moving

Last week I gave notice to my work.  I'm quitting.  By mid-August we will be in Portland, Oregon.  It'll be two years behind our original schedule.

We were supposed to move the fall after George was born.  I was going to graduate, pass my board exam, and then have George all with in a six week stretch back in 2010.  I'd have six months to stay at home with him full-time while I got my license and looked for a job in Oregon.  That plan disintegrated pretty quickly in March of that same year.  After he died I was emotionally incapable of leaving the home that we had built here.

I'm ready now, for the most part, I think.  But the nostalgia for a city that I haven't even left yet has already started to kick in.  I've lived here, in different parts of the city, for the better part nearly thirteen years.  For all its faults, Los Angeles is a pretty fucking rad place to live while you're young.

I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't nervous about the move.  My parents, my sister and her daughters are all less than a couple hours drive from my house so I see them fairly frequently.  My sister and I are very close and I love my nieces like they were my own.  The thought of leaving them makes me sick to my stomach.

We've made really amazing friends here too.  Some are the kind of friends you know that only come along once or twice in a lifetime.

Oh, and the weather.  The lovely, lovely, sunny weather.  As a Californian, born and raised, the adjustment to the cold and rainy weather in Portland is going to be a huge adjustment for me.

But there is so much to look forward to as well.  Leif's entire family lives within a forty minute drive of Downtown Portland.

It looks like two of our best friends -another set that only comes along once or twice in a lifetime- are coming home to Portland from The Netherlands the same time we are moving there.  Which, I admit, I cried a little out of excitement at the thought of being able to live near them again and being able to watch our kids grow up together (no pressure Natalie but you better be coming home...lol).

We will finally be able to buy our own home.  Maybe, just maybe, my dream of owning a big chunk of property with a renovated barn and lots of room for guests will come true while we live there.
And, of course, Portland is just about the most awesome city I've ever been to (Barcelona a close second).    So there is that too.

You'll have to excuse me if over the next three months I get a little weepy around here while we prepare to move.  I can't help it.  I'm gonna miss Los Angeles.

P.S.  Also, if you know of any tricks to make a move to another state easier I'd love to hear them.

picnic

Leif and I have developed a habit of grading our weekends together almost every Sunday night as we lay in bed together.  Admittedly they are always good, so we rarely ever have a B weekend but this weekend was extra great. An A, even.  Why?  No particular reason but I think our picnic had something to do with it.  It doesn't happen very often in Los Angeles that one finds oneself in a beautiful park, with pristine weather, and absolutely no one else around.  We had the entire place to ourselves until right before we left when two adorable little pooches and their friendly human came by to say hello.

You will notice the large mound of watermelon.  It has been my only craving this entire pregnancy.  I can eat an entire watermelon by myself in under two days.  I would, if Leif would let me, eat nothing but watermelon for every meal.  Interestingly enough, it was pineapple with George.

I miss drinking coke.  It isn't like a drank a ton of it pre-pregnancy but I still miss it quite a bit.  This "Vintage Cola" -it's vintage and cool and trendy and look at that old-timey label- is pretty tasty though.  Not quite the same as Mexican Coke but pretty close anyway.  It also fits nicely in my oxfords, which are also vintagey!  Who is too cool?

More watermelon!  I got watermelon juice on my shirt by the dubs and it doesn't look like it is coming out.  Bummer.  I liked that shirt.  Oh well, at least that morning I figured out that I could still wear a pre-pregnancy stretchy skirt.  You win one, you lose one.

Meet Paco and Lola.  Lola is the closer one.  Super friendly.  Super shaggy.  I don't normally like little dogs (Except, have you seen Brooke's Little Mac?  He's pretty darn cute too) with all their yip-yappin' but these two lovelies were undeniably cute and surprisingly unbarky.

 Lola really liked Leif...but mostly she liked the smell of the salami that lingered on his fingers.

Yep, it was fun.

How was everyone else's weekend?  Good or at least partly good, I hope.

riding a bike on a frozen lake

On a whim Leif and I have decided to move*.  Not anywhere far but to a new part of the city and somewhere we've never explored before.  In the hills with a beautiful view and terraced patios.  I'm excited.  New rooms to decorate.  More furniture to buy at flea markets and refurbish.

A new house to make into a home.

But...

And isn't there always a "but?"

Part of me feels like I am leaving behind a piece of George here in this apartment.  It was here that housed all of the hopes we had for him while he was still alive and healthy.  Grief has all but choked out that hope but I can still catch glimpses of them from time to time.  Sometimes I can still remember what it was like to think of him with only joy and not the longing with which I think of him now.  He was alive here.  At one point he was in the present here.  In our new place he will always be in the past.

On so many levels and because of so many things going on in our lives right now I feel like I am closing a door on him.   I know, I know, I know people -including my therapist- will say that it isn't true.  But isn't it true just a little?  When tragedy strikes isn't there a point when we make a conscience decision to start living our lives again?  When we decide to keep moving forward and to start folding dreams of the future back into daily living?

I think Leif has been at that point for awhile now, patiently waiting for me to turn my gaze back to the road ahead instead of the chaos behind.

....

*I wrote this long explanation about how our landlord reacted very poorly to this news last night.  But then I deleted it all.  Let me just say that she was very, very unhappy that we were giving our thirty days notice even though we are within our rights to do so.  The conversation was not pretty and at one point getting an attorney was mentioned on her part.  Later that night she called and conceded to the fact that we were legally within our rights to give our thirty day notice at any point during the month but it doesn't negate how terribly we were treated earlier.  Seriously, folks, it was unreal.  I've never been spoken to like that before and I've dealt with some really tough patients before.  The interaction just made me feel more ready to get the fuck out of here.  Hopefully our new landlord is a reasonable human being who treats other people in her life with respect.  

Please keep your fingers crossed that our landlord does not try to make our remainder here any more uncomfortable than it already is going to be.  I can't wait until these are the views we will be seeing every day.

.the happy place.

Last week I went to Disneyland,

with Jackie, her babies, and her brother's family.

It was decorated for Christmas.

I saw the Loneliest Looking Person in the Happiest Place on Earth.

I took photographs of The Haunted Mansion as it is decorated like The Nightmare Before Christmas...

and I took photographs of the Carousel...

and of the lights in Peter Pan' Flight...

and of the "lasers" in Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters...

and of all the lights on Main Street.

It was so much fun.  I needed that.

.day of the dead.

This past weekend we went to the Day of the Dead celebration at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.  I had a difficult time.  It never even occurred to me until after we got there that I would.  But I did.  It started with an ofrenda set up with a photograph of two premature infants -of the NICU sort- with tubes and wires everywhere.  After that it just sort of went down hill.

...............

We stayed just long enough for me to get my face painted and to take this photograph.  Fifteen minutes later I suddenly become so sick again that Leif had to whisk me away back home, where I spent the remainder of the day on the couch.

..............

Our ofrenda for George: 

Yesterday we spent the evening playing Little Big World Planet (edited: Leif kindly corrected me on the title of this highly addictive game) and then watching The Horror of Dracula and eating ice cream.  At least the weekend ended on a positive note and that is something to feel good about.

.our weekend.

.B.

.B.

.B.

.B.

.L.

.B.

.L.

.B.

.B.

.L.

.the dating game.

One week ago it was 113 degrees, the hottest day ever in recorded history in Los Angeles.  Yesterday it rained all day causing the power in our apartment to go out for the entire afternoon and part of the evening. Today, my fingers are cold and I am bundled in a terry cloth robe.  By the end of the week it will be in the upper 70s and sunny again.

This is the way that Los Angeles changes seasons.  It has trouble making up it's mind one way or the other; like me trying to find an outfit to wear to an event.

I went for a walk yesterday in the rain, around the reservoir, with my friend Melissa and her dog Emma. For once I felt like I looked like the other people who frequent that 2 mile path since almost everyone is either jogging or pushing a stroller or walking their dogs or doing all three at once.  I felt like saying, "See I have a dog too!  I do belong!  I do belong!"

By the time I got home in the afternoon and sat down in front of my laptop with the intention of beginning another day scouring the internet for a job...the power went out.  LA is unaccustomed to the rain.  Power goes out.  People suddenly forget how to drive, frequently confusing the accelerator and brake pedals.  Burly, mean-looking men ride their red ladies' beach cruiser bicycles in the middle of the very busy La Brea Blvd.  People wander around aimlessly in fugue states perplexed by how they have been transported to a place that looks like their city but somehow just wetter.

So I spent the afternoon reading.  Reading on the couch, in our bedroom, in a hot bath.  All the while feeling nervous that I need to be finding a job.  Is there even a job out there that is right for me?  How will I find it?  How will I know?

I feel like I am a contestant on a pre-MTV dating game.  Brianna loves walks in the park and moonlight strolls on the beach.  She loves going to see live music but likes to be home and curled up with a good book by 11pm (9pm in truth but this is a dating game and no one tells the whole truth on those anyway).  She is politically liberal.  Brianna hates machismo and when men wear front pleated pants.

Only the ultimate prize in this dating game is a paycheck and a happy work environment instead of a one-night stand everlasting love.

I think I am going to go take another hot bath.

This: Awwwwkwwwwaaaaarrrrrddddd!

.home.

From the beginning there was always the assumption that when the time was right we would leave.  We would pack up and say goodbye to the smog, to the helicopters, to the traffic and the never-ending honking of horns and wailing of sirens.  We would leave this place and we would go and make our home back where Leif grew up.  To Oregon.

That was a major reason why I went back to school.  Why I spent the last three years working my ass off to get this degree and why Leif spent the last three years working his ass off to provide us a comfortable living.  It was all for an occupation that was not only recession proof but also location independent.  We could go anywhere and we could always be confident that one of us would have a job.

Our plan was that in the fall of my last year of school we would start trying to have a baby, something we had talked about since we got married.  It happened for us much more quickly than we expected it to and just as soon as we said "go," I was pregnant.  Graduation would come in May, our baby in June and then we would move away from here in the fall...just in time for Leif's parents' arrival back in the States after years abroad.

But then our baby died.

And then I lost myself.

An interesting thing happens when you lose yourself.  You lose those aspects of yourself that you used to shape the outline of your person.  Likes.  Dislikes.  Hopes.  Dreams.  Fears.  They all change.  They all morph into something that is vaguely recognizable but only just enough to make you feel not entirely yourself.

The way you see yourself changes and so does the way you see the world.  The way you see your world changes.  Things seem muffled and colors seem muted.  Paths so clearly delineated become obscure and hard to follow; steeper and more tortuous.  You are left with the distinct impression that at a particular moment in time, a time you can specify to the minute, you side-stepped into a world parallel to the one you were born in.

You become needful of familiar things because even at the best of moments, the familiar things still seem...off.  A different hue.  A different texture.  Just...off.  Just a little.  The thought of surrounding yourself with anything but the (semi)familiar is wholly unnerving.  So you learn to appreciate that which brings with it the strongest sense of familiarity.  A particular route home, a particular dish from a restaurant, a particular walk around the neighborhood.  Maybe the same things you felt were reasons to leave become reasons not to.

At least, that is how it is for this lost person.

For so long we thought that this was the year that we would be moving away from here.  This year we would finally settle in somewhere and begin sending out roots.  Only it took George's death and the thought of an impending move to make me realize that I already have done those things here.

As it turns out it won't be this year.  We are choosing to stay where the surroundings are less alien and more familiar to us.

It is a choice that does not come without some measure of sadness and guilt.  Sadness because there is a sense of losing something else.  Another dream, I guess.  Or maybe it is just the sadness that comes with the acceptance that the dream we had of moving back up to Portland with George is dead too.  Guilt because my parents wanted to move up there as well but now they will not because of our decision to stay.  Guilt because Leif's parents were excited that after many years apart, all their boys would be back in the same city.

Ultimately though, I have to remind myself that it is the best decision that we can make for us (a concept that I am generally unfamiliar with).  Financially and emotionally I think we will be able to live more comfortably here than we would if we were to move.

So for now this is home and we will continue to see a view similar to this one every morning we wake up.

.here.