Home Sweet Home - for Better or Worse

I'm living in the town I grew up in - so that's a Good Thing right at the start. My parents and one sister are here in town, and the other sister's only an hour away. Growing up, we were only a few hours away from the grandparents in opposite directions.

The climate is ideal - no snow, for a good start. When it gets hot in the summer, it only gets really hot for a few days or maybe a week at a time and then the fog comes in. And, especially since I got the new roof, I love the winter rains. The hills turn bright green then.

As to my specific living arrangement, I own my own 2-bedroom mobile home. Enough room to spread out in (although I'm trying to de-clutter and arrange...) I very much like having my own space, without roommates. I like not having a neighbor just the other side of a wall, floor, or ceiling so that I don't have to worry about playing music or a dvd at 3 in the morning.

What's not to like? I am not a gardener, and by myself, the yard runs to weeds and neglect. And speaking of the yard, I have three mightily tall palm trees in the backyard (far too big for the small space) and one tree at the front of the space that's pushing up the corner of the house and breaking the driveway.

The mobile home is over 30 years old. So almost everything in it is that old as well - the avocado green bathroom, the harvest gold panels in the other bath, the heater, the oven, the green linoleum in the kitchen, the front porch. I've painted most of what can be painted, replaced the washer/dryer, the roof, the stove, added a dishwasher.

I'm in California, so prices for everything are higher than almost anywhere else in the US. Most noticeably, gas. Always amusing, in a sharp sort of way, to hear that gas prices in the US may get above a certain point - that we've already passed.

I'm at the far northern edge of the san Francisco Bay Area. So, while there are lots of living history and dance events in the Bay Area, almost all of them are at least two hours away, and on the other side of a toll bridge.

Fantasy Camp - Elizabethan Village

I love working the Renaissance Faire - but it's over too soon and there are many things that you just can't do at a Faire.

So - I would love to spend a week or two in an Elizabethan village. Actually brew the ale we serve at the Inn. Tend a kitchen garden, cook over an open fire, bake bread. Re-learn how to use a drop-spindle. Feed chickens and pigs. Sit and gossip with the neighbors, sing and dance in the evenings.

So, there would be a few less pleasant aspects of this. Getting up much too early. Outdoor privies. Slaughtering and plucking the chickens. Dealing with men who think, just because legally they're in charge, that it actually works that way in daily life.

Since this is a fantasy, after all{g}, I would naturally be able to take all my Faire friends with me - and more than a few of them are good practical historians with hands-on experience with most of daily life.

In fact, some of them already have full-scale plans for just such an establishment. Alas, that land prices and local zoning make this far too much of just a fantasy.

My Favorite Thing

My favorite thing would have to be a book. I've been in love with books and reading since kindergarten, I think. I certainly don't remember learning to read, I just remember reading. I can find a touch of romance, swashbuckling adventure in fantasy, the excitement of the unknown in science fiction, the certainty that right will prevail in mysteries. Then there are all the volumes of history, fascinating to see how we've changed, and how much has stayed the same. I also love a good how-to book, whether I'm ever going to actually try what they're teaching or not.

If I had to choose a single book, I'd probably say The Lord of the Rings single volume edition. Adventure, friendship, romance, fighting the good fight, humor, travel, the triumph of good over evil - he fit so much into his story. It's such an inspiration to imagination - so many corners you can turn and ask yourself "what if?" But it could also be because I just re-read them, just re-watched all three movies, and I'm currently listening to an unabridged version of The Fellowship of the Ring.

I think I'd best stop here. I can't imagine being without my computer or my camera. I have furniture, photos and keepsakes from my grandparents and great-grandparents that I greatly treasure. But my first, instinctive response was - A Book!

Accident-prone

I've had a few accidents over the years, mostly when I was much younger, but nothing close to being serious.

[Roughing the listener warning] I once tripped over a stepping stone set in concrete, slid, and completely pulverized and removed a thumbnail. After the shock, and the trip to the emergency room, it was more of a nuisance than anything. The great huge bandage got in the way when I went camping with the Girl Scouts that weekend.[/warning]

A year or two later, I ran down the driveway, across the sidewalk, and fell into the street. Result: a greenstick fracture of my right arm. The doctor was kind enough to set it with a slightly wider than usual angle, so I could still play my clarinet in band. I drove the substitute teacher wild, because I was still playing volleyball. What could I do to the arm? It was wrapped in plaster!

I had a few major run-ins with poison oak, specifically poison oak smoke from camping trips in the fall when the leaves have fallen off and the twigs look good for the fire. My face swelled up until I could just see, and I lived on Instant Breakfast milkshakes for several days. I have, at long last, learned to avoid the pernicious stuff.

Our biggest accident was a group project - coming home from vacation the summer I was between high school and college. We were in a little Chinook camper with two sailboats trailered behind. The wind caught the sailboats and flipped them over, and the camper followed. We three kids were in the back, tumbling around like clothes in a very dusty dryer. But even here, we came out okay. My poor sister Kai had the worst of it - her shoulder scraped along the pavement, losing a good bit of skin, and she had a small cut on her thigh. Dad and Mom both had minor cuts on their hands, and Dad was going in and out of shock. Kelly and I were fine - to the point that all the emergency people kept leaving Kelly out of the count of victims. And we had lots of help - we had two doctors and a nurse stop in short order. We all spent the night in a tiny, empty hospital and a friend of Mom's came down in her station wagon and took us all home the next day.

The serious ones, well. Dad's gallbladder surgery which landed him in the hospital for much too long - but that was my first semester in college and I was at the other end of the state and it wasn't quite real. Grandma's Alzheimer's. But she went so gently that it didn't feel like a tragedy.

We've been blessed.