Has Anyone Seen My Marbles?

When we moved to the city a year ago, I discovered that I had left something very important behind: my marbles.

I have a theory that the misplacement of my marbles was due to this perfect storm of really big life changes that occurred all at once:

• We sold our family home in the suburbs and moved to the city.
• The company where I worked for over 16 years was bought by another company.
• I presented, for the first time, at two professional conferences.
• My oldest daughter graduated from college and moved back home.
• My youngest daughter went off to college.
• Menopause hit like a tsunami.

Books I’m Reading – Winter 2011

The best part about winter is cozying up with a blanket, a hot cup of tea, and a good book–or four. Here’s what I’m reading this winter.

• Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

I loved Franzen’s last book, The Corrections, which was published almost 10 years ago, and I couldn’t wait to dive into this latest one. Franzen seems to polarize people; to some he comes off as an egotistical hack, and to others he is one of the greatest social commentators of our time. I am in the pitch-perfect brilliant camp. His satirical tales about family, society, sex, politics, and just about everything else are Jon Stewart-acerbic, hilarious, genius, and sometimes heart-breakingly tragic. I’ve only just started this book, and I’m already savoring it like a fine wine, reading it in small portions so that it will last longer.

Franzen doesn’t introduce characters with straightforward descriptions; instead, he skewers them through catty observations:

And Patty was undeniably very into her son. Though Jessica was the more obvious credit to her parents–smitten with books, devoted to wildlife, talented at flute, stalwart on the soccer field, coveted as a babysitter, not so pretty as to be morally deformed by it, admired even by Merrie Paulsen–Joey was the child Patty could not shut up about. In her chuckling, self-deprecating way, she spilled out barrel after barrel of unfiltered detail about her and Walter’s difficulties with him. Most of her stories took the form of complaints, and yet nobody doubted that she adored the boy. She was like a woman bemoaning her gorgeous jerky boyfriend. As if she were proud of having her heart trampled by him: as if her openness to this trampling were the main thing, maybe the only thing, she cared to have the world know about.

A Very Weeznuts Year

Well, it has been quite a year. We started 2010 with a bang by throwing a New Year’s Eve/house cooling party. It was waayy too much fun.

Then we got down to the business of getting our Palo Alto house on the market.

It sold in 10 days, and after selling off most of our belongings and storing the rest, we moved into a furnished loft in San Francisco to try out the city life.

These Are the People in My Neighborhood

I live on Bluxome Street in the SOMA district of San Francisco. Bluxome Street stretches for just two blocks between Fourth and Sixth Streets and is sandwiched between Brannan and Townsend Streets. This tiny little ‘hood contains a mix of both new and old converted warehouse buildings hosting mostly high-density residential apartments and lofts. But tucked here and there among them is an ecclectic mix of businesses and services.

One of them is a winery that just opened up. Yes, a winery. On my mostly residential block. Pinch me, please!

We talked to the owner of Bluxome Street Winery the week before they opened. He said their first wines will be ready in the spring of 2011. You’ll find me outside with my empty wine glass waiting for the tasting room to open.

I Am the Cure

Today was the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in San Francisco. I walked the 5k with daughter #1 and some friends from work, one of whom is a breast cancer survivor.

My dogs are barking, my sunburn is cooling, and breast cancer is losing the battle against its valiant warriors–us!

San Francisco Warehouse Shopping Mecca at Fantastico

I was wandering around a new route yesterday in my neighborhood and came across a store that I had never been in before–Fantastico.

It’s on 6th Street, right around the corner from the San Francisco Flower Mart. I had passed by it several times before and poked my head in, but it looked like it was mostly flower pots, vases, statuaries, and other garden-type things.

Since I live in a loft now, which doesn’t have so much as a balcony, I’m not all that interested in gardening stuff anymore. But the other day they were unloading a bunch of Halloween stuff, and I’m a real Halloweenie. So I went in, and am I glad I did.

Fantastico is much more than a garden supply store. It’s like a Diddams/Michael’s/Mexican flea market mashup.

It’s a huge warehouse that’s crammed full of party supplies, holiday decor, craft supplies, Halloween costumes, candles, feathers, vases, about an acre of silk and artificial flowers, and so much more.

Books I’m Reading – Summer 2010

I love reading more than just about anything else in the world.

At this moment I have six books in progress:

• The Empty Nest – 31 Parents Tell the Truth About Relationships, Love, and Freedom After the Kid Fly the Coop

This book is great because it lets me know that it’s normal to be feeling all the crazy feelings I’ve been having about my emptying nest–elation, relief, and a wonderful sense of accomplishment mixed up with grief, emptiness, and surprisingly, a little bit of fear.

• Problogger – Secrets to Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income
  

This book was recommended by a classmate in the terrific blogging class I took this summer through Stanford’s Continuing Studies program. It’s about how to make money, and even a career, out of blogging. I’ll let you know if it works. 🙂

Gone Baby Gone

My youngest child just left for college.

We’ve known this day was coming for 19 years. You would think that would have made it easier.

The hardest part is the quiet that’s left behind.

There has been a flurry of activity over the last few weeks with all the preparations, ending with a crescendo of last-minute shopping and packing and list checking and tearful good-byes to friends and family.

The good-byes are tearful because this daughter, my baby, is not going to college just an hour or two away, like her older sister did. She is not even going to school across the country. She won’t be at our Thanksgiving table this year, and she won’t be home over winter break. She is going halfway around the world to study abroad, and she won’t be home with us again until April.

 

Chicken and What?

I live in a neighborhood that is full of surprises.

Shortly after we moved from Palo Alto to San Francisco in March, we were out for a walk and noticed people were lining up in a nearby alley. Other people were sitting at the loading dock across the street eating something.

Since there are an abundance of homeless people around, at first we thought it must be a soup kitchen. But these were particularly well-dressed homeless folks.

We went to see what was going on and discovered a nearly hidden little window housing farmerbrown’s little skillet, the wildly popular chicken and waffles restaurant.

Mark Twain Was Right About San Francisco

I’d always heard how cold and foggy San Francisco was, but since I moved here in March, we’ve had pretty good weather. Almost too good, as our  SOMA loft catches the morning sun for several hours. For a few months there, it got pretty tropical every morning with the sunshine streaming in the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Until July, when all of a sudden it has been foggy nearly every morning and evening. The fog fades out for a while during the middle of the day, but then it fills back in during the late afternoons.

This fog  migration brings (or is driven by) wind, resulting in your stereotypical San Francisco weather–cold and windy.

So although we had glorious sunshiny days in the spring, during which I thought we were so smart moving to the sunnier side of the city, lately I keep thinking about one of my favorite quotes about San Francisco, from Mark Twain:

One of the coldest winters  I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.

He was so right.

BRRR!