A dayenu day

I am in Mendocino with my boyfriend.

On the way home from walking around town (which took very little time, and even the shops that said they would open at 11:00 had not opened yet), we decided to stop into the Stevenswood Resort and Spa.

I'd heard of Stevenswood while listening to KQED.  A station I choose to avoid in favor of KALW, but it was pledge drive time and I was navigating through it.  KQED said, "If you donate $120, or $10 per month, we'll give you a $100 gift certificate to the Stevenswood Spa in Mendocino."  Since B. and I had already decided to go to Mendocino, I reached for my laptop to look it up.

Whoa.  The rooms cost $399 to $895 depending on demand.  It's gorgeous.  A bit too over the top for this stage of my relationship.  I sent it to B. with a note saying, "Something to aspire to."

I considered the gift certificate.  It would hardly make a dent.

Then KQED went to a "listener perspective."  Reason #2 that I don't listen to KQED.  (Reason #1 is either that their announcers sound like drunk old men or that their "news" is not news; it's prerecorded narratives that don't tell me anything I want to know when I listen to the radio in the morning.)  The listener perspective was from an Silicon Valley engineer who went on about how MBAs are useless and ruining Silicon Valley, and he told a story about a young woman with whom he didn't work well.  He generalized over this experience.

My reactions:

1. They've hit a new low.
2. I will not donate money.
3. They just alienated people who have money, which during a pledge drive, immediately after they asked for money, is even more stupid than I thought they were.

I went online and told them so.

Back to Mendocino.  B. and I stopped into Stevenswood to check out the spa products and maybe the spa.  We were met by Connie, who is the nicest, most wonderful person in the world.  She gave us brochures, and when I commented that they even have a bar in the spa, she said, "Oh, we are having a free wine and olive oil tasting."  So we joined in -- great wine, yummy olive oil on terrific bread.

If we had just had the wine and olive oil tasting, it would have been enough.  Dayenu.

B. decided we should see a room (for future visits), and Connie gave us a tour.  The rooms are great.  Tempur-pedic beds.  The tasting and the tour would have been enough.  Dayenu.

We asked her if we could have massages immediately, and she said yes.  Dayenu.

But before we have our massages, would we like to go sit in the hot tub?  For as long as we'd like?  She provided a set of bathrobes and flip flops, towels, and showed to the outdoor private hot tub, open to the sky and the trees, totally gorgeous.  It drizzled in a beautiful way.  Dayenu.

We sat in that hot tub saying, "Holy cow, what just happened?"

Prior to the massage, we rested in the waiting area on incredibly comfy chaise lounges with our heads supported by Tempur-pedic pillows.  It would have been enough just to do that.  Dayenu.

Hot stone deep tissue massage in the couples room.  Dayenu.

"By the way," Connie said, "we have champagne and chocolate-dipped strawberries for after you are done."  Dayenu.

As we returned to the chaise lounges to have our champagne and chocolate-dipped strawberries, they put down comforters over us so we could keep warm.

When we returned to our room, the sun had come out (contrary to all predictions), and it was warm.  We sat on the deck in the sun and looked out at the ocean and said, "Dayenu."

The best Christmas ever.

Merry Christmas! I am having such a wonderful time at my own Christmas party. Just me. I've had an emotionally and logistically complex few days, and today I finally got some me time: time to spend in my own life and at my own pace.

So after a brunch in Burlingame this morning (hitting the road when it's empty and the sky is clear is a great way to start the day) I took a nap and was awakened to my first Christmas present: my phone was ringing. For the past four days my home phone has been out of service, causing me to have a variety of meltdowns while I wait on hold to ask again when it will be fixed. I finally emailed the CEO of the company (whom I know -- it's not AT&T!) as well as the head of customer service, and the latter called me back within the hour on my repaired line.

A cloud lifted.

I walked on this beautiful sunny day to the local Borders to do Christmas shopping for niece and nephew. I knew what I wanted to get nephew, but I forgot who the author was, and the self-service stations weren't spitting it out when I searched for it. It also appears that Borders blocks access to Amazon.com from iPhones. I was, however, able to easily get into Amazon if I googled a specific book. After an hour, I figured it out: Bad Kitty Gets a Bath. Perfect.

And now I'm listening to KFOG's 24 hours of Christmas, which is incredibly fun and diverse, and I made myself dinner -- for the first time in weeks, between eating out, eating at others', and eating crap here. Me time!

Tomorrow won't be so me, but it's filled with tradition:

1. Open the box of Christmas presents that my father and stepmother have sent
2. Stop at my sister's to exchange gifts
3. Party of Torah studiers in the afternoon
4. Chinese food and a movie in the evening

Then on to New Year's, which will be in Tahoe for the first time in memory and promises to be its own unique adventure!

A day at Tomales Bay

Today my favorite place in California is Tomales Bay.

A classmate has a long term rental of a great house there and invited a bunch of us to a day at the beach. Potluck. With a vague idea of when to show up, knowing this was potluck but not sure how many hours we'd be there, with a forecast of cold, overcast, and rainy, we left in a caravan, grumpy.

Instead, the day was sunny and warm. Duck Cove turned out to involve seven hours of hanging out, throwing rocks into the water, boating, hot tub, and lots of eating. J brought sangria, which we slurped and munched; I brought enough snacks to ruin our appetites for real food, which included tri tip, grilled asparagus and other vegetables, sausages, and hamburgers.

The boating was kicked off by seven children and three adults piling into our host's tiny Boston Whaler to go across the bay for oysters. As they returned, we on the shore thought they looked like refugees, absolutely packed into the boat.  Either that or the scene from "The Sound of Music" when the von Trapps kids joyfully swamp their boat as they greet their father.

Fresh oysters on the grill -- even the kids were eating them.

I have a thing about water.  Whenever I am near it, I must go in.  J and I were reminiscing about a trip we took up the coast years ago with a crowd of classmates.  We stopped at a rocky beach, the kind with huge eruptions of surf as the waves hit the rocks.  I got closer and closer, loving the smell and the spray.  Dragged J with me, and one of the waves totally soaked us.  (I really believe someone has a picture of this moment.  We must dig it up.)  I was wearing jeans and learned that getting wet in jeans is no fun; since that day, I bring a change of clothes if I think I will be anywhere near water.

Until today.  Today I sat by the picnic tables and hung out and had random sangria-filled conversations and took pictures, working up the nerve to ask our host if I could be next in the sea kayak.  I know how to canoe, but I'd never sea kayaked.  I'm a convert!  It's a hull of plastic like you'd buy at Toys R Us, and you just fly with little effort.  Much easier than a canoe.  I anticipated being so lame at kayaking that I said I'd just toodle around near the shore, but once I figured out how spectacularly simple it is to kayak I was off and running.  Not even noticing that I was dripping water all over myself as I paddled out into the bay.  It was like flying, like dancing.  Others of our party were out there in a pedal kayak, and I hung out with them on the water, sprinting off, moving in all directions, letting myself drift in the sun.

By the time I got out, which involved grounding the kayak on the shore and then kind of falling out into the water (not the most graceful landing), I was definitely soggy.  And in jeans.

Nothing drinking more sangria, sitting in a hot tub overlooking the bay (as the fog rolled in), and eating oysters off the grill (throwing the shells off the cliff), and having more great conversation can't fix.  Today we ate 100 oysters.

Krazy Kat

I know it's been forever since my last post.  The free-roaming part of my brain has been consumed with taking care of my cat, Sophie.  Roaming to possibilities, to concerns, calling vets, wondering what my cat is thinking, and now to the Adventure of the Food.  Really, my creativity has been put to good use.

Sophie developed what we now know was a calcium oxalate stone in her ureter, as we found out when the test results came back from the lab in Minnesota on Wednesday.  Last month, she had five days of fluid therapy in the hospital (bank translation: vacation to Hawaii, staying at the Four Seasons), trying to get her into UC Davis (translation: penthouse), followed by surgery (not at Davis but at the wonderful BAVS) when the stone didn't come out on its own (translation: flying first class).
Vets are awesome people, and she ultimately came through with flying colors.

By my count, she's used at least three lives.  (1) Because Hopalong and I agree she wouldn't have made it on the street, or even just as an outdoor cat, (2) because if the stone hadn't been addressed she would have died, and (3) because she's a head case and seems to have forgotten how important eating is and would not have made it if I hadn't followed her into Crazyland.

That's what brings us to today.

Calcium oxalate stones are "highly recurring" (with no definition of that), which means that Sophie could end up consuming another trip to Hawaii.  Many more trips, in fact.  Oxalates can't be prevented by all those prepared, canned cat urinary tract health diets -- that would be struvites, much easier to control.  No, my Sophie, predictably, produced the more difficult of the two kinds of stones.  The only way to even possibly prevent an oxalate stone is to somehow convince your cat to drink more water.  Dilute the urine, that's our only hope.

On the way home from the appointment when I learned all this, I stopped at the store and bought her a kitty fountain (translation: cab ride to the airport).

Sophie's a dry food cat who is under orders never to have dry food again. But she doesn't perceive wet food -- a major source of water -- as food. She licks the sauce a bit and walks away.

I've learned that cats can have food aversions. They (apparently easily) develop associations with food which makes them stop eating it. Sophie's aversing started with stone pain/hospitalization/surgery, and she came home thinking food was bad. She's on mirtazapine, an appetite stimulant (separately: the Pill Adventure), which is supposed to get her through this, but she's figured out how to resist its effect, resist me, resist her hunger pangs. In the face of all this expensive and smelly wet food! At the same time she's perfectly frisky and playful, acting as if being super cute and loving is all that matters. I end up seeming like the only crazy one here.

I document what I feed her and what she eats.  This way, I won't end up panicking that she hasn't eaten in five days when she might have actually eaten recently.  But it turns out her food aversion extends to bowls and locations, so I have to keep switching things up.  The log from the past two days goes:

Chicken/gravy

Ducken

Chicken/gravy

Wellness turkey (in BR w/water in orange bowl)

Wellness turkey (in BR near window on plate)

Moved ducken to table

Chicken/grave on table in cruet

Wellness turkey in corner

Chicken/gravy in BR

SO on table while I eat and work on computer

SO with 5 pieces of dry

fresh chicken

Ducken

fresh chicken

She didn't eat most of this, which means it's all in the garbage.  She will eat the fresh chicken, but only if it's cut into little cubes -- she can't seem to understand it's the same food if it's in shreds.  The vet said I could serve her diluted chicken broth, and that's helping ... so now she has me cooking and cutting chicken, making plain, unseasoned broth, and serving it in a variety of bowls in varying locations.  I have five options in the living room (including two on tables), two in the bedroom, and one in the kitchen.