San Francisco, Finally

As sad as this is to confess, after living here for over six months, we just now finally made it to Chinatown in San Francisco.  All for an outfit to celebrate the Chinese New Year in...because The Redhead finally outgrew her old ones.


The last time we bought an actual Chinatown Chinese new Year outfit, we were in Toronto.  The Redhead was four and sleeping in Mister Man's arms.  She had no idea we were walking Chinatown for an outfit, but she wouldn't have cared either way.



I'll spare you all the details.  But you can let the pictures tell you stories.  (But I reserve the right to add slight commentary from time to time.)  And as you'll notice, it was a fog-free kind of day.

Our GPS, Mallory, claimed we were out in the middle of the bay.

That doesn't look like Sacramento to me.

She doesn't look like a pink lady to me.

The Redhead was quite curious about the shoes.

We found a fun sort of district, but we didn't stay.

Apparently, memories in Chinatown aren't a big seller.

Make sure you drink your Ovaltine.

So, we go to Chinatown and wanted to make sure we hit this one place in particular...and it's not even open.

Still doesn't look like Sacramento.

They were carrying heads.  On their heads.  Wrapped heads.  From decapitated dragons.  I was so curious.

A perfectly nice tree.  Just dumped by a trash can. Why didn't we go tree shopping here?

And another perfectly nice tree. 

We're now officially ready to celebrate the Year of the Horse.

It'd be quite easy to leave your heart there.  Unless your heart is The Redhead, of course.  

The Mystery in the Trash

I was back home after walking The Redhead to school, and I stopped by the trash to toss in the Band-aid that was annoying me, the Band-aid from my new blister, after yesterday's stunt.  And then suddenly I glanced around wondering if I was using the wrong trash can.  No, that's my house behind me.  What wasn't mine was the extra bag on top.  The bag with cardboard and CDs, and other things.  It was what I saw first glance.  I didn't look further.


Now, this isn't new.  In Kansas, extra trash would show up.  My trash would even disappear.  But a couple weeks back, I realized I hadn't put trash out, and I exit out the door dragging the trash bin and discover another trash can in its spot.  I was so confused.  The other side of the street had already been visited by the trash company, so my guess is a neighbor put it there since ours wasn't.  I'm guessing a neighbor also decided to put an extra bag in our bin this morning.  It's fine, I suppose.  Just a bit unexpected.  And you know, if they'd RECYCLE....they wouldn't have as much trash....


I know, I know.  But they pick up your recycling at your house!  Okay, I get it.  It's not for everyone.  But it's so easy.  You pay for it anyway.  It's a service you pay for.  So why send recyclable materials to the landfill?  I know.  I'm pushing my pesky beliefs on others.  In Kansas, I could give people a break.  After all, recycling took some effort.  But here?  Sigh.  I mean, the trash men here, they don't even get out.  The truck does it all.  A lever type claw goes down, picks up the bins (recycling, green waste, trash- all at different times) and dumps them inside the truck.  The crew in Kansas, they are doing heavy lifting.  They grab individual bags.  They have to have crews of several men.




Since we do recycle though, there is plenty of room in our trash.  But I didn't make that room so people would have even more of an excuse to toss things in the landfill.  I do it because it's the right thing...oh, there's that self-righteous hippie again.  Sorry.  Carry on.

How I spent 45 minutes of my day

So, this tree didn't start out looking like it belonged to Charlie Brown.  No, it was once a majestic beauty.  And then I got a hold of it.  All for the sake of fitting it into our green waste in time for Thursday's pickup.  Unfortunately, it didn't all fit, but we're closer to getting rid of it!  And I earned a nice set of blisters on my right thumb.  But it was all worth it...

Six Months Later....

As of today, all of us have officially been together here in California for six months.  Aside from the cat.  She arrived two days later.  Somehow.


Within those six months, we've experienced many things, enrolled in a school here, and the lady at the board office didn't even think we'd get into our neighborhood school, the one in walking distance from our house.  The reason we bought the house.  Luckily, that worked out.  We've had to shop at new grocery stores, sign up for store cards, stores we'd never heard of.  We've been to the shore, three times.  We've barely even been to San Francisco yet.  We've celebrated Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's all on California soil.  We've painted the living room, The Redhead's room, and her bathroom.  Well, at least I did.  This house didn't have working light switches in most rooms, including overhead lights.   They've resorted to lamps since the 60s.  Mister Man rectified that.  We still have a lot of things left to do and I still have items left to unpack, but we still live here nonetheless, and for the most part, we're settled.


Our large beast of a dog seems to be the one who has taken the change the hardest.  This is odd because she always seemed to be the most laid back out of all of us.  When we first brought her home to our house in Kansas, it took her less than five minutes to move in and she never questioned it.  But our laid back Newfoundland has become a bit of a household bully since moving to California.  She has constantly been destroying the cat's toys, she growls when we didn't even know she could do that, and she is often in trouble for pushing our entire bodies in the direction she wants us to go.  We keep threatening to ship her back to Kansas in pieces.  We expected the small one to be a pain, but we never thought the big one would be.  The only way the small dog has changed is that she suddenly makes you pick her up to put her on our bed.  She can jump...but she doesn't want to, at least not if you're around to pick her up.  It's pathetic, and I often refuse to enable her, but Mister Man has a soft spot for the little brat.


The Redhead has settled in well at her school.  She still reads almost every single night, at a much higher grade level than her actual grade.  She has made friends with a sweet group of girls and her fourth grade teacher seems to be a lovely and grateful woman.  I had feared this year because I have had her fourth grade teacher picked out since Kindergarten.  In fact, I used to tell Mister Man we couldn't move until after fourth grade because we had to have Mrs. H first.  Well....you see how that turned out.  He feared this year too, as he feared he would hear all about not having Mrs. H.  We've been fortunate though.  The schools here are much different, and sometimes that's overwhelming, but I'm adjusting nonetheless, mostly because I have no other choice.


Not working has been easier than I thought it would be.  I've been distracted enough and focused on projects and health.  I loved my job very much, but being home with my family this past holiday season was enough to convince me not working isn't an entirely terrible thing.  Of course, I know it's only a matter of time before someone makes some comment to me that sends me into a spiral where I can't wait to drown myself in work again.  Other stay-at-home-mothers may know some of those comments by heart.  "Since you have so much time on your hands."  "You really should be working and doing more with yourself."  "It must be so nice to not have anything to do all day."  "What do you do with all that free time?"  "When are you going back to work, again?"  "You know, it's not healthy to just be at home."  "You have so much more time than I do."  The list goes on and on, and the desire to punch them does too.  And unfortunately, those comments do bother me.  They always have.


But we're all together again and I get to walk The Redhead to and from school every day.  I help her with her homework again, bake her cookies, and laundry is always washed AND put away.  I've cooked more in the past six months than I have in the last two years, easily.  And I've definitely slept more in that time as well.  And as much as I miss some of my friends and coworkers in Kansas, perhaps even some family, I must say that California is our home.


After all, I have absolutely no desire to move again.


Ever.

If He'd Been My Son

I would have been glad someone followed the proper state laws and yielded at the crosswalk and allowed him to go ahead.

I would have been proud to know he made eye contact with the driver of the car that stopped, before heading across the busy road onto the median.  His friends were already there, waiting for him.

I would have also been proud he held on to his skateboard instead of skating out in front of cars.  Unlike what his friends did.

I would have also been proud of him for wearing his helmet, also a state law, and something you don't see very often; something his friends weren't doing.

And I'm glad I got to witness him today and be that car that followed the laws and allowed him across, a law very few cars like to follow around here.  Perhaps it's not a popular law, but I don't really care.  It's also nice to see a kid wearing a helmet.  It's a state law to make sure your children wear their helmets when bicycling, skateboarding, and riding on a scooter.  However, that doesn't stop most of the students at The Redhead's school from showing up without helmets.  Our crossing guard gets very angry and I have heard the principal and the crossing guard remind people of such laws.

As for walking your bike and skateboard and scooter, I don't know if that's a state law or not, but it is a school rule.  And it's not always followed.  

Kansas didn't exactly have these sorts of laws, but I'm glad that California does.  I'm even happier when they're followed.  And if I had a son, I would hope he would be doing the same, even if his friends weren't.

So this how they ring in the New Year...

Perhaps in California, their idea of ringing in the New Year involves setting off fireworks before 6 pm all the way past 1 am.  And randomly thereafter, even after 2.



But that's not how I like to do things.  My Newfoundland doesn't either.  Nor does the cat.



But alas, all night long, we would randomly hear fireworks shooting off, and we continued to hear them into the wee small hours of the morning.  Happy 2014.  Good luck getting some rest.  However, we were still safe in our home with each other, surrounded by a multitude of blessings, consoling our dog Stitch and telling her all would be okay.  We had never been so happy we hadn't left her at home alone.



One of my questions I'd love to ask the locals though would be the schedule of such fireworks.  There wasn't a specific pattern of times they shot them off.  It wasn't on the hour.  It wasn't even every half hour.  It was randomly.  I'm a girl who likes patterns.  I blame my genius IQ, but I demand a pattern.  Have a schedule, please.  And it's not like fireworks on New Year's Eve is a foreign concept for me, but ALL NIGHT LONG?  Even seven minutes before the clock struck 12?  REALLY?!


Regardless of the perplexities, I'm sure glad we were home.  Happy New Year!