Sunday, July 01, 2012

And... coming home.

And then suddenly, we're back. It was tremendously disorienting-- everything just the way we left it-- actually, much nicer than the way we left it, thanks to KJ and Ivan's loving stewardship-- but I felt like our cat Tako when we moved--- she ran into the new house, ran into every new room and under all the furniture like a mad thing, then hid under the bed for three days. I had to wander around for a couple of weeks just looking in drawers and feeling confused-- Did this faucet always spray? Do we really not have a dryer? But now it's been a little more than a month and we've resettled, more or less. Utah seems like a blip-- a vivid dream, or something that happened a long time ago. The girls almost don't remember it, and have reentered their lives more or less seamlessly, remembering all the backstories to their toys and kid-treasure-detritus... stuff that out-of-sight-out-of-mind for a season and they had forgotten it existed.




Winter in Utah: Gettin Used to Leavin

And before I knew it, we were done. We gave back all the stuff we had begged, borrowed, or stolen, packed up a rental car, and drove to California!

 I surprised myself-- I was REALLY sad to leave. We had settled in so nicely! Rosie's school was so wonderful, and our little simplified life was so cozy and intimate-- just us in our tiny apartment. I wasn't sure what I thought about coming home to a pile of stuff that we don't really need and obligations and connections and responsibilities...

 so rather than go straight home and risk dying from shock, we went on a vacation!
A brief-- but noble! Stop in the sierras


poor little street urchins...
 The Lawrence Hall of Science: where I wish I lived.

It's coming. Any second. I can feeeeel it.

A bunch a bridges

Grandma! And an alluvial flood plain, or somethin'.

Oooooh, I LOVED this. talk about hands-on science.


And --Praise the lord-- Cheeseboard pizza.

And, in some no-name strip mall in a suburb of nowhere, the world's crowdedest, sweatiest, spiciest, most delicious Chinese food on the planet. You know it's good, when I'm the whitest thing in a 3 mile radius.

the damask roses of the world tour...

This was the awesome broken wild animal museum. Those owls, hawks, and eagles? All alive. All somehow defective, but... ALIVE! Awesome, right?

Maile as a red-tailed hawk






Go bears!

Look who we ran in to in the foyer of the Botany building-- Lucy!!!

And a tiny archeopteryx fossil

Ooooh!! the Stamen!


Ooooh, the farmers' market.....

Oooh, the borsht at Sauls...







It left us all a bit... deer in the headlights.

Winter in Utah: Birthday girls!

These little March girls each gained a number, and we celebrated with matching spring dresses, that they wore to tatters, over their pajamas, every day, and sesame-street-themed juice boxes....

 And glass blowing...
 And a superfancy Mexican cake that they custom decorated with "O-tanjoubi Omedetou!" Muchas Gracias!
 We had an impromptu birthday party with trampoline jumping...
 And pinata-smashing...

 And pinata wearing

 And best of all... DANDELIONS!!







Oh yeah, and PENgUinS.



MP: "Me said, NO TAKE MY HORSIE!!!"

 Oh and EASTER with lovely friends, where we chucked boiled eggs down the hill with 500 other weirdos



the obligatory eyeball egg