Home

I'm sorry, I'll post pictures tomorrow. Too tired tonight.

Suitcase is unpacked. Going to have a bath and hit the sack.

Anyone who knows anything about replacing a stolen Canadian Passport - could you leave a comment (don't even ask, it's a long story, which ends with me using my health care card and a business card and my visa and Kuri to get on the plane in Calgary.)

It's good to be home.

Going Home

I love vacations, but I must confess about this many days in - 5 for those of you who are counting - I find myself longing for home.

I check the weather at home and I think about what it must be like. I pet the Inn Keeper's dog (and every other dog, I must be honest) and I miss my girls. I curl up in bed and imagine the cats on my feet. I buy dog bones and think earnestly of how I miss them. Delta's antics become charming, and I wish Maggie would jump up on me for ear scratches.

I sniff the air, and it smells wonderful, but it is not the air of home. There is salt and brine in the air, and there is not smoke and wet leaves and the nip of frost. The stars are clouded out here, the bright lights of them occluding any - and I think of my back deck and Orion. I wonder what the neighbours are up to, what has been happening at work, and what my mother is doing.

And most of all, I think of my house, of seeing my front door. I think about the dogs meeting me, Mr. Spit* opening the front door and standing on the porch, standing so that I can see him under the porch light. I can hear him calling out "hello darling". I can feel his arms around me - squeezing tightly, I can imagine my head against his chest, and I can smell his cologne and deoderant.

All of a sudden, it does not matter where I am. It does not matter that there has been crab, and beer and yarn stores, coffee in small places and unexpected glimpses of the ocean. It does not matter that are small treasures on every corner, and that I saw the sea lions play. It does not matter.

Home is calling.

****
(*) Except that there won't actually be a Mr. Spit waiting for me, he's out of town. But still.

This Post is brought to you

By a tired woman, who is filled with crab and shrimp and a mojito, and a brownie sundae with a B-52 coffee.

She is slightly tipsy, and has a badly burned finger, where the screaming hot sparkler on her brownie sundae burnt her hand. It burnt her hand, as she was saying: these things usually get really hot - this one isn't. . . oh yes, it is.

Spent dessert with my hand in my water glass.

The problem with telling you all of this, is that it totally eclipses all of the very wonderful things that happened today, and frankly they are so much more enjoyable and better, so I'm going to think of those things, while I soak my hand in more cold water.

It truly was the most wonderful of days. Everything about it was coloured with magic. I am blessed.

Peas and Carrots and Birthday Cake

Why I'll never forget the first time that I met Mrs. Spit, it was....hm...wait a minute, that's funny...now that I think about it as hard as the remaining four brain cells I currently have knocking around my hollow skull allow, I can't remember the first time that I met Mrs. Spit. Honestly, and not just for the sake of illustrating my crappy memory or my rambling point, I cannot remember it. She's just always been there.

To me, that's how I know that I've found a true friend, not to sound all Lifetime Movie, or Hallmark Card on you, Her Faithful Blog Readers. But that's how I knew that I loved my husband, The Daver. He'd been carefully inserted into memories that he had not been a part of, now seated in the aluminum bleachers beside my parents at my high school graduation, clapping when I walked across the stage, rather than hundreds of miles away, shelving horse food or eating vast quantities of cheese (if you'd seen his recent cholesterol score, this would make FAR more sense to you).

In a more friend-in-the-computer-way, Mrs. Spit is like that, too. Certainly, she wasn't at my high school graduation, not because I can't imagine her in the bleachers with Daver and my parents, but because I'm not nearly tech-savvy enough to have had an email at that time in my life, let alone a blog. I've been blogging for a long time, and she's been my friend a long time, so it's safe for me to assume that she has, in fact, been my friend since we both rode dinosaurs to school, although hers were obviously the more refined and polite Canadian dinosaurs.

The lines have blurred a lot these days between friends who have sunned themselves in each others kitchens like cats and friends who have only met through pixilated screens and words--often pithy if they come from me--in a comment box, and while some might scoff at the notion, it's clear to me that they do not understand. Because to me, The Internet is my friend.

Specifically, Mrs. Spit is my friend.

Because I do not know what else you would call someone who, despite losing her only son, (and my Internet nephew) Gabriel, much too soon, sat tirelessly with me, thousands of miles away, and prayed with me while my own daughter was sick.

I do not know what else you would call someone who propped me up during that time, reminded me that while I couldn't be with my daughter during her brain surgery, God was, and made me believe it.

I do not know what else I could call someone who rejoices with me during the good times and cries with me during the hideous, other than a friend.

Because I certainly know no other definition of a friend.

So today, with you, my friends in the computer, I want to raise a glass to celebrate the birth of a good friend of mine and of yours. Someone that someday I WILL meet, whose kitchen I WILL defile with my debaucherous presence (someone who may regret inviting me to her house), and someone who we are ALL honored to know.

Happy Birthday, Mrs. Spit.

Today, my friend, we raise our glasses, brimming full of vodka or gin and we drink deeply to you.

Where You Think You Are

We each gave Lance, the cable car guy our business cards, because he said he'd send the pictures we took of each other, using his camera, to us. Actually, he said his wife would do it, which made me feel possibly more reassured, although the pictures are so boring that I can't fathom what he would do with them. He was bemused of our stories of Canada, and tried to insist that Canada's economic stimulus package should give him a swimming pool. I am sucking on the candy he handed to me, and smiling that he got a camera to take pictures of the tourists, because they always take pictures of him.

The Cable Car guys in SFO are well, colourful. They are loud and sarcastic, and not grumpy, but what my mother would call mouthy. They'll throw you off the car with out a by your leave, because it's full, and they'll stop the car on a street corner, to argue about the sports pool with a colleague.

We took the cable car to the wharf this morning, although we got on the wrong one, and missed our first sailing. And if a vacation is anything, it is a chance to remind yourself to relax, to go with the flow, and to seek out opportunities to be more zen like. As a bonus, we did not have Jane with us, boring and frustrating, insisting on "re-calculating" every 3 minutes.

Today was a zen like day. We did not do much of anything we planned on, or if we did it, we did it out of order and slightly off kilter. Alcatraz was amazing, if only because while everyone started at cell blocks and bars, we started at the gardens, lovingly restored to what they used to be. I struggled to name plants, not because I did not know them, but because my brain would fight. What is an annual, small and paltry in Alberta, is a bush, a shrub, a tree, a vine to cover the side of your house. I know fushia, I do not know it as a shrub, trained up the wall.

We wound up at a place called butterfly, which was a wonderful meal, but not what we planned. My blisters had blisters, and we took decided to take the cable car home for a brief nap. I entertained myself during the wait for the car, by petting the jazz musicians' rabbit. She was sweet and small and cuddly, and oh, I miss the boys and girls at home.

We were going to take the cable car and bus to the Mission district, but through a comedy of errors, we wound up 16 blocks into the Haight-Ashbury district.

Haight-Ashbury is the stuff of my personal legend. I have loved its music, its ethos since I was a teenager. While others talked about Woodstock, I thought of the Summer of Love. It was poverty and poetry, drugs and direct action. I love the music, the rebellion, the very idea of creating, of being something new.

Every neighbourhood in SFO has a smell. The real wharf smells of fish, the start of the tourist wharf has sourdough, Alcatraz is steeped in fog and salt and honeysuckle. Downtown smells, well of money, as I look at the big stores. Mission smelled of tamales, taco's, and hait, well, Haight still smelled, just a bit of jasmine incense.

The area was commercialized, with the idea of gentrification taking root. There did not seem to be much to indicate what had happened there. I thought of the video I had seen about the Indian occupation on Alcatraz, hours earlier, and I thought what I have been thinking about since arriving yesterday:

How things change.

One last request - this the day before my birthday. Aunt Becky has written my birthday blog, but I would like if you would comment, in the next few days, to tell me who you are, why you read, and when you started. Consider it a simple way to make my Birthday special.

Golden

The Edmonton airport selected me for random pat down, after they had searched my bag twice (they couldn't identify my knitting needles as what they kept seeing on the x-ray.) In Calgary, the baggage carousel would not work, leaving Kuri and I running hard to make our connection. The customs people are possibly still confused about exactly what we are shopping for yarn for, but there you have it. They did at least decide we are not a threat, and let us pass. Where we ran to catch our flight.

The walk up Powell street looked not bad on the map, but alas, maps - transit or otherwise - do not show altitude changes. I am fairly sure that Powell is one of the steepest streets out there. Half way up, I looked at Kuri (who was not huffing at all, I should point out) and said wailed "Please tell me we don't have to go up that mother of a hill." Which was, on the face of it, shocking because the whole city is more or less a hill. Our hotel was more or less 3/4 of the way up the hill.

At any rate, I walked Powell, and I want a t-shirt.

It is Golden here. Even in the pea soup mist that hides the tops of the towers, it is golden. It is both old places and new. The place that Mr. Spit and I ate at during our perfect day, and the wonderful french church with the priest who prays for Gabe, and lights a candle for him on those days that hurt.

It has been a magical afternoon. Our hotel room is at the top of a small hotel, with a lovely resident golden retriever, and it has an elevator with a door you close your self. The room is small and lovely, with a claw foot tub that reminds me of home. I can hear the clang of the cable cars, and I can see outside my window.

A meal in Chinatown (I am not so adventurous as Kuri, and did not go for the entire roasted duck, with head still attached. For someone who has butchered chickens, it looked, well to bird like. I found lovely gifts for my mother, and a few small things for friends, and greatly enjoyed walking around.

Coffee and dessert at the french place again, and back to our room. I will post this as soon as I can, the wireless is slower than the second coming, and I am too tired to go all the way down to the foyer to post there.


(Next morning note)

A wonderful sleep, and a great breakfast. Leaving shortly for the boat visit to Alcataz. See you tomorrow!

Leaving

I'll have left my house before you read this.

I'll be there about 12pm their time.

Look for me.