Ten.Eight Hundred & Forty-Nine

1. I don’t want to wake up but I know it’s time to wake up even though the alarm hasn’t gone off yet.

2. Beloved oil.

3. Gratitudes for leftovers that are lunch for the week.

4. I trade in the audiobook for Lizzo and it seems like the right move for a day like today. I needed a boost.

5. I catch the guy in the car next to mine looking at me. I just smile. Yes. It’s possible to be this happy on a Wednesday morning while sitting in rush hour traffic.

6. I remind myself that this is an evolving process and, ultimately, not something that is crucial. So there is room for experimentation.

7. She says that maybe “empowerment” will be a theme going forward and that sounds progressive.

8. Hummingbird friend. Must figure out the name of this plant. It looks like some kind of salvia.

9. I mean, I could not do any of this at all.

10. Wal-Mart after dinner on the night before Halloween.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Forty-Eight

1. I let myself sleep in a little bit on account of there being cereal and milk for breakfast today.

2. He makes the coffee again. I’m putting away dishes and ladling leftover soup into thermoses. I need a thermos of my own, don’t I?

3. The things I now require.

4. I leave before them so that there’s enough time to stop and get gas. Alice Munro’s collection “Dear Life” on audio.

5. The horizon is hazy. Hazier than before. I am reminded to remind him that we need to buy another set of masks because if these continue to burn the air quality will continue to deteriorate.

6. The polluted smoke tints the shadows of the hills a light pink. Everything looks like a vintage photo that’s lost its color.

7. She passes out masks. She was working on a preparedness kit for the office.

8. The shadow of a hummingbird.

9. I pull everything out of the office and out of my trunk and into the cottage. Yes, this will be good. I check to see if the wreath hanger will fit on the door. I close the door and hang the wreath.

10. Sometimes you just need to become comfortable with the idea of doing something different and new. And sometimes you just have to sit on your hands and wait with patience for the very right thing and trust that the next right thing will come when it’s time for it to come.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Forty-Seven

1. He’s up before me. The glow from the phone wakes me up.

2. I had a dream that it rained.

3. I can’t hear the wind like I did yesterday. That feels comforting.

4. She says he left at 2 am last Thursday and could be gone until November 8th. That they had a break today but the winds are supposed to return tomorrow,

5. The time goes by just as fast even when you work from home.

6. I overhear him say he had to evacuate in the middle of the night but that they are back home and everything was okay. He must have been part of the Oakley evacuation.

7. For a brief moment, I wonder if we made a mistake. But then I step outside into the sunshine and I see Mt. Diablo in the distance, the horizon hazy with smoke, and I know that we didn’t. We definitely didn’t. This is just our new normal.

8. I drag the hammock back into the middle of the yard, straight into the sunshine, to read a little bit before I have to get him from school.

9. We both decide that this town is already too crowded and that we’d vote no on L too, even though we haven’t lived here that long.

10. Great British Baking Show all cuddled together in the bed.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Forty-Six

1. I hear a loud clatter from the vertical blinds. I get up to close the screen door and then walk into the kitchen and hear the winds howl. “Oh no, the fires. The firefighters.” My eyes get teary. I walk back into bed and say a little prayer. I listen to the wind.

2. All phones going off. 6 am. An evacuation for neighborhood in the next town over. Another fire.

3. The gift of someone else brewing the coffee.

4. They all look at me like I’m being silly but I know myself and I know how cold I will get and so calf-length winter jacket it is.

5. A gust of wind whips tiny beads of sand against our face and exposed ankles. I hope they cut this game short.

6. My black pants and black coat are covered in a thin film sand. When I try to put on chapstick I feel a thin layer of grit scraping across my lips.

7. Alerts about more fires.

8. I give up on trying to go to the grocery store today.

9. One of the twins thinks her father is very funny. She’s always giggling at him which I find amusing since most of us in the house have stopped laughing. But glad he’s got a new and willing audience.

10. This will be an interesting week.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Forty-Five

1. Chilly but I put on shorts anyway because I know it will be 85 and I plan on getting some good hammock time in.

2. He gets the donuts and I brew the coffee. Everyone is awake but quiet and in their own rooms and that’s good for me right now.

3. She asks what we have to do today. I tell her that I want to do as little as possible. Maybe go to the farmstand for tonight’s veggies. But that’s it. As little as possible.

4. I leave a bottle of wine with the burner. A thank you and an apology for being so tardy in returning it.

5. I get there just as it opens. An older black woman is there. She gets one pound of San Marzano tomatoes and a cucumber. She and the woman checking her out talk about the ways in which one can cook them. “Sliced, skin on, with a little bit of shallot, butter, and olive oil.”

6. He asks if I bought the delicata squash just because it’s pretty.

7. These dogs won’t stop barking.

8. I pull the hammock to the middle of the patio so that I’m half in the sun and half in the shade. I read the latest issue of Fast Company before closing my eyes for a nap.

9. Noses turned up at the delicata squash. Oh well.

10. He says something about how different it feels knowing someone who is actually a fireman out there fighting those fires. How it’s different knowing that their children are in your house almost every day. How it’s interesting how perspective shifts once a situation becomes personal.

11. You just pray.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Forty-Four

1. I sit on the floor of the closet and turn on the app. 5 minutes of deep breathing.

2. I really do feel more centered.

3. Her text says that there’s a small fire in Livermore too and that now parts of Alameda county are also on the list for power shut-off. I check the map for Brentwood. We are still okay, but just barely.

4. I check the time on Google maps and see that there’s space in the morning for me to do the drop off. I haven’t done it in such a long time. It’s one of those mom things that I didn’t think I’d miss.

5. In fact, there are a lot of stay-at-home mom things that I was looking forward to escaping by having a traditional job. Turns out, I didn’t hate it all as much as I thought I did.

6. I take my time walking from the car to the door of the building. I notice the grasses and the flowers and the perfect patina of the brass lights that flank the double doors. Beauty hunting.

7. While IT fixes my computer, I sort and fold and rearrange. I take the shirts to the cottage to store in the drawers. That lone calla lily. Delight.

8. The loud chirping of smoke detectors that need new batteries.

9. He brings me a glass of sparkling while I read in the hammock. There is time for this.

10. The birds of paradise have bloomed again.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Forty-Three

1. 6 am wake feels luxurious. I might be more tired than I am. I might not actually be a morning person at all any more. Or maybe I just need 3 days of nothing but sleep. I do believe there’s a such thing as catching up on rest.

2. I sit on the floor of the closet and do some breathing exercises. 5 minutes makes a difference.

3. I wash dishes and he takes the kids to school. I finally pour myself a cup of coffee. What next, what next? Journal.

4. Single-task mind.

5. Curled up beneath the blue blanket at the end of the sofa. I close the book and look out of the window. Done with the book. Sad that these little sips of delight are over. Committed to refocusing on beauty hunting.

6. The moderator is introducing folks and giving thanks to donors and my body tingles with tears. And then my body does the same thing again as he introduces the speakers and there a round of applause. I think to myself how the body and the heart are funny things. Why is this making me cry? Maybe it’s something else that’s making me cry. Maybe I just need to cry and for whatever reason someone else’s expression of gratitude is moving me. I will delight in this.

7. The colors of early afternoon are so different from the colors of morning.

8. “How will we be together?”

9. Sometimes I just can’t decide.

10. Sometimes it just takes a while to find your groove.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Forty-Two

1. I miss that crazy loud rooster.

2. I can’t decide if I like that he’s driving me to work today. But since I’m feeling better today than the last two days, maybe it won’t be so bad. Besides, I like to stare out the window and daydream and that’s hard to when you have to focus on driving.

3. Oh no. She reads my stories. I laugh. How did she know what I was talking about?

4. It really is beautiful here. Like, so beautiful. Like, breathtaking. When will it get old?

5. I know mindfulness but I haven’t been practicing it lately and so this luncheon is right on time. She guides us through a meditation. I think of the two of us in those adirondack chairs drinking a bottle of white wine with the sun beating down us, the garden vibrant with blooms. Oh yeah. I needed to be reminded that all you need is one memory to access peace.

6. On the walk back to the office i give gratitude for being able to work in a place where I can bring this intention into my job. Single-tasking is the way for me. Slowness is the way for me. Nothing is as urgent as it seems. I can take my time.

7. One lone calla lily in the freshly mulched flower bed.

8. On the ride home we decide that it will never get old.

9. I am indeed in hell. But trying to stay present and mindful through it all.

10. Tomorrow I will go in late which means tonight I will clean and clean and clean. Looking forward to savoring my morning.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Forty-One

1. Thank goodness for sons who bake muffins the night before thus relieving you from any pressure to make a breakfast this morning.

2. Looking for the light.

3. How is it that the last 30 minutes always goes by so much fast than the first 90 minutes?

4. We are slowed to a stop and so I grab my phone to take a picture. There is nothing there but a big oak tree and a hill and the sky. But in this moment it seems worthy of capturing.

5. I know my head is not where it should be. I am here but I am not.

6. She gets the kind of text that no mother every wants to recieve.

7. Then I realize that the only person who is working on this is me. Which is not a problem. It’s just that I think it will be me and me only doing this one particular thing that I really am not very good at. No. Not that I couldn’t be good at it, it’s just that it’s outside of my comfort zone.

8. It’s almost November.

9. I realize that really, I just miss my friends. All of them. I remember telling her that I think I’m going to be okay this winter because I work in an office and I’ll be around people and that they’re nice people. But the truth is that I miss my friends. There isn’t anyone yet that can just come over for coffee or check out the yoga class at the YMCA, or eat lunch at the tea house.

10. I let myself feel it all.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Fourty

1. Overslept.

2. I rub her Beloved oil on my neck and my forearms. A reminder to myself and my body.

3. I really ought to remember to give myself another day off on the other end of a trip. Always feeling unprepared.

4. Black cows puddled across the yellow-gold hills. The muted green of sagebrush and oaks off in the distance. Blue sky. I fall in love with this view a little more each day.

5. I decide that I am not ambitious. I don’t want to be. That sounds too exhausting. I’d rather have vision. Is it too much to call oneself a visionary?

6. Can you call yourself a visionary when lately everything has felt so thickly veiled?

7. She takes us through, pulling off leaves of lemon balm and lemon verbena. I rub them between my fingers and brind my hand to my nose. The puts green fennel seeds in my cupped hands and then asks me if I’d like some hibiscus seeds. Maybe I just need to spend more time outside (who doesn’t?). Perfect mid-day act of self-restoration.

8. I tell him that I don’t have time to make scones in the morning anymore but that those are things they can make on their own. That that would help me.

9. I miss slow mornings when there was time for making muffins and scones and olive oil cakes. I miss slow evenings when there was more time for enjoying the process of cooking…when it didn’t have to be another chore to be rushed through on the way to something else.

10. No time for delight.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Thirty-Nine

1. Last morning.

2. The rooster makes me giggle every time. He’s just so. loud.

3. We manage to stuff everything back into the bags from which they came and then head out for an empanada and coffee. The fog is still so thick and low but there’s the hazy glow of yellow off in the distance which promises a sunny day.

4. It’s a short walk and yet there is so much to see even though there is nothing to see.

5. Sage, artichoke flowers, brussel sprouts, horsemint, tarragon, rosemary, perfectly shaped heads of lettuce.

6. But the view. Can you even imagine?

7. I drive and try not to think about the fact that this is the end of the weekend, that this means going back. What am I even going back to? Each time I leave, I see another thing that needs changing. Not fixing. But changing. Nothing is necessarily wrong but I can see where I’ve bent the ends of pieces to make them fit.

8. I remind myself to not romanticize it too much.

9. We split a spicy gingersnap as we drive across the Golden Gate Bridge. To the left, the too-closeness of the the city. To the right, nothing but water and air.

10. I worry he will criticize the stack of books I brought back from Dawn’s caboose, but instead he seems excited. I am just tired. Tired and sad. Tired and sad and full of questions. Tired, sad, full of questions, worried that there’s not enough space anymore to figure things out.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Thirty-Eight

1. Oh, good morning, rooster.

2. Fog hanging low. The cafe is fuller this morning than the last few times I’d been. Black coffee and a bacon and goat cheese empanada. The flurry of Spanish circling my ears. I’m reminded that we have a lot of learning to do upon my return,

3. Return. Not thinking about leaving just yet.

4. She pulls out a bowl of pomegranate seeds and adds it to the bar that is already stuffed full of scones and hard-boiled eggs and flaky sea salt, granola and yogurt, and local unfiltered apple juice.

5. A deer darts across 128. He turns back to look at us as we move along.

6. Two more deer. These, I didn’t see. They stop and stare at us again. Remember to look up Deer medicine later.

7. It’s just the two of us, and a young man with the chef, and this is actually the most perfect thing, A private pasta-making class during which we drink Scharfenberger and sparkling water. We make farfalle and pappardelle and the one that looks like a chicken gullet. He brings us oysters—my first time eating them raw—and then a salad with more pomegranate seeds and pickled butternut squash and roasted delicata with a ginger dressing, and then our pasta to which he’s added shrimp seasoned with a piment d’ville. And then a plate of figs drizzled with honeycomb.

8. Delight while under the blanket on the sleeping porch. Her in her bath with her glass of Syrah and her book. The sounds of the cats chasing one another through the leaves.

9. Notebooks full of stars.

10. A whole sky full of stars. Billions of them. I feel even smaller at this moment that when we overlooking the gray waves of the sea. Why does this have to be the last night?

Ten.Eight Hundred & Thirty-Seven

1. Up before the alarm. Not surprised at all by this. There is too much to be excited about.

2. I find them all and give them hugs before I go. They are all jealous that I am leaving. I tell them that we will pick another weekend for all of us to go. Don’t worry. He asks me to bring back a bottle of Pinot Noir Juice.

3. I go through the car wash like he asked me too even though I feel like it will put me behind schedule.

4. No. I’m really not a city person.

5. I’m here. She’s here. We’re together.

6. The water is churning. So powerful. I’ve never seen waves that big. We pull off somewhere in Bodega Bay to watch the gray water smash against the gray cliffs.

7. Lunch at Trink’s. Apparently it’s Point Reyes Blue Cheese that should be on my BLT, not cheddar. The sound of crashing waves flooding the spaces in between words.

8. Mountain View Road.

9. Phillips Hill Gewurtztraminer with our backs to the sun.

10. Roederer Brut. Baxter Pinot Noir. Catching up in the candle light. Writing a list of restaurants in New Orleans for the server. Hot shower uninterrupted.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Thirty-Six

1. She comes today. I won’t see her until tomorrow, but she comes today.

2. Reheat muffins, make coffee. He will want those leftover hashbrowns. I really need to drink my water before I eat anything.

3. I worry. I worry about the loss of dream time, of free time, of art time. I worry that I won’t find a new rhythm that makes space for the other kinds of work I know I’m meant to be doing. I mourn the prior life while also trying to hold the potential of this new one. I’ll figure it out. Right?

4. What is with the traffic today? Sirens from behind. State Highway Patrol. The voice says this is still the fastest route.

5. The problem with listening to podcasts when you drive is that it’s impossible to write anything down. I try to repeat things in my head, a desperate attempt to remember. And then I realize that it’s okay. That whatever wants to stick will stick, even if it’s not the words and only the feeling.

6. Slow.

7. He left gifts on the table and each one is wrapped in the cutest red and white Japanese wrapping paper. I wish I could find out what’s inside.

8. Gratitude for leftovers.

9. She’s here.

10. Another bath. Another chunk of Delight devoured. I could get used to this.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Thirty-Five

1. Too much to think about at 5:15 in the morning.

2. So quiet. Still too dark for me. I need more light. Where is the light. I don’t remember it feeling so dark last year.

3. Episode 232: My Embodiment by Craig Morgan Telcher

4. He’s sending pictures from Disney World. Everyone looks so happy. I am happy that they are happy.

5. I get them all out the door so that I can just gather myself for a few minutes before I need to leave. Just a few minutes of quiet in an empty house does wonders.

6. All of the cows are back on this side of the pasture today, lazing around in the dry grass. A calf gallops andlands his face right into the side of an adult. The big cow doesn’t seem unnerved at all.

7. Sometimes I’m just waiting.

8. Holding all of this.

9. I never take a bath but I want to right now. Maybe I can squeeze out enough hot water before they’re all in the shower. I light some incense and set The Book of Delights by Ross Gay on the edge of the tub. Delight.

10. “If you’re black in this country you’re presumed guilty. Or, to come back to Abdel, who’s a schoolteacher and thinks a lot about children, you’re not allowed to be innocent. The eyes and heart of a nation are not avoidable things. The imagination of a country is not an avoidable thing. And the negreeting, back home, where we are mostly never seen, is a way of witnessing each other’s innocence—a way of saying, ‘I see your innocence.’” - from “8. The Negreeting”, The Book of Delights

Ten.Eight Hundred & Thirty-Four

1. Don’t want to get up.

2. I grab a stick of incense to take with me to the kitchen. I like that this is a ritual again. Thank you Michelle.

3. The morning time vanishes fat too quickly for my liking. I don’t like for my first cup to be in the car. What am I not doing right to get this routine down? The answer can’t be to wake up earlier. Or maybe it is. Maybe that is the only way.

4. Now I do know for sure that this will not be the place. And I don’t know that I want this place to be it either. We belong somewhere else and even though I know that and want that, I am also dreading the idea of shifting our lives once more. But I shouldn’t worry myself with that now. No need to future trip at this second.

5. 4 more days.

6. Getting over the fear of doing something new; realizing that you really don’t have a choice in the matter so you better do it anyway.

7. I am later than usual but there’s still enough time to take them to the library. Everything I want is not at this location and so I request it all, knowing that everything will arrive at the same time and then I probably won’t read any of them.

8. All hail sheet pan dinners.

9. I make him breathless from forcing him to practice chest passes and bounce passes with me. He still beats me in PIG—twice. I let him revel in that for today. I just haven’t been practicing. Also, how is this child, my child, so tall?

10. Great British Baking Show together, all crammed into my bed. But if only they would all stop talking.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Thirty-Three

1. I don’t want to get up.

2. Make the coffee first, then set the oven to warm, then make your juices.

3. Curious about what today will bring. Do I have enough time to journal this morning? Maybe just one page. One page is better than none.

4. No pages.

5. The thing about being so low and so close is that I have to wait too long for the morning light. I miss the old house with its wall full of windows, the way I could great the sunrise and sunset every day. I miss standing at the sliding door with my coffee looking for the deer and the foxes and the owls.

6. I will have to do the best I can.

7. The day goes by quickly; after a week like last week, I am good with things feeling a little slower.

8. James Baldwin and Maya Angelou had that same kind of voice, a church voice, a powerful voice, an intellectual voice, a honeyed voice; everything sounds like song, like in any minute they would begin to sing.

9. Oh yeah, this is good. It’s been so long since I’ve had it. A Brouilly that does not taste like Brouilly. We need to get back to Kermit Lynch soon.

10. Her stories say something like 3 more holidays until Christmas. I tighten up. Yeah. That’s right.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Thirty-Two

1. How is it already time to get up?

2. I put on a dress and a big sweater, grab my water bottle and make my way to the kitchen. Yes. Next house, half this size, twice as much land.

3. Coffee and leftover pound cake. The kids are still fast asleep.

4. The ride back is quiet. I respond to her DM that I find it easier to use process of elimination. That it’s much easier for me to pinpoint my dislikes than my likes. It seems to work for me.

5. I remind myself that we agreed upon a new way of doing this. So I”ll sit here for today, but next week we’ll do this together.

6. Skin warmed by sun. I still have to wrap my shawl around me when the breeze blows. I can tell which one is mine because of the thick salt ring around the hat. Someone should really wash that.

7. I ask her to make the muffins for me while I make dinner. I realize that I won’t be able to get through this new weekly schedule without some kind of meal prep on Sundays. If i can get a couple pans of muffins and a batch of granola made each Sunday, that’s at least 4 days of breakfast. They can add fruit to either one and that should be sufficient. Right?

8. All of this is just one big experiment.

9. March feels so far away.

10. I miss the ocean.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Thirty-One

1. Up earlier than I wanted to be but here we are.

2. We head back to the diner for a pastry and coffee. Not ready to go.

3. We sit in the car overlooking the ocean while we eat. I stare at the water, so deep and so blue. I wonder what it might be like to be like that couple over there driving up and down the coast in a camper, stopping off in little towns for homemade pastries and a little bit of local conversation.

4. At first I think he knows them but then he throws the fish over the ledge and I realize that something is not quite right. I just make sure the young Germans get into their car and that he doesn’t follow them. Then I see him stab a fish is something long and sharp and raise the fish into the air.

5. The view from here.

6. Make note: Big Basin Redwood State Park.

7. I think I can do the drive for us next week.

8. I realize very quickly that I am actually not a city person. I am a country person. I need the quiet. I need the dark. I need the space.

9. Steak and potatoes and spinach. 2013 Clos Pegase Homage Cabernet Sauvignon. Pound cake.

10. Missing the ocean.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Thirty

1. Almost 8. Just as tired as I thought I was.

2. I feel so much further from home than I actually am and this is something I’m beginning to love about California. I need only to drive a few hours in either direction to be in another world.

3. We camp out at a table and wait for coffee. Home fries and eggs and bacon, an English muffin. I suggest we buy a pastry just so we can justify taking up the table for another 45 minutes. It’s light and airy, sticky but not too sweet, walnuts instead of pecans. I pull off a chunk to eat in the car.

4. Once you decide to really look, you realize there was nothing to be afraid of after all.

5. Wilder Beach. Coastal Bluff trail. I am always under-prepared for these kinds of excursions. From now on, always plan for lots of walking on uneven ground. I will never not want to be by the water or under the trees.

6. Collage by the pool. It is empty. The smell of chlorine wafting up the nose between sips of lemonade.

7. Shackteau Grenache.

8. Make it a priority. Must make it a priority.

9. We order the Domaine Laroche and a few bites of seafood but decide that we’re too offended by everything that’s going on to stay here for an entree. Whereas dinner the night before was of good value and excellent quality, this is feeling forced and obscene. Expensive for the sake of being expensive is a quick way to go out of business.

10. When you can go to sleep feeling accomplished, maybe even proud of the way in which you discovered that after 12 years, all things considered, you’ve been making your way just fine. I think of that Shania Twain song. “Looks like we made it.” I love the life we’ve been able to create together. Has it been easy? No. Is it perfect? No. But our mutual abilities to grow, be curious, and apply new knowledge surely does help to steady the ship.