Ahhhhhh. Eli is much better and back in school today. Working hard to
de-germify the house before Brian gets home from his work trip this afternoon.
Pat the Bunny, fresh from a hot wash, takes a sunbath in his lingerie-bag-hanging-from-the-birdfeeder hammock...
The slow, syrupy days of being home with a sick kid (while solo parenting, no less), brought some blessings. It was good to spend so much time with Eli. It also gave me a lot of down time. I found I couldn't work on book projects because of the interruptions. At first I read a lot. I surfed the web. For a few days I suddenly became one of those true Facebook junkies that pounces on new posts. But then I wandered into my old photo files and quickly settled into tasks that I realized I'd been craving.
I'm so glad to be in Georgia. There is no doubt in my mind that here is where I want to live, where we want to raise our child. But I do miss Northern California and the community we built there. In the midst of settling into a different house/town, supporting Brian as he gets used to a new career, volunteering at Eli's school, and restarting my book project, I don't often have time to look backward. The Bay Area is so very far away but also a different climate and culture, which results in a disconnect. As a deep-down history and personal history lover but also someone who values community-building, this has been quietly troublesome.
I had several old blog entries that never got finished before we left California. I finished them. Although they weren't really important posts, my blog serves as a source book for many of my projects and I plan to catch up with printing it as a family album, so those holes bothered me. In the process, I sifted through photos of dear places and people. There was time to stroll down memory lane. It prompted me to reconnect with some folks I'd been missing and helped me knit my past life of the last four years together with the new. It was wonderful.
Here are the finished blog posts, if anyone is interested:
- V. Sattui Winery + Dean & Deluca (picnicking in the Wine Country)
- Fairyland (storybook theme park for preschoolers in Oakland)
- Bay Area Discovery Museum (hands-on children's museum, Sausalito)
- Favorite Bay Area Water Fun Spots (and a few mudpies!)
As a final step, I realized there was a better way to index some of my favorite blog posts so I could find them more easily but also so they might be useful for others too. They are available in the "Categories" section on my blog's toolbar, yet it is hard to find a specific entry that way. Ditto with the "Search" function. I don't know what software codes or algorithms TypePad uses for this mini search engine, but it isn't very powerful. Even as the blog author, I often can't find entries I know are there. Thus I turned to Pinterist.
Sitting on the sofa next to Eli, (tuning out Lightning McQueen running his cartoon paces across the television screen), I created a new Pinterest board as a visual index to the "Local Fun -- East Bay & San Fran" section of my blog. It is so fun and satisfying to look at! It makes it handy, too, if friends want to use it to find places good for Northern California family fun. As a writer and someone who worked in the public services section of libraries/archives for many years, compiling such information just comes naturally to me. And it is my way of offering something back to the community of friends and neighbors who made our California years warm and wonderful.
Our favorite Wine Country picnic spot...
Eli and his buddy, Amara, partaking in glorious bay tidal mud...
Eli and his buddies Rosie and Sam at Keller Beach...
California friends who are reading this post...
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the love and adventures, for being such a caring and supportive first community for Eli. You'll always be a part of our community, no matter the miles and years!
