Back in the Saddle

I could mean this literally and figuratively.

The figurative part comes down to being back here, on my blog, writing again.

Man, it feels nice to write.

I have had one hell of a busy summer.

There’s been this pandemic thing.

Social distancing.

Working.

Working some more.

Working on my dissertation proposal–turned in my third draft this week.

Oh yeah.

And moving.

I don’t believe I have written about that at all.

You know, that little thing, moving during a pandemic.

Or maybe I did and I already forgot because it’s been a minute since I have done a blog.

(at least on this platform, I’ve been posting to my therapy website, but that’s a different kind of blog)

And it’s been a minute since…

I have been on my bike!

Today, however, I got back in the saddle.

I cannot tell you how good that felt.

And, heh, it was just like riding a bike.

I won’t lie, I was a little nervous, it’s been over a year and a half since I had ridden.

I didn’t ride once living in my previous place.

My bike simply hung on a hook on the wall in the hallway entrance to my studio in-law.

Once in a while it would beseechingly call out to me and I would feel some guilt and I would say, yeah, this weekend, go do a ride.

But it was windy or raining or foggy or miserable, as it can be in the Outer Richmond.

And I live on a gigantic hill and it’s a one speed.

And.

And.

And.

Cue not riding at all.

It just never happened.

Until today.

I have been in my new home officially now two weeks.

It’s been a big two weeks.

Getting all the things set up.

Aside.

Today I got my Ihome pod set up.

Soooooo happy.

I got my music speaker back.

I have an old one, like a really old one that docks a first generation Ipod music player and it’s cute as shit and it glows and I can play all the music I loaded on it years and years and years ago.

But.

It doesn’t run off my phone (unless I want to get a cord that will connect it to the speaker and whatever not being a tech kid I will probably not do that, although I suspect the actual accessory is probably pretty cheap, anyway) and I can’t play my music apps–Spotify or Bon Entendeur.

Mostly I want to hear Bon Entendeur, which is a French house music app that I just fucking adore.

My Ihome pod was a gift from the family I used to nanny for when I graduated from my Master’s program in 2018.

I didn’t take it out of the box until I moved into my previous place, so I had it for six months before I actually turned it on.

Game changer.

I really love it.

Great sound.

Great speaker.

Connects right to the internet.

I never use the Siri part of it, just connect my music apps on my phone to it and voila, dance party.

Except I couldn’t figure out how to get it connected here.

A friend tried to walk me through it, but it didn’t take.

So today, after my bike ride, I’ll get to that, I sat down on the kitchen floor and googled all the things.

And.

I got it to work!

I am so proud of myself.

I know, a small accomplishment, but it felt really good and I’m happily listening to my music right now.

I’m also feeling very happy in my body, which got to go on a bike ride.

I moved to Hayes Valley in San Francisco.

It’s pretty damn flat.

I’m at the foot of some hills, but I don’t have to ride up them, I can just head out towards Market street and ride my sweet one speed through one of the flattest parts of the city.

And.

Yes, there are people out (and I was horrified to see people lined up to get into Ross Dress for Less.  Really?!) but not nearly as much as there would be, see previous note about pandemic, and there were very few cars and buses.

It was a glorious ride.

I rode all the way down Market and then along the Embarcadero until my legs got a little sore.

I knew better than to push it.

I don’t want to be sore tomorrow and it’s been a while since I had ridden.

Easy does it.

And easy does it again.

For I will be riding a lot more.

I am going to get my parking permit for my neighborhood this week and then I don’t plan on driving my car anywhere for a while.

I won’t be going into my office for a while yet, so no need to drive there.

My office is small, even if I wanted to socially distance I couldn’t.

I will continue to be doing telehealth for the near future.

Which means, aside from once a week when I need to drive to Daly City to work at the youth health clinic, I don’t need to move my car.

And now that I got back in the saddle, I will definitely be using my bike.

It was dreamy.

I pumped up the deflated tires and I got my messenger bag out of the closet, grabbed my Ulock and my Palmy lock, my wallet, hooked my keys on my belt loop, grabbed a Sigg bottle of water out of the fridge, put on my bandana mask, a pair of sunglasses and hit the road.

Like I mentioned.

Little traffic, either car or foot, some, but not a lot.

It was surreal, I have not been downtown since shelter in place went into affect and it was surreal to see it, and there are people out, like I said, line for Ross, but not that many, certainly nothing like what I would normally see on a Sunday in downtown San Francisco.

I felt really good biking again.

And on my return from the trip I swung into the Farmer’s Market at the Civic Center plaza and grabbed some stone fruit from a vendor as the market was closing down.

I cannot tell you how happy I am to be so close to a farmer’s market again.

I got yellow nectarines, which tasted like how I imagine sunshine should taste like, sweet, and thick, and full of light and golden tones, and I got apricots.

So good.

Came back to my place, stashed the bike in my bathroom–which is huge and my bicycle fits without any trouble, and prepped fruit for the week and stashed it in the fridge.

I’m home.

My bicycle is home.

My Ihome pod is set up.

My home is set up.

My pink couch is hella cute in my living room.

I got up privacy shields on the bottoms of my windows in my bedroom and living room.

I got cute little coffee tables to flank my couch.

All that’s left is to set up my bike stand so that I can store my bike standing up in the closet (I have a walk in closet in the living room) and to get my book shelf delivered and set up.

I feel happy.

I am very grateful and very lucky and very aware at how good my life is right now.

Even without being able to really engage with and connect with my friends and fellowship.

I am in a good place.

And I am.

Very.

Very.

Very.

Much.

At.

Home.

Today I Ate

An entire book.

I mean.

I consumed it.

I chopped it up and snorted it down like it was some sort of happy drug.

I haven’t read fiction in so long it was an aphrodisiac.

I still feel a little high.

I did just like I said I would and I slept in this morning.

I woke up at 9:45 a.m.!

Holy Toledo.

I cannot remember the last time I slept that late.  I mean, maybe the ARTumnal Airpusher after party silent dance rave I went to in November, but even the day after coming home from a night of carousing and dancing I was still up by 8:30a.m.

I think.

So this morning was nuts.

I believe it was partially, at least this is my excuse, not that I need one, that it was so clouded over.

Dark and stormy.

Grey and misty and wet.

True San Francisco winter weather, not exactly rain, but mist and wind and rainy and all-pervasive.

San Francisco rain doesn’t really always come straight down, it seems to enwrap you and get everything soaked.

Without directly raining all that much.

So I slept in.

I might have even slept longer were it not for the siren song of my bladder yelling out about the big mug of tea I had before I went to bed last night.

I got up and was leisurely.

Like in a major way.

I think it was 11:30a.m. before I actually sat down for breakfast.

A phone call from my best friend was partially the reason, but mostly, I was just going slow and easy.

I enjoyed my late breakfast and wrote a ton.

A lot.

It was lovely.

And though I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, I did know I was going to need to make a run to the grocery store and maybe see what was playing at the Balboa Theater, which is just up the road from me.

Unfortunately I’d already seen one of the movies and the other I am planning on seeing tomorrow.

But.

La Promenade Cafe was open and so I took my book and settled into a big leather arm-chair by the front window and sank into my story.

I bought this book last summer, a few weeks before I was to start my fall intensive for school.

A day before I got my first text-book in the mail for said intensive.

I only read a few of the stories, it’s a collection of shorts from A.M. Holmes called Days of Awe.

I really like her work, I’ve only read her novels and was happy to find that the shorts were just as compelling and in a way very interwoven, so it felt like I was reading a novel in a way.

I read at the cafe and listened to music and people watched and thought how nice it was to actually be in a cafe in my new neighborhood.

The first time since I’ve moved here since mid-September that I actually did something other than laundry in the neighborhood.

It felt a little like getting settled.

I did another first today too, this one may surprise you, although it shouldn’t considering how busy I keep myself.

I went for a walk around my neighborhood!

Yeah.

I know.

I really haven’t done any walking, unless it was from my car to the house or from the house to my car.

I had gotten back from the cafe, unloaded my groceries, roasted a chicken, made a late lunch, sat on my couch, watched the rain, ate brown butter brussels sprouts and hot roast chicken and listened to Coleman Hawkins.

It was delicious.

The food.

The music.

The rain on the windows.

It felt outside of time, I couldn’t remember what day of the week it was, Sunday, Monday, it all blended together.

My tree looked pretty, I lit candles, it was so cozy.

Then the sun burst out for a few minutes and I thought I should go for a sunset walk.

I quickly bundled up, there was only a few minutes before the sun was going to set, and I walked out the door on 48th and down Balboa towards the sea.

As I got closer, I realized that there was a path that I hadn’t seen before and what do you know, it’s actually a little park!

Sutro Dunes!

I had no idea.

Sweet little wood slat path along the base of the grass and flower covered dunes.

In the twilight it was deeply moving and full of divinity.

It felt really good to just do a little stretch around the neighborhood, to see the Cliff House hanging like an ornament over the ocean, to smell the fresh washed air, to just be.

I am pretty lucky when I think about it.

I live by the ocean.

It is literally a block away from my house.

Although I don’t get down to it as much as I would like, it is always a solace to me and I see it every day when I leave in the morning.

I always say hello.

I am in perpetual awe of its beauty.

And I am not often home at sunset to ponder it.

It was a really lovely little gift to me.

I got back to the house right before the rain began again and settled back on my couch, my first day of really sitting on my couch too!

My first day really using my coffee table like a coffee table.

I drank a second homemade cafe au lait, so decadent to have two in one day at my house, and I read more of the book until I left to go do the deal up at 7th and Irving.

Which was also just marvelous.

Ran into some much-loved fellows and heard exactly what I needed to hear.

Came home, heated up dinner.

And yes.

Yes I did.

I ate the rest of the book.

I read 288 pages today.

It was not a chore.

It was the best feeling.

And guess what?

One of my text books for the next semester did come in the mail today.

I did not read it.

I was tempted.

But I realized, did I want to leave the A.M. Holmes until next summer?

Or was it actually ok to let myself have Christmas Eve without homework?

It was ok.

And it was so lovely.

Exactly the kind of day off that will sustain me for many weeks as I marshal my way forward towards this next milestone of learning and life.

Gratitude this Christmas for all the gifts in my life.

There are so many.

The best, I dare say, may be my relationship with myself and the life I have been given.

Grace.

That’s what it is.

Grace.

I have been blessed.

And may you be as well.

Merry Christmas to all.

And to all.

A.

Very.

Good.

Night.

Did I Get It All Done?

Fuck no.

Did I do a lot?

Yes.

Including and in no particular order, meeting with a ladybug and teaching her how to do spot check inventory, no need to sit in that dirty diaper all day, change it, change your perspective, get on with your day, walk through the fear.

Please.

And.

Thank you.

Cleaned my house.

Like really cleaned it.

REALLY.

Swept the floors, Swiffere’d the floors ( I know, I know, I used Swiffer as a verb, shut up), scrubbed the bathroom, did my laundry, stripped the bed, even washed and dried the duvet cover.

Which is a pain in the ass if ever there is one.

Putting the comforter back into the duvet cover after it’s washed, that is, pain in the tuchus, let me tell ya.

I even made extra food for the week, since I won’t be doing any cooking or grocery shopping before school next weekend or during the time I’m in class.  But I don’t want to have the experience of bonking out again like I did last time I was in class.  I will have food prepped and ready.

I made homemade pork fried brown rice with peas, carrots, corn, onions, brown mushrooms, garlic, and ginger.

Like that.

Then.

I read.

And read.

And read some more.

I also drank a lot of tea.

Excuse me while I go pee again.

Kidding.

Barely.

I read a lot about Freud, I read more Freud than I have in my entire life up until this point.

I read a lot of Freud, a lot of criticism of Freud and a lot of defense of Freud, that was really good and quite compelling and I find myself actually liking Freud a whole lot more than I used to.

Not that I had many great experiences with Freud prior, just assumptions.

I looked over my syllabi as well.

Although I felt a touch frustrated with how much I still have to read, I read as much as I could.

I switched up spots in my room to encourage better reading consumption.

Moving from kitchen table to chaise lounge.

I read outside on the back porch for a little while, although that was challenging as I found myself just wanting to lie back and enjoy the warm sunshine whenever it poked through the cloud cover.

I read until a friend texted me and we made plans to go up to Twin Peaks tonight and watch the Super Moon rise with lunar eclipse.

It was spectacular.

My friend grabbed me at 6:30 p.m.

Right about he time I was hitting my limit of Freud intake.

It was nice to gel out in the car and not think and let my friend ramble about the new house and new room mates and situations and I wasn’t tuned out, I was just there.

Appreciative.

Grateful.

Held.

Warm.

Because, damn Gina.

I forgot.

It gets cold up at Twin Peaks and after we had parked the car and gotten out to survey the lay of the land and make a spot to watch the moon rise with what felt like a great deal of the city as well–I love you San Francisco that so many of you came out to watch the moon rise and lunar eclipse, I love my city–we decided to get back the fuck into the car.

It was that breezy and cold.

The car.

Oh.

It was lovely.

Warm.

Good music.

Good company.

And the moon rise and the orange glow of eclipse as the earth reflected back it’s refracted light upon the surface of the moon, a reddish-orange hue, the burnt umber red floating in the East over the Bay, the sodium lights of the dockyards in Oakland glimmering, the dusky orange of City Hall shimmering in the cityscape, the flash of a red light on top of the TransAmerica Pyramid, the thread of white gold light sparkling on the Bay Bridge as traffic flowed over the top deck, the fog ghosting in over the back side of Twin Peaks.

And I am reminded of how beautiful this city is.

How lucky I am to get to live here.

And yes.

I had a moment or two, perhaps three, when I thought.

I really should be reading my Freud.

But then.

I would look up at the moon and sigh inwardly at my fortune.

And memories.

The times I have come up to Twin Peaks.

The first time I was taken to the top a couple of years before I moved to San Francisco, at sunset, the fog thick and blanketing the buildings, the tops of the Golden Gate Bridge poking through the grey bed, rosy and red and industrial orange and golden in the setting sun, the clouds over the East Bay a spectacular color guard of pinks and royal purples, blushed with persimmons and pumpkins and creamy rosettes of cloud clusters.

I was smitten.

I still am.

I can still see that first sunset and I can contrast and compare it to all the other times, really, not all that many, despite living in the city for over 13 years I can probably count about ten times that I have gone up to Twin Peaks and taken in the view.

Maybe more.

But not that many more.

I remember the time when I moved to San Francisco and I hadn’t been in the city more than a month and there was a huge spectacular meteor shower that was happening and I walked up to Twin Peaks from 20th and York in the Mission.

The meteor shower was amazing.

I counted 56 shooting stars that night.

And.

I wrote down a wish for each one of them in a notebook.

I have that notebook somewhere.

I feel compelled to dig it up and look at those wishes.

See how many have come true.

So many of my dreams have coalesced.

I have lived a grand and fabulous life.

I have lived in Paris.

I have written short stories in cafes in the Montmartre.

I have travelled to Rome and sat at the cafe on the top of the state museum and written in my journal while sipping an Americano.

I have gone to Burning Man a few times.

Nine.

I have loved and lived and grown in San Francisco.

I get to live here.

Who is this girl, this woman?

Who is this person who now gets to go to graduate school and balance all the things with all the other things, which make all the things possible?

She is a woman who once in a while is going to let herself off the hook from Freud.

To play a little hooky and watch the moon rise over this city.

This beautiful city.

My city.

By the Bay.