Oh vacation, what have you done?
I left my apartment and my job, both in good hands, for 8 days. From April 11th to April 19th I was in California, state and mind. When I came back my apartment had been resettled by one cockroach, 2 spidery centipedes, a troupe of fleas (in defiance of Pigeon's high-power anti-flea medication), and what seems to be a friendly ghost. I went back to work to discover that my department has been turned upside down and is currently vying for the title of Crazytown, VA. This is at least partly why it's taken me a month to blog about my amazing vacation.
My vacation was so good. So good that I need to break it down, list-style.
The Flights
# of all-nighters pulled=2
# of intentional all-nighters pulled=1 I stayed up after work and left my apartment around 1:30 am for the airport, no problems. The resulting sleepiness infused me with a effervescent god-like love as I contemplated my fellow passengers, the pilots and all the tiny precious people down on earth in their tiny precious houses and cars. On the way back, well...things did not go as planned.
# of times I nodded off in flight only to be startled awake by the seat belt sign pinging on and proceeded to gasp and flail around embarrassing everyone else in my row and one time even knocking over my cup of ice to the disgust of the two children sitting next to me=5
# of times I tried, unsuccessfully, to conceal my terror of smashing into the airport/other airplanes/a concert hall while the plane was braking on the airstrip=4 When I'm that tired it never occurs to me that airplanes are built with really good brakes for just this purpose. Nope. We touch down and I do my best to look cool while making little squeaky noises and bracing myself with my arms on the seat in front of me. When I'm rested I still get scared but I read really really hard until it's over so no one is the wiser.
# of magazines read during the 3 and a half hour delay out of San Jose= 4 (Real Simple, Vanity Fair, and People and something else trashy)
# of college crew championship-winning lads on my delayed flight=16 They were all wearing hokey red and white polyester blazers, like they were all ready to go on the Laurence Welk show.
# of items lost between 11:30pm and 12:30am Sunday night in O'hare=2 my favorite sweater and my boarding pass for the next morning (meg-style).
# of items recovered between 11:30 pm and 12:30 am Sunday in O'hare=1, my boarding pass, in the bathroom. The cleaning lady said "I knew somebody had to be going crazy out there."
# of security alarms I set off accidentally between 11:30 pm and 12:30 am Sunday in O'hare=1 I am never, ever connecting in Chicago, ever again.
# of hours spent in Chicago hotel room=3.5 One shower. no sleep.
The Visits
Mom, Dad, Davin
My aunt Myrna, uncle Michael and cousins Daniel, David and Matthew
Teresa
Teresa's housemates and friends Max, Maggie and Maggie's friend Emily
Cities Visited:
San Jose
Fremont
Big Sur
Santa Cruz
Oakland
Cities not visited:
San Francisco
Parties Attended:
30's themed Depression (economic) party at Lobot. (they had a bread line and a soup line and homemade whiskey and moonshine. and bands and sketches. )
# of gorgeous birds sighted=3 1 red-winged blackbird and 2 very saucy Steller's Jays.
My Mom picked me up at the San Jose airport and took me to their adorable two-story in Fremont. It manages to feel tropical and cozy at the same time. Davin and I squealed identical soprano squeals when we saw each other. I took a nap in the guest room and then came down stairs for Aunt-Nephew Easter egg dyeing. This year Davin was all business production-line about it. I usually let the eggs bask in their color baths until they've reached their color potential but Davin just dunked his eggs and moved on the next ones. But then I showed Davin how you can re-dye eggs in another dye bath to create new colors and he got into that, hardcore. And while this was going on Antiques Roadshow came on the TV and I just about died from happiness. 
The next day was Easter. My parents cooked my favorite foods for me, asparagus and salmon. And then, per family tradition, we took an Easter drive, this time through gorgeous redwood forests to the craggy coast. We ended up at Pigeon Point Lighthouse and scouted a good, secluded strip of coast for the Easter egg hunt. The place we settled on came closer to a fairytale landscape than any I've seen. The bluff was covered in a blanket of blossoming succulents. I didn't even know succulents could grow in field - I had only ever seen them in pots, and never blooming. I had been in charge of getting Davin ready for the drive and I forgot his sweater so we put him in one of Dad's shirts which was pretty much the cutest thing ever. Davin and I took a hike along the bluff while Mom and Dad hid the eggs. Public humiliation being another of my parents' Easter traditions, I was required to hunt for eggs with Davin. Davin found his 12 eggs with candy and toys in them but I only found 11 of my eggs with money and m&ms in them. Upon inspection of my 11 eggs Mom determined that the missing egg had $10 in it. After 30 minutes of everyone searching for my missing egg, Mom and Davin huddled on a folding chair while Dad and I poked through the succulent undergrowth and inspected the mole (more likely crab) holes for another 20 minutes. Let me just pause here to remind you that while it is ridiculous for a 27-year-old to hunt for Easter eggs it is even more ridiculous for a 27-year old to lose the Easter Egg Hunt to a 4 year old. We gave up looking for the lost egg, hoping that someone would find it later and that it would make them happy. "Maybe the moles have it, maybe they'll take that $10 and go out on the town.." I said as we were walking back to the car. "Maybe they'll have mole-jitos!!!" crowed my Mom. She was so amused by her own joke that she bent over laughing and......found the missing egg! Which was hidden in plain sight. Needless to say, the missing egg/mole-jitos story enjoyed a lot of replay over the next week, so much so that Davin would bring it up on his own, always starting with "Sara, remember that time when you couldn't find the egg? That was a funny time!"
On Monday Teresa picked me up in a rental car and we headed south for a 2-day camping trip in Big Sur. On the way there the cliffs and beaches were so epic and beautiful that we had to stop and explore them. There were hidey-hole caves in the rocks and giant arms of seaweed with gelatinous green pods on the beach. The hems of my jeans were wet within minutes. The wind was astringent and strong. Everything smelled so good. The landscape was so epic that Teresa and I had a running list: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Shipping News, Heidi....until we ran out of comparisons and decided that this place was so epic that it deserved a mythology of its own. We camped (car-camped) in a surprisingly lively and populated campground for a cold Monday in April. We set up Teresa's tiny-ass tent on soft ground underneath a redwood tree and then drove off to go exploring along the coast. We parked at a park. There was a sign to the beach and creamery meadows, which I decided was going to be awesome. The path led to a river with no bridge. The male members of an Asian family were fording the knee-high water to the other side while the female members stayed rooted on the parking lot side and said loud things. The father and young son on the other side starting giving Teresa advice on the depth of the water and difficulty of crossing. "It's quicksand!" exclaimed the son. "There is no quicksand" the father assured us gravely. After going back to the parking lot to study the park map we rolled up our pants, hung our shoes over our shoulders and decided to ford the river ourselves. What may have been knee-height on some was crotch-height on me. My jeans soaked water up to the pockets. I put my boots back on and we wandered among twisty trees and flowers and heavenly fields for hours. It was worth it. We tried coming back from the beach another way but still ended up having to ford the river....right when my pants were almost dry. I had to sing "climb every mountain" under my breath to make myself go in back in the river. It was a good adventure.
That night we ate rice and lentils heated on Teresa's tiny gas burner and admired our duraflame logfire while a soprano several sites away serenaded the dark campground with a long aria. It was magical. After she was done I kept waiting for everyone in the campground to start singing California Dreamin'. It didn't happen. We were settling down for the night when the most ridiculously loud snoring started up next to us. It was so loud that I assumed that it was Teresa. It wasn't. My Target sleeping bag wasn't keeping the cold out and my pants were still outside laying out to dry (the cold weather would keep them damp for the rest of the trip). After an hour I couldn't take it any more and moved my sorry tired ass to the car. I could still hear the snoring in the car.
The next morning we hiked up the hills that over look the coast we hiked the day before. Huge green hills covered in rippling waves of grass. We were sitting in a field high above the park of the river-fording when we noticed all these people with dry clothes and shoes walking on a wide, flat road from the parking lot to the beach. There was clearly a different road to the beach that didn't involve Oregon-Trail-caliber challenges. "Ah," we said "but they don't know about Creamery Fields. And we have sooo many Oregon Trail points now! We didn't lose any oxen, or break an axle."
We ate lunch outside at a cliff-top cafe that Hollywood movie stars used to frequent on their vacations in the olden days. We sat soaking in the sun for a long time, giggling at the ridiculously inappropriate Caribbean music the cafe was playing and talking about the new stories each of us are working on. Teresa pined for a sea cottage on a cliff. I forgot I had a job or even a way of life outside this vacation.
We hiked many other cliffs, bluffs and hills. It was all so breathtakingly epic that I didn't even try to take photos. Sometimes we would come across a beach that we would want to hike and it would be fenced off with posted "private property signs". This kinda blew my mind. It didn't seem plausible that an individual could own a section of this gorgeous coastline.
That evening we stopped in again at the little grocery (whose clerk confirmed that it was definitely unseasonably cold and windy right now) and bought another blanket, sleeping bag, and chocolate. The plan was to eat supper and then hang out and read Harry Potter by the light of our duraflame log and then, at 12:30 am, leave for the Esselen hot baths which are only open to the public from 1am to 3am. This seemed like a great plan until it came time to leave my double-warm sleeping bag and venture out into to the cold cold northern California night in my still-damp jeans. I wussed out and promptly fell asleep, snoring softly to myself. Now I really wish I hadn't wussed out. We had to head back the next day.
On Wednesday I spent quality time around the house with my parents and Davin. My parents introduced me to their favorite shows on the Discovery channel - which, along with PBS, is our family's favorite channel. Besides How It's Made, my parents are really into Deadliest Catch - a completely amazing and addictive show.
Davin and I took walks around the neighborhood. Besides pine cones, Davin was especially interested in a row of empty houses scheduled for demolition that the local swat and fire teams have been using for practice. The houses are riddled with holes; holes chopped in garage doors, holes chopped every five feet in the roofs, holes in the windows. Davin would always ask why they chopped holes in the houses and my explanations always ended up involving "a kitty, stuck inside the house or garage". 
Davin is, of course, so smart and hilarious. He can count to one hundred on his own without a counting book, spell out words and has a whole new cast of imaginary friends. Cosmo is still #1 in the cast and there's been a new development: Davin told me that I am Cosmo's Mom*. In a strange way this makes perfect sense to me, although it is pretty neglectful of me to have an imaginary 4-year old son living in California that I didn't know anything about. Davin has surpassed Cosmo in spelling and when we're in the car he provides us with demonstrations of his superior skills: "I spell Honda H-O-N-D-A but but Cosmo spells Honda H-O-R-A-A-D-D-R-N!" Davin also recently told his Preschool teacher that his sister was run over by a truck and killed. The teacher believed him and offered her condolences to my shocked Dad, who quickly set the record straight. My parents aren't worried about any of this - I did all the same things when I was his age. Heh heh.
On Thursday all four of us drove to meet my Aunt, Uncle and 2 of my cousins at Roaring Camp outside of Santa Cruz. Davin is really into trains so we took a steam train ride through really old redwood Forest and learned some nice things. Then we went to the adjoining National Park and saw a slice of a redwood tree that was older than Jesus. It struck me then that while I kind of think that states west of Virginia as not having much physical history (you know, like Jamestown and plantations and Monticello and battlefields), they damn well have natural history. I mean, I touched a tree that was older than Jesus. We had a picnic lunch in a park and then headed for the beach, where I saw real live tide pools. Then we went to a marine school/lab/aquarium. They had two giant assembled whale skeletons outside, which you could touch. Inside they had a gorgeous circular tank with a flock of soft pink jellyfish pulsating gently inside, 2 inches away from your face. They had open tanks manned by volunteers full of all kinds of anemonies, starfish and sea cucumbers that you could touch. It was wonderful. 
My cousins Matthew and David spent the night and came with us to the San Jose Flea Market the next day. The San Jose Flea Market was my idea, it is a super famous huge flea market that I saw on PBS special. I hadn't been to a proper flea market in a long time and read all these blogs about girls who score amazing vintage finds at California flea markets. Unfortunately, the flea part of the flea market was closed - just the market part...the fruits and vegetable, Latino wedding supply shops, and skanky clothing stores remained open during the week. I didn't buy anything but it was good to hang out with my cousins, who have grown into funny, sweet and incredibly tall young men. David said he will come back with me sometime on a weekend when there is a proper flea market.
On Saturday I hung out with my family in the morning and then took the BART into Oakland to hang out with Teresa. Teresa and I were cooking dinner for her friends Max, Maggie and Maggie's friend Emily. We got groceries at Trader Joe's and started cooking the dinner in kitchen with Teresa's housemate who was making the soups for the Depression party soup line later that evening. Everything was great. Teresa's kitchen is really lovely and homey for a kitchen used by almost 20 people. Teresa left to go meet her friends at the BART and I stayed in the kitchen with her housemate Tori. I was so nervous about meeting her friends that I've heard so much about that in the 20 minutes before Teresa got back I accidentally broke a bottle of essential oil in the bathroom and burned the bottom 2 inches of rice for our dinner. Luckily, everything else turned out fine and after a drink the 5 of us were the best of friends and had decided to form a joint band called The Country Bears Tribute Band. Which we thought was the funniest thing ever. Then we moseyed over to the party in the public section of lobot and saw some bands and a two-person theater troupe all surrounded by a giant cardboard installation of a fanastical remote control car race track**. It was an awesome night. 
I Barted back to my parents in the morning and said a misty-eyed goodbye to Davin, my parents and California. And due to weather in Chicago I didn't get home until noon the next day.
The frustrating trip back made me grateful to be home. It was raining when I got into National and I drove home in it, stopping for more coffee every half hour. The trees on my drive home looked so delicate. Everything, the hills, the colors, the air in Virginia seemed smaller, softer and more feminine. A land for stories of small things, not epics.
* Strangely enough, the next week I received a call at work from a customer named Cosmo (snappy-sounding Italian last name)- who needed help with the software he is using to homeschool his 3 children. For a split-second I wanted to say "Cosmo? Is that you? Are you my imaginary son?" It was a very package-from-the-future-moment, although this time it was my imaginary son Cosmo calling from the future to inform me of my future imaginary grandchildren.
**I took these four photos in the early morning, creepy-houseguest style. But honestly, Teresa's place is beautiful and the photos don't even capture 25% of the beauty. And I didn't want to be the only person taking photos the night before....
