I left my heart in San Francisco

Morris and I got away for a six-day vacation (which included Memorial Day weekend in there), and we visited San Francisco. We stayed at the Cornell Hotel de France on Bush Street, right near the corner of Powell Street (which is a cable car route). It was a beautiful hotel, and we enjoyed our stay and our breakfasts there. We flew out there suuuuuuuper early on Thursday morning, then spent some time eating a nice lunch in North Beach and shopping in Chinatown.

We spent Friday afternoon at Alcatraz—I can’t entirely describe it as a pleasant visit, since the place is horrid, but the audio tour was fascinating. And even though I was having some health issues (thanks, rheumatoid arthritis!) and was using a cane, the whole thing was made doable since the ferry staff allowed me to sit rather than standing in line, and there was a tram and an elevator available on Alcatraz Island, all of which made it navigable. And after we returned to Fisherman’s Wharf, we lucked into a free lunch. Don’t tell me there’s no such thing—we both had an appetizer and an entree, plus a (non-alcoholic) beverage, which would have rung up around $75, in exchange for our opinions on the food, service, and pricing. (Okay — it wasn’t 100% free, since we left a nice tip for the server, but still!)

On Saturday, we hopped into a van with 10 other customers for a day tour with Incredible Adventures, during which we visited Muir Woods and two wineries near Sonoma, the town of Sonoma, and Sausalito. Jill, our driver and guide, was phenomenal (and an excellent driver), and we seriously loved Muir Woods and the Robledo Family Winery, and we were thrilled to meet up with my sweet friend Tanita Davis (author extraordinaire) and her husband, David, while we were in the town of Sonoma, but the whole day was really wonderful!

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Sunday, we went to Golden Gate Park to visit the Japanese Tea Garden. We caught a tour run by a volunteer from San Francisco City Guides (free tours run by volunteers out of the SF Public Library, donation optional to keep the program running). Our guide was Jay Streets (accompanied by his goldendoodle, Norton), and he knew SO MUCH about the history of the gardens and about the Hagiwara family, Japanese immigrants who did much to improve the gardens and who ran the Japanese Tea House until they were interned in camps during WWII. The stories and details were phenomenal, and put things in historical context, reminding us of the dangers of not studying history.

The first two photos above were taken in the Japanese Tea Garden, and the third was taken outside the De Young Museum.

That night, we went out for a really nice dinner at Café Claude, where we sat at the bar for dinner (we made a late decision and got reservations, but for the bar). We had fabulous cocktails, a good meal, and a really enjoyable time listening to the live jazz trio that was playing in the bistro. Definitely a nice night out.

The next morning, we joined a scheduled tour of Chinatown with Linda Lee of All About Chinatown tours. She came highly recommended by one of Morris’s tai chi students, and she was decidedly entertaining and knowledgeable, though I have to add a caveat that there were parts of the tour that made me feel a bit uncomfortable, since we strolled through a few groceries as if we were peering into an aquarium or something (“look at the ‘weird herbs’ and the live frogs!”). We finished with lunch at a local restaurant, including dim sum and a few other dishes.

Tuesday was our last day in San Francisco, but since we had a red-eye leaving around 11 p.m., we had a full day to spend in town. We kept it super low-key, first at Joy’s Place on Post Street for coffee (excellent lattes, excellent music, no rush at all), and then at the Palace Hotel for cocktails (scotch for Morris, rosé bubbles for me). We visited some other places as well, but it was an easy day and one of favorites.

CHEERS!

Cocktails at the Palace Hotel

It has taken me just over a week to get around to writing about it because I’ve been pretty wiped out since getting back, but I’m finally getting my feet back under myself.

Small luxuries

Let’s start with massage: I made myself a promise at the start of 2018 to do better at taking care of myself—my physical and mental health—and I went and signed up for a membership at Hand & Stone (one of several large chains that offers monthly memberships—I picked this one because it was closest to my house). When I did it, I felt like I was being extravagant. Like, perhaps, I wasn’t worth it. Even though I knew for a fact that massage really helps with my fibromyalgia, and can lower my stress levels, thereby benefiting both the fibro and my rheumatoid arthritis.

I promised myself I’d just try it for six months and then see what I wanted to do . . . and here I am, something like 16 months later. Today I paid extra for a CBD oil massage and I swear I’ve never felt so relaxed. Even the usual massage helps, though—it reduces the number of adhesions I have (basically scar tissue on my muscle fascia) and helps to release many of the knots that develop pretty much everywhere. As a result, I can turn my head further to each side, stretch my arms over my head on occasion, and more. Some of these things have improved over time, month by month, as I go for massages regularly. And some of my symptoms have at least not gotten any worse.

One of the other differences between January of 2018 and today, though, has been a shift in my thinking. I understand that massage isn’t free. And while it’s not super expensive at about $60 per month, it’s definitely something that still counts as a luxury. Because Merriam-Webster defines luxury as a condition of abundance or great ease and comfort. To which I say HELL YEAH, a massage is a luxury. It is also, now, for me, not something I’m unworthy of; it has become instead one of my necessities. Because the age of 55, I have started to embrace the idea that I deserve to live with grace and ease.

Let me digress and back up for a minute: Over the years, I’ve been certain that I needed to work hard, and work a lot, and struggle. I needed to hustle, to prove myself, to try to keep up with others, to make a mark. And I suppose I partly did that — put myself through college and law school, had a job as a lawyer and a house and two kids and a dog and a cat. I did all the cooking and cleaning, all the mowing and landscaping, all the sewing of Halloween costumes, scrambling like a hamster in a wheel, and in the end, I got sick with one, and then two, autoimmune conditions.

I couldn’t work a full-time job anymore, so rather than do nothing, I embarked on a writing career. And there was a time when my network was amazing, you guys, and my blog was one of the top-read blogs in children’s literature. And then stuff happened (my now ex got cancer, and then got better, and then we eventually got divorced), and it all sort of slipped away when I wasn’t looking. Then I met my wonderful Morris and fell in love and started to pay more attention to energy—not just “how much energy do I have today?” but also to the idea of qi energy and feng shui and reiki and more, and started to see that there might be ways of living that were more “in flow.”

This is partly why I decided to purchase the local honey from Mystical Blossoms, a local herbology business run by sisters Jody and Michaline—it’s from local bees, raised in a sustainable manner, with lavender oil added to it, and reiki done during the process. This honey is admittedly more expensive than a similar sized jar of mass-produced honey of indistinct origin at the grocery store. I also require less than half the amount of this honey to sweeten my tea, and the taste is amazing. I get the added benefit of supporting a local, woman-owned business (and if you’ve been around here for a while, you know I love being able to support local businesses and woman-owned businesses, so this is dear to my heart), some delicious tea, and the added benefit of feeling like my afternoon cup of tea is a true luxury. (The mug was a gift from my daughter Sara, and was purchased by her from a woman-owned local-to-Charleston business at the Farmer’s Market, and I LOVE IT.)

And as for Global Entry . . . well, it costs $100. And I know that I don’t “need” it in order to travel home from other countries, though it does include TSA pre-check, so it doubles as a help for domestic travel as well. But my sweetheart and I have at least two trips planned in the next two years, and the idea of not having to stand in the customs line for close to an hour (as we did the last two times we re-entered the US) appeals strongly to me. Especially since air travel usually causes my joints to become super painful (something to do with the combo of RA and pressurized cabins), so long periods of standing immediately after deplaning can be debilitating. And as I said earlier, I’m working toward embracing the idea that I deserve to live with grace and ease.

And I believe that you deserve that, too.

Gee, but it's great to be back home

And yes, I am old enough that I am actually quoting from a Simon & Garfunkel song from 1970. The song is “Keep the Customer Satisfied”, and it’s off Bridge Over Troubled Water. Here’s the first stanza:

“Gee but it’s great to be back home
Home is where I want to be.
I’ve been on the road so long my friend,
And if you came along
I know you couldn’t disagree.”

I’m just hoping not to have been slandered and libeled everywhere I go. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, click on through to YouTube and have a listen.

Dogwood from a rest area in North Carolina

I am super happy to report that Dad is continuing to improve after his esophagectomy (esophageal cancer is no joke, yo, but he is likely to beat it as a result of the excellent treatment he has received at MUSC in Charleston, SC). His feeding tube came out on Tuesday (huzzah!) since he did such a good job tapering off of it. And he’s back on the golf course as I type this.

I am now back in New Jersey, where spring is still in its earlier stages—I feel somewhat lucky to have spent six weeks in the south and experienced mid- to late-spring in South Carolina, only to drive home again to where spring is just entering its middle phase. Of course, I literally drove through miles of “tree sex” in northern North Carolina yesterday on my way here, where the pollen was so thick it looked like a haze. Profligate trees!

Today I’m working on matting some of the smaller pieces I painted while in South Carolina. I think they are looking really great —these are in 8” square mats, with 4” square cutouts. The two on the left are chakra rainbows (which is why red is on the bottom). You may or may not have realized that the colors for the chakras from root to crown are the same as the seven colors of the rainbow, ROY G BIV: red orange yellow green blue indigo violet. But in a naturally occurring rainbow, red is on the top of the arc, and violet on the inside/bottom. I painted these the reflect the chakra alignment (though I guess you could flip the one that is just stripes to suit yourself). The pieces on the right are abstract landscapes.

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The next step is packaging them in sleeves. Is it weird that I ran out of steam and just can’t even with that right now? Possibly. But it was a long drive home after a long time away, so I’m giving myself a break.

The most important thing is that you stay safe

I’ve been away on a lovely vacation with my husband, and we got back late on Sunday evening. It was a wonderful trip, starting with a stay in Rome and then a cruise of the western Mediterranean that stopped in Cannes and Corsica, France, Barcelona and Mallorca, Spain, and Sardinia, Italy. And we loved every minute we were away. The photo below is from our visit to Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, still under construction for the next 8 years or so.

Oh, the light and air inside this space was just magical!

And now we are home, and preparing for the Pitman Craft Show this Saturday (assuming it takes place). But mostly, we are worrying about everyone in the path of Hurricane Florence as the storm heads toward the East Coast. Please take this storm seriously and take care of yourself, if it’s coming anywhere near you. And it seems only right to defer any further discussion of things like my vacation or the craft show, given the coming storm. Because as it says at the top of this post, the most important thing is that you stay safe.

Back from a Sedona vacation - and what a trip it was!

My husband Morris and I booked a trip to Sedona a while back, blithely assuming that our construction project would be done by now (it was supposed to start in early January, but with 18" of frost in the ground . . . ). Our excellent builders managed to work around our absence, though, so we came home to an insulated, dry-walled space despite being away. More on the space in the next post!

We arrived in Sedona late Tuesday afternoon and settled into the AirBnB we'd booked: a bedroom in a log home. The hosts run this particular location like an actual bed & breakfast, with us having access to a downstairs bedroom and exclusive use of the nearby bathroom, and with excellent breakfasts each morning. Plus snacks in our room, bottled water and iced tea, and a nice bottle of wine. And a hot tub. Bliss.

Inside Lower Antelope Canyon, in Page, Arizona

On Wednesday, we drove three hours north, skirting the edge of the Grand Canyon to get to to Page, Arizona, where we saw the dam that makes Lake Powell and grabbed lunch before joining our Navajo guide to visit Lower Antelope Canyon. It's a slot canyon that is absolutely gorgeous in all respects due to the workings of water and wind. And we have so many fantastic photos, and none of them completely do justice to the place.

We ended our trip with dinner at Criollo on San Francisco Street in Flagstaff: shrimp tacos for Morris, pork belly tacos for me. Super delicious, as they are part of the SLO movement: sustainable, local, and organic. The food was so so good.

A twisted juniper tree in a vortex area on Bell Rock.

Our Thursday was pretty evenly split between hiking (interspersed with meditation, tai chi, and qigong) the Bell Rock trail, where there are many energy vortices, and shopping in town. We love hiking out there, and I'm guessing we'd be far more outdoorsy if we lived there. Despite air temps in the 60s, it was sunny and warm enough to not need coats or even sweaters during our hike, so we upped our Vitamin D levels a bit while hiking and then while walking through town. Most of our time in town was us browsing through art galleries to see what we could see, think about pricing, and so forth. So. Much. Fun. And we finished the day in the hot tub, looking at the Milky Way and spotting the occasional shooting star.

Spotted on a t-shirt at the Artists Cooperative in Jerome, AZ.

On Friday, we went to Jerome for the day: a ghost town, a former copper mining town, now full of galleries and cute shops and restaurants and bars. We visited the Hill Top Deli (great sandwiches!) and saw lots of art, chatted with gallery owners, and I even bought a wee painting by Michele Cokl Naylor, which I will put in my studio this weekend. Until then, the painting is wrapped up.

Beautiful even in the rain.

Saturday was a rainy one, but still lovely. And Sunday was a full day of travel, between driving, flying, the time change, and the time zone change. And when we came home, we found a cat who was happy to have us home, a closer-to-done addition, and our very own bed.