Home

What is "home?" Where you hang your hat? Where your heart is? Where everybody knows your name? A place you grow up wanting to leave and grow old wanting to get back to?

Whatever it is and however you define it, as Dorothy said while she clicked her ruby red slippers together, there really is no place like it.

Last weekend we made our first trip back to Missouri since moving to San Diego on the Fourth of July. The wedding of our good friends Angie and Kit gave us a good excuse to take off a day of work and drop a load of cash on plane tickets to St. Louis, but ultimately the opportunity to see our families, our friends, and the only place we've ever called home would have been the only motivation we needed.

Until last weekend, my most recent memory of St. Louis was the blurry, tear-soaked sight of the Arch growing small and dim in my rearview mirror as we drove west. That day--our moving day--with its buzz of anticipation and adventure, nevertheless felt like a sucker-punch to the gut. I had never before lived more than an hour away from my mom. I had never called any other place "home," and in fact had never even been away from Missouri for more than two weeks at a time. And yet there I was, kissing goodbye my parents and my best friends, my dog and my house, my job....my life.

So I had absolutely no frame of reference for what it might feel like to go back to St. Louis...to be somewhere so familiar and with people who really know me, and yet know that I couldn't stay. But to my delight and surprise, going back didn't hurt and it wasn't hard. It felt like homemade macaroni and cheese. It felt like kicking off your stilettos and slipping into your favorite pair of jeans. It felt like going home.

To be honest, I had worried for weeks that it would be terribly difficult to be back in St. Louis, and even more difficult to have to leave all over again (as if it wasn't hard enough the first time, right?). But from the minute our plane touched down, it was almost like we'd never left. We had a whirlwind weekend of brunches and lunches, lots of partying, and very little sleep. We did our best to see every friend, every parent, and every family member in a 60 mile radius of the city. Jack got to catch a Cardinals game and spend some quality time with the boys. I got to spend a little bit of time with my sweet Liz (the puppy we had to leave behind) at the house I grew up in, and I even made a trip back to my old office. We met baby Beckett, saw two of our friends get married, and even found time to scout out a new venue for our annual Halloween party (which, yes, we will be flying back into town for).

In fact, the only thing I couldn't squeeze in (or, more correctly, bring myself to do) was dropping by our old place with Jack to check on the renters. Something about seeing two dudes living in our little house was more than I was ready to deal with. I said my goodbyes to that craptastic house and severed my love/hate relationship with it back in July. And I just didn't want to do it again.

In the end I guess I realized that that little house wasn't what makes St. Louis home. I realized that home, for me, was defined by the people--my best friend since high school, my college roommate, my parents, my coworkers, and all the amazing people that came into my life just because of Jack--who live there and love me. But strangely enough, saying goodbye to those people--to all the things that really matter--really wasn't hard at all. Maybe it's because we no longer have that fear of the unknown, and we know now that we can leave, and they won't forget us, and we'll be okay out here. But each time we had to say goodbye last weekend, it felt normal and usual, like we were just headed back to our little house on The Hill, and like we'd see them all again for drinks next weekend.

This time, when the familiar sight of the Arch disappeared below the clouds, my heart still ached a little, but I didn't cry. I blew a silent kiss out the window, knowing that I'd be back soon enough, and knowing that it was gonna be okay.

Late that evening as our plane descended into San Diego, I put down my book and watched this glittery city taking shape around me. As we drifted past the high-rise office buildings of downtown San Diego where I now spend most of my days, I could see the city lights twinkling on the water. Waiting in the shadow of a palm tree to catch a cab, I took a deep breath of the perfectly warm, perfectly salty, perfectly un-humid air, and I took my husband's hand, and I decided that San Diego may never occupy the place in my heart that St. Louis always will, but for right now, as long as the love of my life is here, it's not an altogether bad place to call my home away from home.

Rain

Compared to the small Missouri town that I've always called home, San Diego might as well be on another planet. I'm still getting acclimated to California living and all that goes with it...the traffic, the quintessential "southern California attitude," the boobs....
But the phenomenon that is really throwing me for a loop is the lack of weather.

The first thing people usually associate with San Diego is the ideal climate this city enjoys year round--perpetually sunny and a smooth 77 degrees almost every day. Sounds heavenly, right? But for a girl raised in a state whose unofficial motto is "if you don't like the weather wait 15 minutes and it'll change," this is downright bizarre.

A month ago it was so hot in Missouri that there were heat advisories warning people to keep their pets and their elderly in the air conditioning. Of course, here it was 77 and sunny.

Right now in Missouri, a short four weeks later, it's gotten so chilly that you really shouldn't go out at night without a jacket. And here in San Diego the craziest thing has happened--when I was walking back to the office from lunch today it was a frosty 72
...but sunny!

Seriously, the meteorologists in this city must be bored out of their minds. The networks could train a monkey to run up and slap a little sun cutout on the lower half of California and call it a day.

Of course I realize I'd be insane to actually complain about being forced to put up with weather that feels like an island vacation day in and day out, but I have a confession: I miss rain. I don't miss driving in rain (or rather, dealing with other people driving in rain) or my hair looking like shit because of the rain (that sure was a convenient excuse). But I miss the sound of rain and the smell of rain and the way the sky looks before a powerful storm. I even miss (just a little) worrying that my power will go out and we'll have to light candles and sit on the porch and drink beer while we wait for the a/c and fans to come back on like we did when a massive storm hit St. Louis in the steamy heat of last summer. More than anything I miss sleeping during a rainstorm. That sound gives me a certain peacefulness that even the murmur of waves lapping the shore can't replace.

When we moved here in July someone casually mentioned that it hadn't rained in San Diego since January. Whhaaaaat? I was mentioning this fact to two friends from St. Louis who happened to be vacationing in San Diego last week and they were equally flabbergasted.
So imagine my surprise when in the wee hours of the following morning Jack woke me and whispered, "Listen honey, it's raining!" I laid there with my eyes closed, all wrapped up in my husband and entranced in the staccato beat of water falling onto the grass. I hadn't realized how much I missed the rain until that moment, but it was pure bliss to slowly drift back to sleep listening to that sweet sound.

And then the rain stopped. Not gradually. It stopped abruptly, like God just got bored with the idea and turned off the faucet. And that's when it dawned on us. God hadn't stopped the rain. One of our apartment complex's Mexican groundskeepers had. Our "rain" had actually been the freakin' sprinkler system.

This weekend we're headed back to St. Louis for our friends' wedding and to see all the people we've been missing so much. And while I wish nothing but sunshine but for my friends' big day, I'm ridiculously excited to get even 48 hours of real midwestern fall weather!

And as it turns out the San Diego meteorologists may even get the first opportunity they've had all year to prove their jobs could not be done by a monkey because the National Weather Service is predicting a winter-like storm that will dump a bunch of rain along the San Diego coast and may even bring snow in the mountains. And we're not going to be here. Go figure.

Stay tuned because come December there's a good chance I'll be complaining about missing snow. And although I vowed from the very beginning never to be one of these SoCal wusses who feels the need to pull out a parka and gloves when the thermometer drops below 65, I'll admit that I did put on fleece pants and a sweatshirt (and flip flops!) to walk Mason last night when the temperature gauge dropped into the 50s. Oh man, my hearty midwestern blood is thinning already, isn't it?

Hiatus from the Blogosphere

I wish I could say that my week-long break from blogging was the result of some fabulous adventure that we took off on, that I've been running ten miles a day and cleaning my house from top to bottom, or even that I was busy billing 60 hours this week. Unfortunately, none of those are true. In fact, my only excuse is that I've had a miserable head cold, constant hunger pangs (thank you, crash diet) and nothing all that interesting to say. But, dear friends and readers, I'm baaaaack! Here's the mini-update:

Tainted Love
If you didn't already know that Jack and I love our 80s music, this is either your first visit to my blog or you really need to work on your reading comprehension skills. We take our 80s rock quite seriously and rarely pass up an opportunity to catch a live show (which may explain why, in the course of three months last summer, we saw Aerosmith, Journey, Poison, Def Leppard, Cinderella, and Motley Crue). So when one of my coworkers suggested we all check out the 80s cover band Tainted Love and promised that they'd not only be better than the morons from Metal Skool but that they'd actually be good, it was a done deal.

A buddy of mine from law school, Nick, happened to be staying with us for the weekend (he practices law just up the coast in Orange County) and decided to join us for what ended up being a night worthy of any big haired rockers' seal of approval. I remember enough to know that the show was fantastic (though they didn't cover the harder rock that I so love, they did Pat Benatar and Survivor and Wham very well), but the rest of the night is a bit of a mystery. Chalk it up to my newly lost tolerance (hey, it's not like Jack and I just sit around and booze it up together and we haven't been out with friends in more than two months!), but I was hammered. It wasn't until I woke up the next morning with a killer headache, a bunch of pictures on my camera that I don't remember taking, and a half-eaten container of chicken salad (that Jack insists was probably moldy) that I realized how many beers I must have had. At the very least I can say that I fit in with the Pacific Beach scene a lot better this time!



Adventures in Kiteboarding
On Sunday morning (Nick's birthday!) the boys soaked up their hangovers with my french toast breakfast casserole and then headed off to a kiteboarding lesson. Truth be told, I'm still not entirely clear on what exactly kiteboarding is, but it looks to be a clash between wind surfing and wakeboarding. But whatever it is, my otherwise very athletic and willing-to-try-anything husband apparently will not be taking it up as a sport anytime soon for two reasons: 1) The required equipment is uber expensive (like $1000+ for the kite alone) and isn't something you can rent, and 2) Jack didn't exactly find it to be second nature.

I was disappointed that I wasn't able to go with them and take pictures (it's a rare occasion that I'm not photo-documenting our lives) but it sounds like it's just as well. In their four-hour lesson they only spent about 30 minutes in the water, and from what I hear it may not have been, umm, picture-worthy.

Noosa
So while the boys were busy learning to maneuver a giant kite strapped to their backs, I was being the dutiful wife back at home (I did mention the french toast casserole, right?) watching the kids. By kids of course I just mean Mason, Mis, and Nick's huskie, Noosa, who kept him company on the ride down and became Mason's newest BFF the minute she walked in the door.

Despite the fact that Noosa is very well mannered and a great dog, my pets' reactions didn't exactly inspire any belief that they should ever get to hang out again in the future. Don't get me wrong, Mason loved her! In fact he loved her enough to, ummmm, "introduce himself" to her over and over again all weekend. On one such occasion sexy time got so out of hand that they rolled into my wine tower, knocking a very heavy glass vase to the floor and taking out a huge chunk of (rented) drywall with it. But fear not, fortunately no wine was harmed in the making of this program.

However, the most obvious casualty of Noosa's visit ended up being our (quite expensive and brand new) dresser. You see, my darling black cat routinely hides under the bed when strange canines come over. However, it turns out that even though Noosa is Mason's size, she is particularly adept at squeezing under beds and into small spaces. I'm not sure who was more surprised.....Mis, to find her secret bunker infiltrated...or Noosa, to crawl under the bed and find herself face-to-face with a cat. Nevertheless, Mis then had to seek refuge in the only place in our bedroom she felt safe: on top of the dresser. She did so, of course, with claws beared and back arched, leaving the surface of the dresser covered with scratches and little bits of her fur. My poor girl was thereafter too petrified to come down even to use the litter box and ended up leaving a little puddle to go along with the rest of the damage. Guess you could say Noosa scared the piss out of her...
When I did finally remove Mis from our bedroom she lodged herself on top of the refrigerator and hasn't really come down since.



The Babysitter, Round II
As if all that wasn't enough pet-centered fun for the week, we found out on Friday that Mason is "no longer welcome" back at the dog sitter's house when we go out of town. Of course she didn't bother to tell us this when we picked him up after his first visit, so it wasn't until Jack called her to arrange another stay that we learned that she believes he's "too aggressive" to stay with her anymore. She apparently tried to "discipline" him and when he wouldn't obey her commands she decided he was toast.

First, let's get a few things straight.

Mason is not aggressive. He is a lab. Anyone who knows anything about dogs knows that labs are notoriously full of energy. My lab in particular is playful and spirited and, even though he's four years old, will always be a puppy at heart. Just because my dog isn't half-dead like all the other dogs she keeps in her home zoo doesn't mean that his romping and barking mean that he's aggressive. They mean he's a dog....that's what normal, healthy dogs do!

And if she's going to run a business based strictly on word-of-mouth and referrals, she didn't do herself any favors by failing to mention any problems until we called her to set up another stay. Moreover, now she refuses to even call us back to discuss things. That's just unprofessional and instills no confidence in her reliability.

Top it off with the fact that she had the audacity to say that we needed to pay her to "work" with Mason so he could be well-enough behaved to stay with her in the future (she's not a trainer, mind you...despite the fact that she sounds half-baked when you speak to her, she apparently has some other "real" job outside of her dog sitting business). To that I say, "go smoke another one, lady." Like hell if you're going to "discipline" my dog, insinuate that we don't know how to train him, and then convince us to pay you for the privilege of allowing him to sleep in your yard again.

So the babysitter has already been replaced. We found a cute little company called Sleepover Rover that has a network of people who watch your dog in their home (no kennels or cages) while you're out of town. They are very professional, pre-screened and ridiculously organized, and charge the same thing as we were paying before. We already met the lady who will be watching Mason next weekend (and her gigantic poodle, Snoopy) and she was so much better. So take that, hippie lady. We don't need you or your three-legged, geriatric dogs.

What $2K a Month Gets You in San Diego

As promised two months ago....the long overdue pictures of our little palace of love. :)

(I still don't have any of the master bathroom because it wasn't clean yet when I snapped these yesterday, but don't hold your breath waiting for those. Something tells me that an entire entry about my bathroom may not garner much readership)

Our Bedroom

Kitchen/Dining Room

Guest Bedroom

Guest Bathroom

Hallway

My Latest Project--a Collage of Wedding Pics

I Forgot to Wear Some Flowers In My Hair...

...but I think we did just about every other kitschy, touristy thing associated with the Golden Gate City, and all in the span of about 48 hours. Since I had never been to San Francisco and Jack had only been once as a child, I saw it completely fitting to strap on my camera and join the throngs of tourists waiting in line to see the sights that made this city famous. Bring on the little toy replicas of the Golden Gate Bridge!

San Francisco felt to me like a clash between Chicago and Italy, but with a lot more hills. Seriously, San Franciscoans must have the sexiest calves in the country. Hoofing it around the city (in flip flops, no less) left me blistered, sore and feeling quite certain I had earned the copious amounts of amazing food and wine that we consumed.

Home base for our adventure was a tiny little European-style hotel in Union Square--the King George. Despite the teeny-tiny room and closet-sized bathroom, the place was clean, comfortable and allowed us to walk everywhere we wanted to go (though in hindsight that might have been asking for sore glutes).



We started off the trip with a walk through Chinatown and a quest for some authentic chinese food. We learned the hard way in Italy that in restaurants that feature snapshots of each menu item next to its name, you're probably better off eating the menu itself. In trying to avoid those tourist traps, I forced Jack to ignore his growling tummy and follow me around Chinatown for about an hour in my quest for the perfect little hole-in-the-wall restaurant. One bite into his chicken fried rice I think he agreed it was worth the wait.



After an unsuccessful attempt to find a cute faux bag, we headed into North Beach and then to the Coit Tower to take in what is arguably one of the best views of the bay. By the time we made it down Lombard to the "Crookedest Street" (man, do I feel sorry for the schmucks who live on that one) my camera battery was dead and it was time to head home for a nap.



For dinner that night we headed back to North Beach (the San Franciscoan little Italy) to check out one of Dave and Juli's favorite spots--The Stinking Rose. Everything on their menu, including the ice cream, is infused with garlic. The place smells to high heaven, but damn was it good. Garlic swiss cheese fondue, fresh seafood over black linguine and a spicy garlic sauce, a liter of the house wine (which I drank all by myself, thank you very much) and a couple hours of good, candlelit conversation with my husband. It didn't come with a view or anything touristy, but it was a fantastic date (despite the fact that ample use of garlic doesn't typically lend itself to sweet goodnight kisses) and might have been my favorite thing we did all weekend.



We started Sunday off with a ferry ride across the bay and brunch in Sausalito. Charming as it sounds, the lines we had to endure to get there were unreal. But it too was worth the wait. Sitting at a sidewalk cafe right next to the bay in the midday sunshine with my husband, some fresh squeezed OJ, and hot blueberry pancakes was the perfect Sunday morning.









After brunch we caught the ferry back to the city just in time to hop a streetcar down to Fisherman's Wharf to wait in another line to pick up another ferry--to Alcatraz. We spent a couple hours on The Rock, did the award-winning audio tour, took some pictures, and froze our butts off. Stepping into one of the dark, cold solitary confinement cells was terrifying (I had to grab Jack's hand!) but touching such a intriguing piece of American history was worth the goosebumps.







Back in the city (again) we checked out Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf and made our way over to Scoma's--Jack's great uncle Chris's favorite San Francisco restaurant. The building was unassuming, but the location was killer and the food was outstanding. Unfortunately I filled up on too much San Francisco sourdough bread and could barely finish half of my lobster thermador. Dummy.


A few beers later I was excited to check out the legendary San Francisco nightlife but, in a true showing of how fast marriage ages you, I was more interested in sleep. So we caught a cab home, grabbed a six pack of hefeweizen at the convenience store around the corner, and rented Shrek the Third. Lame? Maybe. But with a full belly, some cold beer, a comfy bed and the cool air coming in the window I was perfectly content.

By Monday morning we still had a few must-see touristy items on our list, so we got up early and checked out of the hotel. We caught a cable car (again, obnoxious long line!) up to Buena Vista for one of their legendary Irish coffees. We stuffed ourselves silly with clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl (yeah, I know it's not breakfast food, but I HAD to have some before we left the city and that was my last opportunity!) and an omelet made with fresh dungeness crab. Heavenly. After breakfast we checked out Ghirardelli Square and took the cable car back to Union Square for a bit of shopping before we headed back out to Dave and Juli's house in Fremont.







With all the tourist kitsch out of the way, the next time we go back to San Francisco we'll be free to relax and explore some more great food and wine and nightlife....assuming, of course, that I can muster up the energy.

I Left My Heart in....Fremont?

Our much-anticipated Labor Day adventure in the City by the Bay was absolutely fantastic. But before we ever made it into the city we spent a night partying hard in the suburban sprawl with Jack's cousin Dave and his brood.

Dave (who is actually Jack's mom's cousin, but we're not really sure whether that makes him Jack's second cousin or first cousin once removed or whatever, so we just go with "cousin") is the epitome of a California surfer-guy. Well, he's the epitome of a California surfer-guy if that description includes being the owner of his own information technology company, father to four teenagers, and lover of all things boozy. Juli, his beautiful wife of nine years is the ying to his yang: organized, patient and a fantastic mom. Together they are two of the most fun people we know. As guests of our Jamaican wedding three months ago, they totally stole the show. Between getting my dad so loaded he couldn't make it out of his villa for dinner the day after the wedding and drinking so much tequila that the bartenders at the pool bar started hiding the good stuff when they saw Dave's wavy brown ponytail coming down the sidewalk, these guys were the life of the party.

So we shouldn't have expected anything less than a damn good time when we stayed the night at their house in Fremont (about 45 minutes outside San Francisco) last Friday. Dave and Juli picked us up from the airport and had cold beer (and a lot of it) waiting for us when we got back to their house. We downed a couple six-packs of Red Stripe and listened to some CDs they picked up in Negril while Dave grilled up some giant prawns, salmon and steaks. For dinner we moved onto wine, then to tequila shots, and then back to beer. Somewhere in there Jack and Dave snuck off to the garage and when they came back my darling boy couldn't seem to string a sentence together. Somehow we all ended up in borrowed swimsuits and in the neighbor's hot tub listening to Bon Jovi until the wee hours of the morning.
Rock. On.

It should come as no surprise that Dave and Juli didn't send us off to the city the next morning until we'd downed two bottles of champagne and a huge breakfast. So it's no wonder that we made sure we left plenty of time to stop back by their house on our way back to the airport.

On Monday the routine was much the same. Cold beer in the fridge (well, the neighbor's fridge...but fortunately they are a friendly, booze-sharing bunch). Steamed oysters on the grill (well, the neighbors grill....but you're getting the picture). And plenty of fresh ahi sashimi and homemade sangria to go around. The pack of neighborhood hounds (six beautiful golden retrievers) romped around in the yard while we knocked back another four or five rounds of drinks. True to form, we were a little sauced when we showed up for our flight back home. Something tells me Dave would be proud.

In the end, our stopover in Fremont was one of the best parts of the weekend. Dave went out of his way to make us feel incredibly welcome (they even bought a new bed and a new flat screen TV for the room we were sleeping in) and the whole family was so gracious and warm. Dave, Juli, Chris, Holli, Shelby, Jaguar, Trapper and Sabbath....thanks again! We will definitely be back!

The Conclusion of Sports Week

I love a good theme party. I love a good themed dinner. But I generally don't structure my regular work weeks around any particular theme. Nevertheless, last week seemed to (unintentionally) revolve around a distinctly sporty theme. After the horse races on Saturday, the Padres game on Monday, and Jack's fantasy draft on Wednesday, it was only natural that we hit up the Chargers last pre-season game on Thursday.

Truth be told, I found the entire event to be a huge pain in the ass. Combine the usual dense southern California traffic with two major sporting events in the same city on the same night during rush hour and suddenly San Diego's four interstate freeways and six state highways start to look like a used car lot from hell. Thinking we were really intuitive, we decided that Jack should drive downtown to my office and we'd pick up the trolley a couple blocks away and take that over to Qualcomm, thus avoiding the chaos (and hefty $20+ pricetag) of parking at the stadium. However, the 18 mile drive from our apartment took him an hour and twenty minutes (after he had spent half an hour cleaning up Mason's birthday pork chop, which didn't exactly agree with his tummy...poor guy). The trolley ride was even worse. The first one we got on kicked everyone off after three stops. The second one we got on was packed to the gills and smelly people just kept squeezing on. We missed the entire first quarter and most of the second.

The ride home was worse. The unsupervised teenage schmuck that was left in charge of traffic control at the Qualcomm trolley stop had no concept of letting the people who'd been waiting the longest onto the train first. I truthfully thought my husband was going to incite a riot after the schmuck let several hundred people jump the line in front of us. We finally pushed our way onto one of the cars but were dumped off again a few stops later along with a hundred other people who also had no idea which train would take us to downtown (no maps, no signs on the trains, and the regular schedule had been adapted because of the two sporting events so even the employees didn't know when the next trolley would show up). All in all, we spent considerably more time on the damn trolley than we did in the football game.

The game itself was okay. At the very least it made for some great people watching. It seems that the concept of pro football games drawing out white trash fans from every corner of the metropolitan area is not limited just to the St. Louis Rams. We saw a lot of girls trying waaaaay too hard...fake eyelashes, sequins, sky-high stilettos, and lots of Chargers jerseys tied up at the rib cage to show blingy belly-button rings (and stretch marks, C-section scars and a few extra rolls of lovin'). The guys weren't much better. In our section alone we had two asian guys in pink jerseys, one dude wearing massive head gear who picked his nose and ate everything he nabbed, and a crew of 49ers fans who tried to start so many brawls that security took up residence all along our aisles (when the first fight broke out the two dudes in pink quickly escaped to another section). Yeah, it was pure class.

My last trip to Qualcomm was unforgettable. I was a dancer in the pre-game show of Super Bowl XXXII (Packers vs. Broncos--1998) and it was surreal and amazing and the makings of some great stories. This time....not so much. So unless my next football outing involves someone else driving, paying, and barricading me from the huddled masses, I can't say I'll be in a big hurry to go back.

This picture really says it all. The beer-drinking dude in the T.O. jersey was the shit disturber. The guy in the background in the pale blue jersey (hugging another Chargers fan) was the object of his affection. And I've highlighted one of the tough guys for you in the center. After all, don't they say that real men wear pink?

And, of course, the obligatory picture of us.