Swim Suits

And sun hats.

I pretty much lived in those two things all day.

And my sundress.

And some flip-flops.

Pretty nice weather.

Beach weather.

Building sand castle weather.

Wading in the waves with bright yellow plastic buckets to scoop cold salty water for building more sand castles.

I worked today and it did feel a little strange, but I rolled with it, to have my family come out to me.

The mom wanted a day at the beach and was super kind to suggest that we just meet in my neighborhood instead of having me commute in and then we could all head to Ocean Beach together.

Again my start today was later than the noon start we had talked about.

And that was fine.

I got some more homework done.

I couldn’t go to yoga.

I tried.

I signed up online.

I set my alarm.

But.

When it went off there was just no way, I was exhausted.

Exhausted.

I gave myself another hour of sleep on my alarm and rolled back over, I was out, there was no brain activity, no rumbling early morning ruminating, I was dead to the world.

Even an hour later I could have slept more.

I figured I was just tired from the long week, even though my days weren’t full days this weekend, it’s still work on the weekend and not much rest for the wicked.

Not that I’ve been wicked.

Maybe a tiny bit naughty.

In my thoughts, people, not in my actions.

I wouldn’t mind being a little naughty in my actions it just wasn’t on the menu today.

Fortunately I had enough time this morning to wake up slow, to enjoy my breakfast, to have a big creamy unsweetened vanilla almond milk latte and take some time to write my morning pages and sort out my day.

I did some homework, some grocery shopping, and a little food organization and prep before the family got to me.

We met at my house and I suggested where they could park, down on La Playa and Judah, and I walked down to Java Beach Cafe to meet with them and help them carry all the goodies to the beach.

It was very sweet to be with them.

We had a picnic in the dunes.

We dug holes, collected shells and sticks, and dashed in and out of the water.

I was super grateful for the straw fedora I had grabbed at Other Avenues when I had grabbed some groceries earlier in the day.

And the sunblock.

It was a sunblock kind of day at the beach.

It isn’t often that the weather at the beach cooperates.

There was a moment when a bit of fog and mist rolled in, but it didn’t stick and it was really a nice day for being at the beach, sunny, but not too hot.

I was with the family until about 5 p.m.

Then I came back here, roasted a chicken, made some soup, and decided I needed to get right with God.

Hopped on my scooter and took a ride up to Quintara and 20th and got some recovery on.

Back home, hot tea, my fedora hung up in the closet, grateful for the day and the service and yes, grateful that tomorrow is Monday, I made it through the work weekend.

My schedule will go back to its regular hours tomorrow and I’m good with that, I want to get back into my routine before school gets going next weekend.

Four days of work, three days of school.

Then two days off.

I’m going to hang out with a friend on Monday and I have a therapy session on Tuesday, but other than that, nothing.

I’ll get to yoga, make up for this weekend.

I just couldn’t do it, my body was really sore from yesterday’s class and I have a stress injury in my left shoulder that flared up, I’m going to not beat myself up for not getting in today, the fact that I went and did the deal is enough.

Fuck.

The fact that I worked is enough.

I did enough today.

The days are a bit of a blur, I will admit that, they keep rolling along into each other.

The sunrise.

The sunset.

The routine of my days measured out in cups of tea, words scrawled into notebooks with black ink pens, the shift of my heart as I hear the birds sing in the morning and the spill of golden sunlight through the back door of my studio.

I felt like I was moving through honey soften time this afternoon when I got back.

Just to sit outside, shaded up under my fedora, the sun freckling through the straw brim when I tilted my head back, still in sun warmed air, ravens perched on chimney tops, silhouetted against the bluer than blue California sky, my feet up on the wrought iron chair, to be still, I got my break, I got my refresh and though I worked today I was able to have a measure of quiet in my own skin time too.

I need these breaks.

I need to sit still and watch the sky.

To feel the big heavy imprint of azure press itself into my heart, to be glossed in sun, it is glorious beyond my reckoning.

I’ll change out of my swim suit and sundress soon.

My fedora has been hung up for another day.

But.

I may give myself a few more moments in my garb to appreciate the beautiful place that I live, Outer Sunset, Ocean Beach, San Francisco, California.

My home sweet home.

Luckiest girl in the world.

So.

Damn.

Lucky.

Fear Of The Apple People

Part Deux (The original Fear of the Apple People was one of my first blogs on this site about five and a half years ago–maybe I should call this a “reprise” instead).

The fear is not as bad as it used to be, once upon a time, but the fear is still there.

God forbid I look stupid.

I can’t call a help desk.

What if they find out I am an idiot?

What are they going to do, Martines, take away your laptop?

REALLY?

Fear of not knowing what I am doing will stop me in my tracks all the time.

Every time.

But, what I have learned, and I have learned so much since I first became a proud owner of my first, slightly used, refurbished MacBook, is that I may be stopped momentarily with fear, it does not get the best of me.

“Men of faith have courage.”

Courage is walking through fear.

It is not the lack of fear, I’m always going to have fear.

Fear is a part of the human experience, it just is.

However, I have a disease of perception and of over blown fears.

My fears are irrational and unconstituted in fact.

They are baseless, groundless, little mindless animals, voles, shrews, grommets.

I know, a grommet is not an animal.

However, doesn’t that sound like what a little fear animal is–small brown tatty fur, sharp little teeth, scrappy claws, yellowish beady eyes, nocturnal–a grommet.

“Sorry honey, I didn’t mean to snap at you, too many grommets attacking my brain today.”

I have had my new laptop for about a week and I am thrilled.

Thrilled.

The battery last like forever and the receptivity from the key board really does make it feel like I am thinking the words and they are just popping up on the screen.

Lovely.

It’s light, easily a quarter of the weight my old laptop is, that old brick.

But, for what ever reason.

Well, I suspect the not so hot internet connection I have in my little studio by the sea has something to do with it.

The migration of my files on the old laptop to the new MacBook Air took over 24 hours and when it finally happened, something glitchy happened.

The MacBook Air and the old laptop both tell me the same thing–that the files have transferred, but I can’t seem to locate them.

I would like to locate them.

All my music files.

10,000 plus photographs.

Who knew I was so prolific?

Well, you might.

Considering I have been writing this blog on a fair daily basis for the last five years and each blog is on average 1,000 words.

Prolific is not an issue for me.

It has taken me a week, however, to acknowledge that I can’t figure it out.

“Figure it out is not a slogan,” he would say to me brusquely on the phone, and depending on where I was I would burst into tears.

But I want to figure it out!

Damn it man.

God forbid, I repeat, that you find out that I don’t know what I am doing.

I have no clue what I am doing, in case you had any thoughts to the contrary.

I’m following the fault line down the mountain, the path of least resistance, to my heart, to my knees, to my soul.

“If you’re falling down the hill, you’re in God’s will,” she told me at a cafe in Paris, it might have been the Lizard Lounge in the Marais when she first imparted this wisdom upon me.

She then told me about how a snow ball rolling down the mountain takes the path of least resistance, equating it to, if it’s simple it’s the choice, if it’s convoluted and means double back tracking and going around that tree and uprooting that other one, and moving the snow fences, then maybe it’s not meant to be.

I try to figure it out all the time.

Then I remember.

I can’t.

I don’t need to.

And.

Yes.

I can ask for help.

So, I finally got my butt on the Apple site and booked a phone call help session for tomorrow a half hour before my first lady bug of the day flits her way to my doorstep for tea and singleness of purpose.

I can’t imagine it will take more than a half hour to resolve the situation.

If not fifteen minutes.

Probably only five.

That’s the thing.

I often will be given the solution in a nice tidy compact package, but I have to fret for a while.

It’s not as bad as it used to be and I count that as progress.

And bravery.

I am a brave person.

I showed up for a blind date today and I have another tomorrow.

I’m not thrilled to be doing this.

“Geez you sound so excited,” she giggled at me last night when I described going on a date in Golden Gate Park for a picnic on the lawn somewhere.

Yeah.

Not excited.

Not because I didn’t have some rapport with the man, I obviously wouldn’t have accepted the date if there was nothing to talk about.

Which there was nothing to talk about with another guy that tried to contact me today.

Dude.

Did you even read the profile?

And please, I can’t promise I won’t break your heart, no one is responsible for breaking your heart, you break your own heart, so don’t even bother to ask me that.

There are no victims, only volunteers.

I did not volunteer myself to go on a date with said man.

Let some other woman break his heart, I’m too busy breaking my own.

“I’m so over internet dating I told my friend,” my date was running late and I was hungry and boohoo’ing in my coffee.

“Honey, have a snack, I’m sure there’s good reason and he’s making an effort and a MUNI is MUNI, and don’t delete your profile until after you have eaten,” she admonished me.

Yup.

So I’ll be off to try another tomorrow.

Coffee at Java Beach and a walk on said beach, Ocean Beach, with his dog.

I can be afraid of not being enough.

Pretty enough.

Young enough.

Smart enough.

Blah, blah, blah.

Or I can walk through these silly fears too and keep on going.

Every time I take a little leap forward the fear is dispelled a tiny bit and the faith grows larger and larger.

One day this will all be laughable and I won’t worry about calling the help desk and asking them to fax me over a ream of paper and I’ll be ok with looking silly and I’ll keep wearing flowers in my hair and glitter on my face, turning it toward the sun, the blue skies, and the birds flying over head in the park.

“Look, there,” I stopped him, the picnic in the park date, and the story he was telling, “red tail hawk.”

I watched it silently as it circled lazy on the wind and sun, the music of a guitar drifting from the bandshell by the DeYoung, a little boy on roller skates tumble bumbling by, the grass green under my bare feet, I breathed in and closed my eyes to the sun, soaking it up and relishing being exactly who I am in the exact place I am supposed to be.

I think that’s called acceptance.

Face it.

I live in San Francisco.

By the beach.

With a MacBook Air under my fingers, Cat Stevens on my stereo, and nice food in my fridge.

I have nothing to fear.

But yes.

Fear itself.

And even I know that there really is nothing behind that too.

Just another opportunity to grow.

Graceful.

Beautiful.

Loved.

Cozy

You know you’re a San Franciscan when you buy your fourth hoodie and it feels  like a necessary purchase.

Well and its stupid cute.

And cozy.

Oh my god, the coziness right now is off the hook.

I may never take it off.

I may get naked and do censorship worthy things in it.

Just me and my new hoodie.

It’s like I’m on a non stop date with myself today.

All wrapped out in my own person.

It helped that I had a really lovely and engaging morning, with yes, myself.

I had a lady cancel on me and an extra hour to spare before my second gal of the day made her way over to my place for tea, conversation, reading, experience, strength, hope, etc.

I decided to make a quick run to the grocery store, in my malaise yesterday I did not get all the things that I wanted.  Sometimes, though I am loath to admit it, grocery shopping is too much for me, too much information, too much interaction, too many choices (or not enough of what I really need and I have to hunt and peck) and I just need to get out.  That happened yesterday, so I thought, after doing my writing this morning, I’ll spend that extra unexpected hour doing some extra errands.

However, the weather, that fickle thing, had its say and I had no desire to hop on my bicycle to ride down to the SafeWay in the rain.

Nope.

New sponges can just wait until next week.

Yeah, I know, exciting.

I was going to go off and buy some sponges, a few other things too, mainly, looking back at the decision, it was to get out of my house so that I would not be in my head.

I love having my little Sundays by the sea, but sometimes, if I don’t catch myself, I can get maudlin about being alone.

Not lonely, I am great company.

Fabulous really.

But I can get a little sad in my pants and I really wasn’t feeling like being sad.

I wrote an extra long list of all the things that I am grateful for in my morning pages and felt like today, no matter what was happening, was a great day, a day of prospect, of treasure, of new adventure.

Perhaps those weren’t my exact thoughts as the day was unwinding, but the undertow of it was there, stated or not, I felt adventurous in my being, even if it just meant adventuring in my own neighborhood.

When I opened the garage door and stepped out with my trusty steed to find it raining, I gamely parked her back in her spot, went inside, grabbed a cloth sack (my favorite one from my favorite book store in Paris, which is not Shakespeare and Company, should you be wondering, but Le Merle Moqueur in the 20th arrondissement) for my groceries, and my umbrella and headed up towards Other Avenues.

I decided to walk about the hood instead of directly go to the co-op for my organic oatmeal and soy based kona coffee candle (shaddup you dirty hippy) and walked a little further up Judah to discover that Aqua was open and I poked my head inside.

I’m not sure how long the outpost has been open, I had heard about them losing their spot on Sloat and wondered where they would be going and as it turns out, just a couple blocks from me.

I was not there to buy anything, just to look.

But.

It was raining and cool and my light wind breaker was too light.

This is what I tell myself, this is how I justify, but really, it was just too cute and cozy to pass up.

I tried on a cream hoodie with a big fuzzy sherpa hood and fell in love.

Oh my the deliciousness of this hoodie.

I have three others.

A black one from the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition that they gave me for selling the most memberships when I worked at Mission Bicycle Company.

A grey one that I found, lucky for me, it really saved my ass a few times when it was cold, on my way to Paris in the airport.

I scooped it up and kept it.

I wasn’t sure why I didn’t turn it into lost and found, maybe because it was an Old Navy sweatshirt and not worth that much, or maybe because I was boarding and didn’t have time, but I took it.  I suppose I owe someone an amends, now that I think about it, but I still have that sweatshirt and I still wear it.

Then there’s the black one that is all sleek and sexy and trim and I love, it hugs every curve, but it’s not actually all that warm, it’s great to pair with my jean jacket though.

This new hoodie, dear darling thing, though,  feels like my ‘officially a local’ Outer Sunset sweatshirt.

I live here, I’m supporting a local business, it’s a surf shop, and it was needed, I really did need a cozy walk about the neighborhood hoodie.

I may never take it off.

Oh.

I suppose I won’t sleep in it.

Sleeping is naked time and will always be naked time.

No pjs for me.

But in between the waking hours, I shall be lounging in said article of clothing until it falls off my back.

Yes.

I did just write my entire blog about my hoodie.

What should I have done instead?

Written about the hour-long conversation I had with a guy I met on OkCupid.

I suppose.

But then, a girl likes to keep somethings to herself.

I’ll keep you posted however.

We have a date for next Saturday.

Picnic in the park.

It’s been years since someone has asked me to go on a picnic in the park.

Suffice to say I’m excited.

And we talked for an hour on the phone, we could have talked longer, smart man, cut the conversation off before it got out of hand.

Discretion is the better part of valor.

Or so they say.

At least I know what I’ll be wearing.

My new hoodie.

Please.

You think I’m going on a date in the Inner Sunset without one?

You obviously don’t live in San Francisco.

But that’s ok.

I do.

I’m officially a local.

The Week In Review

“Oh my gosh, I so relate to that,” she said, “I self-sabotage all the time.”

Hmm.

And then.

“Oh, I won’t date a woman who blogs,” said a friend today that I ended up hanging out on the beach with this afternoon, “too many people seeing my foibles, all one-sided, nope, I couldn’t do it.”

“You need to stop writing about dating.”

And I wonder.

Maybe I do.

It may be time to stop the self-sabotage, to not air the laundry, clean, dirty, or otherwise.

“You can write about me all you want,” my friend told me last night as we sipped lemon ginger tea and got caught up on each other’s lives–he’s back from the radical sabbatical and it was good, very good, to see him.

It’s hard to watch friends through struggles and he has been there for me through a lot of them.

There is a lot I don’t blog about, I think, I do keep some things, lots of things, to myself, for myself, by myself.

I could write all about my friend, but it is not my place, so perhaps, yes, I should not be writing about the dating too.

Not that I had a date today to write about.

I spent the day having Sunday service down by the sea.

It was so beautiful out today and I had a new white dress to wear.

I woke up earlier than I should have, all things considered, even with it being Daylight Savings time, I still was up late last night.

However, the sun was up and it was all blue skies and the brain started up and I just decided to get up and brave the day.

Even without having a thing planned, which can at times cause a kind of frantic feeling in me, I have a hard time sitting still and I have spent much of this past year trying to find that balance of not working too much and getting in some fun and some relaxation time to, because, ultimately, it does make me such a better worker and person in the end if I do.

Breakfast, coffee, hair in braids, new dress, flip-flops (which made me smile a bit, it’s November 2nd and I am in flip-flops), write for a while, sit for a while.

I went out into the back yard and sat in the big white Adirondack chair and the sun beamed benevolent and warm and the birds rustled over head, ravens, and songbirds chattered, gulls squawked, the ocean surf rumbled, and once in a while the N-Judah would grumble past.

I sat soaking in the warmth and the love and I got quiet.

The frazzle and dazzle of the week siphoned through me and I was still.

I realized I did a few things this week that I could regroup around and rethink, especially in regards to self-care, late nights, some really late nights for me, both Friday and Saturday, with early wake ups and no naps, a few nights when I did not get to my blog, which is like its own version of sunshine for me, I need to do it, it feeds the art monster in me, drinking an energy drink on Friday.

Oooh.

I know, I am so subversive, drinking a caffeine bomb.

However, it’s true, I don’t really drink them, I don’t do artificial sweeteners, I don’t chew gum, I don’t drink diet sodas, so what was I doing drinking a sugar-free Rockstar on Friday?

I knew, even as I said yes, I should have been saying no, or at least, yes, I’ll have a water, thank you.

But I did it anyway.  I want to keep up with the cool kids you know.

Then again.

I also did some spectacular self-care for me–went and got the mammogram done, which I was dreading and it wasn’t so bad, did grocery shopping, sent my mom a birthday card and got her birthday present, I need to drop it in the mail tomorrow.  Called mom, I try to call my mom on Sundays, it still amazes me that we have re-established a relationship, I feel ridiculously blessed by it.

I bought myself a new dress, I don’t clothes shop well, so this was really big self-care and as I took it out of my bag last night to hang in the closet my friend made a comment and I said, “I don’t even know why I bought it, I have no idea where I am going to wear it.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

And of course.

I did.

To the beach, to the beach, to the beachy, peachy keen, lovely beach, that place wild and wooly right out my back yard, just blocks away.

I packed a lunch up for myself–large kale salad with 1/2 an heirloom tomato, broccoli, carrots, 1/2 an organic Hass avocado, kalamata olive oil, apple cider vinegar, Bragg’s amino’s, 1/2 a tart apple, two hard-boiled eggs, and of course the ubiquitous persimmon (they won’t be in season much longer so I have stacks of them in my kitchen), a bottle of water, a blanket from the housemate, my camera, and off to the beach I went.

I climbed up and over the dune at the edge of Great Highway and Judah and walked down toward the sea.

I found my spot.

Spread out the blanket.

Sat down and breathed deeply all things good and salty and sea.

I felt it all loosen in me, the sun warmed me, I felt doused in love and light and I unpacked my lunch and ate it under bright cerulean skies, laughing at the confused sea-gull who was watching close by and was none to happy when after much patience he finally scavenged something from my lunch–the persimmon top, and disgusted with his findings, flapped off  in a huff to better pickings.

Picnic

 

 

Kite

I took some photos and called a friend.

Who, as luck would have it, is it odd or is it God?

Was right down the beach at Noriega and Great Highway.

He made his way to me and we sat and talked about shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings, dating, family, recovery, Ocean Beach, life, travel, work.

It was so good.

He gave me some lovely perspective and I felt unburdened and lucky and blessed to again, come back to this simple, sweet, serene life I lead.

My Sunday sabbatical complete I was able to come back to the house, write some more, meet with a lady, do some reading, eat a wonderful dinner, sit in the last of the sun and drink copious amounts of cinnamon tea.

I downloaded my photographs and felt that despite a rather tumultuous week–all in my head, mind you–I had gotten what I needed and relaxed here, finally, at the end of the week, the edge of the world, down by the sea.

Sunshine Day Dream

Right exactly where I am supposed to be.