Not too much coherent thinkin’ goin’ on at this address, so I’m just totally spilling what’s in my brain…

Lone Cypress at Pebble Beach: This is my favorite pic from vacation, and the deer is my second fave.

My hair loved Cali, but it totally freaked out when we got home. It went into shock; it had an allergic reaction; it totally weirded out on me on Saturday. It was crunchy and sick – the texture of pine straw and insulation combined. Guess it was doing its own decompressing from the trip. Chris’ did the same and after ample dousing with conditioner; it’s on the mend.

Campbell is sportin’ a mysterious high fever and runny nose. Any word on the street about what delightful ailment is circlin’ these days?

Chris and I are still living in the Pacific time zone – up until 1:00-2:00 am and sleeping until 10:00, and now the girls are on it too. Screwy… Chris ran smack into Eastern time this morning as he had to return to work, but I haven’t quite figured out how to fix life for me and the girls, especially given Campbell’s current situation.

I highly recommend Kit Kittredge: An American Girl. About a year and a half ago Carson chose Kit as the American Girl doll she most resembles, so Kit has been part of our life for a while now. We’ve bought coordinating outfits, bought some of her furniture and accessories, and read some of her books. We saw the movie yesterday, and it’s a great family movie – very well done and eerily relevant (Kit lives during the Great Depression) as our economy continues to tank. Thought it was covertly educational and eye-opening for Carson. Kit is not a girly girl at all; she wants to be a reporter and she and her friends solve a town mystery. She has a couple of friends who are boys, so older boys may enjoy the movie too although it is not an action kinda deal. We may even go see it again at the theater, and we will definitely purchase it when it becomes available. Do take my rave in proper context though; we have been enjoying Kit for a while and have long anticipated the movie…

I bought The Shack by William P Young on Saturday. Anybody read it? I’m so interested to dive in to this most controversial novel, but I have to admit that I’m afraid to begin it. I know what happens in the beginning, and I’m not too jazzed about going there – particularly right before I go to sleep (which is when I normally do some reading). Trying to muster up the courage to open the front cover…

I think I have bum luck with I-pods. My first one lasted for two years and died the week before the longest race I’ve ever run. I could not go the distance without my oft-perfected playlist, so we bought a new one – in February. Now this one is intermittently working. I restored it tonight (erased everything off to try again). I’m wondering if I may be unwittingly damaging them. Don’t know what to make of it really…

I’m takin’ my fried brain and hair to bed; night, night…

I am well aware of the fact that I am not a City Girl, but I always thought I could hang in the city – at least for a short stay. Chris and I have always wanted to live in an upstairs city apartment over a downtown storefront or office, and that is still something we would like to do in a different season of our lives. But Charlotte and Greenville and Charleston are more my speed, I discovered…

On our vacation, Chris and I drove in to San Francisco about 6:00 pm on Sunday evening. It had been a big weekend in the city, and people were everywhere. They were walking in front of the car as we were scrambling to find the hotel and avoid driving the wrong direction on one-way streets. Fortunately, there were no pedestrian roadkills, but it was close more than a few times. The city was immediately noisy and busy and crowded and loud and impolite, and I was overwhelmed. I think I experienced sensory overload where I just crawled into myself and decided I hated it! It was overcast and gloomy (I couldn’t even see the top of the Golden Gate Bridge as we approached because it was cloaked in clouds). We had a quiet – almost despondent- dinner in Sausalito.

This place was foreign to me – not so much because it was a new setting. Foreign because there was nothing familiar about the people. How I live my life couldn’t be more different than that of a city dweller: the pace, the noise, the hardness. For the first time during our trip I was constantly aware of being outside the Bible Belt, outside of the South, outside of my world. When I traveled to England, I expected to feel like a foreigner. I did not expect to feel that heightened sense of alien”ness” that I did in SF.

I require my morning 20 oz DP (Diet Pepsi) as close to my awakening as possible, so the next morning, on our walk to this awesome breakfast place, I stopped in to the corner Walgreens and something very unexpected happened. I was washed in the comfort of being somewhere familiar; I realized the hilarity of it but I just stood in the front of the store and breathed in the familiarity of it. I silently staked out that place as my retreat for comfort if that city threatened to crash in on me.

Then another funny thing happened; I got my city legs. I enjoyed my DP, had some phenomenal pancakes at a legendary restaurant, and I was ready to dive in. I got my city legs, and Chris and I proceeded to do it up. We could walk to any store imaginable; we walked to some fantastic meals; we rode trolley cars and brushed death with every turn in the backseat of a taxi (I happen to think that’s the most death-defying stunt you can do in any city – take a taxi). I put on my hard self and smiled less; not because I was unhappy – I was having a ball.
That’s just how you roll in the city. I bought some sunglasses that cover most of my face, put on my loud yellow jacket and my black wedges, and I enjoyed being City Cookie.

The moral of this story is that I am too sheltered in my own little life. SF is a great city, and we had a fabulous time. And I was genuinely surprised by my initial reaction to it.

So if you see me ridin’ through Flo-town in a blindingly yellow jacket, with enormous sunglasses, and I keep angrily blowing the horn at other motorists, just know that I’m still decompressing from the trip.

And if you see my loitering in local Walgreens, just know that I may be reminiscing about our trip…

And the truth of the matter is that City Cookie would love to get her nose pierced, but Flo-town Cookie could never pull that off…

We’re back!!!! And thankfully so. We had an amazing trip, but we are tickled to be home. We spent two nights in Carmel (in a dog hotel), two nights in Napa (in a “green” hotel – not the color), and three nights (in a Union Square dead-middle-of-the-city hotel) in San Francisco. And I’ll try not to bore you too terribly with trip details, but I really had some neat experiences and made some interesting observations (mainly about myself) while we were there. So there may be a couple of vacation posts to follow… Here are some of my vacation superlatives:

Biggest blessing: The flights were mind-blowing. Thank you to those of you who prayed for our travel, especially given my high, high, high state of anxiety. Our flight to California was amazing. I was desperately searching for the barf bag before we took off, but once we began to taxi down the runway I was totally okay. I had asked specifically in my prayers to enjoy the flight, and I internally whispered Isaiah 26:3 over and over again. He showed up. Right on time. As always. Large and in charge. The flight home was a little more turbulent than I would have preferred; we ran into a bit of “weather” which threatened to leave me totally unglued. But – as it turns out- my fear and a little weather were no match for Him.

Biggest surprises:

• I got my nose pierced.
• California is cold! At least the parts we were in. It was 59 degrees when we landed in San Francisco. It was pretty overcast and even borderline gloomy for most of the time that we were there. There’s a popular quip that I found to be totally true – “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”
• The people we encountered in Carmel and Napa were so nice (The city’s a whole different story for another post…). The South definitely doesn’t have the monopoly on kindness and hospitality.
• My hair liked California.
• We very much enjoyed the dog hotel in Carmel. It was this ultra-super pet friendly hotel, and there were dogs everywhere. We are not dog people, so we were prepared to cancel our reservation if it was too over the top when we got there. BUT, and this doesn’t usually happen to us, we were pleasantly surprised. The dogs were beautiful, and well-behaved, and so varied (lots of unusual breeds) that we so enjoyed the dog aspect. We even decided that we might be dog people as empty-nesters.

Biggest deer-in-the headlights moments:

• We went into a clothing store in Carmel where Chris picked out a shirt he liked, and we dropped our jaws when he flipped the tag to see that it cost $365 (as opposed to the $11 Old Navy shirt he was probably wearing and the $4 one I was wearing). This was not a singular experience; I picked out a $125 white t-shirt. Chris picked out $600 shoes. Needless to say, those items are still hanging out in Cali…
• We used hotel points to pay for our stay in SF, but it cost $50 per day to park there. It only cost us $24 to park for the entire week at the Charlotte airport; we were rejoicing to be back in the South!! The SF hotel also charged us to use the business center and the fitness center (which we are not accustomed to paying for). As slow as I am, it would have cost me a fortune to blog there (they charged in time increments).
• A Diet Pepsi cost $1.89, and a gallon of gas was in the $4.50-$4.70 range.

Things I missed the most:

• OUR GIRLS! By Monday it was almost unbearable trying to go to sleep on the other side of the country from them. All four of us slept together last night until about 4:00 am (when it became unbearable to be that close).
• Water pressure!
• Brewed tea
• Driving without traffic
• Being in a place where 20 oz. bottle Diet Pepsis are plentiful!
• Clean clothes – because the weather was colder than we expected, we had to keep rewearing our warmer clothes. It was totally disgusting by the end of the week. That’s gross, I know.

Things I learned:

• New word: patisserie
• New kinda food: Asian fusion
• You gotta be gritty in the city.
• There aren’t as many convenience/gas stations around but there are a gazillion Walgreens everywhere.

Biggest fish tale:

• I didn’t get my nose pierced but I really want to! Gotta think about it and research it a little more…

More to come I’m sure as my brain and body rhythms catch up with the three hours we lost yesterday. If you’re ever heading that direction, I would love to share some of our faves and some things we would do differently.

As lame as it may sound, The City Girl, on her 35th birthday, couldn’t be happier to be home doing laundry and washing dishes with the sound of shrill little girl screams in the background…