Hundred Days of Happiness - Week Sixteen
On a whirlwind family trip to California we celebrated my mom's book and cherished precious moments.
Just under a week with my family in California. It was so lovely to spend time with almost everyone. For our little family, it was a whirlwind of a trip and over way too soon, but I am so glad we made the effort and the voyage. The jet lag was a nightmare, but we seem to have adjusted surprisingly well on this side - usually it’s the opposite.
Most everyone I interacted with in California was super nice, like surprisingly so. My arm-chair analysis is that I think people are over compensating out of fear to ease tensions. Better to be kind than snippy.
One thing I got to see while visiting the farm was an advanced copy of my Mum’s book: “Harvesting History while Farming the Flats”. I am so very proud of her determination, dedication and talent - publishing this book has been years in the making. She has three events in the Bay Area in March, if you’re local to the Bay Area, I really hope you can go and support her and give her a hug for me. I so wish I could be there. March 8 in Bolinas, March 12 in Oakland and March 23 in Point Reyes.
Feb 24 – Day 107
Monday we went “over the hill” to go shopping for various things to bring back with us. Between errands, we had lunch at “The Cheesecake Factory” and split a piece of cheesecake among the three of us and still had a hard time finishing it! It was Dulce de Leche flavored, because of course it was. The Argentines among us loved it.
Feb 25 – Day 108
I met up with friend downtown on Tuesday morning to talk about “the state of things” and we went for a walk to the beach. This was as close as we could get as the tide wasn’t cooperative. You can see two tiny surfers walking at the edge, but we didn’t have our wetsuits to walk through the surf. It was really good to catch up and to get to the beach. Next visit, I’ll time it better and get out to Bolinas beach and walk out to the sand on this beach.
Luckily though, in the afternoon, we had a family outing to Agate Beach just to the north of Bolinas Beach and it’s best shown in a series of photos because I really want to remember this special outing.
Feb 26 – Day 109
We met up with family friends in the early afternoon for tea at the farm which was lovely. I got so involved in the moment, I forgot to take photos, but seeing my godparents and others who have known me my whole life was very special.
That evening, we had dinner at the Coast Cafe and we saw several people we’d known for a very long time, it was nice to catch up while having some family time with some yummy food we didn’t have to cook.
When we got home, we got to see a beautiful star-filled night sky. I specifically wanted to show the guys the “Big Dipper” and the North Star since they grew up in the Southern Hemisphere and now there’s so much light pollution where we live in the Netherlands, it’s difficult to see. This was taken, hand-held on my iPhone. I’m seriously impressed with the stabilizing processing software.
Feb 27 – Day 110
We left Bolinas to head to San Francisco to meet up with folks from work and have dinner with some friends. I really wish we had more time to see more people. I am glad for the time we got to share with folks but of course wanted more.
While in SF, we had a unique experience which might become more common in the future. We took a self-driving robot car on a short 10 min trip. It was actually not as scary as I expected it to be. It felt weird but also the car drove in an extremely super safe way. The driving seems to be programmed to be overly cautious and very law abiding. Of course when it gets into unknown situations it has not been programmed to handle, then problems arise, but our trip was super smooth.
Feb 28 – Day 111
We spent the night in San Francisco at our friends’ place and their floofy floofy kittens were very curious as to exactly who was staying in their space for so long! I opened the door to the guest room in the morning to this sight. Pretty cute. This way we were closer to the airport for leaving on Friday.
Leaving the US, I was patted down on the way through security at SFO because my groin area lit up on the scanner. I don't know why. Even though the woman doing it was professional, I got so discombobulated I left our European residency cards in the scanner trays and lost them for about 15 panic-inducing minutes. Luckily a helpful woman at the information desk searched for them in the pile of trays and retrieved them. I was so grateful, I gave her a hug. That would have been a nightmare if they had been lost. Yay for helpful people.
Mar 1 – Day 112
Saturday was a full travel day but we were welcomed back home with beautiful weather and a lovely sunset which we normally don’t see well most of the year. That early evening was a beautiful exception.
Mar 2 – Day 113
Sunday was a very quiet day of relaxing at home as my son and I recovered from jet lag. DH (dear husband) went off to see friends and have a good time - more power to him! Pica is super happy to have us back home. We are super grateful to our friends who visited and kept him company while we were gone.
Almost everyone I spoke on this trip with was freaked out about the political crap-show in the United States, or actively blocking everything out so they could function. And it culminated in the complete sh*t-show of the meeting between Zelenskyy and Trump and Vance the day we left. I’m in several politically minded chat groups and they all blew up at the same time. Everyone at the airport was talking about it, strangers getting involved with the conversations they overheard. It reminded me of when we visited in 2016-2017 and left on his inauguration day. Moving between the US and Europe is surreal. After the election, so many friends contacted me thinking Europe would be the place to move to. Europe is freaked out as well and possibly picking up the slack. We will see how things unfold.
In the meantime, I wanted to share this piece of music composed by Gustavo Santaolla. It is haunting, beautiful and brilliant. You might know his work from “Brokeback Mountain” and also “The Last of Us”. He is Argentine and this performance is from Buenos Aires at the gorgeous Teatro Colon. He came to Utrecht last fall and we were supposed to see him, but I got sick with COVID so we sadly missed his concert. Hopefully he will come back another time.