A. California notes, continued

Whenever I ride the bus in Berkeley, ten people jump up to offer me a seat. It could be that I am nearly always with my mother. She doesn't look fragile, but she does use a cane and she certainly is of a Medicare eligible age and so people rise for the both of us.

I have reached a mature age, finally. Perhaps other signs of maturity will soon follow.

Tonight, on board the Bart train bound for downtown SF (and therefore to my hotel), I sat back, wanting very much to reflect. To mull things over. And smile at the recollections. It was not to be. Four rowdy youths absolutely dominated the entire space of the Bart car. They weren't vulgar (unless you find vagina jokes vulgar) or threatening in any way. They were (NCU) students, done with watching some ball game or other, heading out for... various things. One of them definitely wanted to lure a girl to bed (his choice of words). The remaining two appeared to merely want to talk loudly.

The rest of the people in the Bart car bonded by darting meaningful gazes at one another. I should have made a youtube video out of this, I tell my seatmate -- it may have gone viral! 


Still earlier? Well, there was the Bay Bridge outside my hotel widow. Stunning at sunrise. 





I could not sleep after I rose to look outside. And now, predictably, I am too tired to finish the story of the day.

Here's an idea: I'll do the ending when I get back to Madison tonight. One can't be rushed with a recount of a rich day.

California notes

A long long time ago, when I was just done with college, I considered coming to Berkeley for grad school. Of the places I was accepted, it turned out to be my second choice. Almost, but not quite right. Too far from Europe.

I think that was a good decision for me. Even though I've sometimes wondered -- what would it be like to live in California? I mean, what would it be like to be in this kind of a climate? This kind of culture? Among this many people? This close to the ocean?


I wake up to a foggy morning. I mean really foggy. I zip up my fleece and feel grateful for my scarf.






The commute back to the airport and then, by Bart, to San Francisco proper...






... is a bit of a long haul and I decide to switch things around a little and stay the next two nights (as opposed to just one night) in downtown SF. Sure, I have a predawn flight to catch on Sunday, but that's Sunday. Let me get out of the airport area already and spend my time close to where I want to be.

There is a terrific deal at the Harbor Court Hotel, just by the Embarcadero (for those who track the Bay area) and every time I call, the deal just gets better. That seals it. First thing on the agenda: off to the Harbor Court to drop off my bag there.


The room isn't ready (well what a surprise -- I arrive just after 9 a.m.) so I take a little walk in the city. A partly hidden by fog city.






But a lovely city nonetheless because, for one thing, it already made friends with spring some weeks ago.











As long as I'm trotting around downtown SF, I may as well give you a few postcards from my walk. It was a rather random walk, though it did have a goal of sorts  -- to get up high enough to see the Golden Gate. A trip here cannot be complete without a peek at the bridge of all bridges.

So first, a stroll through Chinatown,






then a climb up...






...to Coit tower and from there you can see it -- the Golden Gate, rising in that stunning way above the wisps of morning fog:






Of course, there is also that 'other' bridge to admire, the one over the Bay...






Okay. My morning is complete. Now, is my room ready? Not yet? No matter. I'm off to Berkeley to meet up with my mom.

Berkeley. I've changed my mind about Berkeley so many times already that I can hardly understand why this one community puts me in such a spin of contrasting emotions. The first time I visited it, I didn't like it. Later, I liked it. Then, I really didn't like it. But since my last visit here a year ago, I finally began to give it a good consideration. Looking at it from, say, my mom's point of view. And this is when I truly started to like it quite a bit.





After some minutes in the place where she lives, we set out for lunch at Slow. It's the kind of place where once you order your sandwich or salad and sit down, it's hard to leave. The sun beats down on your back (nearly all the tables are outside), stories and recollections flow to you from across the table, the ice tea is refreshing and has raspberries floating in it -- it's a life is good kind of place. Or, is it that when I am there, I am acutely aware that life is indeed good?







We then walk to get an ice cream cone at my mom's favorite ice cream place (what a deal!)...






...and then for a quick coffee at Peet's because somehow this morning I forgot to have breakfast and with it my daily shot of caffeine.

My mom is still game for more walking and this surprises me and pleases me all at the same time. We stroll through the Berkeley campus which is quite beautiful and I smile to myself as I think how close I came to attending school here.






After, a quick bus ride brings us to my mom's place again.

She has arranged dinner for us, along with her good good friends, at a local Thai restaurant.






My mom is turning 90 this year and she calls this her birthday celebration, even as her real birthday isn't until fall.  Not that she wants a fuss. That's not her. Like Ed, she'll insist on keeping the birthday theme to a minimum. But, the kind restaurant people bring out some sticky rice and mango and in there somewhere there is a candle and in my mind, it is a fitting end to a very lovely evening.






The Bart train -- that wonderful thing that I wish Wisconsin would embrace already -- takes me back to SF and from my hotel room I watch lights set the Bay Bridge aglow...


 


...and I think about how nothing about SF or Berkeley is home for me and yet, because of these familial circumstances, I don't feel like a visitor here. I tell people -- I'm here to see my mom. She lives here. And that makes it almost an extension of my home.

outsmarted

February this year was looking to be a no flight month for me (a rare thing), until I realized that a year had passed since I'd seen my mother. She lives in Berkeley. Is that ever a bonus! Here I am, writing about the imminence of spring while blizzards rage outside and there's my mom, in Berkeley, where spring happened weeks ago. And so on this last day of this short, but in many ways very long month, I'm taking off for California.

After a breakfast in the front room, with a view toward the snow covered trees…





…I get ready to set out at once for work, but too, I take with me a packed bag for an evening set of flights to San Francisco.

During our breakfast minutes at the farmhouse, Ed and I consider the braininess of mice. We have this plastic trap. It's a simple device: a mouse enters in pursuit of a dab of peanut butter, the thing tilts and slams shut. In the now nearly two years of my life at the farmhouse, this little contraption has caught nearly a dozen critters (mainly in late fall, but this year, in the winter as well).

Until this week. Every evening, we set the thing downstairs. Isis is indifferent to the whole project. Once he waved his tail and smacked the trap shut, but mostly he just steers clear of the whole thing. He'll chase mice, but on his own time, when the mood is right and the air is sweet and the flowers are blooming outside.

So we set this trap and sure enough, in the middle of the night, we hear the slam of it shutting tight. Except in the morning, we find that the trap is empty. Peanut butter eaten. Mouse, filled with our organic crunchy stuff -- nowhere in sight. This has happened five times in a row now. Five times!

So how could it be? I propose several ideas: maybe it's this, maybe it's that. Ed, the engineer among us, rejects them all as physically impossible. The only answer, he tells me, is that the mouse is smarter than us. The mouse knows to go in and not mind that the box slams shut. Because he (or she) knows that after feasting, it's possible (I mean it has to be possible) to turn around and lunge for the entrance, causing it to open just enough so the he (or she) can exit.

After five days of feeding the mouse, we conclude that we need a smarter trap, because the intelligence of this animal far exceeds that of the human who invented our heretofore infallible device.


Onto Berkeley. And I write this with great relief because I nearly missed the second of my two flights. Not because of the usual February culprit (bad weather), but because of a malfunctioning gate door at the Detroit airport. And if you're wondering what I'm doing in Detroit when my destination is in the opposite direction, well that's just the reality of flights these days: if you take what's cheap out there you're likely to find yourself flying in circles.





And because I have become that kind of a cheap person, I will not post this on the expensive in flight WiFi, but will wait until I arrive at my San Francisco airport hotel (the very affordable Hilton Garden Inn). So technically I can't say I am yet in Berkeley and not even really in San Francisco, but I am on the west coast when I click the "Publish" button and that means that I no longer need the snowshoes, the cap, the gloves (I do keep a scarf, just in case). Hello, California! Thank you so much for warming up for me this weekend!

let's go

One more homage to this winter and the snows it brought for us.

Wake up to a continuing snowfall. You think it's beautiful if it comes in December, but tedious when it comes in late February. Me, i think it's beautiful even now. Even if it means I need to clear the pathway to the farmhouse no fewer than five times today.






We eat breakfast in the front room. It's a place where you can sit back, look out at the snow capped trees and think yourself to be pretty near heaven itself.






My work day is long. But as I pull into our yet once more snow covered dirt road, I think -- maybe there's time still. And Ed tells me -- there's time still!

We go out to ski. It's dusky dusk, but we're determined.






The snow keeps falling. There are no visible trails. We love it. Onwards!



(Ocean author)




(Ed)


I am sure that this is our last spin in the local park: I'm leaving tomorrow evening to see my mom in Berkeley and by the time I come back at the end of the weekend, I see that even this last snowstorm will be a thing of the past. The great final melt will be underway. But right now, tonight, there is this beautiful cover of snow.

And so we ski as if there is no tomorrow. The snow is sticky and wet, but it doesn't matter. We ski in deep appreciation of the skiing that we had this year. A last run is as good as the first run.






After -- a quick supper of whatever I could find in the fridge.






Tomorrow, I have a long work day followed by a long set of travel hours. I'll post here, on Ocean once I get to San Francisco.

wind

Evening darkness came so early today that I had to look up daylight savings time for 2013. The hope being that it would come soon. (And it will: March 10th for the States.)

It's one of those days when it just feels dark outside no matter what time the sun sets. I cannot complain about the thermometer reading: 31 degrees at dusk. But weather.com tells me it feels like 18 out there and though I avoid having someone tell me what I should feel, I have to admit -- that's a pretty accurate assessment. Maybe 8 would be an even better guess as to how it felt walking to the donkey car after work.

The wind right now is brutal.

Of course, it's tough to give you a photo of a winter wind. There are the shivering trees. And the blowing snows across country roads (our snow cover isn't substantial right now, but what little there is blows right across, as if being chased by some holy terror). But the howl, the force of the wind is far greater than that. I'm thinking maybe I should detour just by a block or two and swing toward lake Monona, for a brief look out there.



(yes, there is a lonely figure braving the winds in the middle of the lake)

It was so cold that I lasted all of five seconds.



(and a hut with a fisherman in it)


Two photos and I am back inside the donkey car, thanking the little engine for producing a good, warm stream of air.

At home, I can hear the wind howling, loud and strong. Snow is coming down now. Or coming at us, in a horizontal direction. It would be a perfect day for staying put, not venturing anywhere at all, except, our town has a Common Council meeting tonight and both Ed and I want to present our reasons for stalling development just to the east of us. So after a quick supper of eggs and various veggies and a salad (the only color you'll get here today)...





...we bundle up and emboldened, we set out. At the meeting, we say our stuff, listen to the vote (it's never in our favor, but we're chipping away, at least at the edges) and then, finally, we retreat to the farmhouse right as the blizzard-like snows add fresh layers of thick white stuff to the landscape.

Four deer stand by the road and watch the old donkey car struggle up the snow covered pavement. The wind continues to cause the trees to shiver. The night sounds of owls will be muted tonight, indecipherable. Instead, we'll listen to a loud roar, a gust, another roar. A concert of winter noises. I'm hoping it's the season's crescendo. That in a day or two, maybe three, we'll have moved on. To spring.

leftovers

For a good part of the day I thought the best I could do today, indeed, the only thing that I could post about today would be breakfast. Such as it was.





Because  immediately after that, I had dental appointment number two (out of the needed three, all in the matter of one tooth). For which I allocated an hour. It took three hours. Three hours! For no good reason, except that things moved rather slowly in that office today. Very slowly.

After, it was a gallop to get to work on time and then of course I was terribly behind with everything and it was in that frenzied set of hours that I thought -- what the hell. It'll be about breakfast.

I came home as the sun disappeared to the west. Ed was winding down his engineering project and he was ready for a break. Want to make ginger ale from scratch?
Make it -- okay. Drink it -- no.
Why?
Too much sugar! I say as he reads off the ingredients.
We can cut the sugar in half. Or more...
Then it becomes ginger, water and lemon.

It's not a big undertaking. I grate some ginger, twist out a bit of lemon juice and Ed throws it together with yeast and (a decreased amount of) sugar and water.





Outcome? Ask me in 24 hours. I cannot imagine it to be anything but strange and yet it is very calming to be finishing the day with making something so inconsequential as ginger ale.


Dinner is not a worry: we have plenty of leftovers. Leftover chicken soup. Leftover beans and shrimp. And a fresh salad and then a freshly roasted whole head of cauliflower because sometimes, you just crave cauliflower. And of course, you crave it all the more when you read in the paper that this very diet of foods, foods that you love more than nearly any other foods on the planet are what the world calls the Mediterranean diet and BTW it's good for you!

So, our supper of leftovers...





... on this otherwise tedious and only in rare flashes delightfully playful day.

night owl

We hear her almost every night. I think her song comes from the west of the house. Ed thinks she's to the east. We've never seen our night owl.

Lately, much of Ed's restless night time has been given over to an engineering project he has been working on. He'll head over to the sheep shed when I can't keep my eyes open anymore. Almost always I wake to hear him come in a few hours later. And so it was last night -- at around 1, he comes into the room, happy to tell me about the moon. You were right -- it's almost as bright as daylight out there. (I'd been telling him how beautiful it is when a full moon -- or, in this case a one day short of a full moon -- comes out over snowy white fields... today, we have out there this rare and perfect winter night.)

I can't resist stepping out. Just a coat thrown over my shoulders -- it isn't really cold outside. Twenty degrees maybe. It's not easy to take photos, especially without a tripod and yet I have to try. Here's one. The moon's to the right, up high. The shadows are long. The air is still.






A handful of hours later it is the cat's turn to be restless. As he moves from one side of the bed to the other, I take a look out the window. 6:30. The sun is about to come up over the horizon.

It's been a while since I've gone out for a sunrise. Too cold to do my usual -- hop on Rosie and scoot toward the lake. But not too cold to get into the donkey car and spin it in that direction. Past one of my favorite fields here -- always serene, always breathtaking, even in predawn light.






And then toward Lake Waubesa. I stand for a long while looking out at the frozen waters. I am not the only one up and about: a few solitary fishermen are setting up their station. I watch them move slowly from one point to another. The sky is turning lighter and finally the sun breaks through.





It's funny how quickly the sun moves once it's up and climbing (so to speak). By the time I turn the donkey car in the direction of home, the fields have stripes of gold and the forest has taken on the deepest orange colors. This is almost always a good time to mingle with the deer herds and sure enough, I come across this stately animal, just before she takes one of those famous high leaps and disappears from sight.






And so breakfast comes rather late in this Sunday story that is more about the night than the day that follows.






Not that the day is inconsequential -- no, not at all. Yoga. That. With my yoga buddy. And then, because it is so springlike outside (mid thirties and sunny!), I coax Ed into one more spin on skis. No snow pants for me. Not even a cap. Just the sublime feeling of air and sun, announcing the season ahead  of us, letting go of the one we're all so tired of.






And as long as we're so close to spring, we make a quick trip to Farm & Fleet. Ed needs a saw blade, we need a furnace filter and in addition, for once Ed is willing to do clothes shopping. In his usual way, he picks up (with just a few guiding hints from me) all that he claims he needs for the next year. Or more. The bill, including the blade and the filter: $96.

Evening now. My daughter is here. We're eating a supper of shrimp and beans, watching the Oscars.










If I'm lucky, I'll stay awake for the entire presentation. That rarely happens, but I'm feeling rather night owlish lately.

turning the corner

With the temperatures at freezing, I consider this to be the beginning of winter's end. And that just puts a jolly spin on things.

Jolly enough to get me to the early morning yoga class.

Jolly enough to eat (break out from the routine!) a granola breakfast with Ed (who breaks out of his same old and joins me in the granola madness).





People down south may wonder what all the fuss is about: 32 degrees and I'm cheerful? It reminds me of the scene in Silver Linings where the judges score a dance... oh, I can't give that away! just go see the movie and you'll understand.

It's all relative.






In the ten day forecast for my home town, only two days show highs that don't have a "3" as a first digit and those are the two days when I wont be here!

Could it mean that winter is fizzing away? Like the last bubbles of a Cava that you let stand opened overnight? A little there, but no longer very assertive?

Thinking that this may be the last possible day (or at least weekend) of skiing, we go out to our nearby trails for a good hour spin through the familiar paths.

The day is lovely! Just cold enough to keep the snow more or less in place (and to keep the ice fishermen happy)...






...but also warm enough to open up the jacket and let the scarf fly!





 I leave you with this thought: winter may be over and done with.

good natured

It's not as if Ed enjoys being photographed. At some level, I'm not sure he fully understands why I bring the camera to the breakfast table every morning.






Or, if we're both outside, why I point it at him instead of... elsewhere.






But he doesn't object. He has a quiet and gentle disposition and he doesn't protest the inconsequential.

Today, since I worked at home, I felt especially that much of my off-work thoughts drifted toward our quirky curious (and in many ways so conventional) life together. And maybe this is because we are actually scheduled to go out on what you might call a date -- movie and a dinner (better value in that order). And so I thought about how rarely we do that and how mostly this is my fault: I've always loved cooking a meal in the evening with someone there in the background to whom I might make an occasional remark. It's such a good way to end a day! And so when asks -- do you want to go out? -- I almost always say no, thank you.

But one must step out of one's comfort zone occasionally and so I pick an Oscar nominee that has a high chance of appealing to me ('Silver Linings Playbook') and out we go.


(Later) And it could not have been a better night. True, I cry my way, loudly, uncontrollably through the last five minutes of the movie, but if you've seen it, you'll surely understand why. Dinner? We drive down to a Taste of India -- a small place with very typical very good very Tandoori Masala kind of cuisine...





So you see a lot of Ed in today's photos. It's not intentional. But it is as it really is.

the week in review

My work week, like your work week, doesn't end until tomorrow (and actually, mine is rather fluid, often spilling over into odd days and even odder hours). But except for rare Fridays, I do not usually teach on that day. And so Thursday feels like the end of one week and Friday feels like the beginning of the next.

As my "work week" came to a close, I thought how unpredictable it all is. You start the week anticipating nothing more that a few tight hours, a handful of long days, and maybe one small screwup somewhere along the way.

You don't bargain for a crushed back, a lost vote before the Plan Commission, a tooth that falls apart before your eyes... and so on and so forth.

But you also can't know that at the end of it all, you may well come out whole. And if and when you do, it feels quite humbling.

So here I am, humbled.

 As for the trivial aspects of the day, I'll give you, of course, breakfast -- note that I trimmed Ed's beard, finally!






Then, a shot of the iced-over dirt driveway, in the glow of the morning sun...






And finally, at the end of the day, the week, at the end of it all, a pot of home made chicken soup. For the comforting elements that it provides.