Year: 2016

The season, etc.

I think we’ve covered the fact that I don’t really “do” Christmas anymore, or at least no more of it than is absolutely necessary. This year is no exception; I’ll be doing the family thing on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and trying to hover in corners with the sane cousins I like rather than the one or two batshit crazy ones my need for sanity requires me to avoid. Fortunately, most of my family falls somewhere in the middle.

But now that I’ve established my new after-Christmas tradition of one very cold week in Virginia Beach (this will be year five) with a nice two-room suite and lots of books, I’m now able to look at Christmas as “that little hurdle I have to get over so I can have one relaxing vacation of the year.” It makes me slightly giddy with excitement. I tend to have very exhausting vacations, as many of you may have noticed, but I really enjoy my winter beach trip. I don’t force myself to do anything other than eat, read, and occasionally look at the ocean. If I do happen to get bored, though, there’s plenty of civilization nearby. 

The trip, combined with the fact that I also don’t really have to buy Christmas presents anymore, has made the last two weeks in December surprisingly pleasant of late. In short, I have succeeded.

I would, however, still consider accepting a hippopotamus. Maybe.

I know I left something…

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Since a friend recently made a joke about it, here are ten things I left in San Francisco that were not my heart:

  1. My cardiologist: He was a great guy who wore little plastic animals on his lab coat. More importantly, he was very generous and treated me at bargain rates when I found myself uninsured and facing a thyroid-generated emergency.
  2. My ex: He was a native Californian and I actually did take him with me when I moved back east, but I returned him after a few years. Unfortunately, I did not take him to an authorized redemption center so I never collected my CRV.
  3. My car: Someone set it on fire in an alley off Harrison Street twenty years ago. It ended its days in the old impound lot off Third Street.
  4. My “essence”: OK, this is just a polite way of saying I got laid a lot in San Francisco.
  5. My (ahem) career with Kinko’s: Leaving SF was how I finally cut the cord. Great move, that.
  6. My nicotine addiction: Left it out on the deck one night in 2003 and haven’t missed it.
  7. My account with Wells Fargo: Hated them. Loved saying goodbye. And now, as fate would have it, I am POA over my mom’s account with them. So I once again have an ATM card with a fucking stagecoach on it and a message that reads “customer since 1992” as if I’d never left.
  8. My long (and sometimes big) hair: Chopped it all off just before I turned 30, which is, I think, a wise move for just about anyone.
  9. My twenties and my thirties: Not much more I can say about that.
  10. My willingness to be in San Francisco: Even for a visit. Which makes me a little sad.