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.

Me and the young fogey

John Denver’s nana is on television. Umm-hmm. Tim was flicking around the channels and stumbled on a 90-minute John Denver special and I said, “No!” and he said, “Rock on!” My husband is a young fogey.

We had a moment

So I’m seriously starting to wonder if I have an executive-style ulcer cos my stomach has been misbehaving for a couple months now. It seems so 80s and unoriginal. I don’t even have a briefcase, and I don’t feel that stressed. But I have always been good at compartmentalizing and I think that’s my problem now. Nothing in our lives is feeling settled and stable and rather than meet this interesting challenge head on in an adult manner, I choose to deal with it on a sub-conscious level as I sit on the express bus and watch that one lady who applies her eye makeup as we skid down the hills towards the city—eyeliner, mascara, shadow, highlighter the works—and suffer the physical consequences of a burny tum and a bedtime that crawls ever forward. Soon I’ll be going nigh-nighs at 7.30pm.
Anyway, none of this means we’re not having a good time. We finally went to the Fillmore last week. It was tres funky—dark red walls with gold trim, chandeliers, opera boxes, and lots of pissed people in their 40s acting in the irresponsible way they hope their children won’t. There was one woman who fell on the floor and had to be helped up before the main act even bounced onto stage in their ruffled shirts and brocade jackets. It was the Waterboys, who Tim adores. I love Whole of the Moon and Fisherman’s Blues, so I was happy when they played those, and was deeply impressed with the brocade jacketed one’s fiddle playing, but I could have done without the dirty, skunky drunks.
I think that when you get to a certain age, and it varies from person to person, you simply can’t get away with public displays of drunkenness and general out-of-it-ness. Everyone around just resents you.
***
Oh-bama! Mayor Hunky was re-elected, which was no great surprise given his opponents were like cartoon characters, but he’s old hat now. I have a new crush—Senator Hunky from Illinois. We waited in line for an hour and half to see Obama at his SF rally on Wednesday. It seemed for a while that we weren’t going to get in at all because there were just two doors to the auditorium set up with metal detectors and there were over 6,000 people trying to squeeze in there. Just before 9pm everything stopped—the line halted, more police turned up, everything went quiet, and then whoop, whoop, the motorcade burst onto Polk St. We could see Obama sitting in the back of his Cherokee, waving, and then it stopped and he got out and I had my first-ever moment of celebrity worship. He conducted his own energy. As if he’d just jumped out of God’s pocket. It was extremely exciting. He’d been told we were the tail-end folks who might be foiled by the metal detectors and made an impromptu speech about closing Guantanamo and ending the war and other stuff that didn’t sink in because I was jumping up and down and trying to keep my eyes on him at all moments. He was just 10 feet away from us, and some of his energy clearly leapt across the crowd and into the tops of our heads because after he got back in his SUV and the secret service guys folded themselves back into shape (they did not seem happy about the unexpected pit stop) we joined the crowd who surged for the doors. The line unraveled like yarn—that someone had thrown acid on—and although some people tried to stay in formation, it was futile. We ended up getting ushered in a side door with no metal detector and no-one to check our tickets. We could have been very dangerous, I suppose, but like everyone else there that night we felt like Barack-stars.

Another one checked off

When I was 7 my life ambitions were as follows:
* Become super-duper speller.
* Adopt a shelter puppy.
* Aquire a Barbie townhouse.
* Coax my mother into the baking habit.
* Convince someone to build me a tree house.
* Pass beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.
* Learn to ride a bike already.
* Live in one place always like the Brady Bunch.
* I also, as I have mentioned before, wanted to become a singing secretary named either Linda or Stephanie, or perhaps both.
Few of these things have come to pass. I did eventually learn to ride my brother’s yellow banana-seated Schwinn (I will never forget looking behind me to see that Dad had let go and I was on my own. I immediately toppled over and felt such a sense of betrayal). I did acquire a shelter puppy, which didn’t turn out too well. I created a grand imaginary treehouse with many rooms including a reading niche and gourmet kitchen.
And then, guess what folks?
Yar! We went sailing on Saturday and it was lovely. We cruised beneath both spans of the Bay Bridge, down to SoMa and the AT and T ballpark, along the downtown waterfront past the ferry building and Coit Tower, skimming past Fisherman’s Wharf and Alcatraz. And I got to pass underneath the Golden Gate.

Not a morning person

Overheard on the bus:
Perky blonde commuter with bright pink lippy: “Do you mind if I open the window?”
Greying, balding commuter in grey suit: “No.”
“No, you don’t mind, or you do mind?”
“I do mind. I am cold all day at work.”
“Oh. Well, have a good day.” Muttered under breath: “Grump.”
“Yes. Sometimes I am.”

Joy Luck Crap

Finally. Fortune cookies for a chica like me. Read in the NYT today about a fortune cookie company in Queens that asked its writers to come up with some more contemporary fortunes. The results include:
“Your problem just got bigger. Think, what have you done?”
“Perhaps you’ve been focusing too much on yourself.”
“It’s over your head right now. Time to get some professional help.”
Love, love, love. Next time I get a fortune cookie I am going to be extremely disappointed if I get a crap fortune like “Don’t worry, be happy” or “Today is an auspicious day.”

The Iceman cometh

I feel guilty because I know the result of the France-NZ World Cup rugby game and the three men watching it in the next room do not. I don’t actually care except for the fact that this will plunge a small nation into a period of mourning, which is so counterproductive and lame I can’t bear it. Also, it will plunge my husband into a period of mourning which I would rather do without. At least he and the others had the joy of watching the Aussies get defeated first. There was fist-pumping and joy-jumping when that happened. Also lots of “shut up Gregans” and the delicious schadenfraude of knowing that was Georgie’s last game and, bum, it was dreadful.
This is Fleet Week in San Frantastic and there were air shows today and yesterday to celebrate. I felt quite sick yesterday watching four little biplanes puttering around the bay, barrel rolling and diving and tipping their wings. They would shoot straight up into the ether and keep going until it looked as if they were still and would surely stall, then barrel roll and head back down to earth. Amazing. Especially cool with the backdrop of Alcatraz, the TransAmerica building, Coit Tower, and a Bay full of sailboats. We sat at Inspiration Point, in the Presidio, with a bunch of neighbors, munching cashews and marveling. Today we went up on the apartment roof to watch the Blue Angels, a Navy sextuplet of Top Gun-style pilots who whizzed over downtown for 30 minutes or so. It was quite thrilling, and it was me who jumped up and down and clapped a few times—especially when they sliced through the sky just above our building. It was almost enough to make me feel patriotic. I have never been a particularly patriotic person—for NZ or the US—because, I think, of the shifting sands of my childhood. But seeing clever citizens doing cool stuff only made possible by the dedication of their government to building big, noisy, expensive stuff, well it makes a girl flutter.