Life 2.0
Hi there!
Yes, it’s been a while. It turns out that major life changes require a lot of time and focus and energy. (Surprise!) But now that things are finally settling down, it’s time for a reboot.
Let me catch you up…
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Moving house
Once the floors were refinished and the walls painted (with lots of agonizing about paint colors!), I finally moved into the 1889 Queen Anne Cottage in Alameda where Craig has lived for thirty years.
ASIDE: Craig describes a Queen Anne Cottage as a “workingman’s Victorian,” less ornate in decoration but with many of the appealing features of other Victorian-era houses — high ceilings, decorative woodwork. The Queen Anne style was popular in the United States between about 1880 and 1910.
One of our nicest surprises as we got the house ready was discovering that the main hallway became a lovely room in its own right, once we removed the enormous bookcases that for years had dominated this space. Now the hall houses a couple of Craig’s beautiful Shona sculptures, a few photographs and paintings, a stout bench, and a row of sturdy hooks that stand in for a closet. The space feels open and airy, a lovely entry to our home.
I’m happy living here with Craig, but it was a wrench to leave behind the Emeryville flat into which I had poured my creative energies for fifteen years. Craig made my transition easier by offering shelter to my favorite things, many of which originally belonged to my parents. Having these “material companions” (to use Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s apt phrase) around me makes this feel like my home as well as Craig’s — like our home.
Craig says he was ready for a change when I moved in, but it was still challenging for him to see his largely unfurnished space fill up with my stuff. Over the past months, he has grown accustomed (or perhaps resigned is the proper word?) to seeing his once-empty front room furnished, his once-blank walls hung with pictures, and his once-bare floors covered in colorful rugs. I think he likes the change most of the time, though I suspect he suffers the occasional pang of nostalgia for all that empty space. Thank you for making me feel so welcome here, sweetie!
Life in Alameda
I’m gradually settling into life in Alameda, getting to know this island town, developing new routines, discovering local businesses and neighborhood quirks. Important questions needed to be answered: Where’s the nearest dry cleaner? Who makes the best croissants? Where can I find a public mailbox? How do I get to BART?
ASIDE: As it happens, I know the answer to this last one: I can ride my bike! One of my happiest discoveries when I first moved to Alameda was the bicycle repair shop at the Fruitvale BART station. They will store your bike securely for free on weekdays. And when you come back at the end of the day, your bike is safe and sound and ready for your ride home. They’ll even hold onto your helmet, if you like. So give them a good tip and a big thank you. These guys are treasures!
As for the all-important croissant question, Feel Good Bakery is a strong contender: their ham-and-cheese croissants are to die for!
One of the many things I love about living here is the walkability (and bikeability) of this neighborhood. It’s an easy stroll over to Park Street to see a movie or to have a bowl of pho or to meet my friend Judith for a cuppa, and I can walk home by myself at night without feeling afraid. The leafy, tree-lined streets tempt me out for a walk first thing every morning, and this new ritual has proved a terrific energizer, as well as a great way to get to know our neighborhood. Lately, I’ve been discovering the newest round of seasonal decorations.
Alamedans embrace holidays with gusto, decorating their houses and yards on the least pretext. Here the Halloween season begins in September, and everywhere houses are bedecked in fall colors and sport spooky decorations: witches and skeletons and gravestones and lots of giant spiders (Ron Weasley, beware!).I quit!
I only wish it had been that dramatic. Instead, the process of leaving my job dragged out over several months. First, I looked for a compromise: Could I work fewer hours? Could I work from home a day or two each week? Well, said the Powers-That-Be after months of dilly-dallying and a good bit of shilly-shallying, NO.
That decided it: I really was going to quit. (As you might have guessed, some of the dilly-dallying was on my side. What can I say? Change is hard.) But when to leave? I initially planned to hang on until September, so I could help mitigate the craziness of one last semester launch. But when the P-T-B also denied my request for a mid-July vacation, I gave notice and quit two days before the start of the trip. That was three months ago, and I haven’t looked back — except to feel grateful that I’m finally on the other side of the door.
To be clear: I’m not sure I’m actually retired. I’m definitely taking a break from having a regular job, but that’s all I’m willing to claim right now. My friend Susan and I are developing workshops for women of a certain age (about which, more later), and I have several other creative projects underway, so there’s no lack of things to keep me busy when we’re in town. But we’re hoping not to be in town a good bit of the time…
Wanderlust
One of the main incentives for quitting my job was that Craig and I want to do more traveling. We’re looking forward to more and longer international trips, camping trips in the West, and travels in Craig’s new small plane (when it is finally ready sometime this winter). We’ve already made a good start!
This summer we took our third annual 4th-of-July camping trip up to the far reaches of northern California. We spent the holiday watching the parade in Weaverville, then headed up for a couple of nights at Kangaroo Lake (elevation: 6500 feet), and spent our final night camping along the Klamath River. We always marvel at how uncrowded this area is on a weekend when you would expect mobs. So it’s likely to continue to be our annual midsummer getaway.
In early September, Craig and I took off for a long-anticipated visit to South Africa. Trusting that this will be the first of many trips to this beautiful country, we didn’t try to see everything but instead focused on the Johannesburg area — and from there south to the Drakensberg (cave paintings! hiking!) and northeast to Kruger National Park and environs (leopards and lions and hippos — not to mention amazing birds!). It was a wonderful trip in many ways, and I’m still processing the 1200 or so photos I took. More to come on this, as well.
Our plans for the coming year include a visit to South America in the winter/spring, a camping trip through eastern Oregon and Washington in the late spring, a return to South Africa in June/July, and — for Craig, at least — a flying trip in the fall around the continental US with stops in all 48 contiguous states, weather permitting.
After that, who knows? But I’ll keep you posted on our adventures…
Sometimes when we’re clinging with all our might to the status quo,
life gives us an irresistible shove toward something new.
Here’s to letting go and allowing ourselves to fall into the unknown!
Connections
- If you’re not familiar with Queen Anne Cottages, here’s a little more info:
- Wikipedia: Queen Anne style architecture in the United States
- Victorians in Alameda – Queen Anne Cottage
- ThoughtCo: A Picture Gallery of Queen Anne Architecture (these are considerably more elaborate than our house!)
- Sweet Lemon Moving Services — I used these guys for both parts of my move, and they were terrific: responsive, reliable, and efficient.
- Feel Good Bakery
- Fruitvale Bike Station
- Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Objects of Memory: Material Culture as Life Review, in Elliott Oring, ed., Folk Groups and Folklore Genres, A Reader, Utah State University Press, 1989, pp. 329-338. Read the article here.
- Weaverville, California: see the Wikipedia article and check out the Visitor’s Guide.
- Kangaroo Lake
- Kruger National Park
You might also be interested in…
- End-of-year reboot
- Postcards from my July 2019 trip to the UK
- Hiking the Drakensberg
- Postcards from South Africa
- All postcards
- Read about last year’s midsummer trip to the Klamath River area: Rambles along rivers
- Cover photo from Weaverville’s 4th-of-July Parade:
7 thoughts on “Life 2.0”
Jenny~How wonderful! Thank you for sharing. You are truly inspiring. I love the quote?
Thanks, Kelly! It feels good to re-launch this project and wake up my brain a bit. 🙂 Hope you and Mark are doing well!
Jenny always enjoy your writings!!! I am glad you have posted again! I am sure the house turned beautiful!! Will you come this way?? Hope you do. Love, take care, a hug for you two and the best to your sisters
Thanks, Peggy! If we do get to South America this winter, Montevideo will be first on our list. We’re not quite sure whether it will work out for this year, because we don’t yet know when Craig’s new plane will arrive. He will want to be in town when it gets here and for a few weeks after that, so our plans are up in the air right now. I will definitely let you know, as soon as we figure out whether we can get down to Montevideo. I know it will happen sometime — just not quite sure when. Sending love and a big hug…
Jenny, you create the most wonderful word pictures. I can “see” so clearly what you are writing about
I feel so caught up after 25 years!
Damn! Is it that long? Yikes!
It’s great to hear from you, Cassandra! Where do I catch up on what you’ve been up to?
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