Sentimentality alert

Feeling nostalgic today. And sick. I have been sick all week--nasty flu-ey congestion and fuzzy head--and nostalgic for about three weeks. We finally made a firm decision about our future--we're heading back to New Zealand next year. I resigned from my job yesterday and that's all folks. I'm glad we have a plan of sorts because I am the original girl with a plan. If I'm not heading somewhere with some objective in mind I am pretty miserable. So that's good. But I love living in San Francisco. It's a childhood dream come true and while I always knew it was temporary I guess I figured it would be a more longterm move than it's turned out to be. We have been here a year. We flew into New York on September 1, 2006 and we moved into our chilly wee apartment last December. So we've experienced all the seasons here and watched our neighbors gorgeously OTT decorations change from St Patrick's elves to Easter bunnies and eggs, to summer flowers, to Halloween ghouls, to Thanksgiving cones of plenty, to Christmas wreaths--and all of it wonderfully American in scale.
Today is cold but sunny. I had to drop Tim off for his Saturday business class and then drove home along California St, past the Bank of America building (tallest in the city, home to our money manager), past two cable cars, past the Fairmont Hotel and Tonga Bar where we have yet to go, past Grace Cathedral where we attended an ANZAC service, past Fillmore St where I do so much of my window shopping and we do our laundry, past the Jewish Community Center where I work out, and finally past our block with its Edwardian apartment buildings and fancy home shops. It is all so pretty.
* * * *
Enough bellyaching--we went to the Dickens Fair last weekend. The Cow Palace, a huge South SF venue for bullriding competitions and monster truck shows, was transformed into ye olde London. Or, I should say, the area where they keep the cattle and such for the big shows was transformed into ye olde London. The big domed Palace itself was a happy place for me as a child. My family used to go for the bullriding and equestrian shows thanks to Dad's country boy roots. My favorite part was intermission when we would eat Mom's egg salad sandwiches while the rodeo clown entertained us. He had huge overalls and tiny dogs would emerge from his pant legs to jump through hoops. I think there may have been a tiny spider monkey too, or that could be a 7-year-old's embellishment. In any case, it was cool fun.
So last Sunday we went to the animal area, where 25 years ago I admired blueblood horses, and it was packed with costumed folks and jewellery stalls and food places, and more costumed folk doing skits and singing bawdy songs. We watched the Irish and Scottish dancers for a while and ate some fried oysters and tried on some hats (a Robin Hood cap for T and a floral wreath for me) and headed home.

Bad baaa-stards

It had to be done. On Friday night, we went to see Black Sheep, the kiwi film about eugenically altered sheep who turn on the humans who run their farm--and any other unfortunates who stumble upon them. It's part of the lineup at the San Francisco Film Festival and conveniently was shown at a theatre in Japantown, not even 10 minutes from the apartment. I'm not a horror film fan, so I'm probably not much of a judge when it comes to the schlock variety. There was no time when I felt scared, which is a positive for me, and there were many moments of great humor--I almost weed myself when a tiny genetic mutant from a broken sample jar bit off Oliver Driver's ear. But there were some rather obvious gags--there just had to be a sheep-shagging joke, for example--and the one and only Maori character was the cliched cheeky chappie, which I found a bit disappointing. Still, you gotta love a film in which a bloodthirsty sheep gets behind the wheel of a ute and drives it off a cliff.

Too mean

I'm working on a story about New Zealand identity, which has been a very interesting exercise. I am feeling more Kiwi than I do when I'm in NZ, no surprise I guess, because I feel most American when I am not here. My editors found the introductory paragraphs a bit mean, and I take their point. They have been removed from the story. But I still like them. So here they are.

***

"That's an interesting accent, darlin'. Where ya from?" asks a heavily made-up woman selling Navajo jewelry and pottery at a Santa Fe boutique. She is a riot of color, a bespectacled parrot wearing a squash blossom necklace.
"New Zealand," I answer with a tight mouth, knowing--hating--what comes next.
"Oh," she says, lazily polishing the counter on which she leans, her eyes narrowing as she mentally refers to a globe. "Where's that? Is it near Nova Scotia? No? Part of Greenland?"
"Try the Southern Hemisphere," I say, less gracious than I would like. "You know where Australia is?"
"Oh! You're that island at the bottom of Australia! The little triangle."
"No," I say, defeated, "that's Tasmania."
As my husband and I drove across the United States last autumn--from New York to San Francisco via Lisbon Falls, Maine and Tucumcari, New Mexico--we had dozens of conversations like this. They were funny at first. Then annoying. Then humiliating. Who wants to originate from a place so insubstantial as to be left off some world maps?

***

I guess I do.