Some of you my know that I have moved into an apartment; others may not.  I will not elaborate on the particulars, but I will go into detail on the new challenges that apartment living have presented.  I was in a house for over 10 years, and in all that time, you get used to the patterns in your daily life. 

In my House, I never locked the door. 

In my Apartment, I have two locks and have to remember to turn around and lock the damn door every time I leave.  I have a key for the laundry room, the mail room and mailbox, my storage room too.  Plus all my House keys.  I look like a Janitor.  It really is a pain in the ass.

In my House, I never did the laundry. 

Yeah that sounds sexist, but really I didn’t – so there.

In my Apartment, I have to take the laundry down to the room remembering the key and remembering to get quarters.  Quarters are the nectar of life in an apartment living, and I now try to purchase things so that I get change in quarters – not dollars, but quarters.  Is there a Quarter Machine in the Laundry room?  No.

In my House, I had central heat and air. 

In my Apartment, I have radiant heating and a wall mounted AC.  I have found that even with a small place, you don’t have even heat transfer, so I have learned to stand in front of the radiator and warm-up, then go into the colder rooms.  In the summer, it will move to the AC unit in the dining room.   I think of it as exercise actually.

In my House, I knew every sound and noise. 

I could tell when the kids were walking from their room to the bathroom, or coming down the hall to see us.  Every sound was known:  The raccoon in the back, the dump truck, and even when the next door neighbors are partying. 

In my Apartment, there is a never-ending stream of noises, and more often than not, none of them are the same.  The first two weeks living there, I would hear someone walking down my hallway and coming into my bedroom.  I would leap up in my best Karate pose, only to realize it was the guy upstairs.  Sadly, he wakes up at 3am every morning to go to work, but I just look at this as I am happy I can roll over and go to sleep.  I have waitresses all over the place, and they all get off around 10pm I guess, because they all come tromping in around 11pm – and they are really a chatty bunch.  I have heard some pretty juicy gossip right outside my bedroom window.  When I say ‘right outside’, I mean literally they have leaned against my window while talking.  I can’t wait for the summer when I have my window open and they fall through the screen – or I make some comment about their conversations.

So it has been a while since I have posted, and I am sure you can see that with the economy, the end of the year, and my own personal changes posting has not been on the priority list – I just wanted to put a new line in the sand, and I can’t wait to see what stories come my way.

See you at the Sports Bar,

Sandy

I took the Thanksgiving week off to spend some quality time with my kids.

I had made up my mind a week earlier that I was going to take them somewhere that I traditionally avoided at all costs on the weekends.  I was going to take them to San Francisco.  I hate going to San Francisco on the weekend.  It is like going to work for a ½ day, so I never do it.  Same commute, same BART, same parking, and same guy who plays the saxophone begging for money.

Granted “the City”, is one of the most beautiful cities on earth – and I will stand by that statement.  I don’t care.  You bring you your city, with whatever it has, and I can find it here and it will be better.  I am not going to apologize.  You have parks, it has better parks, you have art, it has more art, you have bridges, it has better bridges, you have slums – it has award-winning slums.

One such slum is called: Pier 39.  It is painted and lighted to look like a tourist trap, but it is nothing but a slum with crappy food and no ATMs.  The “Carnies” there are much more dangerous, since they have actual places to live and do not meander from town to town.  Clearly this Pier is their Pier, and you are just visiting the flame-juggling-girl - and you have no real chance to date her, or her bearded sister.  Not that you would want to, but they do protect their own…

I digress.

The only positive that I could think of with going to The City on a vacation day was that that the kids would be up early, dressed, and ready to go with no fighting, cajoling, or my typical threat to: “ end the day right here and now!”.  I didn’t want to go (as you well know by now) but decided to find something else to distract me from the fact that no matter what we did, Pier 39 was our eventual goal.  Then it hit me – Ghirardelli Square!  I have lived in the Bay for over 20 years, and had never been to Ghirardelli Square.  It was perfect, I would take the kids there and they could see how the chocolate is made, and then we would have to spend LESS time at “Slum 39”!  I was very happy with myself.

When I told the kids we were going to a chocolate factory, it was clear that my oldest was close to swooning – she loves chocolate, and to actually go to a place where they make it was almost incomprehensible.

My youngest informed me she was looking forward to meeting Willy Wonka, but was way more excited about riding the BART to and from the City, and the eventual Cab-rides.

My son was just happy to “be”, and came along for the joy of “coming along”.  He hates chocolate, and could care less about BART.

We got there,  we BARTed, we Cabbed, and eventually arrived at Ghirardelli Square.  By this time everyone was pretty excited, and we clamored out of the cab and up to the majestic brick building with the massive “GHIRARDELLI” sign in neon-red.  Up the stairs we ran and into the main lobby that was full of chocolate in every imaginable shape, size and color.  The nice lady was handing out free samples from a huge bucket of chocolates, the kids were giddy – even Max took a piece.  There were other kids leaping about the lobby, and the lady was almost yelling, above the din of squeals, about all the different kinds of chocolates that they had here, and how you could get them for a deal if you bought a couple-hundred pounds at a time.

I stood right in front of her, and since she was shorter, she would bob-and-weave around me to yell at everyone, so that her well rehearsed sales-pitch was heard by all.  I winced through the acoustical pain, and once she was done, I calmly asked:  “When do the tours start?”

She dropped her hands into a folded position and ever so slightly tilted her head to one side:  “Oh, Honey.”  She smiled:  “They moved the actual Factory over to Oakland in 1967.  They don’t make chocolate here.”

Sigh.  You get the rest from here…

This story sprung from an unexpected source: a bowl of Macaroni and Cheese.  Maisy wanted a quick snack – so I went to the fridge and found a bowel and fired it up.  Pulling it out of the microwave, the sickly-sweet smell of ultra-processed-fake-cheese-food triggered a long-lost memory.  I had to write it down.

It was 1985, and I was a Freshman in college.  I went to a tiny school in Washington state with my long-time friend Brett.  We were roommates, and inherited a Senior’s dorm room that had been decorated over the years.  Since this was 1985, there were still some strong ties to the 70’s, and this room was no exception.  The one wall was covered in a massive Jungle wallpaper that ran from the floor to the ceiling.  The idea was that you ‘thought’ you were looking at an opening out to the jungle.  It was Groovy. 

The green wall touched down onto a thick, dark brown, shag carpet that covered the entire floor.  We are talking the big-time shag that if we knew then what we know now, we could have made thousands of tiny dreadlocks all over the floor.  Continuing across the room, you would eventually see the Pièce de résistance:  An entire wall of 12 inch squares made of Dark Brown Cork and Mirrors, fashioned in a checkerboard pattern!  If you stared long enough at the mirrored wall, the reflective jungle on the other side would start to ‘wobble’ a bit and you would have to sit down.  It was all very trippy.

In this “Jungle Room” as it was known, was where we would try to study.  Now I was a horrible College Student (there were just too many distractions…) but when I did try, I sat at my desk facing the cork and mirror checkerboard.  Bret would never study in the room, but would distract me to no end while he was there.  He would jump around, throw stuff at me, and ask to go to Dairy Queen or 7-11 to get food.  On this day, he convinced me to go to 7-11.

We drove there; and as I was purchasing my junk-food, he walked up to the Cashier, holding a can of Cheese Wiz.  He mentioned to the lady that the cap and the dispensing nozzle were missing, but could he:  “get a discount on the can?”  The lady blinked, said:  “Fifty Cents.”, and Brett left the tiny store.  He was all smiles, holding his trophy in one hand, and a small box of Ritz Crackers in the other.  He assured me that he really got a deal, and I wondered how he thought he was going to get the cheese out of the can.  The lady put the two quarters in her pocket.

We got back to the room and I sat down, trying to finish my studies, while Brett continued in his incessant puttering.  About two hours into my efforts, Brett innocently asked me for my Swiss Army Knife.  Without a second thought, I passed it over my shoulder to him and maintained my heads-down attack on the problem at hand.  It took me about 5 actual seconds to realize what I had done.  I paused, looking straight up from the desk, into the mirrors on the wall to see him sitting, crossed-legged on the floor, with the can of Cheese Wiz in his lap.  His right arm was held high, and the Awl (sharp pointy) blade on my knife was exposed.  I  didn’t even have time to yell when he slammed the Swiss Army Knife into the side of the can.

Because I was watching this through the mirrors, it was somewhat like watching a reality TV show – right up to the point when the Can exploded, and I was hit with a barrage of Cheese Wiz projectiles.  The entire wall, front of my desk, back of my head and back were peppered in orange slime.  I literally made a reverse-silhouette of my body on the wall made of cheese-splatter.  I spun around furious and screaming:  “What the HELL are you thinking?!”

Brett sat there on the floor, not a drop of cheese on him.  He was holding the can up to me and after the initial explosion, the hole was now streaming a foot high fountain of processed cheese-food.  I sat there stunned while the room was dripping in ribbons of this stuff, and all Bret was yelling was:

“Get the Crackers!!  GET THE CRACKERS!!”

We never found the crackers.

The mess was never fully cleaned up, you can’t get Wiz out of shag carpet, and then all the crannies in cork made the wall cleaning impossible.  The room never lost its new “Cheesy Aroma”, and we were often mistaken as the source of the odor.  After a particularly hot day, the Dean came by and insisted that the entire ensemble of Shag, Cork, Mirror and Jungle be evicted from the dormitory.  With much sadness, we tore it all out and down, and put it in the garbage – leaving us with a yellowed walls and a Formica tile floor. 

We had killed our “Jungle Room” with Cheese.

Sandy

My friends across the street finally got married.  They had been dating for over four years, and it was time.  They decided to get married by the ocean.  It was beautiful, and everyone went.

At the same time, Stacey was coaching her soccer team up in Carson City, Nevada.  She left the tournament, caught a plane down to Oakland, and I picked her up and we sped to the wedding.  We just missed the ceremony, but were in time for the reception.  This was all to plan, and everyone was happy that we made the event.  Stacey stayed on for a couple of hours, and then took the car and drove all the way back up to Carson City (over 4 hours), while I stayed on and drank with friends.  I am good at drinking.

The evening continued, with much toasting and revelry; and at the end, my Ride loaded me into the back of their car, and we drove the hour back to Martinez.  When we arrived at my house – it was now 1:30 AM – my friends, unknowingly, dropped me off in front of the house next door.  I got out and started to saunter down the sidewalk to my actual home.  They started following me slowly in their car, watching me stroll along.  I looked over and smiled, and they looked back confused.  I stopped at my mailbox to get the mail, and at that point they started yelling at me thinking I was robbing someone else’s mailbox.  I informed them that this house was actually my house and they drove off laughing, waving and honking.  I smiled and waved back as they rounded the corner.

The evening was perfect:  The moon was close to full, and the cool-gray light made me stop for a second and just look at the front of my house.  My house.  My house that I work very hard to maintain and live.  My house where my children have been raised.  My secure house.  My totally locked house.  My god, I am totally locked out of my house!  It was locked up tight as a drum.  For the first time in 11 years every window and door was locked – even the stupid little one for the bathroom.  There were times I have come home, and walked up to a totally empty house, air-conditioner blowing, with the front door wide open.  Not tonight.  I have no key (gave it to Stacey), no phone (didn’t need it), no neighbor’s to get the spare (they are all at the wedding I just left).  Did I mention that it is 1:30 AM?  As I stood there in the moonlight with a handful of bills, I knew that drastic measures were going to have to happen.  The one thing that was not locked was my tool shed; so I went over and opened it up looking for something that could get me into the house.

I found a sledgehammer. 

I picked the weakest and ugliest door on the side of the garage, and started hammering away.  After about 10 good hard whacks, causing all sorts of ruckus and dogs barking, I stopped and viewed my handy work.  Nothing – just a few dents in the door.  This was going to take a bit more.  I found a 5 foot long tamping iron with a crowbar-end (I have a ton of tools) and went to work on the door jamb where the lock was located.  The entire time I am splintering wood, I am wondering when the cops are going to arrive and start shooting: “My neighbors know that I am away, we have a Neighborhood Watch Program, and someone is smashing the side door to my house.”  I broke the jamb and the door swung open, I got into my house, and from there have yet another project to fix.

No cops ever came – ever.  And no one mentioned the ruckus or the vandalism that had occurred.  Nice to know these people have my back in an emergency…

When Stacey got home, I showed her the damage to the door, and she decided to get one of those “rocks” that you can hide the key, so that next time, I will have a better way to enter the house than a 5 foot crowbar.  She took the rock out of the package, put a key in the bottom and closed it.  I asked her where she thought a ‘plastic rock’ would fit in around the house.  I thought the ‘rock’ was a silly idea and made fun of it.  She commented that:  “This whole ‘rock’ issue is because you got locked out – not me.  You are the one that is going to need it.” 

She turned, and chucked it deep into the ivy, and I have not seen it since.

Sandy