Summer in SoCal
Hey LJ, what's up?! I haven't been around for pretty much all of June. On the last day of finals, our friends, Aimee, Roger and Joseph came up to SF with my brother We packed up all Nick's and my stuff in two days and were out of the city faster than I could really register it (though my being terribly sleep deprived at that point probably factored into that). I drove Aimee down in my mustang, and our 6 hour drive felt like merely a two hour totally enjoyable endeavor.
Since coming home, I've spent a lot of time at my Grandma's house. I'm living there for the summer so that I'd have a place for myself and my things, and there is the added bonus for my family: Brie gets to clear out Grandma's stuff. My family is weird about death, my dead uncle's room went pretty much untouched for a year before I came in and turned it into an office for myself. My Grandma's house is the same one my Dad grew up in, a 1950s track home. It is small but, imo, lovely. It is a bit run down as my Grandma was nearly bedridden for I think 5 or 6 years. A live in nurse stayed with her, but there wasn't a lot of real maintenance or upkeep in areas outside of where they occupied after my uncle died a year ago. Even with his work, it wasn't in the same shape as when my Grandma took care of it.
So now it is up to me. I have cleaned out ancient nooks of the house discovering things both awesome and downright gross. The shower in her bedroom's private bath had grown some pretty intense mold in the short time since my grandma died. The water had been left dripping and there were just patches of black. Yuck! In the farther corners of the cabinetry in the kitchen there is just a lot of dust and accumulated grime; stickiness and dust mixed with accumulated dead insects. But out of this I have found treasure. One thing was a pair of hand paint plates wrapped in newspaper from the 70s. My great great aunt Aimee was an artist in New York. She hand painted platter ware and embellished with real gold. Outside of some really gorgeous bowls, we also have a dining set she made. It has "M" for Mayer, my Grandma's maiden name… Her family came from Alsace, which is like an uber German part of France. Anyway, I have been engrossed in all things related to heritage, cataloguing Victorian photographs of relatives from as far back as the late 1800s.These plates were a real find as they had been separated from the set of the set.
Outside of milling through photos, and clearing through the thousands of greeting cards my Grandma saved, I've also taken to reviving the back yard. I've said before that roses are really big in my family, for example my mother has 30 at least at her house. My Grandma also loved roses and unfortunately when her health declined so did the health of her garden. My uncle's idea of gardening was hacking things down to the ground and as a result of that and poor watering, only about four bushes remained. I was lucky, though! Across from my Grandma's house, were at least 20 rose bushes languishing waiting for care! Another old lady, Carroll, who I'd know growing up, had roses in her front garden, surrounding her house and in her backyard. She died some years ago and the other people who lived there paid no attention to them, so a lot had died. But recently a couple bought the property and decided to tear it all down. Since everything was going, they were extremely generous and let me take as many of the rose bushes as I could carry across the street. I only got 10 and I'm afraid two aren't going to make the transplanting. But still it is nice to see some rose bushes back in the yard.
My typical morning goes like this:
I wake up around 8am, open the curtains in the living room and go the back yard. I open the sliding glass door and there is my wiggly, my Ms. Spring. After some rubbing, I leash her up and take her out around the neighborhood on my bike. We come home and both have breakfast (though I'm usually picking up the poops in the yard while she's eating). I water the roses and the trees, Spring will drink a bit from the hose and then we play fetch. At that point, the day deviates from any kind of set schedule. Sometimes I pick up Aimee and we head back to my place for lunch and watercoloring. I've been the the beach a few times, though I'm ashamed to say, not as much as I would have liked. I've kind of gotten extremely dark… As much as I think I look better tanned, I don't want to overdo it either. I'm darker than either of my siblings and they live in SoCal year round. Speaking of water related fun, I've also babysat my cute little cousin, PauPau. We played at the pool at my parent's who live a mile away. My sister, Aimee and I taught her to float and now she can sort of doggy paddle as well as swim backwards. She's actually better at swimming backwards. I got her this cute mermaid snorkel and fin set; I die (of happiness) a bit when I see her in it. Most days though, I usually eat out on the patio with Spring and if I'm engrossed in a book, I'll just sit there reading for hours. If there's no book, I like lounging in this big comfy chair and watching the Korean or Japanese TV channel they have down here. There are dramas! Subbed in English! For free! I'm not super consistent, but there are three I am following when I remember to turn on the TV.
Through everything, Spring is pretty much at my side (or am I at hers?). I spend more time in the yard and patio than inside. I tore out a bunch of unruly bushes and trimmed down the ones I left. I've weeded, fertilized and treated the soil around the roses I planted and trimmed. All the while, Spring is there, resting in the the cool freshly turned earth, playing fetch or tug with the roots I've dug up, and chasing after or running away from the squirts of water of my hose. When I go out to eat, or to get groceries she loves to come with. I know this because when I try to leave her, she hops the fence and runs to my car. I'm not too thrilled about that, but I love that she loves riding with me. She enjoys the top down and is so well behaved in the car, just curling up in the backseat (I know I need to get her a doggy seat belt).
One day, when Aimee and I went for Korean tofu (we do it a lot, but this was the first time), we tied her to a bench outside a restaurant where we could see her right through the big windows we sat near. They're head level windows and it was so funny, she'd sit on the bench and look at us, head tilted then go back to napping. Occasionally her head would pop up to see if we were still inside. She's gotten a lot better about being in public. She almost never barks, is never aggressive, always playful, and apparently I'm not alone in thinking her cute. A team of Korean athletes stopped and took pictures with her. I took her to this cafe last night, where you sit outside around a fire and dogs are allowed (it's called Lucky Dog Cafe) and she got along swimmingly with everyone and every dog that came near. I'm not sure of the purpose of having your dog there since they didn't have food for dogs (I thought they did), but it was fun watching her and introducing her to my friend I met with for dinner.
Speaking of non-doggie friends, I've been reconnecting with my jr. high best friend, Keri! It is totally awesome! She lives with her cousin, who is my brother's best friend, but I never really saw her when I'd come down. It was always family time, Aimee and Roger time, and then that was it, I had to go back to SF. She's great, and in a lot of ways neither of us have changed, it feels like the relationship just kind of went on pause for a while. We've grown up a lot, but still at our core we're the same. Keri is practical, responsible and I have always admired her level headed-ness. We disagree about lots of silly things (I just learned she didn't like the movie 5th Element, like how can you not like that?!) but at the same time we agree on more base and important things, like how we like to spend our time (outdoors! She double majored in horticulture and psych at UCI… and she's redoing her backyard and it looks sooooo awesome!). When I'm around her I feel really relaxed and freed from a lot of anxiety I developed in high school and in college. I've always been the kind of Phoebe ("Friends" reference) though more in a nerdy way than a new age masseuse way. It was jarring in high school and even college to discover you know, there were people who don't like me. I dunno, I guess I'm lucky in that I had a pretty awesome childhood full of love and acceptance. I feel like, Keri knows me, I can be me and not worry about her thinking I'm weird in a bad way. It is nice to return to that (not that I don't feel that way about Aimee as well), it feels like, "home."
Anyway, this week my two online classes for AAU started. I'm taking History of Fashion, which looks to be awesome! And 20th Century Art, a history class that, once we move away from the impressionists and the realists, looks to be uber painful. I hate stuff like Cubism, Abstraction, Expressionism, all the "isms." But I guess learning about it at the very least will help me articulate why I dislike it so greatly? And at the very best, maybe I'll come to see the value of Pollock's jizzing onto a canvas style? …lol Sorry, that was crude, but UHG! The saving graces of the class will be like, Dali, Dada, & Art Nouveau, I guess I shouldn't forget them.
At the moment Spring and I are at my parents since there is internet here. I'll be getting it come Tuesday at "my" house. Until then I'm working on class stuff here, and since I'm on the comp, why not an LJ entry right? Spring is curled up on a rug next to the bed I'm on, sighing, so I kinda take that as sign she needs a good gallop. TTYL, LJ!
Since coming home, I've spent a lot of time at my Grandma's house. I'm living there for the summer so that I'd have a place for myself and my things, and there is the added bonus for my family: Brie gets to clear out Grandma's stuff. My family is weird about death, my dead uncle's room went pretty much untouched for a year before I came in and turned it into an office for myself. My Grandma's house is the same one my Dad grew up in, a 1950s track home. It is small but, imo, lovely. It is a bit run down as my Grandma was nearly bedridden for I think 5 or 6 years. A live in nurse stayed with her, but there wasn't a lot of real maintenance or upkeep in areas outside of where they occupied after my uncle died a year ago. Even with his work, it wasn't in the same shape as when my Grandma took care of it.
So now it is up to me. I have cleaned out ancient nooks of the house discovering things both awesome and downright gross. The shower in her bedroom's private bath had grown some pretty intense mold in the short time since my grandma died. The water had been left dripping and there were just patches of black. Yuck! In the farther corners of the cabinetry in the kitchen there is just a lot of dust and accumulated grime; stickiness and dust mixed with accumulated dead insects. But out of this I have found treasure. One thing was a pair of hand paint plates wrapped in newspaper from the 70s. My great great aunt Aimee was an artist in New York. She hand painted platter ware and embellished with real gold. Outside of some really gorgeous bowls, we also have a dining set she made. It has "M" for Mayer, my Grandma's maiden name… Her family came from Alsace, which is like an uber German part of France. Anyway, I have been engrossed in all things related to heritage, cataloguing Victorian photographs of relatives from as far back as the late 1800s.These plates were a real find as they had been separated from the set of the set.
Outside of milling through photos, and clearing through the thousands of greeting cards my Grandma saved, I've also taken to reviving the back yard. I've said before that roses are really big in my family, for example my mother has 30 at least at her house. My Grandma also loved roses and unfortunately when her health declined so did the health of her garden. My uncle's idea of gardening was hacking things down to the ground and as a result of that and poor watering, only about four bushes remained. I was lucky, though! Across from my Grandma's house, were at least 20 rose bushes languishing waiting for care! Another old lady, Carroll, who I'd know growing up, had roses in her front garden, surrounding her house and in her backyard. She died some years ago and the other people who lived there paid no attention to them, so a lot had died. But recently a couple bought the property and decided to tear it all down. Since everything was going, they were extremely generous and let me take as many of the rose bushes as I could carry across the street. I only got 10 and I'm afraid two aren't going to make the transplanting. But still it is nice to see some rose bushes back in the yard.
My typical morning goes like this:
I wake up around 8am, open the curtains in the living room and go the back yard. I open the sliding glass door and there is my wiggly, my Ms. Spring. After some rubbing, I leash her up and take her out around the neighborhood on my bike. We come home and both have breakfast (though I'm usually picking up the poops in the yard while she's eating). I water the roses and the trees, Spring will drink a bit from the hose and then we play fetch. At that point, the day deviates from any kind of set schedule. Sometimes I pick up Aimee and we head back to my place for lunch and watercoloring. I've been the the beach a few times, though I'm ashamed to say, not as much as I would have liked. I've kind of gotten extremely dark… As much as I think I look better tanned, I don't want to overdo it either. I'm darker than either of my siblings and they live in SoCal year round. Speaking of water related fun, I've also babysat my cute little cousin, PauPau. We played at the pool at my parent's who live a mile away. My sister, Aimee and I taught her to float and now she can sort of doggy paddle as well as swim backwards. She's actually better at swimming backwards. I got her this cute mermaid snorkel and fin set; I die (of happiness) a bit when I see her in it. Most days though, I usually eat out on the patio with Spring and if I'm engrossed in a book, I'll just sit there reading for hours. If there's no book, I like lounging in this big comfy chair and watching the Korean or Japanese TV channel they have down here. There are dramas! Subbed in English! For free! I'm not super consistent, but there are three I am following when I remember to turn on the TV.
Through everything, Spring is pretty much at my side (or am I at hers?). I spend more time in the yard and patio than inside. I tore out a bunch of unruly bushes and trimmed down the ones I left. I've weeded, fertilized and treated the soil around the roses I planted and trimmed. All the while, Spring is there, resting in the the cool freshly turned earth, playing fetch or tug with the roots I've dug up, and chasing after or running away from the squirts of water of my hose. When I go out to eat, or to get groceries she loves to come with. I know this because when I try to leave her, she hops the fence and runs to my car. I'm not too thrilled about that, but I love that she loves riding with me. She enjoys the top down and is so well behaved in the car, just curling up in the backseat (I know I need to get her a doggy seat belt).
One day, when Aimee and I went for Korean tofu (we do it a lot, but this was the first time), we tied her to a bench outside a restaurant where we could see her right through the big windows we sat near. They're head level windows and it was so funny, she'd sit on the bench and look at us, head tilted then go back to napping. Occasionally her head would pop up to see if we were still inside. She's gotten a lot better about being in public. She almost never barks, is never aggressive, always playful, and apparently I'm not alone in thinking her cute. A team of Korean athletes stopped and took pictures with her. I took her to this cafe last night, where you sit outside around a fire and dogs are allowed (it's called Lucky Dog Cafe) and she got along swimmingly with everyone and every dog that came near. I'm not sure of the purpose of having your dog there since they didn't have food for dogs (I thought they did), but it was fun watching her and introducing her to my friend I met with for dinner.
Speaking of non-doggie friends, I've been reconnecting with my jr. high best friend, Keri! It is totally awesome! She lives with her cousin, who is my brother's best friend, but I never really saw her when I'd come down. It was always family time, Aimee and Roger time, and then that was it, I had to go back to SF. She's great, and in a lot of ways neither of us have changed, it feels like the relationship just kind of went on pause for a while. We've grown up a lot, but still at our core we're the same. Keri is practical, responsible and I have always admired her level headed-ness. We disagree about lots of silly things (I just learned she didn't like the movie 5th Element, like how can you not like that?!) but at the same time we agree on more base and important things, like how we like to spend our time (outdoors! She double majored in horticulture and psych at UCI… and she's redoing her backyard and it looks sooooo awesome!). When I'm around her I feel really relaxed and freed from a lot of anxiety I developed in high school and in college. I've always been the kind of Phoebe ("Friends" reference) though more in a nerdy way than a new age masseuse way. It was jarring in high school and even college to discover you know, there were people who don't like me. I dunno, I guess I'm lucky in that I had a pretty awesome childhood full of love and acceptance. I feel like, Keri knows me, I can be me and not worry about her thinking I'm weird in a bad way. It is nice to return to that (not that I don't feel that way about Aimee as well), it feels like, "home."
Anyway, this week my two online classes for AAU started. I'm taking History of Fashion, which looks to be awesome! And 20th Century Art, a history class that, once we move away from the impressionists and the realists, looks to be uber painful. I hate stuff like Cubism, Abstraction, Expressionism, all the "isms." But I guess learning about it at the very least will help me articulate why I dislike it so greatly? And at the very best, maybe I'll come to see the value of Pollock's jizzing onto a canvas style? …lol Sorry, that was crude, but UHG! The saving graces of the class will be like, Dali, Dada, & Art Nouveau, I guess I shouldn't forget them.
At the moment Spring and I are at my parents since there is internet here. I'll be getting it come Tuesday at "my" house. Until then I'm working on class stuff here, and since I'm on the comp, why not an LJ entry right? Spring is curled up on a rug next to the bed I'm on, sighing, so I kinda take that as sign she needs a good gallop. TTYL, LJ!