The ocean is laden with
fog today.
I know this despite not
having even gone outside yet because I can see to the water from my kitchen
window.
I won’t lie, this may
play a part in the fact that I mind washing dishes so much less lately.
We live in a real
neighborhood for the first time in years, not in some shitty shoe box apartment
the middle of town. There are no words
to express how much I hated the last apartment.
It was listed as a one bedroom but it was really a studio with a large
walk-in closet. Except the walk-in
closet had a window and an adjoining smaller closet. That must have been either for a single
occupant’s storage or for the man’s clothes if it was a couple like us.
Then entryway to the complex was beautiful because it was older, so the foliage had plenty of time to grow large and beautiful. There were walnut trees, cottonwood trees, and one pine tree. There were large flowers and bushes accenting the edges of the lawns, and there was a creek bed separating it from another complex of nicer and larger condos that were stratospherically out of our price range.
The creek bed was lined with trees and full of feral cats.
Somehow this place was
located in a time/space jump, because it seemed like all the other tenants were
Mexican families with children. The
children became a wolf pack on sunny days (which there were many of because California,
despite the wet weather this year, has been drought-central for about the last
five) and would run the complex screaming until darkness had firmly settled its
cloak around the West coast.
The screaming was all day long on weekends, especially in summer when the pool was open. It was punctuated by the calls of a bicycle snack vendor who used a bike horn to lure people out for overpriced chips with chili powder on them, and a woman with a bell for a similar purpose who cried, "TAMALES" at the top of her lungs for several minutes. There were also sounds that occurred at any time of the day or night: car alarms and horns, sirens, our neighbors fighting violently, cats yowling, dogs barking, bass, mariachi music, or both from people with absolutely no common decency, homeless people rooting through the dumpsters for cans, and the miscellaneous people, not necessarily tenants, who would wander through the complex shouting at each other or themselves.
The first eight months
or so there was also a group of college students across the interior lawn from
our unit. They would smoke pot in their
back yard until all hours of the night and sometimes, often on Thursdays, they
would have parties. One of the
partygoers would inevitably end up sick and for some reason would choose to
vomit somewhere on the lawn or surrounding bushes anytime between three and
five AM, which is awesome when you like to sleep with your bedroom window open,
have a very specific phobia, and have work the next morning.
This person is actually
the primary of about three reasons I took antidepressants for a while when we
lived there.
Between that, monetary
issues because everything was fucking expensive (particularly rent for our
closet), and some generalized anxiety resulting from my daily commute, I was a
wreck for a little bit. Nothing compared
to how I was moving here, but nine months after moving there I couldn’t
compartmentalize anymore and even though I didn’t feel particularly depressed
my doctor decided to put me on a moderate dose of Prozac to see if it would
help my overall symptoms.
It helped. A lot.
But when we realized
the time had come to move I had just stopped taking them and we couldn’t afford
for me to get a refill, anyway.
It was all just really
poor timing that I don’t feel up to digging into today.
The apartment complex
was on the West side of Santa Rosa, which was great for us because it was less
than ten minutes out of town and 30 minutes of beautiful forested countryside
to the beach.
I think the beach drive
is what I miss most, aside from people.
That drive was where we
got engaged a little over two months before we moved. It hurts not to be able to visit it whenever
we want to, but at the same time I’m so glad it was a special place and we at
least still live close enough to it that we can go by when we visit his family
in the Central Valley or friends/family in the Bay Area.
There are places here
in Humboldt that remind me of Santa Rosa.
That helps, but I think I’ll always miss it. That’s hard to admit because I always assumed
we’d move away from there. If we decided
to have a family it would take a long time to establish ourselves there and I
don’t think we’d ever be able to do it the way we want to.
I don’t want to raise a
family in an apartment. I don’t think it’s
fair to children, not to have the space to play outside. I want to own property someday. I’m already tired of other people telling me
what I can and can’t do in my home.
Mostly I’m tired of people telling me I can’t get a dog or I shouldn’t
have any pets at all because obviously I’m going to let them destroy the rental
property.
I mean, don’t get me
wrong, I love the smell of cat piss as much as the next woman, but if I didn’t
care about my pets enough to really take care of them why would I have them? Why would I worry about letting my cats
outside enough to keep them indoors if I wasn’t going to clean up after them
and make sure they were taken care of?
It is my duty as a pet
owner to provide the domesticated animals I keep with the best life possible
and anyone who is not willing to do that does not deserve to have a pet. In some cases they deserve to be prosecuted
to the full extent of the law.
And that is one of the
few things I am truly passionate about.
I miss San Francisco
being a little over an hour away, depending on traffic. I miss the drive across the Golden Gate,
though I don’t miss receiving the $7.00 toll in the mail three to five weeks
later. The thing is, we rarely had the
money to drive to the city for anything other than family events. I think in two years we were able to go for
dinner once. We always planned to go to
the opera, but there wasn’t money for that either.
If we had made it a
priority we could have, I’m sure, but especially after the first year when we
were both starting to make decent money the other problems compounded and
stacked on top of each other. We both
were working full time and neither of us wanted to do anything when we got home. Often when I came home from work I still
answered emails and Skypes from the factories in China, so sometimes I felt like
I was never done working. That meant we
would get something from the store or fast food for dinner and rarely did
regular grocery shopping.
I hated the tiny water
closet of a kitchen in that apartment and cooking in it was miserable because
there was practically no counter space, the cooking area was a range on top of
what I think may have been Maytag’s answer to the EZ-Bake Oven, circa
approximately 1984, and much of the teeny tiny bit of navy blue counter space
that existed was covered by dirty dishes because there was no dishwasher. The deal was that I cooked and he did
dishes. Since I rarely cooked because of
the aforementioned reasons, he rarely did the dishes. And I wouldn’t do the dishes because I was
trying to press the point that it was his chore. Sometimes there were so many that it would
take over three hours to hand was them all.
That is why I am so
happy that I’m able to keep my kitchen clean and beautiful right now. I know it’s sanitary, I like the space, and
it can be a safe place for me like it should be.
I know little pieces of
my heart will always be in the North Bay, sprinkled around at my favorite
places: a grain of sand at Kala, a larger piece at our beach spot, a little one
at the Raley’s down the street (the most beautiful, clean, and spacious grocery
store I have ever seen), and sprinklings here and there at places like Taps,
Old Chicago, and Jamison’s Roaring Donkey in Petaluma, and El Patio in Santa
Rosa.
I miss the happiness I
was able to obtain there and the people who made it feel like home to me.
I can only hope I forge
friendships half as wonderful here.
For now, though, I am
able to keep myself content with watching the fog move over the ocean and
seeing ships move in and out of the harbor from my kitchen, cooking delicious
meals every day in a space I love, weeding in a garden I didn’t think I’d have
for years still, and taking peaceful drives up the Northern California coastline
to see elk, giant ferns, and even larger redwood trees.
And, of course, the
open ocean. Because, let’s face it, that’s
where my heart really has been this whole time anyway.
