I Might Need a Makeover

I did a volunteer shift at the Downtown Women's Center today. Instead of sorting donations like I did Tuesday (Dear person who decided to own a pair of Earth Shoes in every color and then changed your mind about Earth Shoes, thank you,) I began training to work in "Made," the coffee shop/boutique. I'm learning how to use the cash register and make espresso drinks on a coffee machine that's only slightly smaller than a Smart Car. The idea behind this training is that, eventually, I will be able to train some of the women who are currently homeless in the DWC's job training program.
And if my worst case scenario arrives, I will have a marketable skill or two.
Or maybe someday, I'll have a little coffee place of my own: Beach Beans.

At the end of my shift, I was asked to deposit a large bag of trash in the dumpster behind the center. I wrangled the monster bag out the door and through the parking lot gate, noticing that the massive pedestrian gates were already closed and locked. Hmmm. That's right, I thought, I'll bet the day center is closed today for the all-staff meeting. Then I heard a slight whirring and a clunk. The parking lot gates. Yup. There I was, not looking my sharpest with a head of hat-hair after my café shift (yes, the job requires a hat, but it's not paper and looks stylish on most people,) toting a large black trash bag. The staff person who bolted out the door asked me very politely, and almost tenderly, if she could help me, but I'm pretty sure she thought I was homeless.

Note to self: dress for success, and carry a comb and some hair product.

Photo note: The pictures above and below are from"Made" the DWC boutique and coffee café.

Going to the Dogs

I walked dogs today. It was clear and sunny. Not too hot, not too cold. The sort of November weather that people pull up stakes and move to California for.

If I had some snow, though, and a miniature sled, this energetic beautiful guy could pull it. He looks like a big sled dog in this photo, but since he weighs about nine pounds, the sled would have to be the size of a muffin pan. That said, he would be happy to trot anywhere with you and your muffins. I've been calling him "Mr Fluffy," but I think his name is Santiago.

Then there's this rather shy girl. She has the most lovely coloring. A brindled coat. I call her "Brinnie the Pooh," but her name is Almond.

They're at the San Gabriel Valley Humane Society--with a bunch of their friends.

Home again, Home again, splishity-splash

After driving a round-trip of 800-plus miles, enduring a deluge complete with hydro-planing, a brief dust storm, wind gusts that brought Oz to mind, road construction that squeezed a billion trucks and my tiny Prius into one lane, and, last but not least, a trucker who tried to render C. and me into roadkill, I am back in my own kitchen stuffing myself with some fabulous bread that the man who loves me brought over last night. I am drinking my home-made latté and still savoring how far beyond wonderful it is to visit family, come home and sleep in my own bed, and then wake to a man who has already enjoyed his morning coffee before he crawls back under the covers scented with that morning elixir  I crave at first consciousness.
C. is fond of saying "I love my life!" when joys, big or small, rise up in her daily goings-on. And that's where I am this morning. In my kitchen, loving my life as I type at my breakfast bar next to a newspaper clipping from the L.A. Times. A few weeks ago Edna St. Vincent Millay's famous poem, "God's World," was printed there, and I cut it out and laid it next to the phone where I knew I would run across it now and again.


O world, I cannot hold
 thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide
  grey skies!
Thy mists that roll and
  rise!
Thy woods, autumn 
  day, that ache
  and sag
And all but cry with 
  colour! That gaunt
  crag
To crush! To lift the 
  lean of that black
  bluff!
World, World, I cannot 
  get thee close 
  enough!"

In which I resurface and return to the blogosphere

"Where are you and why are you neglecting your blog?" My friend Julie messaged me on Facebook days ago, and I had an answer, but it was the simple version of why I haven't been blogging.
I've been zipping around in several directions lately. In addition to my new commitments to the San Gabriel Valley Humane Society and the Downtown Women's Center, I've decided to apply to another MFA program in creative writing. I've also set myself on the path to selling my townhouse and moving north of Los Angeles to a house as close to the beach as possible. Both of these projects will involve a couple of years of effort. Thursday my daughter C.(the bride,)who is visiting, and I drove an hour up the coast and met with a real estate agent. The trip was not so much about looking at houses, even though we did that, as it was about looking at neighborhoods. So somehow, I may start grad school in the fall, temporarily move out of L.A., and then permanently move from the city that has been my home for most of my adult life.
But if I had harnessed enough of my focus to blog, I would have blogged about 2 things:

1) The state of disequalibrium I experienced while visiting the banks that continue to host the two joint checking accounts that still tie me to a certain person I am restrained from mentioning on this blog. I literally fell down in front of one of the banks after I learned that I cannot take my name off of these accounts. The accounts must be closed, and because the certain person continues to use them, he must do the closing after he sets up new auto-pays for his bills. Of course, I could do the closing if I were the sort of person who went around poking bears with sharp sticks.

2)El Dia de los Muertos
I am not a fan of Halloween. I never liked traipsing around the streets of L.A. with my children while feeling like a bad mother when they recoiled from some gory display on someone's front porch in order to receive things I didn't really want them to eat. But remembering our dead loved ones seems like a holy practice. Love, I'm convinced, moves from one world to the next.To celebrate this holiday, I did what I have done every year for the past decade--I went to the fabulous exhibit at the Folk Tree in Pasadena. The photo at the top of the post was taken there.