2 posts tagged “bay”

Criminy is shut up tight in her room and the other two are with their father tonight, which means I am essentially alone and I'm definitely feeling it. It is the natural order of things to be alone, I guess, but it feels so unnatural to me. I don't think the kids wanted to leave me, either; someday, they won't have to. But by then they'll be more grown up and maybe they won't want anything to do with me. I hope not.

Yesterday I spent time with my own mother. The kids and Duff were there, too. We ate black-eyed peas with rice and cold ham, plus scrambled eggs with sausage that I added to make sure everyone got enough to eat. It may sound like an odd combination but it all went down pleasantly enough, especially with a little fresh salsa to tie everything together. (Except the ham.) Mom had also threatened to make sauerkraut, but somehow we avoided that fate. After dinner we set up Mom's new DVD player (made by Philips--I got it at Costco for $40; I still remember buying my first VCR for $250-$300) and watched the movie I got her, which she had been wanting to see for some time: The Bucket List. Needless to say, sap that I am, I cried buckets.

Today we drove down to the Monterey Aquarium. Criminy had won tickets on the radio. We took Rojo and Sean with us, since Bambi had to work. It's a wonderful place to visit but I just wasn't into it at all. It's not as much fun now that the kids are big and they don't need me to read all the little signs to them anymore.

OK, I think I'm ready to share my news. Here goes. After living in this house, which is owned by my in-laws, for the last nine years, I have rented an apartment. It's a flat, really, funky and relatively unspectacular, in an old building in downtown Karkin. Mine is the only residential unit. When I say old, I mean old: the original building dates from 1850, though my part of it was tacked on later (but not that much later). The kids and I were there earlier this evening, dropping off a modest assortment of treasures, and I told them that one way you can tell the place is old is that the bedrooms have no closets. In the nineteenth century, I told them, people had freestanding wardrobes, or armoires, and relatively few clothes.

The place is upstairs, over a salon and at the rear of a courtyard, and it has a wraparound wooden balcony that makes me think, to be perfectly honest, of a Wild West bordello. Coincidentally enough, I just did some research and learned that the building as a whole definitely did house not only a bordello, but a Prohibition-era speakeasy and a "Chinese lottery," whatever that is. A Pai-Gow parlor, maybe? Anyway. It has eight-foot ceilings, and the front doors are just as tall, so even if we stay there for years my children shouldn't ever bump their heads on the door jambs.

Naturally enough, there are disadvantages, several of them relating to the previous tenant's interest in creative paint finishes. I realize a lot of people are into these, but in my experience, they rarely look good when done by an amateur. These were done, apparently, by a very enthusiastic amateur. The biggest disadvantage may well prove to be the parking. I haven't had a problem so far, but the place is just off the main street of the town, which is routinely roped off throughout the year for various events. And there is no other way to gain access to my portion of the street, because the other end of the street ends in the Bay. Which actually makes me really happy, because I love being close to the water. (I don't know why; it's just one of my things. Some people want to start a restaurant. Some people like exotic pets. I like to live by the water.)

So I am excited, and nervous, and hopeful. At last, something is changing.