Author: Steph

I couldn’t properly toodle around until we found ourselves a home and signed the paperwork. Fortunately, we found a lovely home in saratoga last week. It’s sunny and quaint and sits on a terraced acre where an orchard once stood. The road bisects the farm from the field. We live in its vestiges: a tower hung with vines, once for water, stands beside the driveway. What happened to the orchard? In the excitement of finding ground for roots I forgot to ask. There’re more history behind the house, too. It was the retirement home for the owner’s parents. I recognize the 50s mint cream bathroom tiles. A real breakfast nook. And it was home to two young boys, before we came along last week. There is a fading basketball hoop in the driveway with a piece of paper taped to the backboard, claiming “FREE.” Two belay ropes hang from a large pine tree in the backyard, and as I look around, I see other swings hanging in other trees. A treehouse in an alcove of the lot, tucked behind soft green corners.

We move in february 1st. The owner, who lives next door, is my new town historian. She has a playground of her own in her backyard, standing attention under the eaves, awaiting her seven granddaughters. In her pool she has taught all the neighborhood children to swim. Ford is on her list for Summer 2007. She even has an Araucana chicken.
Home, indeed!

In the meantime, back to toodling:

Shoreline Park shenanigans

Natural Bridges driftwood

cleaning our lungs at Castle Rock SP

budgeting a membership

We lived here once and it was never so sunny. Kids change everything. Baker beach, the Presidio, SF

Noodles on Haight

Tired on Haight

all toodled out on Twin Peaks.

The hotel is quiet and mellow, and the ebb and flow of Googlers from Sunday afternoon to Friday morning keeps me regular. Otherwise, our life is crazy and chaotic and loud. I come and go through the lobby apologetically, always on some pretense to avoid conversation with the concierge, but the reality is that they are all cool with our presence. They love the kids, and they laugh when Chas climbs all over the fancy retromodern furniture in the lobby, reaching out to grab bottles of wine from the rack on the wall. But someone has to hear them downstairs when they jump off the bed like kid goats or stampede across the room with the foam basketball towards the net I hung from the minibar closet. And if I don’t get out of the hotel room by ten o’clock, all of us reach a critical mass and someone has to have noticed the screaming tantrums when we’ve missed that deadline. Half-dressed baby dolls on the floor in the corner of the room. Marbles in the toilet. Cream cheese on the rug. But every day we return in the evening, after a long day of house hunting, to find Petey and Baby (the boy’s dolls) tucked properly back into bed, and a replinshing set of little toiletries standing in array in the bathroom, telling us to go ahead, shower off, relax. There’s an apricot beer in the microfridge. This isn’t so bad now, is it?

Friends. We return to very loved friends here. Alis is now a mother and I enjoy watching her on her home turf. She’s beautiful and photogenic and while she may wonder why I chose this photo out of many others, it is because I just love it for some inexplicable reason. She’s thinking about something while we wait for food at the Upper Crust Pizzeria in Santa Cruz. And this is Seth, Chas’ partner in crime, so you’d better look out.

Jim is Alis’ husband and is telling me that I have a sweet camera but that my fisheye lens is really not a fisheye lens. And I’m about to tell him that it is a fisheye lens, but that it cost less than $800, so it’s just not an expensive one. Santa Cruz, at a popular local coffeeshop that I can’t remember the name of.

Jerry, our best man, bester than ever. In counting our blessings, having Jerry back in our company is at the top of the list. We pick up just where we left off, just like that, and it’s fun to watch him study our new parental habits and hurdle the chaos we create around him. Always benevolent, here he is with a peace offering for his girlfriend, because we kidnapped him for an entire day down to the beach to skateboard and watch clustering monarchs and buy panoramic cameras at SwapMeet.

We insisted that Chas poop before getting on the plane, and this saved our LIVES. The kids and Damon filled the row behind me on the plane, shouting out random data like “Look, Mom! Shit Pile crater!” and “WHOOOOOOOOOAA!” and “Look at me! Look at ME!” as the plane bounced through mile-high white clouds. Really, there was nothing sober about the flight; I think that these pictures just show our fatigue after dealing with the whole waiting-for-Chas-to-poop-while-fearing-he’d-still-wind-up-pooping-on-the-plane period. The flight was nothing but an amped riot and strangely, everyone near us on the plane thought it was all pretty funny. One man lost it when he heard Ford ask Damon,
“Daddy, what’s this button for?”
“Don’t touch that Ford, that’s the Self-Destruct Button.”
Just lost it.