Lattes, Lazers, and Little Girls

 Having spent all my money on 7 weeks of travel with my beloved, I am for now reduced to settling for whatever odd job I can squeeze a few bucks out of. The other day, it was babysitting. I found the family on craigslist. The lady of the house said her mother was in town to help with the kids while she recovered from surgery, but she needed back-up for the day. So I went.

She answered the door with stiff, shiny arms and a lavender velcro towel fastened around her chest. Moving around the house in quick, jerky motions, like a robot, she introduced me to her kids and her mother, a large woman who wore black stretch pants and reeked of cigarette smoke. The surgery, it turns out, was "voluntary." Soon her arms would be free of sun damage and the freckles she's always hated. That day, though, her arms were freshly lazered, and looked like uncooked sausages, red greasy speckled bloated sausages. She smelled like chemicals.

Scattered around the floor amongst toys and giant, life-sized stuffed animals, were two sweet little girls and a rolly baby boy, the girls made even sweeter by the entire ginger bread house they were allowed to eat for lunch. "You sure you don't want a sandwich, girls? I have cheese and salami here..." grandma said, trailing off. "I swear ya haven't eaten any real food today! Oh well..."

I was just grandma's helper while mom oozed medicinal ointment all over her bed upstairs, so I stayed out of it. At one point, grandma got us Starbucks. She said "latte" so many times I'm convinced she doesn't know any other kind of coffee beverage. "All Starbucks is, anyway," she said, "is just reeeally strong coffee." She laughed, then added, "with steamed milk!" She kept laughing to herself, seemed to think she'd made either some kind of joke or a very shrewd observation. It wasn't long before I could no longer figure out how to respond to the things she said.

Grandma brought her latte from her solitaire game on the computer to the bench on the front porch. She went out there pretty frequently with cigarettes and a romance novel. "The kids don't need to know I smoke," she said. "But when they get older, hell if I'm gonna run outside all the time to do it!"

Mom appeared downstairs every so often, usually to pick at cold orange chicken in a plastic takeout container or tell me more about the benefits of plastic surgery. I was relieved when she suggested I take the kids to the park. We spent a blissful hour, free of mindless (and I mean mindless) adult chatter, playing on the swings and doing gymnastics in the sun.

On our way home, the 5-year-old picked up big fallen leaves off the ground and collected them in a little bouquet, saying it was a bird. "No," she said, "it's two birds. They're flying... when two birds fly together, it's called a celebration."

She said this like it was total, unequivocal fact. And for some reason, this little sentence made the whole day worthwhile to me. It reminded me that so often, it's the kids we should be listening to. All day I'd been hearing chemicals, lazers, tobacco, caffeine. And here she was, the little one. All sugar and leaves and sun and cartwheels. Still young enough to speak in poetry.

Santa: Naughty or Nice?

Yikes.

Well, the blinking lights and blackout sales have made it impossible to ignore; the holiday season is upon us! Get out the ginger snaps to be inhaled whole and the candy canes to be looked at but never eaten because it's time to celebrate! We're getting into the holiday spirit by turning the TV to the Sounds of the Seasons music channel while we arrange assorted creepy Santa heads around the house. (Don't get me wrong, my mom's Christmas decorating is lovely and relatively reserved, but it does include Santa heads. Can't get around that.)

Sounds of the Season plays various holiday songs and flips through Christmas trivia and weird images of snow and presents and stuff. The other day, this little fact popped up:

"Poinsettias are the most popular Christmas plant and the No. 1 potted flowering plant in the U.S."

Like, hold on, are they saying more popular than Christmas trees? Or does that not count as a plant? Do they mean more popular than mistletoe? Either way, I am so happy to have this information. Now I'll be the life of all the ugly Christmas sweater parties in the land, both mock hipster version and authentic old lady version.

But in all seriousness, I did hear a statistic the other day that made me squint a tad more suspiciously yet at the creepy Santa heads that represent the most genius media creation in the history of mass consumerism. Last year, Americans spent a grand total of $450 billion on Christmas. Compare this number to the $10 billion it would take to solve the world's lack of clean water for good. This information comes from the Advent Conspiracy, a Christian group that urges people to spend a little less money on material gifts and a little more to help people in need. Now, I'm not religious, but this is something I can get behind. 

With similar do-goodness in mind, my mom instituted a new rule that all gifts exchanged in our family this year have to be either used, recycled, vintage, or handmade (and not by Indonesian children). In other words, nothing mass produced. With the leftover money, we'll select a charity to contribute to. Just a nice way to mix things up and feel a tad less guilty about all the excess at the same time.

There are also things that can be done to lessen the blow on the environment during all the Christmas cheer. In light of the UN climate conference going on in Copenhagen right now, we ought to do our share as they try to save the world in two short weeks. There are a few tips on how to have a more green Christmas here. As for us, we'll be wrapping our gifts with brown paper grocery bags and perhaps newspaper (with pretty ribbons, of course). We've done it in the past and I can say that it is quite stylin'.

Anyway, I don't want to seem like one of those people who stand outside Target ringing a bell and making you put on your best starting-at-something-really-important-on-the-ground routine. I'm just saying, it wouldn't hurt any of us to be a little less wasteful this year, and a little more in touch with the suffering going on in the world beyond our crackling fires and spiked nog.

Airport Security Romance

Well here I am yet again staring at a month since my last post. A whole lot of things have happened since this time in November when Jordi and I were still cruising down the California coast looking for another place to set up camp. We made it back up to Livermore for Thanksgiving after 5,714.4 miles of driving together. Five thousand, seven hundred and fourteen miles. I wrote it out for a stronger impact. We didn't get any speeding tickets, no flat tires, didn't get lost all that much, and we still like each other. A lot. And he's on his way to Central America for 4 months and I'm here. In Livermore. Trying to earn money for whatever I do next.

Saying goodbye to Jordi at the airport in San Francisco was tough. I got used to his constant presence for 3 months, and the prospect of spending an indeterminate length of time on different continents is a scary one. But this is how it has to be. I need to be here to work, he wants to travel, and it's good for us to spend some time apart to focus on ourselves. But as much as my rational brain understands that, there's a part of me that questions it, resents it, fights it like a teenage girl who's been grounded right before prom.

I stood there by the security line at SFO watching him through the plexiglass partition like an animal in a zoo. It's a shame people don't still travel on huge passenger steamliners like the Titanic. I feel like goodbyes must have been much more poignant and romantic back then. I'd be waving my handkerchief and gathering up my skirts so as not to trip as I fluttered along the dock to get one last look at him, tall and dashing in a three-piece suit, before he disappeared on the horizon. Instead I stood there with a couple other weirdos and watched as he removed his belt and shoes, placed them in the plastic container, and stepped somberly in his old black socks through the gray plastic gateway of airport security.

But maybe in a hundred years people will be in their spaceships daydreaming about how romantic it must have been to bid farewell to their loved ones at those primitive, non-galactic travel hubs where people still had to manually remove items of clothing for a security screening. I guess real life is never as romantic and perfectly scripted as we want it to be, and I'm sure people felt the same way a hundred years ago and that farewells at the departure of the Titanic were not as romantic as James Cameron wants us to believe.

Ultimately, the here and now is as much as we can hope for and we ought to be pretty damn glad to have even that. It's ours and the romantic thing about it is that no one else really knows what's going on in your own personal reality (not even the pierced, tattooed lady with a partially shaved head who stood next to me at the airport watching her beloved trek through the TSA line before removing his Dr. Martens).

I just hope Jordi, who I believe is in a plane somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico, is enjoying his here and now and will have good stories for me when we see each other again.

How's it been? Um...

I know I haven't written very much about the road trip so far, a combined result of laziness, lack of internet time, and just the sheer fact that it hasn't been all that great.

Just kidding! But I'd be lying if I said it hasn't been hard. Two months of constant every-breathing-second togetherness with anyone is a great recipe for tension and conflict, and attempting to execute a road trip like this comes with all kinds of built-in challenges.

So yeah, it's been hard. It's been getting lost, it's been camping in the rain, ten thousand smelly bathrooms, a leaky cooler soaking the floor of the car, it's been chasing off raccoons, cramming night after night on a twin-bed sized foam pad, the ever-present stench of campfire smoke, broken flashlights, duct tape and tarps and improvised protection from the rain, it's been paying too much for poorly equipped campgrounds and bad food, going several days without a shower, more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches than a person is meant to eat in a lifetime, running out of propane before our dinner is cooked through, constant wrestling with all the stuff in the car, it's been cold and wet, it's been exhaustion and stress, it's been yelling and it's been fighting and it's been hurt feelings.

I can't deny any of those things. And many of you may wonder why even bother? Why spend time and money putting ourselves through all this crap? Why not just stay home?

I have to wonder the same things myself sometimes, but then I remind myself that it's also been pure bliss, light as air, clear as water. It's been falling asleep to the sound of the ocean or a river falling over rocks, it's been seeing things we've never seen before, it's been hiking through lush forests, cooking meals that are simple but to us they are feasts, playing and running wild like children in the sand. It's been the whole luminous world contained in our little old tent.

It's been a misty Redwood valley, rounding a corner and coming face to face with a herd of elk, it's been reading by the fire, watching the sun go down over the Pacific, counting stars on the beach, it's been the new Avett Brothers album so loud on the car stereo that any level of thought is impossible, only feeling.

It's been coloring in our route on Jordi's big map, sketching a little tent in all the many places we've slept, it's been new surprise and thrill every time we turn another bend on the Pacific Coast Highway and see the great endless ocean in the distance, it's been the windows down, the wind in my hair and the sun on my face. It's been laughing and growing stronger and figuring it out. It's been freedom. It's been ours.

We've let the mileage on the odometer run since we set off for Yosemite on September 29th, and since then it's been 3,534 miles of everything, the good and bad, the awful, the helpless, the tired, the so ready to go home, the last straw.

But hey, that's travel sometimes and that's OK. Because what it's really been is 3,534 miles of love. And we still have a couple more weeks to go.

...Toes? Or, fun with language.

I'm in Santa Cruz sitting at a coffee house trying to write, but an old white-haired local won't let me. He's here "doin' lap top" today with an iBook G4 that looks like it was buried in mud and then tied to the back of a truck and dragged down the road. One of these Berkeley graduates from the '60s who's lost a few screws and now blurs the line between the derelict and the tax-paying.

He just won't stop talking, and I don't even know what about. In the last 10 minutes he's mentioned, among other things, running for president, "mythic government," Bhutan, hitch-hiking, earthquakes, and smoking his pipe by the river. Luckily, he's now talking to another old man/veteran/vagrant named Jimbo and giving me a break.

I bring him up because he reminded me of how easy it is to mix up two languages when you spend all your time with a bilingual. When I sat down next to this old fellow, he smiled and said, "we'll be neighbors" and I very nearly said "wat gezellig!" Roughly translated, this means something like "how nice!" in Dutch. I caught myself, but here are a few mix-ups and mistakes that have slipped through over the last few months.

Going from English to Dutch to English to Dutch isn't always easy, after all, and especially hard for some. Take my mother, for example, who, on her visit to Amsterdam, raised her beer for a toast and accidentally said "Probst!" for cheers instead of the Dutch, "proost!" Probst, incidentally, is the name of her gynocologist. She also tried to say something was gezellig once and instead said, with great exuberance, "gefilte!" which is a Jewish fish cake.

At a dessert bar in Portland, Jordi politely asked the waitress for an "ice sandwich." Mmm! In Dutch, ijs (pronounced 'ice') is the word for ice cream (and for ice, and popsicles, and frozen yogurt), so naturally he forgot the 'cream' even though he knows ijs from ice.

Dutch prepositions give me a lot of trouble, and as Jordi and I were conversing in his native tongue one day, I was trying to say something like "I was talking to her" but I couldn't think of the word for "to" in that context. I started listing prepositions until I landed on the right one, "Naar? Met?...Tenen?" He laughed. Tenen, it turns out, means toes.

When my siblings visited Amsterdam, they asked Jordi and I how we met, so over Thai food Jordi explained to them how we were at a party and got to talking about the weather in California (what every Dutch person I met wanted to talk about), but we couldn't get very far because neither of us could convert Celsius and Fahrenheit. Some light chuckles around the table. "So then," Jordi went on, "we were talking about my length..." There were a few seconds of confused silence, everyone hoping he didn't mean what it sounded like. What the tall Dutchman meant, of course, was his height. In Dutch, lang (pronounced 'long') means tall. An honest mistake, really.

Luckily, after 6 weeks of essentially spending every waking (and sleeping) moment together, Jordi and I still haven't run out of things to talk about, so as I continue to practice my Dutch, and as Jordi continues to pick up more and more lazy idiomatic American English, we're sure to confuse ourselves and each other countless more times. Wat gefilte!

World's Largest Sponges: Free! And extra absorbant.

Friday marked our entrance back into California, back into the sun. Not to say we didn’t see blue skies our whole time in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, but it was scarce and the sun that did shine shone cold. But yesterday morning we woke up in Redwood National Park and looked up to see cracks of blue sky through the trees, walked out of the forest into bright, distinct warmth.

We were especially thankful for this sunny greeting after essentially being rained out of Canada. You see, we’re trying to travel cheaply, and that means no indulgences on the essentials. We may be willing to fork over $12 each to see the world’s largest sea cave, but when it comes to eating and sleeping in a dry place, we don’t budge. OK, I may be exaggerating, but we definitely did our best to withstand the weather (we came here to camp, and we’re gonna camp, god dammit!). Here’s how it went.

The worst of it was on Vancouver Island. This wasn’t actually part of our original itinerary, but we have a bad habit of just throwing stuff in, an few days here or there, an extra $150 for the ferries, no big deal. Our first night on the island, we camped on a densely wooded ridge overlooking the Pacific near a lovely place called Tofino. It was beautiful, and, though damp, we managed to make it out of there with no worse than a soggy box of matches. (Although, we did accidentally oversleep to be woken up by a park ranger outside our tent calling, “Good morning! I must have missed you guys on my first time through, but we’re closing the park for the season in 15 minutes, and you don’t want to be on this side of a locked gate!”)

That day we discovered that we can’t afford whale-watching excursions, but had fun exploring a vast stretch of unspoiled beach. We left after we’d had our fill of contemplating life and playing with dead sea plants, just as the real rain started. After spending a good amount of time sitting in the car watching the water pound the windshield and arguing about what to do, we finally just drove.

It rained and we drove and we drove and it rained and then we saw A BEAR! Yes, ladies and gentleman, all the wet sleeping bags in the world couldn’t put a damper on my excitement.

But it did keep raining. We found a campground near Port Alberni that hadn’t closed for the season and set up our tent as fast as we could. In we went, safe and dry…for a matter of hours anyway. It’s a 30-year-old tent that hasn’t been waterproofed in who knows how long, so you can imagine how well it managed.

When I woke up, Jordi was still unconscious as usual (I swear, if someone would let him, he would sleep into old age, wake up with a gray beard down to his ankles like…what fable is that?) and it was still raining. My hip pressed into the old, faded egg-crate foam pad my dad lent us. It was cold. I closed my eyes and hoped that it was just cold, not wet. Not wet, please please not wet. I shook Jordi awake and realized my knees were sinking slowly into the pad as though into a gigantic soaked sponge. Dirty water was seeping up to us from underneath. And cue panic.

Now, you may not think this sounds like fun, but I’ll tell you that nothing beats drowning in your own tent. What a way to start the day! Splattering ourselves in mud, we loaded the whole sopping mess into the car as quickly as possible and raced off as though trying to escape some kind of horrible monster. Flee! FLEE! We did manage to get away (though we had nowhere to go), from whatever it was, but it took days for all of our stuff to dry, and even longer to get over the emotional scarring. I just kept telling myself we saw a bear, we saw a bear, we saw a bear.

But I write this now from the coastal town of Mendocino, CA, a little place full of art, hippies and sun, and as I enjoy the organic oatmeal cookie Jordi just bought, I can hardly remember the reek of moldy foam pads and the damp slime of an eternally wet tent. After all, as Jordi’s father would say, we aren’t made of sugar. We can handle it.

Double Dutch

Unusual circumstances brought us to the town of Lynden, Washington, a place that we would have otherwise cruised right by. Jordi is applying for a graduate program conducted in English that requires him to take the TOEFL exam to prove his knowledge of the language. The only testing center that roughly coincided with our itinerary was at the Christian high school in this little town situated just south of the Canadian border. So we went.

Arriving at the campground the night before the exam, we checked in with a woman wearing a baggy pastel sweatshirt and matching scrunchy in her stringy hair. As soon as Jordi told her his last name, Scholten, she freaked out and talked us about half to death in her croaky voice. It turns out—get this—that the town of Lynden is filled with Scholtens. Filled! After discussing this fact for at least 10 minutes, she pulled out the local phone book just to make sure we understood the magnitude of the coincidence.

You see, about half the population of Lynden has Dutch heritage. That’s 50 percent. As the story goes, they came here starting in the early 20th century because the climate was similar to that of the Netherlands. It’s true. A similar climate. Wild, huh? And then they just, like, made lots of babies and turned the place into miniature Holland faster than you can count een twee drie!

And here, standing before this woman, like Hans Brinker reincarnate, was a real Scholten. Straight out of Amsterdam. I’ll tell ya, that knocked her silver skates right off. “You wouldn’t believe it!” she said, “You’ll go into town and see signs in English and Dutch!”

We’re thinking, no freaking way. Well, actually, I was thinking that. Jordi was probably thinking, echt waar?

“There are old people here who still speak real Dutch!” she went on. “And it’s not just Scholtens…” She started listing other “Dutch” names, which were either heavily Americanized or just not Dutch at all. The one I remember best, partly because she kept repeating it and partly because it’s obscene, sounded like “Coochie”. Jordi and I couldn’t for the life of us imagine what actual Dutch name she was trying to say, but I was reminded of popular mid-90s slang, and, well, female genitalia.

We couldn’t wait to get into town and see the madness for ourselves. And boy, she wasn’t lyin’. They had a public bulletin board with flyers for piano lessons and lost cats with a sign that said “Dorpsnieuws” (village news). There was the Dutch Mothers restaurant, the Dutch Bakery, the Dutch Village Inn, the Dutch Computer Repair Emporium. (OK, I made that last one up, but you get the idea.) They had a giant windmill and a mural depicting wheels of gouda, tulip fields and people in clogs. The post office said “Postkantoor” over the door with a Dutch flag and, again, tulips and clogs. It was kitschy and artificial, but damn were they proud. The only thing missing was a tribute to van Gogh and stoned tourists crowding the streets.

Jordi felt right at home. But, alas, we had to leave dear Dutch Lynden and head north to British Columbia. It's funny, though, that we were there so Jordi could prove his knowledge of English, but what we found was a little American town trying, with all its might, to prove its knowledge of all things Dutch.

They also, just to freak you out a little bit, apparently had some sort of scarecrow contest under way.

 

Ah! Happy October everyone.

Pictures of Portland

Here are a few of my photos from the wonderful place that is Portland, OR. It was a brief visit, but it didn't take much time before we were asking ourselves we why don't live there. It just fit.

Patience is a virtue. According to most, anyway.

After our night of horror sleeping 30 feet away from the grunting Larry atop a cold mountain, we treated ourselves to coffee and a giant blueberry muffin at a cozy place called Stage Door (that apparently also does cabaret on the weekends). It was warm and friendly and a little quirky (as most of Mount Shasta City is), and the muffin was fluffy as a cotton ball.

The events of that morning wouldn't really be worth sharing with you if it weren't for a particularly strange message I found in the bathroom. Now, it wasn't the kind of bathroom in which one would normally find scribbling on the walls. It was nice, clean, suitable for an old lady. It even smelled delicious. But there, squeezed in rounded letters onto the carved wood toilet paper holder, were the words,

"Patience gave me genital herpes."

What is this? A cry for help, a protest, a warning?

And, my poor, sweet angsty one, I can't help but wonder, what happens when you're in a hurry?

Meet Larry.

Checking in from Portland here, though I won't be spending time talking about our gracious hosts in this funky Southeast neighborhood, the eclectic Easter egg Victorians, the crisp first days of an Oregon autumn, the vintage stores, coffee, books or dessert bars. It's all delightful and warm and fuzzy, but the night we spent on Mount Shasta makes for a far more interesting story.

The sun was setting as we drove up the 5 on Saturday evening and as we neared our destination I insisted that Jordi take out the guidebook and select a campground. "This one's free," he said, "just exit here and follow this road to the end. It's close." Fine, I thought. Free is free and maybe it's nice. I just wanted a convenient place to camp for a quick night before we continued on to Oregon. But the road kept going, became empty, dark. It was winding slowly up the mountain. The moon, white and full, rose over the trees and glowed through the purple haze of the dim sky. Signs for 4,000 feet elevation, 5,000 feet, 6,000 feet. It got darker, we drove on.

What Jordi hadn't mentioned was that the campground, Panther Meadows, is "high on the mountain"--7,400 feet up, roughly. This mountain is the second highest volcano in the US and still considered active. When we finally found the place, there was just enough light to see the face of the only other person there, getting supplies out of the trunk of his old car. He was in his 40s, a backwoods type with a big gut and long graying curly hair. We asked him a bit about the place, it sounded fine so we unloaded and set up camp in the dark.

As we settled in, we got to talking to our lone neighbor a bit more. He was exceptionally friendly, offered us a helping hand and told us some things he knew about the mountain. He'd been camping up there for about a month so far. Though a nice guy, he was an excessive talker and seemed to disregard a certain level of social protocol. But hey, when we're eating leftover rice out of a pan with plastic spoons, who are we to judge? "Beautiful moon," I said to him as I passed, "Do you think it's full?"

"Full enough for me," he said.

So we joined him, Larry, at his fire. At first the conversation floated around topics like travel and the weather, but we all too quickly learned that Larry, dear old Larry, is a religious fanatic, racist and homophobic. A-ha! I knew there was something less than desirable about this fellow. But we were mooching off his fire atop a cold, dark mountain, and were sort of ensnared in this conversation, so we remained seated on our tree stumps.

Then, it got weird. After Larry finished warning us about gruesome death by quicksand on Oregon beaches, expressing sympathy for white supremacy, and sharing his hopes that God would send him a lonely woman to keep him warm in his tent, he said, "Now here's where I'm gonna sound crazy."

Right, because until this point he was screaming normalcy. "All my life," he went on, "I've been able to see things before they happen. See what's gonna happen to people." I closed my eyes, bracing myself, half-expecting to hear next, "And you two are gonna die tonight on this mountain, and I ain't sayin' how."

He didn't say that. But he did tell us about a telepathic encounter he had with a bear in Tahoe and about hearing the growling breath of a Yeti at the nearby Lake Siskiyou. He said Yeti attacks happen all over Mount Shasta. That they attack groups of grown men. He told us that the ghosts of Indians roam through the land, and that strange men in mysterious vans wander through campsites shining flashlights in random tents and snatching women.

"Yer gonna have bad dreams," he said.

The fire was dying and I'd heard enough. We went to bed and I lay there, stiff, unmoving and scared out of my mind. One of three things will happen tonight, I thought:

1. Larry will remain quietly in his tent and we will pass the night in peace.
2. Larry will remain quietly in his tent but we will be attacked by a Yeti, an Indian ghost, or men in unmarked vehicles scouring the area for innocent campers.
3. Larry will axe us to death in the night.

Fortunately, my imagination proved unreliable yet again, and Larry did remain quietly in his tent. Well, mostly. He was actually making loud, unnatural grunting noises all night. And I don't mean snoring or clearing a sore throat, I mean weird, unnatural, almost shouting grunts. Noises a person can't make while asleep. My fears were outlandish, but Larry was right in predicting that I would have bad dreams.

After spending most of the night in terror, either in waking or asleep, I woke up to the tiny cricks and ticks of chipmunks scrambling through the trees above us. It was morning. The sky was light. We'd survived. We emerged from the warmth of our sleeping bags into the cold, gray day. The jug of water in our tent had frozen while we slept. It was snowing. We explored the empty mountain, the still trees that seemed to greet us calmly and wisely, the frozen creek with fresh running water bubbling just below the ice.

I hated that mountain while I lay terrified in our tent, hated Jordi for having no reservations or worries about Larry, for saying he was just lonely and scared and not actually dangerous. I'm glad he was right. And I'm glad he lured me up to that mountain under false pretenses. Because it was an adventure, and it was pure and simple and beautiful.

But I probably would have rather been on that mountain with a Yeti or a ghost than with Larry.

15 tank-tops may give you peace of mind, but they won't solve your problems.

Ladies and gentlemen, the road trip is officially about to begin. We spent a weekend in Lake Tahoe with my parents, and have now given ourselves one day to assemble all necessary items for 2 months on the road before heading off to Yosemite, the first stop on the itinerary.

That one day of preparation is today, and I'm sitting here staring at the Blogger logo instead of sorting laundry, organizing camping gear, working out the budget, researching routes, buying last minute gadgets, or even taking a shower.

The thing is, I hate packing. Packing for a 3-day trip can take me up to 12 solid hours, and I've never even traveled for longer than 2 weeks at a time. I've moved across the world more than once, but going somewhere to live, somewhere with drawers and cabinets and a feeling of permanence, is an entirely different thing. Jordi has lived like a turtle with his home on his back for a number of months on several different occasions. I, however, still have the tags on my big North Face backpack.

When I moved back from Amsterdam, I had a total of 5 bags--2 suitcases, 2 duffel bags, 1 backpack--and the airline charged me an extra $100 to get them all on the plane. This was after throwing out or giving away piles and piles of stuff, and I was only there for one year. In the midst of that disaster, I decided to simplify my life and just have less crap.

This road trip is my chance to prove that I can. Jordi keeps telling me I just don't need very much, but this is coming from the guy who's wardrobe consists of 6 t-shirts and 2 hoodies. I see how stress-free his packing process is, and I try to channel some of that minimalist energy, but I know I'll never be able to match his level of freedom and flexibility when it comes to material goods.

The problem, as with most things in my overly considered world, is that I can't handle the decisions. You essentially have to see into the future, predict what scenarios might possibly befall you, and make sure you're prepared. I, however, have an overactive imagination and an inhuman ability to worry about things most people don't even think about. I imagine weirdly specific and unlikely scenarios, and then somehow decide that bringing 15 tank-tops is the best way to prepare for them. Not surprisingly, all this leaves me with is a big tangle of semi-soiled spaghetti straps and more weight than I ought to be hauling around. But I continue to bring too many of everything because I just can't stand the prospect of being unprepared.

They say you should stack up everything that you want to bring, and then bring half of it. This, I may be able to do. I just wish I could also leave behind the half of my brain that is illogical, irrational, and convinces me to pack my entire summer wardrobe for a fall trip to the Pacific Northwest.

Wish me luck.

Ladies' Home Journal and Me

As I waited this afternoon in Livermore's Piazza for Hair (fancy, eh?) while a woman called Gail coiffed Jordi's mane, I started flipping, as one does, through Ladies' Home Journal. Making my way for the interview with Meryl Streep and Amy Adams I stumbled across this article about chronic worriers. Below the title, the infinitely wise Ladies at the Home J. asked, as though speaking right to me, as though reading my mind, Hey Honey, "Spending too much time thinking about all the things that could go wrong in your life?"

Yes! I thought. I am! I always am! Maybe this magazine, this holy grail of Relaxation Techniques and Mood Boosters, was meant to find me, meant to land in my lap and, and...deliver me! Plus, when that's taken care of, I can learn "5 Moves for a Sexier Stomach" and "How to Give a Killer Massage".

It was kind of like getting a fortune cookie with your Chinese take-out that says "You will soon embark on an exciting adventure" right before leaving for a trip to the Grand Canyon with your parents. Like, "Oh my god! How did they know?!"

But in all seriousness, I do relate to much of what the article says about the tendency to worry, its pros and cons. Reading through it, I let out a deep breath, grateful for their reminder that I am not alone, that lots of people are anxiety-riddled stress magnets, that researchers at Yale actually discovered a genetic mutation that can increase the inclination to fret. I'm just gonna tell everyone my chromosomal make-up is to blame.

I was feeling better already. Then, I read this: "Eighty-five percent of the time people's worst fears never materialize." They had plucked that doozy out of the body of the text and put it in big colorful letters as one of those gems they use to suck people in. They included this seemingly impossible to prove statistic with the purpose of calming the nerves of their worrisome readers.

My immediate thought was this: that means 15% of the time people's worst fears do materialize! Fifteen percent of the time! That's a big number! Statistically speaking, that means that 15 people out of 100 will experience their worst fears before they die. Or that 15% of my worst fears will materialize before I die. Or that 15% of all dead people died from their worst fear. Or that 15% of your total time on earth is how much time you'll spend suffering your worst fears. Or that I should use 15% of my energy preventing my worst fears from happening.

Or that magazines will publish 15% of all bullshit statistics if it means selling 15% more copies.

Don't get me wrong, the article actually offers a lot of practical advice for coping with anxiety, like sharing your fears, writing it down, getting all the facts. There is one tip, though, that I just struggle to take seriously. A psychologist suggests setting up a worry-free "zone"--I picture some kind of area in the living room sectioned off with traffic cones and caution tape and a flashing light--a time of the day when you won't let yourself worry. This, I can understand. But then it says that "a related technique is to choose one specific time to worry -- from 5 to 5:30 p.m., for example." This I kind of get. It's like only allowing yourself one cookie instead of seven. But a specific time? I imagine someone telling their friends they can't go to the movies because they'd miss their daily half-hour of worrying, then sitting down, closing their eyes tight, and inventing nonsense to worry about because their psychologist told them to.

4:58...4:59... 5:00!

Ready...aaand...worry!

Here it goes: I'm worried that my cynicism and bad attitude will forever prevent me from conquering this bad habit.

Sounds like something I might find in a fortune cookie.

The Flying Dutchman

I'm writing this post for two reasons: one is to provide more details about the next few months of my life, and the other is to use that oh so clever, impossible to resist title that I'm sure has you all just tickled. It does, doesn't it? Doesn't it? I know.

Anyway, as we speak, there is a Dutchman flying over the continental USA, soon to land in San Francisco, get in a little Honda Fit, and be swept off to my home town. This mysterious individual stepped foot in our proud country for the first time but one week ago. He visited New York City and Washington D.C., and now he will visit Livermore. Glorious, typical, suburban Livermore. I am dying to know what he thinks. He's from the bold city of Amsterdam, has traveled extensively through Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Northern Africa, but I have a feeling this place will really surprise him. And cue culture shock.

I have an invested interest in this visitor for several reasons, the foremost being that he is my current  beau. We're, ya know, going steady. Young love and all that sort of thing. His name is Jordi. And, to clarify, that is pronounced "Yordi" as the Dutch "j" makes a "y" sound. He often introduces himself to non-Dutch speakers as Jordi with a "j" sound, as though the real pronounciation is just so foreign and strange that our brains will blow a fuse and we won't be able to talk to him at all. Right.

When we first met and he introduced himself to me using this Englishified version of his name, I laughed and asked if it was a nickname. He said no, but thanks. I much prefer the Dutch version because it's cool and different and, to be frank, because the other version always makes me think of Geordi La Forge, the blind guy from Star Trek: The Next Generation who wore a visor over his eyes that looked like a headband.

 You may also recognize him as LeVar Burton from Reading Rainbow.

My mom is a big Star Trek fan--always pining for Captain Jean-Luc Picard--and when we were kids we used to have to watch episodes with her in the evenings while we ate our ice cream. She had all the collectible ceramic plates hanging in the kitchen of our old house. There, I said it. I tell you this because I want you to know that I'm not familiar with Geordi La Forge because I am personally a fan. On that one, I'm guilty by association. But I did enjoy Reading Rainbow. Who didn't?

So, back to the matter at hand. Jordi is on his way here not only to see my roots, but also to join me on a 2-month road trip around California and other states in the West. So far, the trip is only very loosely planned, but there will be more to come on our adventures. After Mr. La Forge... I mean, Jordi... after Jordi leaves the U.S., he'll be flying to Guatemala and backpacking down there until he runs out of money or something else spurs him to go home, or somewhere else. As far as I know, that's his plan. You could say he is, in fact, like the Flying Dutchman, "a ghost ship that can never go home, doomed to sail the oceans forever." We have very different traveling styles.

This difference will account for many of our adventures, I'm sure, but I'm nothing but excited for the places we'll go and the things we'll learn from our surroundings and from each other. I mean, I can go anywhere! There are friends to know, and ways to grow...

But you don't have to take my word for it. Stay tuned.

Here's something lovely.

The next time you want to buy a gift for a special someone (including yourself), consider supporting a local Bay Area artist, Rebecca Medrano, designer of Riella Creations. She makes truly beautiful jewelry by hand, each piece unique and from the heart. To browse her lovely creations, visit her etsy shop, and see what's new on her blog.

Praying Agnostic

Tonight, as I was carrying my heavy Trader Joe's bag through the dark parking lot, I saw a mother and her child get out of the car next to mine. The mother wore lavendar scrubs and crocs, probably having finished a day of work at the nearby hospital, and her little boy, maybe 5 or 6, wore a bright tie-dye shirt. As she helped him climb out of her old minivan, an ambulance sped through town, its siren lifting a call of distress over the rooftops and down to our tired ears. She and her son exchanged a glance, and at once I saw his little hand sweep across his chest, making the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. He knew someone needed help, and he'd been taught that every little bit counts.

I'm not religious; my parents raised me in the Methodist church and I went with the trendy Christian kids to Young Life camp in high school, but I have since come to relate more to the agnostic belief system than anything else. Religious devotion is something that I fear at times, something that I often can't help but admire, and something that I will probably never understand.

Prayer, though...prayer is something this agnostic gets. I don't know if prayers are ever answered, or if anyone is listening, but I believe in sending positive energy into the universe, and in so doing nurturing one's own soul. I like to think that every source of love, every smile, every helping hand, every tiny plea for someone else's well-being, adds to the overall good of humankind and pumps the energy we all share with new light. Just as every tragedy, every hate, every insult or ill wish, hurts us all.

As the siren faded into the distance--a passing emergency that, this time, didn't involve us--I watched the boy finish his prayer and walk off, hand in hand with his mother, to help pick out groceries for a late dinner. After a few steps, she stopped to lean down and kiss his little face, then on they went. And now, sitting here in my quiet house, I find myself wanting to pray for them...whatever that means.

Maybe there is no sense, no purpose or meaning to life, to all of our daily toils and triumphs. Or, maybe, there is something that connects us all. I'll never claim to know what's going on, to know the answer, but I will always try to do good, to treat others right, and to send love into the world--even when that means merely closing my eyes and hoping that whoever is on the other end of that siren will be OK--because to me, that seems to be what matters most.

Beautiful Botanicals

Over the weekend on a trip down to sunny LA, I enjoyed a lovely afternoon with my family at the Huntington Library. We took a liesurely stroll through the botanical gardens and saw some very old manuscripts, including Shakespeare's First Folio. These are a few of my favorite photos from that delightful Saturday afternoon.

Word.

Since I claim in my irresistably charming 'About Me' to be a big reader, I thought I might prove it to you all by sharing from time to time what it is that I'm currently falling asleep to when I go to bed every night.

At the moment, it is none other than The Lord of the Rings. Some of you may wonder why I hadn't already read this monstrosity, while others may wonder if it isn't a few too many elves and goblins for my liking. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a diehard H. Potter fan, but other than that the fantasy world is not one in which I spend much time. Be that as it may, I find myself thoroughly enjoying Frodo and company, and I certainly tip my hat to ol' Tolkien for doing it first.

I figured if I was going to embark on the quest to the land of Mordor where the shadows lie, I'd do it right. This includes a giant, red, 1200-and-some-page edition of the classic and reading about those pesky wraiths by a dying fire at a secluded camping spot in Norway, a black cliff stretching up behind me and a great, still lake curling around the rocks to my side. There could have been wraiths anywhere. Anywhere!

So I was enjoying all the orc-beheading goodness until a wicked combination of jet lag, too much time on the internet, and one very boring page rained all over my hobbit parade. I have been stuck on the same sentence halfway through the second volume for literally 2 weeks. I go to bed every night, settle in with the 10-pound book crushing my intestines, and read this:

The day passed uneasily. They lay deep in the heather and counted out the slow hours, in which there seemed little change; for they were still under the shadows of the Ephel Duath...

And then, like wizard magic, I am unconscious.

I know I must press on, and I will finish this book. But let's just say it could be a good, long while before I am posting about new reading materials.

Gimme S'more

I hope you all had a great long Labor Day weekend! I missed 4th of July this year, and I've been out of the country for the last two Thanksgivings, but dammit! I was here for Labor Day. And with the heat we're having this week, it doesn't feel like the end of summer to me. Though, I guess that's also probably because I don't have a job and don't go to school and am, all things considered, a feckless vagabond contributing nothing to society.
Happy Labor Day!

Anyway, on the topic of the good ol' U.S. of A., there are things I'm not too thrilled to be back for, but I won't get into that now. What I am thrilled to be back for is the food. The food you just can't get in Europe and that I've unsuccessfully tried explaining to my European friends far too often than they cared for, I'm sure. I'm talking about Mexican food, burgers (real burgers), big giant salads with names like 'Wiqui Waqui BBQ Chicken' or 'Quesadilla Explosion.'

I can't tell you how difficult it was for me to explain s'mores to the four Dutch people and one Danish person I went camping with in the Netherlands in the spring. They don't have graham crackers in Holland, of course, and nothing really resembling them (aside from maybe speculaas, a kind of cinnamon cookie), so from the get go it was a challenge. They're like, "you eat burnt marshmallows with crackers?"

What they came up with were the cheapest cookies they could find (being Dutch) and multicolored marshmallows that were at least the right size. The cookies were plain, round, with one side coated in chocolate. So not the idea. And instead of roasting the marshmallows on the long sticks that I meticulously selected from the firewood and then placing the hot gooey puff in between two cookies, they used little wooden grill skewers, basically like big toothpicks, and stuck them through both cookies and the marshmallow and held the whole sloppy thing over the fire. This, of course, failed. At one point they were using empty Heineken cans to prop the ridiculous cookie sandwiches up near the fire, because the tiny skewers they tried using were of course too small and didn't allow enough distance between hand and flame for proper roasting. Essentially, it was a disaster.

One of these amateur Dutchmen will be arriving in California in a matter of days, and I can't wait to show him how it's really done. As for me, I'll go on enjoying my favorite American fare until the next time I go abroad. Like yesterday, when my mom made ribs, corn on the cob, and this delicious apple pie:

It's good to be home. And now, hungry readers, I'm going out with my brother to get a legit steak burrito the size of my arm from a cockroach-infested hole, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Lekker!

Eeny meeny miny mo

So the current happenings in my life are... um, let's see... mostly just trying to figure out WHAT THE HELL TO DO WITH IT. I spent a shiftless year in Europe, my greatest ambitions to maintain sanity while two heart-stealing little boys (or vampires, if you'd rather) sucked all the energy right out of me, and to see as many different places as I could cram into 3-day weekends.

Now I have a 2-3 month road trip with a foreigner planned (more on that later) around this vast, American wonderland we call the wild, wild West. After that, your guess is as good as mine. It'll either be more travel (possibly funded by teaching English to eager learners on a continent I have yet to explore) grad school (should I be foolish enough to undertake the application process while on the road), or moving to San Francisco or New York and knocking on doors until some merciful soul hires me.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, are the options I've laid out before me. The first step is to choose one, then narrow things down within that vague selection, then figure out how to make something work. Sounds easy! Now, where do I begin...?

Oh right, I have no clue. 

This is where you come in, my older and much wiser (or is it wiser and much older?) readers. I'm not shy to admit that I'm currently floundering in a rough sea of possibilities, so I've certainly had advice dumped on me before by those who will listen to my wretched 23-year-old woes. Most people just smile and shake their head at me, fondly recalling that happy-go-lucky time when they had nothing but freedom and a rusty volkswagen.

They say, "Don't worry! Follow your heart and the right opportunity will present itself in good time. You just have to make sure you take it." Then I nod and breathe a sigh of relief before I go home and make myself blind and dizzy sitting in front of the dim computer screen scrolling through ten million job postings, university websites, and volunteer abroad programs waiting for the "right opportunity" to present itself. Then, my brain explodes. This has happened more times than I can count. Apparently, the internet does not have all the answers. Maybe I should try searching 'my soul' on Google or Wikipedia.

So what I'm wondering is this: how did you all come to decisions back when the world was your proverbial oyster? The way everyone else talks about it, you'd think they rolled through life without any stress at all over what to do next, where to go, or who to go there with. "Oh, I moved here, then got this job, then we met, then we went here, then we traveled, then we got married, then he got this job, then I got my masters here, then we moved..." Were things actually simpler back then? Or do people just tend to forget how hard it was to decide (and agree on) all that stuff?

If you have a nugget of wisdom you'd like share with me, please leave a comment. I promise, anything would be appreciated. Maybe you want to tell me to get a grip and be a grown up and stop dicking around on Blogger when I could be doing something productive. If so, that's fine too. I'll take anything.

ripe for the picking

 

I was just scrolling through my iPhoto and decided to start sharing some of my favorite photos with you every so often. I'll just pick out one from time to time and post it to give the bloggy a little color and something to look at. Ya know, for those times when you can't bare to read another word of my infinitely insightful written treasures. 

For starters, here's a produce shop in Madrid. We bought bananas and tangerines, and the tangerines mysteriously disappeared before we got around to eating them. Their whereabouts remain a mystery.

The Wheels on the Bus go... where?

As you all know, I've returned to California. Livermore, California to be precise. This is the town where I grew up and where my parents still live. It's a town I know and love, and can't help but appreciate for its quirks and eccentricities--usually hidden behind the guise of typical American suburbia.

We have, for example, the longest burning lightbulb ever recorded in history. Seriously, it's in the Guinness Book of World Records. It hangs from a single wire in the fire station, and has been burning for over one hundred years. We also have a rodeo every summer and, even better, a rodeo parade. There's a lovely little downtown area with great restaurants, even greater dive bars, and a sex shop called 'Not too Naughty' right next door to the frozen yogurt shop.

Don't get me wrong, Livermore is really a lovely place. It's surrounded by golden brown hills scattered with around 30 small wineries and vineyards, the weekly farmers' market is one of the better ones I've been to, the ale house on First Street serves the best burgers and fries I have yet to find anywhere. But with all the small town charm you ever wanted, the place can still be a little dull.

Tonight I joined my parents at a free outdoor concernt where the grass is covered with people on blankets and lawn chairs picnicking and drinking wine as the sun goes down. My parents go every Friday. It's a lovely way to spend a summer evening.

While we sat there sipping our Livermore chardonnay out of plastic cups, eating 'white' oreos and observing the people around us, my mom said that when they get bored they watch the buses come and go and make fun of the people getting on and off. My dad chimed in enthusiastically. "Oh yeah, I'd say at least 30 or 40 buses go by here every night!" He was sincerely excited and after much teasing from my brother and I, continued to point out every bus that went by, partly to make fun of himself, and partly, well, because he noticed them.

It's definitely an adjustment to land back in good ol' Livermore after living in Amsterdam. When I mentioned this, my mom argued that we weren't actually in Livermore for the concert, but rather Pleasanton, the adjacent town. I told her yeah, we had to leave Livermore to find entertainment as enthralling as counting the buses that go by.

But hey, tomorrow I'm gonna get me one of those half-pound burgers, on Thursday I'm gonna go to the farmers market, and as soon as possible we'll all go out on a day of marathon wine tasting, because that's just what you do in Livermore. Although you may not be able to tell by passing through, it's a place unlike any other. And if I do get bored during my visit here, I can always count on my parents to keep things interesting.

Who wouldn't love a nervous piece of bacon?

Hi all! Just wanted to share something that I can't get enough of. I discovered Dan Goodsell's art last summer at the LA Times festival of books. Explore The World of Mr. Toast and find dozens more delicious little treasures like this one. Mr. Toast, seen here enjoying a rainbow snow cone (what else?), can be found doing all kinds of silly things, along with other characters like Shaky Bacon, Joe the Egg and Clem Lemon. I can't do justice to the subtle humor, so just have a look!

My bathroom calendar didn't prepare me for this.

After a 24 hours of travel, I am now back in California feeling appropriately strange after having spent a year on another continent, with just one stateside visit over Christmas. It's been a while, and I found myself searching for the flush handle on the toilet at my parents' house because it of course isn't a plastic button to push on top, like I'm now used to. Welkom in Amerika!

The night before I left Amsterdam, my boyfriend finished reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig's popular 1974 philosophical memoir. He closed the book and sat there quietly watching me pack up all my things, my face red and tear-stained from a few emotional goodbyes earlier that evening. It was hard for us not to be nostalgic as we thought about our time in Amsterdam together and separately. It's been his home all his life, and now having finished school, he'll be traveling and living out of a backpack indefinitely so he's got some goodbyes to say too.

I told him I'd rather not think about any of it if I can help it, that leaving is hard enough as it is and I can't be getting all choked up over good times that ended too soon. Then he reached for his book again and showed me the beginning of Pirsig's afterward about the ancient Greek view of time.

They saw the future as something that came upon them from behind their backs with the past receding away before their eyes.

When you think about it, that's a more accurate metaphor than our present one. Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know?

I wonder if the Greek say anything about how fast the future comes upon you from behind your back. Do they mention how even with a calendar hanging over your toilet, a countdown widget on your dashboard, and every rational molecule in your brain reminding you that time is passing, that September is here, you'll still be blindsided, rammed and plowed over by the future?

But it's here. It's September. My year of few responsibilities and European escapades has come to a close, and I'm back in the States getting dangerously close to decision-making time. How the hell did that happen?

I guess all I can do for now is take baby steps backwards into the future, blindly groping for the best choice, the best opportunity, and hope I don't trip on the way. And I suppose I'll allow myself a little nostalgia. The memories of my past are fond, and they deserve some attention.

Hello, Goodbye

Welcome to the new home of Holes in my Rainbows! The old location can still be reached here, but from now on this will be the place for all new content. It's still the same blog, but with a snazzier look, more features, and an explanation of the title. (It's more than just a pretentious empty emo metaphor, I promise. It comes from something.)

As I enter another period of change in my life, I thought why not revamp the blog while I'm at it? It's like how every now and then you feel the urge to rearrange the furniture in your bedroom or get a new hairstyle. It's a small change, a change you can control, a change you're comfortable with but still provides that refreshing sense of variety.

It's the big changes I have a harder time with. In a few days I'll be moving away from Amsterdam, my home for the past year, and saying goodbye to people who have become deeply important to me, people who were total strangers when I got here, but who are now family. I'm ready to move on and relinquish the title of "au pair," but I'm not ready to give up everything--rather, everyone--that came with that.

The most important thing that I will take with me from this whole experience, though, is the knowledge that it is possible to uproot yourself from your old life and make a new one from scratch in a place thousands of miles away where you don't know a soul. You can make a new life that isn't merely livable, but that enriches your existence immeasurably, gives you a closer look at the world and at yourself, and allows you to love in ways you didn't even know were possible.

But there's a catch. At some point you have to say goodbye. Herein lies my greatest inner conflict: the ever-pressing desire to seek out the unfamiliar versus the struggle and heartbreak of leaving what I know and love. How does one reconcile the two? Just shed a few tears and suck it up, I guess, or stay home and never find out what else is out there.

I'd like to say that it's only the major life changes that I resist, but unfortunately I'm slightly more crazy than that. Here's an example.

When I started my blog just over a year ago, I was a recent college grad flip-flopping around Orange County. Graduation had been more bitter than sweet for me, I was living temporarily in the attic of a house full of strangers, my friends were coming and going, I didn't have a steady job, and I didn't know where (as in, what country) I would be moving to at summer's end.

One of the only constants in my life was the shoes I wore every day. As anyone who lives in Southern California can tell you, the primary sandals of choice for many people are Rainbows, and I'm no exception. When I finished school, I had pretty much worn out my second long-term pair of Rainbows, and when I say worn out I mean there was a hole the size of a golf ball in the heel of each one, and the area for my big toe had literally disappeared, dissolved over time on the hot concrete of sunny Orange County.

The thing is, though, that I kept wearing them. I wore them in this condition almost every day for about 4 months, almost half the surface area of the bottoms of my feet scraping the ground with every step. I wore them around California, in Vegas, even on a June trip to New York, the summer rain and the hot filth of the Manhattan streets creating some kind of grimy crust on my feet that I needed Goo Gone to remove.

I just couldn't give them up. They had molded so perfectly to the shape of my feet (as Rainbows do) and had been with me for so long that they were virtually a part of my body. With a new pair you have to go through that uncomfortable period when the sandal is still stiff, a little too tight. It's that awkward phase when it just doesn't fit, but you hold out, put in the mileage, because you know that eventually it will feel perfect.

So when it got far past the point of ridiculousness, I gave in to a new pair of Rainbows, just like I'm giving in and moving on now to the next phase in my life. It will be uncomfortable at first, and I won't know if it's right, but I know that it will all take shape with time.