Sparkwood & 21

Saturday Snaps: A Road Trip Photo Trip

Getting Trashy (No More Dump and Run)

Here's a little something different about waiting tables in California versus Tennessee (the only place I was ever a server), besides the health care and minimum wage: by law restaurants have to not only recycle, but compost.

That means three different bins in the dish area: a black one, a blue one and a green one. Food scraps, paper products like beverage napkins, coffee grounds and other "organic" items go in the green bins, plastics and glass from wine bottles go in the blue, while very little, actually, goes in the black.

I'm in full support of this mandate. I used to stand at the enormous trash barrels at Outback Steakhouse and frown at all the wasted food and landfill fodder. It really made me sad. This arrangement feels a little less gratuitously wasteful.*

So, it's awesome that there are three bins.

But hoo boy, do three bins take a lot of extra precious time. 

You're in the weeds, and your table are so fucking mad at you, and you come into the kitchen with a complicated arm load of dirty table items, and you can either dump everything with a quickness into a single, massive tub then gingerly sling flatware into its proper stack and be on your way. 

Orrrr, you can get to the kitchen with the same complicated arm load of dirty table items and stand there trying to determine whether the paper liner will decompose or if that plastic will degrade, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to just dump and run.

But this is better, even though it is more difficult. And it's just different. Sooner than I know, it won't be.

*And for heaven's sake, the portion sizes at Outback Steakhouse contribute to a tremendous amount of food waste. Another plus for smaller portions than that of a trough. 

[photo credit]

See You Soon, San Francisco

I'm going home.

I've been in New York for exactly one year. For me, one year is plenty. 

I'm going back to San Francisco. I'm moving to California on December 1.

New York is a lot. For this gal, it's too much. Did you know that I hate crowds? Oh, yes, I really dislike crowds.

As I write this I struggle to think over the stabbing sounds of horns outside my windows. I'm sitting as high as clouds, and I can see all the way to Brooklyn through the haze. The view here is spectacular, but the view I miss is that of San Francisco as it spills out at 360 degrees from atop Bernal Hill.

I've discussed this with another former San Franciscan, and together we agreed: there is something miraculous about being able to pull back and take in your city from high above. San Francisco allows this at every turn. Each next climb is a new look at the splendor that is San Francisco, so beautifully nestled between the stark sea to the west and the placid bay to the east. It's the most gorgeous city I've ever stepped foot in, and I want to go back. So, I am going back.

There is so much to do here. There is too much to do here. It overwhelms me. It makes me spend money I don't have. I can't climb a hill and pull back and take it all in. If I lived here all my life I'd never scratch the surface of all that this vibrant city has to offer.

I feel like I can handle San Francisco. It's my size.

I got lost in the vertical horizon of New York City. I couldn't find my way. I grew stronger as a result of the struggle, but it sucked me dry down to my bones.

It's hard to live here. If you can handle the hard, it has to be worth it. My God, the place is crawling with world class everything. If you can stand the snow and the summers and the crowds and the expense and the grind of commuting and the non-stop jostle that is living in New York, then the payoff is tremendous. But I don't need world class everything. I don't need the best ballet in the word. Just having a ballet to go to suits me just fine. 

I miss the nature that San Francisco provided. It's a big city in the midst of some of the world's grandest scenery. When people talk about being in San Francisco and being able to be at the ocean one day and skiing the mountains the next, you've heard it a hundred times before. But until you've lived in that kind of paradise, it's hard to comprehend. San Francisco is splendid. New York is splendid, too, but in a grittier, harder, more concrete way.

I'm going back to San Francisco a different woman. New York City is a spanking, and I've learned many a lesson. So many that I know I won't know the breadth of them for a long, long time.

I miss San Francisco so much that I am going back without a job. I've secured housing, but I have yet to find work in the city by the bay. I've been looking, but it's difficult to get hired from 2,500 miles away. I don't care. I can temp, I can wait tables, I can stock shelves, I can work three jobs if need be. I will make it work.

My job at Modest Needs Foundation was incredibly fulfilling and the skills and experience I gained there will carry me far. I am grateful for my time there, but that job requires that I be in New York. And as great is New York is, it isn't great for me.

I'm selling everything I own to afford to move back. I'm bringing my cats, my clothes and a few other valuables, and heading west. What lies next, I have no clue, but I'm up for what ever adventure may await.

San Francisco makes me happy. I did an important thing in coming to New York, but it's time to go home.

Thirty days and counting.

Time to Try Something New

I love San Francisco, but I am leaving it.

I'm moving to New York City.

Two months ago I took a job as the marketing and outreach person at Modest Needs Foundation, and oh, how fun I thought it would be to work from home and make my own hours. I would go the gym every day! I would blog in the park! I would meet friends for lunch or tea!

Instead I sit in my studio in the perpetual fog, or bundle up in a coat and scarf and sit by myself in some drafty coffee shop until I'm so over-caffeinated that my teeth shake.

I became depressed. I gained weight. I drank too much. It wasn't a good scene.

Apparently I don't have the discipline it takes to work from home. Structure and camaraderie and a place go to each day that is not my couch is what I need.

So, I am moving to New York City.

It's not just so that I don't have to work from home anymore, but because (cue cliche) I've always wanted to live in New York. And I've only ever lived in two places--both awesome in their own way--but I want more. I want to know what it's like to wake up in a city that never sleeps in a place with no horizon, only buildings and more buildings and more buildings, and nine million people. I want to learn new train lines. I want to develop a new accent. I want to carve out my own experience in one of the most challenging, but potentially most rewarding cities in the world. I want to not look back with regret. I want to follow my bones to the place they feel they should be.

This move, this step forward, is not without its intense sadness. Despite my deep and overwhelming love for the person whom I've spent two and a half years exploring Northern California with, I have chosen to go it in New York alone. It's heartbreaking. But it's something that needs to happen, for me. I need this time to come into my own, something other people do much earlier in life. It took a while for me to grow up enough to get there.

I am lucky and blessed that my dear friend and partner is an amazing man. I went to him scared and anxious with my plans and what I wanted, and he smiled at me. He took my hand and said he understood--how could he argue?--and then he told me that he was very proud of me. And that he knew it took courage to reveal my wishes to him. And that while it would suck for a while, that he was very happy for me. And that he knew exactly what it was like to feet drawn to a place, and he also knew exactly what it was like to need to be alone for a while. Thank God I don't have to give up this phenomenal man's friendship, because we make a good team.

It was a loving, mature, clean split that hurts like hell.

But, I'd always regret not going if I didn't go. I feel the pull.

I'm going to miss the shit out of San Francisco. And Ian. And the kind people here who are generous enough to call me a friend.

But, it's time to go.

It's going to be hard and scary and wonderful and wacky and a whole bunch of other things I could never, ever anticipate.

I have a lot to learn.

So, I am moving to New York.

And I broke up with my boyfriend.

And I feel like I am going to throw up.

I can't even wrap my mind around what's coming next. Best to channel the Buddha and just live in the moment, I suppose.

Holy shit, I am moving to New York.

RELATED: I Live Here: SF

Cute Goats, Small Goats

I get to go to Harley Goat Farm this weekend to check out the 173 (and counting!) kids born in Pescadero right by the ocean's edge.

Little. Baby. Goats.

Stoked. Here is me getting the goods from a milker on my last trip:

Fun times ahead.

OMFG, UPDATE: From a Harley Farms rep:

Yes we have baby goats in a small pen which you are able to enter and play with them.

See you then,

Dee

Harley Farms Goat Dairy

THERE WILL BE PLAYING.

Just Like That

As the CBS 5 news blogger, I read a lot of stories that shock or sadden or anger. But something about this story out of Pacifica today gave me serious pause different from the others.

A Berkeley woman, 37 years old, was walking along the shore on the beach in Pacifica this weekend. Ya know, like you do. She was with friends, enjoying the surf on the sand, no doubt. Something many of us do on a warmish winter weekend.

She was just walking. Just strolling along the waters edge when a very strong wave knocked her down.

How many times have you been walking along the ocean's edge when a swell unexpectedly crashes down much further inland that you expected, and suddenly you are wet from the waist down? It happens. For this woman, the wave knocked her all the way down.

Then a strong current sucked her out to sea, and she died. Think about that for a moment. You are ambling along on a clear watching the water lap at the sand, then suddenly you are down and gone. In just an instant everything is different, and terminally so.

That is powerful and scary, as the sea does not discriminate.

It seems petty and silly to say in the face of such a tragedy, but as the months warm up and we are more strongly drawn to the water, let's all be careful out there.

[Photo by Nico Nelson]

The Divide. It's Getting Blurry.

I think it was the second day I'd been in the Bay Area that the difference really hit home. Kevin and I went to Safeway on Solano Avenue in Albany to buy groceries for our food-free new place (after sustaining ourselves on truly novel Popeye's fried shrimp the first night). It was the first trip for either or us to anything known as a Safeway.

It was like Kroger, but it wasn't. Because the prices were all wrong.

$4.50 for a box of Morningstar fake sausage. Milk for upwards of five bucks. You had to have a Club Card to get the reduced prices, but as it was the first trip, there was no card in my wallet. And I was afraid the cash in there might soon not be there as well.

I felt defeated. Even simple things like marinara sauce in a glass jar was 30% more than what I expected to pay. Reality was settling over me like a heavy, dank blanket.

I no longer flinch at $4.50 for a box of fake meats. I've got my Club Card, and know where to find cheap produce at a farmer's market or Mexican grocery, coupled with bargain buys from Trader Joe's.

I guess I am saying that feels like a really long time ago. And like yesterday.

Reverse Culture Shock

I'm gonna be going back home for a week's visit in either July or August, and after reading this note from a Bay Area friend, I kinda can't wait for the reverse culture shock:

You're still new here, but after a while you forget what life outside of CA is like. You go back home and visit fam & friends and wonder WHY everyone there is wearing chinos & polo shirts and why isn't it appropriate to talk about dildos and butt plugs in a coffee shop? Hey, how come talking about the girl who has two mommies is a conversation-ender? And hey, how come I can't buy booze on Sunday? It creeps up on you.

Like I said, can't wait. I imagine going back will be almost as weird as coming out here in the first place.