Yosemite - Part 1

I reserved a campsite in Tuolumne in February. Each time I’ve gone with my father to Yosemite in the past several years, I’ve wondered if it would be the last time. This time, I’m pretty sure it is the last time, until it is time to sprinkle his ashes there. I think it has been over 40 years since we stayed in a campsite, though.

My mother rarely went to Yosemite. She always had an excuse not to go, but the truth is, she isn’t the outdoor type. She gardens, but that’s the extent of it. I can count on one hand the times I can remember her being there, aside from when we lived there as Ranger’s Family. Even then, we had beds, a wood burning stove, refrigeration, and laundry facilities. She had a reason to go this time.

Out of the thick miasma of my childhood, Yosemite was the magical place that provided a safe haven, an escape, a positive experience. The smell of the place touches the innermost part of my soul. It is there that I formed my deep abiding love of tall trees, altitude, soaring granite peaks, and crystal clear ice cold water. Everything else is judged in comparison to the impressions that Yosemite made in my brain. It is there that I learned my outdoor skills, which are substantial, and my ability to enjoy myself even while dirty, cold, smelly, and without gadgets or toys or material distractions to entertain me. It has served me well.

I want my daughter to know the places that I love, and this was her second trip to Yosemite, although she doesn’t remember the first one. She has heard the lore of camping, and more than anything, she wanted to roast marshmallows over an open fire and make S’mores. (You can’t come from generations of Girl Scouts and not want S’mores. I’m pretty sure it’s a rule.)

We lucked out and had a beautiful spot. It was far from the road and other campers, yet not so far from the bathrooms that my mother was worried. It got cold at night (about 30 degrees) and the firewood that my dad brought was pretty “wet”; it didn’t burn well. I have good gear and just replaced my tent, got a new sleeping bag for M and brought a great inflatable mattress to sleep on, so we were comfortable, although M was surprised by the cold.
My dad is very bad at what my daughter calls “co-opertating” and I have to constantly choose whether to try to argue with him about something or just resign myself to coping with whatever problem comes up because of his obstinate stubbornness. The wood was one of those things. He insists on doing things his way, and will fight you if you try to interject your own opinion or method. Since I knew my and my daughter’s survival was not at stake, I left the wood to him, though I had my doubts, and in the same way, let my mother bring countless things she didn’t need and she had to fuss over.

The one thing I insisted on having my way about was the food. I have found ways to have great food on very rugged backpacking trips and since we were in a campsite, I wasn’t going to skimp, since weight wasn’t an issue. If I let my parents have their way with the camp food it would have been a disaster, so I persuaded my mother to let me choose the meals, and I argued with my father about how to cook them. It is crazy how much trouble I have to go through to make myself heard. But when it came to the food, I was willing to battle.

So, on the first night we had Rocky Mountain Salmon, corn on the cob, and field greens salad, which they declared fabulous (it was) once it was finally on their plates. The next night we had marinated Tri-tip and grill cooked potatoes and onions, with the rest of the salad. The beef took forever because my father insisted on using this rinky-dink self-contained grill thing that my mother had bought, that although it lighted and burned impressively, never got hot enough. By the time they relented and let me put in over the fire, it must have been an hour, and then it took another 45 minutes or so to cook. Still, it tasted good. The last night, reason prevailed and we went to the Tuolumne Lodge dining room. I loved it and it would have been a lot of fun had I been there with other company. The food is really good and the atmosphere is a perfect blend of funky and fancy. The people at the other tables were interesting and diverse. (By the way, the Lodge is one of the places you can get a shower, should you want one)

I’ll post more as soon as I can. I'm packing for my move, but I'm sure I'll need breaks.

Going Camping!

Yosemite is one of my all-time favorite places. When I was little, my dad was a Ranger and we lived in the Park in the summers. I backpacked as soon as I could walk, pretty much. I didn't even sleep in a tent until I was in my late teens; my dad was a minimalist and liked to sleep under the stars, so that is what we did.

M has been to Yosemite before, but she doesn't remember it. Tomorrow - EARLY - we are going camping for several days. We're going to be up in Tuolumne. We are going to be camping in a campground (gasp!) but it should still be fun.

The picture is of me when I was five. That is a fishing creel slung around my shoulders. I was "required" to learn how to flyfish, because my father did, and his father did, and ... my dad knew how to take anything and make it into work. He's fun like that.

M and I are just going to walk around and look at all the pretty things. Bootcamp can wait until she's older, as far as I'm concerned.

Sand and Surf

By Wednesday, M was feeling good enough to venture down to the beach (!), but it was overcast and windy. We went to Zelda's for lunch, because I was determined to fit in my Bloodies by the Bay, but it would have been nicer had it not been so chilly. Still, she colored and I listened to the ocean, and it was pretty good. We'd left behind such hot, baking, awful weather that I didn't want the weather gods to think I wasn't grateful to be at the beach.

They must have looked down on my poor little sick kid and felt sorry for her, because not long after we went down onto the sand and set up the beach umbrella, the clouds parted and the sun came out. This doesn't always happen; I used to spend lots of time at the beach when I lived in the Santa Clara Valley, and it could have easily been cold and grey all week. Happily, it was not.

We were able to make a smallish sand castle and decorate it with the flags that M made. She is so fair that I have to be careful about how much sun exposure she gets, regardless of how much sunblock she wears. Wednesday, she was too tired to do more than putter in the sand, but she was happy doing it. Yay!

Thursday, we had a nice day on the beach again, and had the most delicious chi-chi chicken quesadillas at the Paradise Beach Grille (with an 'e'). They were made with sauted red bell peppers, grated carrot, carmelized onion, fresh avocado, and sour cream, and were well worth the Touristy Inflated Prices that everything costs. Plus, they were only a little scandalized by my bringing my daughter in to their "posh" restaurant. I always feel a little smug when I get those looks. Yeah, I worked in the business, too, and I know that children are usually nightmares. I also know that they take a look at a kid and a single woman and think they won't get a decent tip. We are just embassadors of the Unexpected! My daughter is quiet and well behaved in restaurants and I generally tip 20%.

Anyway, on Friday, our last day down at the beach, we checked out of the hotel and headed down to Monterey for the Aquarium. M loves the Aquarium, and was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately, it was the Friday before a big holiday and everyone else had the same idea. I knew I was fucked as soon as we got close to the Aquarium and I saw the parking situation. I hate crowds. It was too crazy busy, and I'd have loved to have not been there. M was cranky and not her usual self, and I was not thrilled about the amount of people. Still, the Aquarium is an awesome place and we enjoyed looking at all the fishies. The jellyfish exhibit is captivating. I didn't take too many pictures, though, because of the crush of people.

At 3, we headed back to hell - I mean Auburn - and were home by 6:30. (The stretch of freeway that runs through Fairfield is enough to make you want to commit suicide by car, but we finally got through it.) Considering that my daughter was feeling so crummy for most of the trip, we had a good time. A change of scenery, cooler weather, and no need to watch the clock are always worth a little inconvenience.

Next week: Yosemite!

The view from afar

I can’t believe how bad the Santa Clara Valley (Silicon Valley to you younguns) looks these days. Driving down from Northern CA, taking the freeway that is now called 680 into San Jose, looking ahead into the thick haze that now virtually obscures the foothills surrounding the valley. If you didn’t know they were there, you might not know you were in a costal interior valley that was maybe 15-20 miles wide, surrounded by what was once oak covered round hills. Along the stretch of freeway that turns into 17, the tall conifers are still there, lining the freeway, but they look so damaged now, like chemo survivors. The branches that were once so deeply green are hanging on, but rusty, with bare spots, straggly and sparser than in years past. Living along the freeway has no doubt taken its toll, but the air in that fetid depression has been their undoing, I can tell. They look fried. This valley was once orchards and strawberries and big open fields. I know it had its “peak” of high tech expansion and crazy money – that’s about when I bailed, in the early eighties, knowing the little suburban postage-stamp lots with their ordinary little ranch houses and million dollar price tags would remain stratospherically out of my reach. What makes me sad, driving along a freeway that every exit has a memory attached to it, is how it looks now. Burgeoned beyond its capacity, then allowed to go a little fallow, this valley now has the look of someone you used to run around with, but haven’t seen in a while, and their hard living ways haven’t slowed down, and now it shows on their face and body in unmistakable ways. I try to discern the ridgeline of the foothills that once were so unmistakable, and I can barely see them.
I had some good times here, in this Pit that I never wanted to move to in the first place. It was the scene of our undoing, the Valley, though it wasn’t its fault. I was too much a child of the redwoods, the cool shady forested hills, the little creeks and the smell of inches of rotting leaves and ferns. I never fit in, and I got away from it as soon as I could, though that ended up taking close to 20 years.
Lately I’ve been remembering some moments that had their part in defining me. I shouldn’t have been so hard on me then. I would be nicer to that girl who worked so hard and flailed around so bad trying to find something that made sense. That girl had hootspa, and she shouldn’t have been so alone in a sea of people.
I’m glad that girl moved to Colorado and found her way. I’m glad she’s going back.

Coastal respite

Ahhhh. Fresh ocean breezes. Lovely. This morning I left behind (I kid you not) 107 degree heat and drove 3 hours Southwest to Capitola!
The past few days have been a little harrowing. My little girl got sick just as I was trying to wrap up my job and my class, and if I thought I was sleep deprived before…! She’s got a really awful cold, basically, and her typical way of fighting anything is to spike fevers off and on until she gets past whatever crud has found her. When she was really little it used to scare me, and I’d rush her to the pediatrician, only to be told I was already doing everything there was to do. I’ve been through it now enough times to know the routine. What did people do before children’s Motrin? As soon as we got here she got in the bed and was OUT.
Still, I am just so glad to see the end of that class. And the job’s last day came and went, so now I’m just sitting here in my hotel room, tapping away on my keyboard, listening to M snore, and cursing the fact that I left behind the wine key. This is the same hotel we’ve stayed in before, and I’m so glad to be here! The room is comfy, it is close to everything, we have a little fridge and microwave, and Internet! There’s a small swimming pool, and the continental breakfast here is pretty decent. I want to hit the grocery this evening and pick up a few things, but we are okay for now. M hasn’t been hungry much, I’m thrilled if I hit on something she will eat right now, and that isn’t her usual style. She couldn’t eat anything at my “celebration dinner” at Red Lobster, and it was her idea to go there! She loves crab legs!
For tonight, I’m so beat that I’m just looking forward to some food, a bath, and sleep! Then we’ll get to all the FUN later.

Three Weeks

It is now 3 weeks until my planned last day on the job. After that, my daughter and I are going on a well-deserved and long awaited weeklong vacation to Capitola, California. She’s been there before and is really looking forward to it. I have a long history with Capitola and it has a special place in my heart. Since when I was a teenager and first started going to the beach without my parents, this is where I have gone to relax, have fun, and step away from whatever is going on in my life. Before the next phase of my life begins, I need a week of bliss with my little girl, playing in the water, on the sand, walking, eating icecream, and listening to the ocean. There are lots of little shops that we stroll through and poke around in. Last year, I bought myself a lovely sarong to tie around my waist over my swimsuit, and a big wide brimmed hat, and we walked around like ladies of leisure.

The area around it has much swankier (more expensive) surrounding towns like Monterey and Pacific Grove, and more well-known destinations like Santa Cruz, but I have always been attracted to the quaintness of Capitola and it’s unpretentious style. It took a hit in the 1989 earthquake, but aside from losing one of my favorite restaurants, it recovered nicely. I am looking forward to going to Zelda’s and drinking Bloody Marys and eating shrimp and calamari with M on their patio on the beach.
(ok, M doesn’t get a Bloody Mary, and we walk everywhere – no car!)

Can’t wait!

The Trash House

This is our next door neighbor's lot. These piles of crap have been there for four years, probably longer. (that's just how long I've seen them!) The trash cans are ironic, I think. I've never been able to figure out how they decide what goes in the can, and what they just throw on the ground. There's all kinds of nasty crap that doesn't show in these pictures. They claim they are "renovating" - but it's been going on for EVER and it just gets worse. Oh, yeah, there are several late model trucks parked there all the time.

I’ve written before about the Trash House next door because of the rats that keep finding their way over here. My tally for the four years I’ve been here: 3 infestations of big disgusting rats, and 2 of mice. The last mice “visitation” was pretty recently and the little fuckers were in our upstairs bedroom! I even heard them squeaking!

I’ve been meaning to get pictures of the place and I finally did. One of the old ladies across the street saw me taking the pictures and was laughing. We started talking about the Trash House and she told me everybody has had rat problems since those people moved in, and everybody’s mad about it. Of course, my mother never told her we had worse rats than anyone, so I outed her to the neighbors. My mother and the other old ladies on this street talk all the time, standing out by each other’s flower beds, and in all time, Mom never revealed our shameful secret! Eeesh.

The camper comes and goes. Some children live over there, and sometimes you can see them playing on the trash piles and it looks just like a Save the Children ad. Between the health violations, the building code violations, and the other nasty goings on, the sheriff and the county have been called numerous times. Because it is "unincorporated" and the enforcement is truly pitiful around here, nothing is done. One of the old ladies on the street, the one who has the misfortune of living right across from them, was once a Social Worker for the county and she knows these people. It kills her that it isn't being taken care of, and it kills her that she has to look at it. For a while she was going to move, she said, but she can't sell her cute as a button and neat as a pin house. Hmmm, I wonder why?

Location

It is raining cats and dogs. M thinks that’s a funny saying, and I can’t tell her why we say it, but I think it’s funny, too. One of the fun parts of being a parent is explaining things to a little kid, especially a smart little kid like M. She asks amazing questions. It is always a joy to see how her mind works. I don’t always have a good answer for her, though, and she can get frustrated with me. That part isn’t fun, especially while I’m driving. We spend a lot of time commuting every day. I have her in a great daycare that is half way between work and home, so she gets a half-hour ride each way.

I worry about being on the freeway, but there aren’t very many options here. They just didn’t plan this area at all, and all the improvements have been retrofitted to the bizarre layout that came about from the gold-mining past. I will NOT miss this rain.

Four months of this job left. It sucks so much, it is mind boggling. In the past couple months, I’ve worked on several projects that didn’t go anywhere due to conflicting legislation, poor communication, and changes in requirements that no one knew about. Thousands upon thousands of dollars wasted. The state of California is in such a financial quagmire right now. It will take years to rectify the mess. I don’t have that kind of patience, or the desire to pay crazy out of control prices for things just to avoid snow. That is what most people say when they learn that I’m moving – “but it snows so much in Colorado!” Yeah, and that keeps the population and the real estate prices down. There is a great little elementary school by M’s daycare that I would love for her to be able to go to. The housing in that area costs easily twice what it would in Colorado. Even now, with housing prices tanking, California is unaffordable. The jobs don’t pay better. How do people do it? Twenty years ago I couldn’t afford the Bay Area; how does anyone now? Here is bad enough. My friend S lives in Sacramento, and his neighborhood is nice, but I can't afford it there, either.

The Rats are back!

There is a real estate rule of thumb that you don’t want to put a lot of money into a house that will make it vastly different (more valuable) than the surrounding houses. Of course, my parents don’t make decisions based on rational thinking, so they sold the home they had in the Bay Area for 30+ years and bought this monstrosity here a few years back. Their Retirement Home. Complete with stairs that rival the Winchester Mystery House, an architectural design that makes it impossible to heat and cool efficiently, and to make it really, really special, it is on a narrow little road right off the frontage road of Interstate 80. The noise is constant, day and night. Just down the street is a major freeway exit, with its requisite multiple gas stations (I count 6), fast food entities, and other miscellaneous businesses that tend to cluster around freeway exits. Nothing remotely resembling a neighborhood. The road we are on is narrow, as I said, without sidewalks or a shoulder of any kind, and features a ditch on both sides that some of the homes have installed a pipe and covered. Most of the other houses are “modest” as they say. The neighbors think of my parents’ house as the Big House. When my parents first moved in, they held an Open House each Christmas for a couple years, acting like the newly landed lords of the manor, but instead of bonding with their neighbors it simply provided a way for the neighbors to satisfy their curiosity by poking around. When I moved in with my baby I squelched the idea. It was gross. No one misses it.

All of this would be bad enough, but just after my parents moved in, the little house next door went through an unofficial change of ownership. The hillbilly (their word, not mine) who had lived there ended up letting someone they were somehow related to move in and that cracker proceeded to “remodel.” What was once a little, slightly run down house on a weed filled lot now looks like what is left after a cyclone hits. The house and adjacent outbuilding are partially covered with plastic tarps. There is some chicken wire surrounding the porch. Huge piles of what looks like a combination of construction debris, garbage, tree branches, discarded parts and old broken appliances, odds and ends of lumber and cardboard boxes, and lots of unrecognizable junk fills the lot. The weeds have grown and there are bare patches of dirt and gravel, too, and – yes, litter (fast food wrappers, crap like that) strewn everywhere. M calls it the Trash House. Twice in the past, rats from next door have found their way into this house. Big rats. Aggressive Big Rats.

They are back.

The fog is back

The fog came back this week. Rain and fog all day and night, making the drive to and from work more stressful and unpleasant and making me that much more anxious to leave. The damp gets into my very bones. The noise of the wipers and the hiss and splatter of water on the highway grinds on my nerves.

When I lived in Colorado I used to hear people talking about the dry air and how they worried it would age their skin, but I found the dry to be great for my skin – it finally cleared up – and the blue sky and sunshine was such a great contrast to the dreary grey of the Bay Area that I’d left behind. Northern California has lots of areas that are dismal to someone who is sensitive to the weather. I lived in the Silicon Valley until I was 23, and smog and haze was the norm. Now I’m living and commuting along I-80 and the sky is rarely blue. It is so depressing to not see the sun for weeks. Even clear days the air pollution is ever present. Today we are completely socked in – we can barely see across the street.

Such a week at work. The projects I’m working on are a mess, and the emails have been flying back and forth. We’ve had several meetings and changes of direction. The budget problems are making everyone crazy. One of the senior project managers told me yesterday that she’s looking for another job; she can’t take it any more. I’m worried about what the job market will be like in Denver when I get back, but I really hope I never have to work in an environment like this one again. Not one person I work with is happy, and these are the good, talented, dedicated people. The stress level is just exhausting. It makes people act stupidly and make bad decisions, and doesn’t foster creative thinking AT ALL.

I’ve got school to pay for and M’s daycare, so I am that much more grateful for the paycheck, but once I’ve graduated and she’s older, I won’t have those expenses anymore and that is something I’m really looking forward to. Those two take up almost 30% of my gross income.

The ticking of the clock

I'm having a hell of a time focusing on anything lately. All I've wanted to do is walk outdoors, so naturally, the weather has been horrible. I can handle cold, but wet, grey, and foggy/damp/drizzly for days and weeks on end makes me feel depressed. The weather here is on the top ten list of reasons why I MUST move, no matter how insane my timing or plans are. Living with my parents is #1, of course. GOD, I was delusional to think I'd be able to deal with it. It was still the best choice for M, but it has shaved years off my life just tolerating all the toxic dysfunction. So, imagine my joy to have M telling me that she doesn't want to move because she wants to live with her grandparents forever! I tell her calmly that it isn't an option; that she has to live with me and that I AM moving, but she remains unimpressed.
Reason #2 is this area. Ugh. A poorly planned one-horse town that mishandled its sudden growth a few years back and is now just a cluster-fuck (transportationwise) and deeply conservative, provincial, and distrustful of progress. BIG McCain/Palin supporters. BIG stupid trucks and SUVs, gun-lovin', church-goin'... Crazy hot in the summer (110+ not unheard of) and grey and damp in the winter. Rain and fog, no snow. The only time the sun shines it is so hot out everyone runs inside to the air conditioning. No one walks.  Soooo funny that this is California - the place the rest of the country thinks is all sunshine, tan, blonde, bean-sprout-eating, surfing actors. Ha.
Reason #3 is this soul crushing job. The management is so hideously bad, the morale is so low, and the work is so poorly executed that it is nearly impossible to stay anything close to positive, motivated, or engaged. The few really great people here are overworked and abused to a ridiculous level, there are a LOT of incompetent slackers, and everyone else acts like a quiet little sheep, keeping their eyes down, their mouths shut, and their focus on simply getting by. It is tragic.
Yes... I could have done something else. I started here as a temp. It was supposed to be a 3 month gig (ala Gulligan's Island, anyone?) and I liked what they had me doing. I was paid a fair amount, and I enjoyed the work. Then they asked me to fill a position that I'd never done before, as a contractor, for more money. Seemed like a better idea than trying to find something else. I was going to school full time (mostly online) and had a just over year-old baby. Less hassle the better, right? But then the stuff started going south. They made me switch agencies - from a really good one that has a national reputation, to a seedy weird one with a stupid name and no local presence. They even had a bad website (red flag for a tech company). Pretty soon they had me working on the Project From Hell, that took things to an all new low, and then I had to hire on or be let go. Of course this happened while I was in the midst of classes and such, so I kept "rolling with it," thinking it would sort itself out. Then the State budget ran aground, the company got bought, the work started to slack off, and here we are.
I've got six months left. It would be stupid to leave now. I have to just tough it out.