desert life

It's been a while.  There are reasons for this, which I won't go into.  Nothing crazy, just felt like I needed some time away from the blog for a while, among other things.  I meant to post pictures of Yosemite, which Edwina and I visited during my last weekend in California.  And it was truly amazing.  All the things you ever hear about the park and all the pictures you ever see... well, they don't quite do it justice.  You just have to go there and see it for yourself.  They say that the glories of Europe are found in its old architectural structures -- castles, bridges, museums.  The glories of America are found in its national parks, of which Yosemite is a gem.  Someday I really will post pictures, but not today.

This morning I sit here, post early-morning walk, exploring the boundaries of human smell.  I've been in the same clothes for the past 48 hours with only a rinse-off shower yesterday morning, mainly because Saturday afternoon, after we packed up my brother and his stuff into my parents' cars, I made the snap decision to go early with Mom and Nick and stay in the hotel, rather than drive over myself the following morning.  If you're just tuning in, this weekend my baby brother went away to college.  So here it is Monday, and I'm still in the same clothes I was wearing Saturday morning.  I took nothing with me, other than the clothes I was wearing, my purse (which, granted has a fair amount of essentials, including my phone and the car charger, as well as the cold meds I'd been taking all this past week), my Nalgene, the box of tissues I've been carrying around for the past week, and the newspaper I'd bought Thursday that I'd left in my car.  And I was wearing my glasses, so I didn't have to worry about contacts.  I am so glad I went with them.  It made it a lot easier to say good-bye to my brother, having been part of the trip, as well as having taken a big roadtrip with him and my mom the previous weekend to Nebraska.  I think I also just see the reality of the fact that he's ready to be in college, which helps me let go a little easier.  It still hurts and I will still miss him.  But it turns out the anticipation was worse than the actual event.

What doesn't help is the fact that I said good-bye to my brother at the end of what turned out to be the longest week of the year thus far... maybe the longest week since the horrendous events of last summer.  I was sick all week with a cold given to me by my mom last weekend, had to take my car to the mechanic on Monday, got it back on Wednesday, paid $200 to have it fixed, only to accidentally rear-end some lady the next day, then said good-bye to some dear friends (the Griggs) who are moving to the UK in the next couple of weeks.  Then we took my brother to school.  Oh yeah, and then I experienced fresh disappointment over a guy who I thought might be the tiniest bit interested in me and turns out totally isn't, at least not from what I can tell... and I feel like I'm pretty intuitive when it comes to that.  We've all seen "He's Just Not That Into You...".  Let me tell you, I live it.  It's why I end up living in a cave most of the time.  It's just easier because then I don't have to deal with the frustration and disappointment of having even the tiniest hopes dashed by some guy who's "just not ready" or can't figure out what he wants.  My friend Jimmy says it's because I don't dress like I'm trying to compete for guys' attention.  He says that guys take one look at me and know they aren't going to get very far.  And he's absolutely right.  I have bigger and better things to worry about than whether or not I'm showing off enough of the girls, if you know what I mean.  I'm a professional, out to educate people in the arts and I don't need to do that.  Not to mention that I'm so over dating.  Either way, I'm a freakin' dime and I don't know what their problem is.  And then I came home last night to find that one of my roommates' drunk friends had slept in my bed over the weekend and left my room in total disarray.  I was beyond pissed.  It's a bloody miracle I didn't wake the whole house up.  It wouldn't surprise me if I actually did.

A couple of things occur to me this morning:  All week as this has been building up to be the perfect storm, I have kept asking the question "Why?"  What is this for?  I don't understand.  But you know, it's not really mine to ask why.  Who's to say why it's happening?  Who's to say how God is using it to shape me into the person he wants me to be?  Who's to say that it actually has anything to do with anything?  Sometimes shit just happens, and that's what you have to chalk it up to.  Because otherwise you'll drive yourself crazy.  I'm sure that somehow, cosmically in the universe, it all has something to do with something.  But I can't contemplate that.  It won't do me any good, nor will it make me feel any better to give myself some sense of false hope that it's because something good is about to happen.  All I can do is go through it as best I can, share the pain with those I trust, leave it behind, cling to the Savior, ask for his peace, and pray for better.

I have also realized that it's time to leave this house.  In addition to dating, I am so over living with boys I'm not related to or in love with.  It's time to go.  I don't know where I'm going or when but I will be leaving just as soon as I can get my act together.  In the meantime, I hope they both get the cold I've had all week.  And I hope the cough lingers for an additional two.

My friend Laura posted the following verse on her facebook the other day.  I've come back to it several times since then:  "But as for me, I will hope continually, and will praise Thee yet more and more. My mouth shall tell of Thy righteousness, and of Thy salvation all day long; For I do not know the sum of them." Ps. 71:14-15

It's a lot of loss.  And I feel really overwhelmed by it all, especially since it all came at once.  But when I think about this verse, I'm continually struck by its truth.  I've come to realize over the past couple of months that I'm living in the middle of a freakin' desert at this point in my life right now (and have been for a while).  And desert life is so hard.  

But I will choose to hope continually... for I do not know the sum of them. 

Whoa, California: Part III

Things that we do differently in California:
1. wear sunscreen every. day.
2. hang your laundry out to dry
3. ride a bike every. where.
4a. wear layers or 4b. change clothes 3 times/day or 4c. suck it up when it's cold in the morning/evening
5. eat what's in season

Things that we don't do:
1. sweat
2. use the dryer
3. drive a car if unnecessary
4. shop at big chain grocery stores
5. turn on the AC
6. drink from the tap (because we're in the Central Valley and we don't want to end up like Erin Brokovich)

It's wonderful, but you know, I actually kinda miss St. Louis... the humidity, the just-kind-of-ok produce, the allergies, the lower rates of alzheimers, the highways and traffic. I'll be glad to get back :) 

After I hike up the Half Dome, that is...

Lewis

The following link was a delight to find in my facebook newsfeed this morning, per Robbie Griggs, the father of the family I've become good friends with who are moving to England this August.

Such a lovely little read.  Lewis was truly a sweet, wonderful man...

C.S. Lewis' Letters to Children: On Writing

Whoa, California: Part II

11 am PST with a lovely morning to look back on.  Ironically, my phone refuses to switch from CST to PST and therefore, when I set my alarm for 8 am this morning, I ended up waking at 6 am here.  I got up, caught up on email, and went for a delightful little run in the chilly California morning air as I headed towards a fantastic mountain vista in the distance, after which I freshened up a bit and Edwina and I headed out towards the Davis Farmer's Market... on bikes, of course.  My sweet Missouri piano-teacher tush is slowly getting used to the fact that it has to sit on a hard bike seat at least once or twice a day.  Probably more than you want to know, but it is what it is.  As Edwina says, "You're in Davis now, Katie.  Your ass is just going to hurt for a week or so..."  I also figured out how to snuggle my Starbucks cold cup between my shoulder-bag strap and my body so that I can still enjoy my iced coffee at stop signs and traffic lights during my new morning commute without spilling it in my bag or holding it the entire way :)  Edwina is a pro though.  She conducts half of her daily business on her cell phone while riding her bike, which is quite unfathomable to me.

The Farmer's Market:  Whoa.  I have never tasted peaches so sweet, as if the farmer injected them with sweetener before bringing them to market.  Then we got distracted by the Greek stand where I ate half my morning breakfast in falafel and hummus samples at the urging of the stand owner.  Whoa.  They know how to do food here and they aren't shy about it.  It is amazing and marvelous and ridiculous, which is one thing about Missouri that I have to concede:  by comparison, our food is just kind of ok for the most part.  In most cases, we have to work hard to make it truly extraordinary, although we do make wonderfully nice dessert wines out of seemingly random fruits (like blackberries and strawberries)... we're kind of forced to be resourceful in that way since we can't all have grapes growing outside our front doors.  Here, everything is just naturally incredible on its own, especially when it's in season.  And I asked Bobby and Edwina about why that is (which, they would know, since they're both studying specialized agricultural sciences here) and from what they tell me, it seems it all has to do with rainfall.  Before he came to UC Davis, Bobby spent significant amounts of time farming and gardening in Missouri and he says that the soil in both places is essentially the same (clay), but that in California, the farmers know it won't rain.  For instance, in Missouri, we store our hay in barns since the weather there changes like the tides of the female mind but here they just stack their hay bales (or alfalfa) out in the field because the likelihood of it randomly opening up and pouring down is extremely slight.  Incredible.

Oh yeah... and here, rosemary grows in hedges... like everywhere.  The people here who buy rosemary in markets must be completely out to lunch since they could walk out their front door and trim it off the hedge down the street, where it would go completely unnoticed.  I also tried my first boysenberries here the other day.  Holy cow, someone needs to make wine out of that...

One thing that does strike me as strange about this place is the people.  California really is the land of fruits, nuts, and flakes... truly, there's a reason that joke exists.  The people in Davis are very nice and extremely down-to-earth, very much like the people in Columbia.  But whoa, San Francisco:  holy cow, that city is full of strange people.  Being there even for a day made me feel totally vanilla in comparison.  I used to think that people in St. Louis were really authentic and down-to-earth, which they are... to a point.  But I realize now that people in my town can be somewhat guarded in certain ways, which I think is actually good and healthy sometimes.  It took me a while to adapt to that mentality when I first moved back after undergrad, but I now have a lot of respect for it and feel it's a lot easier to live and exist as a self-employed professional while operating in that mode.  Business is business, personal is personal... and not everybody needs to know about the personal either.  There's dignity in keeping the vault closed to most people.  In San Francisco, if outer appearances are any indication of what's going on inside, it seems that everyone is on a perpetual quest to find themselves and in all sorts of unconventional ways, which is extraordinarily interesting (and I daresay hard?, considering what I come from...) to observe as an outsider, to say the least.  I think I would rather live in a town full of people who think I'm crazy, rather than live in a town where everyone else seems to be crazy.  But I speak in a horrible digression of terms which are completely relative... these are purely my own observations and speculations as a casual traveler, for what they're worth, if anything at all.

Not entirely sure, but "Moonrise Kingdom" looks like it might be on the docket today, since Bobby and Edwina haven't seen it yet.  Edwina has also switched me over from Tevas to Chacos:  she gave me a pair for my birthday.  They are wonderful and I think more durable than my Tevas (which I can easily wear through in two summers) and I feel crunchier than ever when I wear them :)

More whoa to come from this mind-blowing part of the country:  See you soon.

Whoa, California: Part I

Whoa:  California.  This is the best word I can think of to sum it up best.

I got here late Tuesday night, picked up from the airport an hour and a half after my plane landed, seeing as how my friend Edwina (who is one of my dearest friends from the music school at Mizzou) and her boyfriend Bobby got back late from hiking in Yosemite.  Go figure.  We've hit the ground running ever since.  With relatives still here from South Africa (a cousin, an aunt, and two adorable little-boy second cousins) for her graduation from UC-Davis with her masters, Edwina piled all of us into a rental van Wednesday morning and off we went to San Francisco for the day.

Again:  Whoa.

The scenery and the weather here are, well... amazing.  Edwina and Bobby (whom I'm also good friends with from our time together at Mizzou) complain about it being hot, but compared to Missouri summers, it is absolutely divine.  Even though it's in the upper 80's and lower 90's during the day, it's soooo dry.  And there's almost always a breeze blowing.  And in San Francisco (by the bay), when the north wind whips in off the Pacific, you really almost feel... cold for a second, until it lets up and you feel the sunshine again.  It's really the strangest sensation.  Hot-cold, hot-cold, hot-cold.  I sometimes feel like a 26-yr-old menopausal woman.

In the midwest, all the fields are the same:  wheat, soybeans, or corn.  Here, I had trouble recognizing the first field we drove by.  And there are soooo many kinds of crops:  almonds, walnuts, tomatos, apricots, oranges, alfalfa, olives, cherries... yesterday we bought cherries for $1.59 / lb.  Incredible.  And the sunset last night was unfathomable.  Holy cow.  The house we're staying in has a grapevine slowly making it's way along the courtyard arbor just outside the front door.  And Davis has all sorts of bike paths all over the place, which makes it super easy to get around without driving.  Today, I had a lovely mile-and-a-half ride into town to meet my gracious hosts and a relative or two for lunch.  And oh yeah... it was fabulous.  I've never been any place like this before.  It is, in a word, incredible.

Yesterday I had lunch next to the Pacific at Fisherman's Wharf, after which we went down to the old arcade where I played on a baseball game machine from 1937.  The game was unique in that it kept track of strikes, balls, and outs, and had all the names of the original players from the Yankee's World Series line-up from the year it was made.  So. cool.

After that, we went to Ghirardelli's... you know, the chocolate company.  Their factory / main headquarters is in San Francisco.  And I had quite possibly the world's largest and richest hot fudge sundae ever.  Edwina and I shared it, it being too big for either of us alone.  Then we drove through the Golden Gate:  wow.  It's even better in person than it is in the pictures.  The following picture does not do it justice.  They say it's never done being painted.  Apparently there's a crew of 30 or so people and all they do is paint the bridge.  As soon as it's done on one side, they go back through and paint it all again.  Wow.

It was roughly 7 pm by the time we got up there, and because of this 1. we got to see the fog start to roll in and 2. it was SUPER windy and cold.  Felt like Missouri in March.  Again:  whoa.  I definitely did not expect that one.

Oh yeah... and we saw Alcatraz from a distance.  Edwina says we'll go back again before I leave so we can go in.  And not only did we see Alcatraz, but we saw all kinds of busy activity that comes with being next to a bay.  My favorite was the huge container ships that came in carrying literally hundreds of railway containers on board.  This particularly hits home for me since my family has lived a block away from a train track for the past eight years and I've seen countless railway cars go through Old Monroe.  The thought that they all get put on a ginormous ship and sail across the ocean absolutely blows my mind.  I literally feel like I've followed them here from Old Monroe to see what the end of the track looks like for them.

This morning all but one of Edwina's relatives left.  And so the whirlwind is over for the moment, but quite interesting while it lasted, seeing as how at least half of all yesterday's conversation was in Afrikaans, which I only ever understood the gist of when combined with hand gestures and a few choice words here and there.  So. interesting.  I spent half the day in my own world, wondering what was happening around me.  And some of the cultural differences are incredible.  But they are wonderful people and I have a standing invitation to go to South Africa whenever.  Bobby wants to go there and be the first person to ever ride a giraffe, which I find completely hilarious since not only is there sure to be someone who's done that already, but also because the spine of a giraffe is a strict diagonal.  But he's determined.  I just think going would be an extraordinary adventure in and of itself.  But we'll see... here we are at Fisherman's Wharf yesterday.

Whoa, California.  Mind blown in only two days.  And still two weeks to go :)

moonrise kingdom

Here is my latest obsession.  Really, really want to go see this sometime soon... the problem is finding someone who'll go with me.

Moonrise Kingdom.  Directed by Wes Anderson.  So. excited.

You can find the St. Louis Riverfront Times review of it HERE.

stuff

"I'm sorry, I can't hear you for the jackhammer in the next room..."

"Katie, do you want this?  It's been in our family now for 35 years..."

The last day and a half or so, I've been at my Mom's house.  A couple of months ago, she and Dad sold our building to a new owner, who is renovating half of it into rental units for other tenants.  We've been dragging our feet in cleaning everything out, partly because of my semester, partly because of tax season for mom, partly because Nick graduated this spring, and partly because we just didn't want to deal with any of it and didn't know where we were going to put half of it.  I come from a family of hoarders.  But the time has come:  the construction crew is here.  We are literally cleaning out while they jackhammer and put on a new roof next to us.

And I feel like I'm at a huge garage sale in the line of family memorabilia and general crap.  I've become really convicted over the sheer volume of STUFF in the last six months and I'm ready to let a lot of it go.  Because about 75% of it needs to.

There's been a lot of sorting.  It's extremely draining.  Do I really want a ginormous dry erase board for my own personal use?  Well, I might use it once.  Stress on the word might.  So the answer is no.  I have nowhere to put it and maybe useful once does not justify keeping it.

And it's like that.  Over and over again with this trunk or that box of stuff.  What about our old bikes?  The tires are flat and I have a nicer one at my house.  I never ride my old one.  There's our childhood Easter baskets.  Those stay... put them in the new storage room.  Here's another four or five boxes of old music... what do we do with it?  What about the painting that Dad commissioned for Mom when they got engaged?  Neither one of them want it.  Lordy...

You get the point.

Yesterday I spent six hours or so going through roughly ten years' worth of my own memorabilia.  I finally pared it down to about five or six boxes that are now stored in my old closet.  Thank God I had sorted through most of my stuff from childhood prior to that or I'd still be at it today.

And Mom and Dad are both here.  Sorting.  Making decisions.  Mom wants to pitch.  Dad wants to keep.  And if Dad can't keep something, he wants to give it to one of us kids.  Oy...

I think we should just take all of it to the dumpster, call it day, and play Dominion.

However, my brother did find a collage of drawings from when he was in middle school. Amongst his doodles were depictions of Jamie from Mythbusters, an Apache helicopter, a rainbow, the US Marine Corps symbol, a bunny, the One Ring, Han Solo in carbonite, a moose, and a coat of arms he designed with the initials LNS in the center (for Lord Nicholas Smith).

That is sooo going on the fridge.