the current June vacation plan...

6/5: Seattle to Emeryville, via the Coast Starlight. I need to figure out how to get from Emeryville to San Francisco--if that's not easy, I'll just go down to San Jose and catch Caltrain up into the City. I'll arrive on 6/6, sometime in the afternoon.

6/9: after a lovely weekend spent in SF, I will head out to Sacramento on the Capitol Corridor train and visit with my parents for a day.

6/10, midnight: I will catch the Coast Starlight in Sacramento and arrive in Seattle on the evening of 6/11.

This is, of course, subject to change as I contact people and make up my mind on timing. I can extend my stay in SF for a day or two, as well.

(no subject)

My mom called it "picking up".

I call it "putting things to rights".

It's that thing you do after dinner, after the dishes are done and you've cleaned the kitchen, including wiping off the stove a lot because you've made fritatta again and there is no frying pan in the world large enough to contain this frittata. Fritatta is all over your stove top, so you wipe that up and put the unexpectedly useful burner covers back on the burners.

Then you drape the dishtowels over the empty rack, because your mom did teach you that you put dishes away right after you wash them. Because otherwise they get germs on them. She never adequately explained why they get fewer germs on them on the rack than in the cupboards, since said cupboards are not airtight, but you have cats who like to knock things over and the dishes are safer inside the cupboard.

Of course, you did grow up with a dishwasher, but your mom thought ahead, you know.

so after the kitchen is done you wander into the living room, and there are things to put away here. New dishtowels that need to be washed before they're at all useful. There are library books, two you've read and one you haven't, and the read ones go on the return pile and the unread one goes into the backpack.

You change the calendar to April. Water the plants. Put your shoes in a line with the other shoes. Pick up the catalogs that Cricket has surfed on right off the coffee table. Pick up the cougar skull on the bookcase and dust it with your sleeve. Read the rest of the March chapter of Romancing the Ordinary. Watch a little bit of a movie. Come upstairs and put a bunch of books on hold at the library.

Curl up in bed and fall asleep, recharged by silence and the meditation which is order.