Showing posts with label Vacation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vacation. Show all posts

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Little Crystal Apple

My mom and I were at the Ohio Thrift store yesterday for their monthly half price event. I love going to that store. It relaxes me. I can browse through the shoes looking for new ones, or through the mugs and housing wares looking for special things. We found two pretty mugs with giraffes that were made in Japan and were very artistic and had comfortable handles and even though neither myself or my mom need any mugs at all, I had her buy them and someday I will take them home. :)
I love looking through the sweaters the most. This store makes sure that they are all facing the same way on the rack and are color coded, so I can begin at the beginning of one aisle and flip quickly through the sweaters, looking for my mom and myself. I throw things to her to try on and make my own pile. Usually sticking to brands I recognize and know would have been expensive new. My mom got 7 sweaters (one her first cashmere) yesterday and I got one. But earlier this vacation time I've gotten 5, so only 1 for me is good.
When I was in the small stuff section, I came across a small crystal apple. I usually don't collect apple things but I have one really pretty glass apple paperweight, also from the goodwill, with little bubbles in it. My students would come over to my desk and admire it. (Luckily no one threw it, as it would have been a weighty projectile.) Little apple trinkets always remind me of being a teacher and make me feel a little fuzzy inside. I picked it up and admired it. If it were 90 cents like the paperweight had been I don't think I would have hesitated, but it was 2.92 and not on sale. It also might be considered unnecessary clutter, which my dear husband has trained me not to accumulate. But I held it for a while and thought about it, and pictured it on a shelf in my classroom (currently nonexistent) looking shiny and meaning, a teacher is here. There must be parts of me that still want to teach.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Carmel

Fred and I would like to live in Carmel, at least as a vacation home, with our real home to be in Palo Alto, when we grow up.
We'd like a lovely cottage on the ocean with large windows facing the beach so we can watch the sun set. Those are about 2 million, so it might take a while. (The house in Palo Alto would be about 2 million as well, so it might take a great while! And of course you need a house to live in before you can buy a vacation home.)
We walked quickly down a side street as the sun quietly decided to dip into the ocean. The golden hour making the trees look a little more beautiful. "It wasn't supposed to set yet" I told Fred, even though he had predicted that it would set at exactly this second and I had wanted to stop at the small grocery store to buy some ginger ale to calm my stomach from my overdose of dark chocolate from the candy store. "It isn't set yet, you aren't supposed to look directly into the sun as it sets, you are supposed to wait until it goes down and the look at the colors of the sky it leaves behind" he said trying to console me. I wasn't in the mood to be consoled "Yes you are supposed to look directly at the sun until it sets, seeing it the whole time" I said.
We made it while there was a beautiful tall stretch of bright orange meeting the green blue of the ocean and a periwinkle blue sky overhead. As we watched the orange turn to yellow and the sky darken shade by shade, we sat on a halved wooden log and discussed lots of everything and nothing, important in its forgetableness.
Lovely weekend in Carmel, and back in time for the last day of the weekend (Sunday, we left on Thursday evening) so we can feel rested before the week begins.
I decided to have a biopsy of the suspicious area, either a fine needle biopsy (comfortable procedure) or a core needle biopsy (more painful and traumatizing, but at least I know what to expect and the lump is right next to the skin, so not a lot of really deep digging into the flesh of the breast) and will schedule in Monday, so that I can wait for the whole mastectomy crazy until the turn of the new year so I can save on the yearly minimum requirement of the insurance company. Otherwise the whole procedure will begin this year and end next year and I will have to pay a thousand or two for each year instead of just the one year.