blood diamond

this movie affected me, and not in a i'm never buying a diamond again kind of way. what right do we have to be so happy?

the world is so sad, and so vast, and atrocities such as this will go on forever because we are each so wrapped up in our own tiny joys and deaths. how can it be otherwise? reality is so crazily different for each person, it is so hard to see globally when we are each stuck in our own prisons/castles.

it's embarrassing. my biggest problems are invisible in comparison to what others go through. it is all so unfair.

it rains a lot here, and other truths

it rains every single day. sometimes all day. we've been here for 10 days. we unloaded our stuff from the u-haul at midnight at midnight in the rain and it's been raining since. sucks for me because i walk everywhere.

we don't have a washer and dryer yet. we went out yesterday and bought new underwear instead of going to the laundromat. i hate laundromats. i always thought i would like them, until i had to use them. not at all like our little laundry center in the dorms at college. that was nice. when we were walking into the store after work yesterday, i caught a glimpse of myself and my husband in a store mirror and thought for the first time in my life: i look so grown up.

i love the library. i love being able to walk to it. i love looking at books with old pictures. i just read about hollywood in the 1910s-20s. i can't believe how little humanity has changed since then, and how lot it has. i also can't believe how plain (even unattractive sometimes) the movie stars were. or how un-skinny.

i am deathly afraid of roaches. it gets in the way of normal life, especially in the south. the year we lived in massachusetts was the most carefree of my life in terms of being scared of bugs. in texas, it's back with a vengance. however, i've only seen 3 roaches in 10 days - a big one outside crawling up the wall, a medium one in the street crawling along, and a tiny one in our bathroom when i kicked a box to see if there were any roaches in it. jack wants a platform bed, and my reason against it is that with a platform bed the bugs will crawl across us instead of under us. who can argue with that logic.

i had a dream last night about katrina (i think). we were still young - my mom, sister, brother and me - but looking through a mess of our childhood rooms and deciding what to take with us. my sister didn't want anything, so i packed up her sentimental jewelry and took down all of the pictures from her bulletin boards - there were a lot of us in dancing school. throughout there was a sense of dangerous urgency to our actions. that's it.

i was sick to my stomache every day from high school to college. i don't know if it was stress (i was a very stressed kid) or mental or something else. i would carry pepto bismal in my purse and take it before going anywhere. like a placebo or preventive or something, sometimes every few hours if i was on a date or somewhere important. i'm scared it's back.

although we are in texas, it feels like mexico. the flowers and plants are the same, the tiles and architecture and, well, the mexicans. i love mexico and always wanted to live there, so it works for me.

new digs

old view from bedroom:


new view from bedroom:


this is the coolest apartment ever. from my window, i can watch squirrels collecting nuts. i'm not lying, i just took this for proof:


new apartment, new city, new name (officially as of yesterday), and still i'm just sad. crying all day every day. exactly how long can you go on blaming pms?

rocks and moving

i still can't believe we lived here.

everything is packed. in three days we leave for the cross-country drive to texas. and now we are in the in-between, where packed things you didn't think you would need again become needed.

i do love finding things you can do without - like half of each of our closets, some furniture we don't really like, outgrown toys and books - to make room for new things you love, like this maybe:



i can't decide if i like or hate starting over in a new place. i feel scared always about what will happen, will i not make friends, will i not enjoy myself, will i feel safe. but, this is what i always wanted to do, my mom reminded me of that the other day - i've always said i wanted to move around and live everywhere until i find the perfect place. well, i'm doing it.

but look what we're leaving, it might already be the perfect place, look how gorgeous. i took the top picture and the one below at the quarry park this weekend:



when the ocean tide goes low it leaves the most colorful, vibrant little corners of life between the rocks, it's incredible:



and on an unrelated note:



and i took this soap from our room in the hyatt san antonio a few weeks ago and it smells so good - white ginger. i just opened it because we ran out of soap in the bathroom and you can smell it throughout almost the whole house. i really am not so into fancy products - i normally use only dove unscented bar soap - but i love this.

another goodbye month

thank goodness for video games after a long day of exploring and swimming...



summer is here and with it remembering how incredible this little place we live is. this last month here is a month of walking to the beaches (the rocky beach, the sea glass beach, the sandy beach - our ways to tell them apart), the quaint local restaurants, enjoying the absolutely amazing little town.

i feel still like a vacationer here, never actually becoming any part of the community in any way, and sometimes i like that, but sometimes i don't. in between swimming (in the freezing ocean) and sea glass-collecting, i've been packing and sorting.

amazing how much stuff you have when you take it all out into the open and start putting it in boxes. even though i know we still don't have a lot of stuff. we are moving ourselves - with the two boys - which will be a new experience for me. we have a tiny u-haul rented and will pack our favorite stuff first and leave whatever doesn't fit.

i think i am ready for another change, although as always i am scared. i don't like having no idea what life will be like. i'm not sure about texas, but i'm sure it will be fine. i like the little apartment we've picked, the river in the backyard, and at worse this will be a working place instead of a vacationing one.

i will miss this little seagull, pirate town, but texas here we come.