Best Birthday Ever Part 1

I recently celebrated my 35th birthday. Jeez, writing that out just now made me feel really OLD. I'm halfway through my 30's and if you round up, that makes me practically 40! Plus, that puts me in an entirely new age bracket for online surveys. But to make up for that, I went and celebrated my birthday over 2 weekends and enjoyed what has been the most beautiful birthday ever. I'm just gonna photo-blog. Pictures are worth a thousand words, right?

Woke up on my birthday and went out to breakfast with sweet friend KB and ordered a giganto waffle with strawberries and bananas and whip cream and syrup and a side of--yeah, that's right--bacon! It was decadent, breakfast heaven. Welcome home, diabetes!

Then, my dear friend Coke invited me to join her up at a retreat center in Philo to celebrate the big day. She was finishing up with her retreating, and I got to tag along at the tail end for the beauty and wonder of the unmatched Northern California forest. As soon as I got there we went for a walk along a river. It was a warm day, sun shining down, no one in sight, water all jade-sparkly and oh-so-inviting in that late August heat. I pointed to a swirling pool and said, oh, doesn't that look like a nice place to jump into? And then Coke suggested that since it was my birthday, and since I was practically 40, that I ought to take a dip to baptize myself into middle age. I was reluctant, she was persistent, and my god it was a hot day and I'd driven 3 hours to get there! And, well, to make a long story short, baptisms in Philo are undertaken in the bathing suit you were born in, so we dove in, screaming like little girls and, hallelujah, I'm ready for middle age!

That evening she made us the cutest, most delicious mini-burgers I've ever had. They were actually the first mini-burgers I've ever had, but hands-down belly-up oh my-my were they tasty! You don't get birthday dinners made for you like that very often. Ono-licious!

Since Philo is so close to Mendocino and Fort Bragg, I suggested that for the next day, we cross over to the coast and saunter on over to a place called "Glass Beach." It's been one of those places to see on my bucket list. Apparently the place used to be a public dump. People would just drive up to the edge of the sea and dump all their junk and trash into the ocean. Hard to imagine now, but they did! They cleaned up most of the junk but what got left behind was all the glass. Now, decades later, the glass had been worn down into little jewels. I'm sure that all the best pieces have been picked over but it's still beautiful, in its own way.We spent a long time, searching high and low,

until we found the best ones:

And then we left them on a rock for the sea to reclaim them again:On the way back home, we stopped at one of those inconspicuous pullouts on the side of the road. It was a botanical wonderland. Perched high on a cliff overlooking the sea was a beautiful garden of plants. Mother nature herself must have spent a millenia figuring out how to arrange the most beautiful, wind-swept landscape here. Succulents and grasses and teeny tiny flowers, all in bloom--in late August!! I don't think I've ever seen anything as amazing as this. Not in a botanical garden or a magazine or even on the nature channel. It was truly breathtaking.I didn't want to go home. I didn't. No I don't wanna! I think there was whining and a little bit of temper tantrum rising up in the car. The road was so beautiful though:

And my iphone takes groovy pictures. Here is a gem. Coke never lets me willingly take pics of her, but I caught this one. Kind of sums up the spirit of the whole trip. Thank you Coke for a wonderful birthday!To be continued . . .

Staycation Part 2

The next leg of my staycation took me far from the reaches of the city, north and westward to a place called Point Reyes. It's a national park in Marin, and I think it's one of the most beautiful places on earth. The San Andreas Fault basically broke off this giant chunk of land and its gentle rolling hills are dotted with farms, surrounded by water and covered here and there in forest. You've got your pick of what sort of beach you like, everything from jagged, rocky, rugged coastline, to miles of sandy big-waved beaches, to gentle, lapping coves with hardly any sort of ripple in the water. I wanted to visit Point Reyes for my staycation, but didn't have anything in mind, and when I went to the website, I saw that they had volunteer activities. The one that caught my eye was their Native Plant Seed Collection Volunteer day. I love plants, and one of my fantasies has always been to go out into the field to gather seeds. Never thought I'd be able to do that for real, but here it was, staring at me in the face. I signed up right away.

The volunteer leader was a young guy named Jamus (sp?) and after a brief orientation he took us out into the field (how awesome is it to be able to say that?), which was a grassy hillside beside an estero, which I later learned are fingers of ocean that reach inland, kind of like the polar opposite of what a peninsula is.

Our job was to identify and collect seeds for DeChampsey grass (I have no idea how that is spelled). Apparently it's one of the native grasses in the area and they use the seeds to restore areas that have been returned by man to nature--places like old farms. He showed us what to look for, and how another grass--I forget what it's called--closely resembled the native stuff we were looking for. Our only gear was a humble paper bag, reused so much it was practically fuzzy. Here is what we were looking for:

Here is me finding some, and looking gosh-darn, geeky-happy about it.To harvest the seed, you just had to run your fingers over the seed stalk and take what came off and put it in your paper bag. I used to do this for fun as a kid. Here is a video:

I think this is one of the funnest things I've ever done on vacation. I could have stayed on that hill all day with my paper bag. Jamus was extremely knowledgeable, throwing around all sorts of botanical terms and explaining the flora and fauna. I totally envied his job. He was actually an intern, finishing up his degree at Chico. Can you imagine a more amazing internship?

At the end of our few hours there, I wound up with about a handful of seed, wet, poison-oaked jeans, and a happy heart. If only I had more Wednesday mornings available for this!

Afterward there was still time in the day to do a little exploring at Point Reyes. Wound up at Heart's Desire Beach. It's the calmest little cove with pretty sand. I had to strip the shoes off my aching pigs and dip them into the sea:

The cockles and mussels (and whatever these things are) were alive-alive-O there:

Ok, well maybe not these guys, but you get the picture.

Point Reyes was yesterday. Today was yet another day of staycation. Today I had nothing in particular I wanted to do, and instead did a bunch of things I'd been putting off, meaning to do, never getting around to it. Don't know where I got all the energy from, but from the moment I awoke I was knocking things off the to-do list left and right. The first thing I did was sew on the patches from places I've been with my Mom's backpack:

Someday it's gonna be covered in patches!

Then I framed a picture I got in Japan. It's an original woodblock print that I thought would look nice in my living room. I knew that professional framing would be $100+ dollars, and I didn't want to pay that. Since it's original art, and maybe because it's Japanese, there was no way I'd find a pre-made mat and frame that would fit it. When I was in LA, my Dad gave me a mat cutter, and before I'd left on vacation, someone was cleaning out their office and left out an old frame that was up for grabs. It was ugly brown and chipped and scuffed. I sanded that thing down and gave it its first coat of some black paint left over from taiko stand projects. The first coat is always kind of streaky and uneven, but my god, it really worked! It turned out to be that pretty brown-black color that Ikea has. The only thing I needed was a mat, so off to the art store I went, and after some experimentation with the mat cutter, I created a mat for the picture. A little windex on the glass and a couple nails in the wall and presto! Seven bucks for the mat, two dollars to park near the mat store (ugh!), and voila--framing for under ten bucks!

Then it was outside for a little garden time. Did some watering and tidying up and also picked some of my precious dahlias. There's lots more where these came from:

Then took advantage of the fact that most people were at work so went to the laundromat and washed my clothes. And since I was on a roll, I ironed a whole closet full, which will hopefully get me through the next week or two:You may ask why I'd do laundry on my vacation. And the simple answer I have is: I love doing laundry, and I especially love ironing, and nothing gives me quite the satisfaction of a closet full of cleaned and ironed clothes. Ironing relaxes me. Oh come on, everyone has their weird thing that gives them their kicks.

And since I was knocking out the to do list, there were those 3 pairs of pants that I love but were all too long. Been meaning to hem them for the longest time, and actually had to resort to rolling them up, or--ack!!--stapling them up so they wouldn't drag. Pulled out the trusty sewing machine and stitched away. Presto!! Three pairs of custom tailored pants!

I'm no seamstress, but it beats staples any day.

And phew! This is on top of dealing with kitty litter, vacuuming the whole house, changing the sheets, doing the dishes, visit with friend, and coffee-and-quiet-time on the beach. And whoa, the day is almost over. Thinking about a hot bath and reading and then bed. I'm sure there's more stuff I could do, but I can sleep soundly knowing how much I got done today. Not sure what's in store for tomorrow (massage maybe? Self-indulgence?), but I like it that way!!

Staycation Part 1

I'm on staycation. That's when you don't have enough money for a real vacation and stay close to home and take the time to enjoy what you've got all around you. Who needs a trip to Tahiti or Toronto or Tasmania when you've got it all close to home? I spent last weekend in LA, visiting my adorable new niece and, well . . . eating!

My staycation unofficially kicked off at the end of my Maze concerts. All that performing really works up an appetite after the post-concert hangover kicks in. A friend and I went out for Korean food. Actually, we were shooting for Thai, but the place was closed, but the Korean place next door wasn't. Boy oh boy do they know how to do the pickled vegetables right:

Then this past weekend I was off to LA. I wanted to see my niece, since it had been over 6 months since I'd last seen her, and in baby-time, that's like twice the person you saw last time. As soon as I got to LA, my Dad took me to my favorite, Phillipe's, for French dip sandwiches:

See how they cut it into a heart shape? And yeah, that's coleslaw and 10 cent coffee!

The next morning, my Dad made me my other favorite--French toast! No one, and I mean no one, makes French toast like him. He gave me the recipe, which I will have to try one of these days, but I ask myself, why? I don't think it will ever be as good as his':

And here is little Jellybean, the cutest one-year old out there. I'm sorry, but she is. I'm sure your one-year olds are absolutely precious and all, but mine is the cutest. Daddy posed her like that. And she and I have an understanding. I love food, and she loves it too. One day we're gonna travel the world and eat all of it. Grandpa even hand feeds her, just like he does me, practically:Monday morning I went on my usual trip to Marukai, a Japanese market. Stocked up on the good stuff like lau lau and portugease sausage, which I guess isn't exactly Japanese, but whatever. They had violet candy there. I had that once when I was a kid when I visited Lanai. You have to admit that the pretty purple wrapper and the exotic idea of eating candy made out of flowers is appealing. But OMG, that was one of the most disgusting things I've ever put in my mouth. I can still taste it after all these years. Yuck!When I got back from Marukai, my Dad was on the phone, but he pointed to Jellybean, who was in a cage of fishing poles. He said she had just crawled in there and grabbed the smallest pole and held it like she was fishing. Oh, she sure knows how to go after a person's heart! I'm sure my Dad the fisherman will teach her everything he knows! Maybe she'll even bait her own hooks one day like he showed me. And she won't be the first grandchild he's shown how to fish.For dinner, my Dad took me to Diana's, my favorite Mexican restaurant. We brought our own pot and they filled it up with Menudo and we took it home and ate it. Ah heaven!

And they had a wall of spices there. A whole wall! Imagine all the wonderful food you could make with all that!!

After LA, drove back home to the Bay Area, crashed for a few hours, and then got to see dear freind Coke's performance at Interplayce. She does improv performance work there. It's a whole world of creativity going on there, and tonight I was welcomed back home to a wonderful performance. I love watching these folks. There are amazing accompanying musicians (I got goosebumps tonight) and very little is pre-set. They just go. It's so hard to describe, but what they create is magical and fun and funny and touches you on a deep level. The idea of such spontaneous performance is a difficult concept for me to grasp, but so exciting and inspiring and liberating to watch. And they've got a warm and inviting studio space:
So glad I was able to make it.

Tomorrow I'm off to more adventures. North and Westward. To be continued . . .