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One Year Later

July 20, 2015

I can point to the day when we decided to move here, I think (or at least decided that it was something we'd very seriously consider were Kendrick to be offered a job at the end of his internship). It was the day that we drove out, on a reader's recommendation, to the Whale City Bakery in Davenport, and ate huevos rancheros and muffins, and then wandered up the coast and found an abalone factory and a little house where people who were selling pottery and having a party on the front porch invited us in for wine and strawberries. Eventually we ended up at a practically deserted beach, where our son rolled around pretending to be a crocodile and I laid down and fell asleep in the sand without even meaning to.

We went back yesterday - to the bakery and to the beach - but this time there were four of us. Goldie did her best to consume an entire beach's worth of sand while Indy built sandcastles with a kid he met down by the water and told us about moats and seaweed and sharks, and - once again - I fell asleep without even meaning to. When I woke up, though, I had a fever, and on the drive back I felt worse and worse.

When we got home I crawled onto the couch, and turned on the TV for Indy, then started trying to figure out what we were going to do for dinner. When you're sick as the parent of very small kids, you don't really get to peace out, you know? I mean, of course your partner picks up the slack, but still: someone will need something, or want you and only you, or whatever, and you don't get to do what you want to do, which is lay there catatonic and stare at the Kardashians.

My Looks

Beachin

July 17, 2015

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The weather here is funny. It'll be all 90 degrees and clear blue skies in our back yard, and then we get in the car and drive twenty minutes away, and all of a sudden it's 50 and overcast. Last summer, I remember the first time we drove from the South Bay into San Francisco, our son looked out the window and said, "Mom, look! The clouds are falling down." Which is an incredibly creepy and Stephen King-story-ish thing to hear a three-year-old say, but it was true: the clouds were literally rolling down the sides of the hills. If you've never seen it, you wouldn't believe how dramatic the climate here is: you can actually see a wall of fog coming at you. Like, an actual wall. That you will hit.

Weird.

Decor

In The Real World

July 16, 2015

via A Beautiful Mess

Blogger homes really stress me out.

They're all fiddle leaf figs in adorable woven pots and white carpets that my dogs would destroy instantly and lamps that I can't afford and perfectly arranged gallery walls of expensively framed prints that look like they were collected during a succession of impossibly glamorous round-the-world trips.

SNAPSHOTS

I’m Going To Try Very Hard Not To Sound Like An AirBnB Ad

July 15, 2015

1954 Trailer | Pasadena, CA

...But I have a feeling I'm not going to succeed.

OK, so I was really late to the AirBnB party - I stayed in my very first one during our house-hunting trip last March, which is approximately fifty years after everyone else started staying in them - but...I mean...that's how I want to travel.

Decor

Lightning Bugs

July 14, 2015

I've always had a major thing for fairy lights. And yet, for whatever reason, I've never hung them other than at Christmastime, because the logistical issues have always vexed me: I don't want them on all the time, but I would like them on some of the time, but I don't want to have to remember to turn them on because then I'll just never do it, and et cetera ad lazyfinitum.

But we have a yard now, and not just a yard: no no, a California yard. Which is basically a second living room. We spend a lot of time out there, and there are big windows all over the house leading out to it, so visually it's just a really significant part of the house. So: fairy light time it was, but not just fairy lights: no no, lighting bug fairy lights. Which are tinier, more delicate versions of traditional ones, and which gently blink off and on, creating the (surprisingly realistic) effect of actual fireflies. It is lovely.

Lovely lovely lovely.

Lifestyle

Links & Love & Stuff

July 13, 2015

So I bought a crop top and high-waisted jean shorts. I'm sorry. (For future outings, methinks that crop top will be planted firmly underneath a pair of overalls, but hey, every once in awhile you've got to let out your inner Miley.)

If you're going to snoop, snoop like a pro. (10 Mistakes To Avoid When You're Crashing With Friends, via Refinery29.)

Perfect white button-down at a GREAT price (it's from the junior's department, though, so size up.)

My Looks

Field Song

July 13, 2015

This weekend, we drove down to Pasadena (just outside of LA) to visit my parents, who were there for the weekend for my dad's work. At one point, my mom and I were standing in the hallway, waiting for Kendrick to come upstairs with the stroller, and she turned to me and said, "So. Do you like it here?"

Part of me wants to say I don't. Especially to my mom, because I miss her and my dad so much, every single day. And there's also a big part of me that feels like...you know, being a New Yorker is such a huge part of my identity, of my upbringing. I haven't technically lived in the city for a few years now, but I still felt like if I was raising my children just a few minutes outside its borders I'd...I don't know, I'd somehow be able to wrap my mind more easily around what their childhood would look like. I'd know what museums to take them to, what restaurants they'd like, be able to tell them stories about the things I did when I was their age when I walked down this street or that one.

At this point we've obviously committed to a life out here, but still:

DIARY

The Village

July 10, 2015

Some of my favorite memories from when I was growing up are of the times we drove upstate to visit my parents' friends at the 1950s-style family resort they owned. All day (and night) long the grownups hung out in the common room and drank wine and played chess and talked and laughed while the kids played a board game, or searched for Tiny Toon Adventures on the old TV by the bar, or hid under dining room tables telling secrets, and it was all just so...communal. Not just family units in threes and fours braving the waters in rickety little boats; an actual village full of parents and children and grandchildren and babies, everyone doing their own thing, but together just the same.

I remember the sound of it, you know? The sort of grownup buzzing that's the soundtrack of so much of your childhood; those conversations about politics that you can't even begin to make sense of, those jokes that make your parents laugh until they turn red and that you don't understand but laugh at anyway, just because they're happy and so you're happy, too. It's the same sound that you hear late at night when you're in the backseat of the car driving home from somewhere, and your parents start talking about work or something else your kid self doesn't care about, and you fall asleep to the sound of their office frustrations and traffic reports on the radio, and feel warm and peaceful and safe.

It's cool, seeing how happy our kids are when we have friends over. Not because anyone's doting on them, especially, but just because I get the sense it's exciting, getting to be a part of what Grownup Life is like. The other day we had a few friends over for lunch and swimming, and when the sun started to set we decided to take a mini-picnic out to the trellis-covered tables by the playground down the block. We swung on swings and climbed hills and ran around with the dogs and just sat and talked, and the kids stayed up late and ended the night watching cartoons on the bed while we ordered Thai food and talked some more, and it reminded me of those weekends at the hotel way back when.

Decor

In The Kid Room

July 9, 2015

Our son's room when we first moved in (the floors and paint had already been done by a Thumbtack pro; more info on those here).

There's something so special about the room you have when you're a kid. No matter what it looks like - whether it's bare-bones, whether it's fancy, whether it's neat or messy or whatever - you love it, because it's yours. You know every single corner of it; lay awake at night wrapped up in elaborate fantasies about the picture hanging on that wall or the stuffed animals sitting on the chair in the corner.

It's alive in a way that I don't know any room later in life ever is.

Decor

Hanging Out In Furniture Heaven

July 9, 2015

I don't even know how to describe the Big Daddy's showroom in San Francisco, other than to say that it's paradise. Francesca works with the company and introduced me to them when we drove through LA (there's a showroom there, too), and now I'm basically a superfan and would like to decorate our entire house from top to bottom with their pieces, please. I was in the city for a meeting yesterday morning, so I swung by to check out potential dining room tables (because ours is just way too small for our weirdly large dining room), and then oops: it was two hours later, and they had fed me cookies while I had elaborate fantasies involving pendant lights and leather-wrapped benches.

In theory, Big Daddy's is an antique and custom furniture store...but that's sort of like describing an animal-style In 'N' Out burger as "a hamburger": it doesn't even scratch the surface. What Big Daddy's really is: an Alice in Wonderland-style maze filled (literally filled to the rafters) with one-of-a-kind pieces, spectacular reproductions, and custom creations of the in-house team of welders and wood-workers. Clients can also work with staff designers to customize pieces, adding, say, fold-out stools made from reclaimed prison table bases to a dining table made from old bowling alley lanes (really; I saw both of these things while I was there).

Also: there are bird cages the size of studio apartments hanging from the ceiling, and next to them is an actual airplane suspended over a wall of buckets, and over there in the corner is a Lucite egg chair hanging from a massive iron wrench-type base, and oh hey, I just tripped over a tiger-print couch, just sitting there all tiger-printed and perfect.

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