hello, it's me

Dear sisters,

Well, I have been busy you know. Finding yet another recipe for the previously unkown vegetable chard, which has been appearing weekly in our organic locally grown home delivery box for the last two months, I suppose it is chard season. I have been painting my toe nails, watching the varnish dry, expanding my flip flop collection, digesting the fact we will be moving to Bali in two weeks and three days.

It is the right time to panic. The house has to be empty very soon. We still have to sell our cars, our tvs, furniture. We have to have our shots, our visa, our tickets, Christmas has to be celebrated. Goodbye parties. You know.

I have to unsubscribe to the mailing list of all the filmfestivals I hardly managed to attend. I got to the film noir B movie festival, that was a good one, the documentary film festival, the independent filmfestival, but not the, Jewish, the Irish, the Italian, the Asian American or the silent movie festival. Of course we went to the the sing-a-longs in the Castro theatre. I will have to unsubscribe to the newsletters from the music venues and my favorite online shopping sites.

We also had a family crisis. We laugh about it now. I call it the Taco Intervention. At recent social gatherings of our instigation, Allard panicked that guests would get hungry later on and went off on a taco and salsa buying rampage. The kitchen cupboards are still stuffed to the gils with big bags of corn chip bags and pots of salsa suace in various strengths. I have had to forbid him to enter the taco chips aisle for a while.

Things are being put in piles, organized, thrown away. It has a liberating aspect. The aim is to leave with five or six suitcases, containing clothes, toys and electronic gadgets.

Oh, does moving to Bali mean we are leaving San Francisco? Mmm. That part is also sinking in. Jip' last day at school, Rosie's coming up. A lot of lasts.

As Jip keeps asking" Why are we leaving San francisco. Everything is so good here? " And it is true there are a lot of things I will miss of this fair and beautiful city and not many things I will be glad to leave behind. Except maybe for Nancy Grace, the commercial breaks, the scary police officer who lurks behind the cars on 19th and Church, waiting to ticket people who do not make the full stop at the stop sign and the heating system which makes so much noise blasting hot air into the rooms, the cold is often preferable.

I thought of doing posts on my top ten views (so many), top ten trees -love the Californian trees! - top ten coffee shops, that wall on Valencia that changes with a new collage of posters, artwork and text every week, but I haven't yet. Maybe later.

Now patiently waiting for the delayed parents, who hopefully will arrive tomorrow, held up by the snow. Jip had the most boring day of his life today, his words, towing along with my to do list, until we started his new blog: www.legotales.blogspot.com.

I wish you both a great Christmas. We wish you could be here, of course. We will be thinking of you under the tree.

kisses
S1