Day and night

The East Side of Los Angeles on a Sunny Day from clark vogeler on Vimeo.

LA Light from Colin Rich on Vimeo.

(HT: The Daily Dish).

California Kills

I know, I know, from these posts, you'd think that California is all sunshine and lollipops. But let me tell you a secret. In California, deadly things lurk at every turn. I know this because I just confronted my first poisonous spider: a brown widow.

I failed to take a good picture of this beaut' because I was only willing to view it through the balcony's sliding door. However, it had a telltale orange splotch on its belly. (Was it an hourglass, exactly? I wasn't close enough to see, but what else has an orange splotch on its belly??) It had created a web stretching from the side of our camellia planter to the balcony wall. For hours, it just hung there, upside-down, giving me a good, long look at its belly.

I hate killing things, but this sucker had to go. Sorry, spider. I can be deadly, too. (OK, I'm being a bit unfair to the brown widow. Apparently their bites are rarely deadly.)

I have also been watching Shark Week on iTunes, where I learned that great white sharks are coming closer to shore than ever before. Tagged sharks were even traced to one of their favorite local hangout spots—right under the Santa Monica pier!

And don't even get me started on mountain lions, rattlesnakes, and everything else that can kill you on a hike.

Now, I know that these species are all largely misunderstood and that probably 99% of the time, deadly encounters are either very unfortunate mistakes or human-incited (shark thinks you're a seal; you stepped too close to a snake's hideout). But...they can still KILL you. So could a rabid subway rat, I guess, or a diseased pigeon, but this is a pretty big wildlife shift from the sights of old NYC.

image credits: shark, mountain lion

Jewelry stand

Until now, all of my "everyday" jewelry has been sitting in a cardboard USPS box next to my dresser. Yup, despite having been here about four months, I still had not unpacked it. In New York, I used the shelves of my old post-college TV stand (covered with a curtain) as extra storage for jewelry, lotions, etc. But I sold the little TV stand before we moved, hence the cardboard box.

I've been struggling to find a solution that works for me. I love little framed earring hangers, but what about necklaces and bracelets? (Even hangers with pegs wouldn't necessarily fit everything.) Jewelry racks and trees are cute, too, but I doubt I'd keep everything neat enough to always be on display. And once again, they probably wouldn't fit everything.

Most home stores sell every make and manner of plastic tray, but those would require clearing precious drawer space. I even considered a tackle box (cheaper than a large jewelry box, easy to transport in a move, and full of little compartments!), but don't have a good place to store one.

What I really wanted was a binder. I even thought about making my own, larger version of this jewelry book using a zippered binder and coin-collecting inserts, but I pictured the pages getting really heavy (and jewelry falling out). Seriously, though--wouldn't that be great? You could just stash the book in a drawer or on a shelf. Your stuff would be stored out of sight, but you could see everything neatly when you opened up the binder. It would be space-efficient and easy to transport.

At the end of the day, I did want things more or less out of sight. I wanted as much as possible stored in one place, and for it to be easily accessible on a day-to-day basis. I didn't want the responsibility of keeping things neat. (Plus, too much dangling jewelry might as well come with a sign that says "Fun shiny cat toys!")

In the end, I decided to try an inexpensive pastry stand. I have bracelets on top, earrings in the middle, and necklaces on the bottom. So far, it totally works! I can't see the jewelry unless I'm right next to the tray, so the "out of sight" element is pretty much covered. (Except for the 2 necklaces I chose to dangle, which can easily be moved.) Pieces are separated (no knots), but don't have to be neat. Everything is easy to access. The tray fits all of my "everyday" trinkets, and it seems that the cat could not care less about the new jewelry rack.

I know these home posts are not as exciting as the adventure posts, but now that we're done traveling for a little while, I'm happy that we're getting some things done here and taking steps to make the new place feel more like ours. It's the little things that count!

Bathroom facelift

I felt we'd mostly solved the overall beige-ness of this apartment, but for some reason, the one room still plaguing me was the bathroom. Now, I've never cared that much about bathrooms. In fact, they've often baffled me. Flipping through a home and garden magazine, I'll marvel at the cavernous bathrooms--how much stuff could you possibly want to keep in there? I'll puzzle over the phenomenon of his and hers sinks--does marriage hit a point where you suddenly *need* two sinks? The only thing I ever covet in those photos is a whirlpool tub (relaxing). But all I really dream of is a bathroom with adequate ventilation. One day...

Anyway, consumed by the boringness, I decided that bathrooms actually do matter in their own little way. We finally used a housewarming gift certificate to give our bathroom a little facelift. (Note: You'll see from these photos that we still have weird fluorescent lighting. Not much we can do about that.)

Rather than aggressively fight the beige, we attempted to work with it, using sort of muted colors. We found sage green towels on sale and a super-soft oatmeal-colored bathmat.

They looked good hanging on our existing white towel rack, too.

We added a tissue box cover (an item I'd formerly deemed as useless) and stuck a bunch of dried lavender in a Ball jar we had hanging around. My glass jar of lotion blended in nicely, as did a little framed mirror that used to be in our NY bedroom. Three rolled-up white hand towels gave it kind of a "spa" look (the spa thing was all Chris!).

We also bought a soap dispenser, which was a big step for me. (True story: I kept the same plastic dispenser in NYC for 3.5 years.) Finally, we threw some of my favorite milk and olive oil soaps into a glass apothecary jar. (We have green and white soaps; I'd like to add a few lavender bars, too.) I love all of the things we found, because they're pretty neutral and we can take them with us to our next place. We'd still like to add a little piece of art to the wall, but Roger liked it so much already that he decided to move in.

You know what they say: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

(Note: Very observant readers will see that the framed mirror is missing in photo 1. We added it later!)

Summer mocktail of the week

As I've mentioned before, I drink a ton of water here in CA. Here's a refreshing little way to jazz up your water and make the most some farmer's market finds: Throw a few slices of lemon and cucumber into your water, along with a few sprigs of fresh thyme.

This next part isn't a drink, but some of you have probably heard me rave about my "special" grilled cheese: crusty bread, raspberry jam, gruyére cheese. Here's my latest, more savory version...

-Thinly slice onions and white mushrooms. Cook together in butter. Butter is key.

-Spoon some of the onion and mushroom mixture into a sandwich of—what else—crusty bread and gruyére (I used ciabatta below). Grill that puppy until your cheese is nice and melty!

We may not have it all together...

We saw these words posted on a sign in the Coastal Maine Popcorn Co. store in Portland (P.S. Parmesan garlic=heaven!). A little corny, perhaps, but they've become our new favorite saying.

East Coast Nostalgia

Saturday night, I went with the boys to see Captain America. The old-timey New York backdrop tricked me into thinking that I was about to step out into modern-day Times Square, about to make the no-win choice between the depressing 7^th-to-8^th-Ave. tunnel (aka “The Tunnel of Doom”) or pushing through throngs of tourists/darting in and out of the bus lane to make it to the 7 train. I really thought for a minute that I’d be impatiently standing on the platform late at night, smelling that peculiar Times Square subway smell of stale popcorn and axle grease. I thought I’d be coming home through the dingy front hallway of our Queens apartment, pouring myself a glass of water in our kitchen with the sunny yellow paint, throwing Roger treats to scrabble for along the hardwood floor. It was a little freaky when I realized I was still in California.

You see, we just returned from our first trip “back East,” and I’m having some strange flashes of East Coast nostalgia. I’ve been steadily downing the California Kool-Aid for a few months now, but this trip reminded me of my lazy, leisurely summers growing up. I thought I’d hate the humidity, but I realized that it’s a mixed bag. I actually quite liked it at night, when I sat outside in Portland, Maine, in the exact same linen top and summery shorts I’d worn during the day. At night, humidity makes everything feel sort of tropical and romantic. (During the day, it wreaks havoc on my hair.) It reminded me of sitting out on the back patio at Bull McCabe's in NYC, or of listening to friends play the guitar on the shore in Bristol, RI. Even the heat (though we left before the extreme heat!) reminded me of days spent reading in the backyard; attempting to make it through the small classics shelf at the Pontiac Free Library.

On our way back from the East Coast, we had to switch planes in New York. Catching our shuttle from JFK to LaGuardia, I really felt like I should be explaining to a cab driver how to get to Woodside instead, following his movements despite his insistence that he knows where he is going. (Otherwise, the exit inevitably comes and goes, and we go on a nauseating and unnecessary tour of Queens Boulevard.) We had a very New York interaction with the shuttle ticket seller, that special kind of exchange in which you, as a customer, ask a service provider a simple question (“Is this where the LaGuardia shuttle stops?”) and s/he acts entirely offended that you have dared asked her/him to perform the job s/he is paid to do. The city felt harsh, but still felt like home.

When we came back to our current home, our apartment building didn’t really feel like “home” yet. Only when we picked Roger up from Sam’s did it start to feel “homey” again. (I think I’ll put that on a cross-stitch sampler: Home is where your cat is.) I’m still very happy here, and I think it will feel like “home” before long….but Northeastern summers will always hold a special place in my heart.