It was a Good Trip

It was a good trip but now we are home again. So quickly we fall back into the routine of life; watering the garden, messing up every room in the place, returning to the work of patient care. Forgetting.

It was hard to leave Sunday, we lingered in Auburn, having lunch and walking around the wooden sidewalks, stopping into the antique store, the Alehouse.

It was hard to plunge back into the steamy swampy heat that summer has become in the Los Angeles basin. Sticky and uncomfortable, running the AC that night because we needed some sleep.

A part of me wants to run back North right away, just do it now. I miss it already. I miss knowing my sisters are close enough to reach in 6 hours, not 13. I miss the sunset there. I miss the hikes with family. I miss it all.


Monday I went into the office to pick up my laptop and muster up some home care patients, in need of work and money. And I had a sit down with my supervisor and let her know that I am going to apply for jobs North, unsure of timing but sure of the change. She was supportive and assured me that she would not fire me in the meantime, so that is good. And in that moment I knew we were committed. That we are not waiting until next year or 'maybe soon' or 'someday'. I know that it is time to do it now. So scary but so cool too.

Big changes make me think of the movie 'What About Bob'. Baby steps. Baby steps to the computer to fill out the system application. Baby steps to the de-cluttering of stuff. Baby steps will eventually get us the 500 or so miles North, back to the place we want to call Home.

Then I always inevitably think of the scene where Bob is tied to the boat mast, arm spread joyously shouting "Look at me! I'm a sailor! I sail!'. And he got their via Baby Steps.
(God, I love that movie. Bill Murray, he is just brill.)

But first, this weekend we will play hooky for a bit, heading down to San Diego for a few days of equanimous weather that stays in the 65-72 degree range without fail. Legoland calls, then Blogher 2011 to see the lovely friends that live too far away no matter what point West, to play in the beach sand and watch sea animals and listen friends speak their amazing words and then it will be time to come home and declare an end to all the dallying and just get to it.

A little recap of our trip as a reminder to me that we need to do this and a little glimpse for you as to where you will find us in the near future.




And a big smile to any new people that found their way here via Blogher. Feel free to come along as we take this new ride in Life. :) xo amiee

Fear and Freedom

I have to chuckle a bit after reading the last post. Somehow I thought I would find the time to write in the maelstrom that is life on the road. It feels as if I wrote that post months past and a minute ago. And tomorrow it is time to head back South, somewhat weary from the time away but also very very changed.


The last few weeks have solidified some very important beliefs that Tim and I hold, the most important being that we have to move. Not want to, not going to, but HAVE to. It was a multi-purpose trip with riding and family and yoga but the crux was spending time in our future home to make sure it should be our Future.


What we found still makes me smile. The people at the checkout counter smiled and took moments for conversation or to speak with our boys. The ice cream shop teenagers asked my kids which color spoon they preferred. The library has felt boards and tolerant smiles and The New Yorker shelved right next to Farm and Grain and Organic Homesteading. It felt like our Utopia.



Sure, people still cut each other off a bit and snarls of traffic could be found in some places. But it did not feel hick or wrong or closed. It felt right. And the homes we were able to visit sealed the deal, places with some breathing room and old oaks and veggie plots, one was even right next to a family winery (which might be a dangerous situation if the tasting room is open frequently). We did not find our home but I instead we found our Place, and the home will follow.


So now, to take the plunge. There are 5 PT positions open in the very nearby area, my parents are eager to move and the house we live in is (almost) in a salable condition. My heart squeezes and thumps harder as I write this but it feels possible.


I did a full day of yoga on Thursday, it just so happened a HUGE yearly festival coincided with out return this week. I worked through three 2 hour classes over the course of the day and still feel a bit hobbled. But I will tell you, each class I chose did something to me. One literally churned my insides, teaching me to reshape my inner body and strength to support the outer. One taught me to fly on the backs and hips and hands of other yogis. And the last gave insight into teaching and branding yoga and all the nuances that exist as the practice of yoga moves into common consciousness.


During my Acroyoga class the tiny full voiced teacher Jenny discussed the form with us. We spoke of releasing fear and her comment still sits in my heart today. "Fear and Freedom are two sides of the same Coin". And they are. I would like to think I am listening carefully enough to the Universe and its message. And though we have to return much deeper south than I would prefer, I want to continue to stoke this fire and freedom as we thread back into our lives in our current Home.

So many memorable moments from the trip but for now I just want to marinate in this newly found conviction.

Thai massage demo. That was some yoga day, let me say. Also, I discovered I can do this to Tim. And that makes me feel so powerful and him so loved.

From the Road

Sheepishly trying to jump back in ...

It is mid-July and we are in the first few days of our long weeks away. We worked our asses off for this, juggling the boys and the stress and trying to remain calm and trying to get all the proverbial ducks in a row before leaving.

For once I finished every bit and speck of paperwork and left the office Wednesday free of work laptop and work obligations, shedding the layers of patient care and responsibility gratefully. Instead we hauled a big box containing our new HP faux-iMac up on which I type right now. I am deeply in love with it already.

We are planning days here at Tahoe where Tim will ride and ride and shed some of the layers of stay-at-home-dad-starting-a-fledgling-business-in-his-'spare'-time. I will try to hold my sanity as I spend the days with my energetic and lovely but often trying boys. I will also seriously contemplate checking them into the Northstar Kids Day Camp even if it stretches the budget.

This is the place we want to be forever, not Tahoe proper but its rolling foothills, sitting at the base of our very favorite place on Earth. So we will go down the hill and talk to our realtor and search the area for our new home and our new jobs and new schools. It is so scary to say that out loud but I know now is the time to just say it. When we hit the Right Place on the 80 we both looked at each other and smiled because it felt like coming home. And there is just no denying it anymore.

So we will play for a few weeks with a few obligations here and there. And I hope to muster up some writing around here with all this spare time, my trial of Lightroom, my trusty camera and acres of pretty things to look at.

These pictures were my first foray into using Lightroom, a program I think I am going to love. I like how it made the mundane moments before vacation still seem a little bit special.

A [Mama's] Day

Camping, Park Play, Ojai, Drive Home ... Sick kids now. But fun while it lasted


Photo credit :: Mace

White. Out.

We came up to the Cabin for the weekend for a much needed escape to the high Sierra area. We brought good friends that were game for the trip even though 8+ feet of snow fell in four days and more piled on top throughout the week. We were pretty sure the water would not work and that we might be low on propane and that there might be certain complications with roads and access and stuff. But all four of us loaded up and headed out Friday.


We were greeted a five hours later by walls of snow, higher than I have ever seen here, ever. I thought the snow might be shoulder deep in the 'driveway' but I was off.


It was overhead, about 10 feet, almost level with the second story of the three story cabin. It was a little daunting at first but neighbors were all digging out and joined us in making sapces for cars. They laughed and gave us bathroom privileges at their place when they heard our plight. The propane was out but there is plenty of wood and down comforters to go around.

I laugh a little to myself because we voluntarily left Spring in full bloom to plunge shoulder deep into winter again.

The town folk look exhausted, a building collapsed this week and they have been battered for months with more snow than this little nook has seen ever. But they hold on and we just visit and I reliaze that it would be very hard to live here but, man, is it gorgeous when the whole world is white and the sound dampens off and the light filters through and you have good friends to laugh with as you suite up to go dig something out again.

Here is to snow. Piles and piles that will eventually melt away.

It made a great cooler and an even better surface for that old board I have not ridden for a few years. As I type this I am feeling every muscle in my upper body scream from the yard sale crash I had yesterday on the slopes but it was totally worth it.

Now to clean up, pack up and head South, back to my babies that I am missing something fierce. Nothing like a few child free days to make your heart long only to get back to your kiddies.
Have a great (and hopefully Spring snow-less) week, folks.

Anew

That last post was somewhat prompted by the odd heady space Tim and I have been in since the New Year came. I think I have mentioned in a not so specific way that we are thinking of moving. It felt not so specific until this past weekend. Now it feels like a much more real and present prospect, an idea that can become reality.


It is not an imminent move, we are not packing any bags quite yet. There are a lot of logistics to sort out but first we had to make sure. So we spent a weekend exploring the curves and secrets and contours of a place that we would like to call home someday. We visited the library because the library can speak volumes for a town. I found the mother lode of buttons at the local antique shop (a good omen, I believe). We saw land and farms and found ourselves climbing steep mountain roads that made me ill.

It is still California but North, far from the dry Southland we now call home. And yet, there is a continuity to California, something that fits like a good coat.

We want some breathing room, some not so suburban living, access to the things that we love so dearly and try to appreciate daily.

We want to be closer to a family that is performing a mass exodus north with no designs on returning to the L.A. basin. I want chickens and maybe a goat, a pond would be nice. And I want a place to wear these. I want my boys to be able to roam a little freer in an area that still rolls without the interruption of tract home after tract home coating the once oak filled hills.


So, we took the first tentative step into a new world of unknowns. The next steps are much more concrete and involve finishing home projects and deck building and front door refurbishing with the aim to invite someone else into my childhood home and ask them to live here (for a fee, of course). It feels good/odd/scary/different but it does not feel bad and it does not feel sad. And I think that is what matters most.

The up side? If we do fix up this place and decide not to sell, I anticipate we will have one hell of a nice place to live.

Wings (Clipped?)

Our passports expired December 31, 2010. We had initially planned to renew them but the steep price of 110$ each made it impossible this year. Letting them expire felt like a closure of some other part of our lives together. Locked in the U.S. we are until we can come up with the sum of 320$ to let us out again (once they expire you have to apply anew which costs 160$ now).

I remember when we received them in the mail, it was the fall of 1999. we were planning our first trip out of the country, to africa, of all places. South Africa to be exact. We quit our jobs, we tried to pack as light as possible and we left home, hoping to stay away for at least three months, maybe more. We left on a plane to Holland right about this time in January, arriving in Amsterdam, impressed with the airport Schipol, venturing out via public transport, welcomed by my father’s Dutch-Indo family that call Holland home. It was bitter cold winter and we wandered the city for over a week, taking in all the amazing architecture and spirit that is the city of Amsterdam.

We loved it, I still remember the feeling of walking through the van gogh museum, seeing painting after painting gathered in one centralized spot. It was almost shattering.

We also had an interesting encounter with the Dutch ‘emergency’ room due to a terrible mix of Larium, strong Belgian beer and some pot. Never ever to be repeated again. And then we were on a place headed to Jo-burg, into summer and far far away from anything called home. South Africa was beautiful and shocking and disorienting and enchanting and all the things that places far far away from home can be.



But oddly enough, parts of it felt just like home, some parts are in the same climate zone as Southern California and we would hike and feel suddenly relocated to home. Until baboons starting hooting from the cliffs above. There were rafting trips and hostels, monkey encounters and almost getting swept out to sea in pilfered canoes.



There was the endless round of travelers from other countries asking us why the hell we elected Bush, there were the vestiges of apartheid and black women who would do our laundry for a few rand if we wanted. Plates and plates of fresh calamari that we could have for a dollar or so American. Small towns and cities and slums, and only instant coffee. It was a most eye-opening way to leave the States for the first time.



2000 was a year of travel for us, we were in Ireland for a month, Hawaii for a month, Arizona, Utah, Oregon. We did not work, we just wandered. I was 25, Tim 23 … no plans yet, unmarried, no home, free in so many ways. We had disposable income that year because of a settlement I received from an accident long ago. I do not regret a penny that we spent in travel that year. I do regret the chunk of money I invested in stocks trying to do the grown up thing. Funny how sometimes doing what is responsible is not nearly as productive as doing what feels right.

I am pretty sure we will never go to Africa for three months again to do the hostel route and party like rock stars. But that is okay. Since that trip we did another to Australia which ended after three months of car living; spines in their late 20s and a country far far more expensive than South Africa sent us home. And another with the boys to Canada. But the latest journey involves the parenting of two young boys who fill up our lives and days in ways that I could never have dreamed of back in those days

And now the latest dream. It includes a move, a place to call a new home, some animals, some land, and access to all the things we have always loved. Mountains, oak trees, snow, water … we are tentatively stretching out to touch this dream, try to shape it and make sense out of change. But for some reason it already feels like it fits.

Our hearts hold instincts, I truly believe this. They lead us, these instincts, to seek the right path. The right journey. Not destination. There should never be a certain point destination. Cause we all have just one, really.

Onward to this new facet to the latest travel. We may not need a passport but I am hoping we find a pass to the next road.

Thought I would note that all pictures were taken on our very first digital camera, a Sony shaped like a SLR. Digital was still pretty new in 1999 and I remember the camera cost 700 bucks or so. Upon reflection, I now realize they had programmed a lot of flexibility into that little camera. It served us well.

Brooklyn Love

It would be remiss of me not to speak of Brooklyn as a huge part of this trip. It is where I stayed for the week, where a lot of good things happened and where I found sanctuary when the wailing rush of Manhattan got to me.

The neighborhood where I stayed felt like an old song that I know how to sing.


Not yet gentrified with just a smattering of wine bars and whole food restaurants mixed in with the corner bakeries and bodegas. Still diverse and open to all with Peurto Ricans/Russians/blacks/whites/Hasidic jumbled up in the streets and homes. It has its own rhythm; where I was just a few stops up from Coney Island. And I loved it so. It is funny how you can slip back into a skin you thought you had forgotten how to wear. And it was a little disconcerting how comfortable I felt once I found my way about.

Brooklyn, she was the recipient of my Hope Notes mission. I first learned about Hope Notes in my Mondo Beyondo class. It is an exercise in signs, in letting the Universe speak a little through a Sharpie pen and a stack of Post-Its. Since then, and especially when I am feeling off my game, I try to have my supplies on hand to leave little notes behind to be found by someone who might need to hear them.

The first day I did it in Brooklyn I got caught. I felt clever slipping that little note onto the door of the elevator at my friend's building.

Then I, ah, forgot something upstairs on the 7th floor so I had to ride all the way back up. With this guy who got on at the 1st floor.

Who read the note from behind me and I think whispered, "What the hell". His face was too good not to photograph.

But the second go round felt much more successful. The day before I left I wandered off the F train through the streets looking for good opportunities. It sounds weird but they seem to present themselves.

The train stop at Ditmas... an old elevated platform with wood grain and shadows abounding...




An open door waiting for someone to come home...



A school bus waiting to pick up a load of lovely little people...



But then the Universe started throwing signs at me and it freaked me out a little bit. As I left the train station on this, the day before I was to leave New York, I glanced at the ground and found a sticker with my child's name on it...

Yep, that is his name. I laid down on the ground to take this picture, that is how much I wanted to see him.

Then as I walked down the street, approaching my destination (which happened to be an air-conditioned apartment which I was pretty desperate to reach by that time) I was cut off by an ambulette that stopped in my path to unload a passenger. Here is what cut me off...


So I took it as the Universe telling me I better get my ass home as there were some people who needed me more than Brooklyn needed hope notes. I heard you, O'Universe of wonderful signs.

(This kid was running fast down the street...he just looked so free and happy. Be-zeep.)

As a last note, I always feel weird when I do not have the twin thing happen with basically everything in life (when it comes to them) so I was antsy to find something to do with Owen. Later that night I sat on the fire escape looking out at the street below, the Brooklyn street so different than the City.


I always used to sit out on my fire escape because just a few hours inside make me feel a little breathless; even more so now 12 years later and 7 floors up. I looked up at the building across from me. And here is where I let you in on the crazy that is my brain...

I was looking at two windows with keystone accents. You know what a keystone is, right? The mark of a good mason. And centered right between the two keystones was a big white round O. The whole time my boys were with me, watching me from across the street.


Yes, it was good to find that part of Me that feels like she has not breathed for years and years. Yes, there were moments when I felt sweet relief to be sitting listening to loud music while scrolling through Twitter without any small persons demanding attention. Yes, I feel more whole than I have in a long time.

But, oh, how I felt dismembered at times during that week. And the Universe, well, she was just reminding me that I am not.

* and just to be totally clear, I scroll through Twitter and listen to loud music all the time at home it is just that the banshees like to interrupt that action. A lot.