back to California doesn't mean walking to the lighthouse to watch the surfers at Steamer Lane, or getting our burritos from Taqueria Vallarta. We won't just make an impromptu trip to the Boardwalk to ride the Giant Dipper once, or spend the afternoon wandering up and down Pacific Avenue. I've been away from those things for some time now, and I'd stopped missing them the way I did when we first left California, but I'm missing them again now I'll be much closer but not getting them back. I suppose I've idealized Santa Cruz to a certain extent, because I don't find myself feeling the same attachment to Martinez, where I spent my entire life up until college. Maybe it's because Santa Cruz is where I "grew up" and found an identity apart from my parents. It's where Brian and I met and fell in love. It's beautiful in both immense and minute ways. It was gorgeous when we were there last week--sunny and warm, with nice waves out on the bay. But it had seemed perfect to me in November, too, on the grey day when we drove up the coast for lunch and that evening when we went up to campus in a misty rain. I suppose that a lot of the beauty of the area for me isn't just in the actual surroundings, but in the familiarity and memories.

House hunting

Last weekend, Brian, Adriana, and I headed to California for a house hunting trip. The experience was very different from finding a place to live in the DC area five years ago. Back then, I came out to DC on my own, spent some time looking around, and figured out what I wanted for myself. Of course, we'd talked extensively before I headed out about what we wanted, but I didn't have to negotiate with anyone as I realized that neither the Virginia high rises that Brian thought might be a good idea nor the Georgetown basement apartments that I had envisioned were right for us. After a weekend of riding Metro and taking wrong buses to get around, we ended up in a condo (above ground, but not in a high rise) in the suburbs for a little more than half of what we were paying for our little house in Santa Cruz.

Now we are moving back to California. Our rent is going to go up, although we fought it (and fought with each other over it). We both went on the trip this time. Instead of newspaper listings, a cell phone, and a Metro card, we had easy access to Google maps and the VTA website so that we could check commute times, as well as a relocation agent who took us first on a general neighborhood tour around the South Bay and Peninsula, and then pulled up listings and took us to view various condos and apartments. The whole experience was vastly different. We negotiated with each other and bounced ideas off the agent.

I think we'll be happy in the place we chose. It's in Mountain View, which we wanted but then decided we couldn't afford. Before we left for California, we decided that we would focus on San Jose, and after an evening wandering around we decided we loved the idea of being right in downtown San Jose. Then we discovered we couldn't afford it. Well, we could afford it, I guess, but we weren't willing to pay that much. During the neighborhood tour, I started thinking Campbell might be good, with lower housing prices and a cute downtown area. Unfortunately, the commute for Brian didn't look good. Then we fell ridiculously in love with a complex in North San Jose that was everything I didn't want in a neighborhood: office park after office park after office park. We are apparently suckers for pretty views and granite counters. But Mountain View seemed like a better bet and the apartment is spacious and seems pretty nice. I feel like such a housewife whenever I say it, but I am excited to have a kitchen larger than what we have now (not that it would take much), in spite of the fact that the stove is electric rather than gas, and I love that not only do we have our own washer and dryer but that they are not taking up room in the kitchen. Brian is already totally in love with the balcony, which gets lots of morning sun, so we're planning on growing herbs and maybe geraniums. We'll be able to walk to the library, parks, and restaurants, and on Sunday we saw that the farmer's market looked big and crowded. I'm excited about our move.

I'm not sure at this point which house hunting method I prefer. I liked the independence of looking for a place on my own, but I'm glad that Brian and I found a place together. I felt that I was exploring more as I visited places using public transit, but the relocation agent and his car made it easier to see a lot of places in one day. The hotel we stayed in was more comfortable than the hostel I stayed in five years ago, but I didn't meet cool women to go out to bars with. But one thing was definitely better about this house hunting trip: when my plane landed at BWI five years ago, it was ten at night and the pilot reported that the temperature outside was over 90 degrees with ridiculous humidity; on Thursday when we touched down in the bay area it was relatively cool and not humid at all.

This is really happening, isn't it?

Today I booked one-way tickets to Oakland. I think we might actually be moving back to California.

Moving

I am in the middle of moving. We’re literally moving just down the street, to another apartment in the same development. I’m excited about the new place—it’s much bigger, it has more “upgrades” than my current unit, and I will have my own washer and dryer, so I no longer will have to constantly bug the supermarket clerks for quarters.

Even though I am glad to be moving, I am not having fun this weekend. I hate the whole process of moving, even though the end result is usually pleasing. I hate having to put my entire life into boxes. I hate all the cleaning. I try to think of it in a more positive light. Even though I hate all the cleaning and sorting involved, it’s good to go through everything and purge things that aren’t necessary, random things I’ve been dragging around during various moves that I really don’t need.

I’ve thrown away a lot of stuff, including about 500 pages of photocopied journal articles I’d used for my senior thesis, and birthday cards in which the senders hadn’t written any notes, just signed their names. There are boxes of things that haven’t been touched since I moved into this apartment three years ago: a box of snapshots and cards and other small things from my wedding, and one of miscellaneous cords, many of which are probably from electronic equipment that’s been tossed.

Yesterday I found a large manila envelope that had slipped behind the shelves in my closet. It was a random collection of stuff:

• A yellow notepad, mostly used
• A copy of my senior thesis
• A photo Christmas card from my half-brother’s family, from several years back
• A photo of me and my friend Mark at Porter College—taken in July 1998 according to my note on the back
• A black-and-white photo that my friend Lynn took of me on the carousel at the Boardwalk in 2000
• A dollar bill
• Six pennies
• Print outs of classifieds from the Washington City Paper from my apartment search when I was first moving to Washington
• A copy of the first issue of the New Yorker to come out after September 11^th
• A hot pink Post-it note: “Call Jeff: B-day 7/22”*

I clearly haven’t looked at this envelope since I left Santa Cruz. Some of it I like—I saved the card, the photos, the magazine. But I’m unclear on how some of it ended up making the move, like the Post-it note (I moved in August, so I didn’t really need the note about Jeff’s birthday at that point) and the ads.

At any rate, the move is taking more time and energy that I’d planned. I’m trying to be philosophical, though, about the whole (miserable) process. Brian has entered some sort of organizational euphoria as he unpacks our kitchen stuff, trying to find a place for everything, repacking things we don’t really use (or that he thinks we don’t need to use) because I won’t actually let him throw away most of it. He repacks it all into carefully labeled boxes that will go up into the attic. I am trying to think of the process of moving in the same way: I will weed out what I don’t need, eliminate things that are no longer necessary, put aside what I am uncertain of, to deal with at some point in the future. I can see some benefits to having a philosophy of life that purges what is unused and organizes everything into carefully labeled boxes. I’m just not sure if it’s an appropriate philosophy for me, personally. And I still hate moving.

*That’s coming right up, isn’t it?. Happy birthday, Jeff!