Seasonal

The pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting is calling. Also the donut, the caramel apple, the frosted cookie, the cream of chestnut soup, the jamon-manchego sandwiches, the green beans with blue cheese cream sauce, the deep-fried artichoke hearts....

The air has gotten colder, the trees are changing color, I turned the heater on for the first time last night, and my body desperately, desperately wants to gain about eight pounds - ideally in the next week.

So far I'm holding it off at two.

But in the back of my head, I wonder: isn't gaining weight for the cold season exactly what mammals are supposed to do? Wouldn't I be warmer over the next few months if I gained a nice cozy layer of insulating fat?

Then I think about going shopping for a whole new set of jeans.

My hand hovers, hesitating, over the oh-so-tempting plate of Friday morning donuts.

The Over-Scheduled Adult

(The person who inspired this post doesn’t read this blog. And I’m at least as bad at this as her, anyway!)

I had plans tonight. I really did. But when my husband asked me this morning what I was doing tonight, I told him, then added, “... but she’ll probably cancel. I did, last time,” and he nodded, understanding.

So off I went to work. I sent an email: “we still on?” and got back, no surprise, “Actually, I’m sorry but....”

And thus the round continues. I forget which of us cancelled first, but this is about the fourth time, or maybe the sixth. Last time it was me. It’s easy: we email, we ping, we add to our various electronic calendars. We agree and then at the last minute...we had a prior engagement. We’re getting sick. I’m so sorry but.... Meeting up for dinner sounds oh-so-attractive when it’s a couple of weeks away. Up close...other things impinge.

I can’t help contrasting it with a recent trip to NY, where social plans went something like this: “...dinner...?” “Love to! 7pm?” over and over and over, so that I wound up with plans on no fewer than six nights out of eight. Not one person cancelled; not one person changed a time or a place. And one, I swear, sounded surprised when I emailed her on day-of to confirm.

Which leads me to wonder: what’s different about New York? It’s sure not less busy; there’s just as much going on. (“Oh, please, there’s more going on!” the average New Yorker would probably claim.) And the usual human priorities remain: self, significant other, friends, work, in some combination of importance and varieties of labelling.

So what’s the difference?

Out here in CA I am situated in, living on, gripping with the edges of my psychological fingers, the edge of the crazy roiling tech-hub of the world. New York, as far as I can tell, thinks cellphones and "The InterWebz" are nice and all but is still inclined to give a virtual shrug and go do something else.

So is it just the technology? Is it knowing that thanks to a last-minute text, no one is left standing at the bar? The ability to change plans at the last minute means that instead of shamefacedly getting up from a restaurant table, whoever got stood up can quietly drive from work to home, shrug it off in an empty kitchen, move on with an evening only slightly different than planned.

Rescheduling is easy too: an email, an invitation online. No cost, no effort, except that we’ve done it over and again now how many times?

In theory, I’d imagine that with constant connection we’d make more plans, not fewer; see each other more frequently, not less. I love the idea of being able to plan something at the last minute. There was the day another friend called, “I have to run an errand near your house. Want to get coffee?” and she reached me even though I was out for a walk - I had my phone. I love this. I do.

But that's the exception. And so I wonder, if we couldn’t do all this, if plans were harder to make and harder to break - would we be more inclined to show up?

You know what the problem is?

Everyone tells you you should have a baby. And then...

...if you think maybe you do want one, you wonder if you're just succumbing to peer pressure. But...

...if you think maybe you don't want one, you wonder if you're just reacting to peer pressure.

Sigh.

Turning 31

On Friday I turned 31. “You ready to go?” my guy asked when he walked in the door after work. He tossed groceries in the fridge and started changing from work clothes into something that looked more like weekend-wear: jeans, a t-shirt.
“Yeah,” I said. “Do I need a sweatshirt?”
“Yeah.”
We headed out the door. He drove me out to Half Moon Bay - the nearest beach. We watched the sun set behind the hills, multiple times, as we drove. HMB was foggy, but we walked through the sand anyway, before dinner at Half Moon Bay Brewing Company. This is one of my ongoing favorite restaurants, largely because it has firepits and live blues/rock bands. It also cards me every time I go there. This time was no different. It’s not all bad to get carded on your thirty-first birthday, but I do wonder - where was all this rigor when I was underage? I didn’t have ID, so I ordered hot tea and sneaked sips of my guy’s beer when the server wasn’t looking.
On Saturday we hiked out to Tennessee Beach. When we got home my guy started dinner. I messed around with the stereo and the computer, not paying any attention. “OK!” he called a while later. And we sat down to perfect steaks - grass-fed, since that’s my newest food-kick, and with a sauce that my guy, in his first attempt at steak, adjusted wildly from the recipe with noticeable success.
This is an awesome birthday.

Babies at Christmas

I never expected to get here: in surveying the Christmas cards on my mantelpiece, I find that over 50% of them include photos of various people's babies.

Good grief. Really? Am I really at this point?

One photo-card shows two little boys gleefully grabbing bottles of Jack Daniels & Bacardi (their parents are my models for how not to take things too seriously).

Surely this helps balance things out? I'm just going to keep telling myself that it does.

Stratigraphy

On my way home from work, I stopped at the hardware store and bought a shovel. Then I headed for the backyard and started digging.

It's been years since I did this for a living, but digging holes is apparently like riding a bike: you never forget. My arms and shoulders still remember exactly the leverage and pressure it takes to dig a round hole, 18 inches wide and 30 inches deep, the size of a standard archaeological test pit. Conveniently enough, this is also the size of hole the Internet recommends using to seat a hammock-post.

After 10 or 15 minutes, I started to notice what came out of the earth. At first, it was just adobe soil: incredibly hard, the kind of soil I used to sharpen my shovel for. A foot or so down, the earth became softer and darker. I bent down and rubbed it between my fingers. It had the texture of ash. I slammed the shovel down again and again, chopping a straight sided round hole into the earth. I cut through tree roots and levered intrusive rocks out of my way.

Once upon a time, I would have made this hole perfect. I would have documented the changes in soil that marked habitation layers or fire pits. I would have screened all the dirt for artifacts, and saved the ones I found in numbered paper bags.

I feel incredibly smug that even without all that effort, I found three pieces of broken glass, a fragment of a flower pot, and a very rusted but still perfectly recognizable square-cut nail.

Resolutions for Thirty

August 15 is my birthday. My guy has planned some sort of overnight something as a celebration; I'm not yet privy to the details. Before he & I started going out, I never expected to like surprises - but now I do, much the way I have learned to enjoy multiple flavors of coffee, nature shows & CSI, and funny books about travel.

I have also made some resolutions. The first is:

1. Store a clean t-shirt, jeans, and underwear along with my always-packed toiletries kit. That way, when Friday afternoon hits and I abruptly decide to get in the car and drive for a couple of hours, I'll be prepared - rather than having to madly try to make it to the Gap before they close at 9pm, as I did a couple of days ago.