Oak Canyon Trail

Today we took a long (time-wise) hike in Mission Trails. It was absolutely lovely out today. Tiny pink, purple, yellow flowers in bloom, coyotes howled, and a baby rattlesnake crossed our path.

Oak Canyon is one of my favorite parts of MTRP, shady and quiet and just this side of technical. Whenever I make it out there, I'm reminded of the time when I knew the entire park like the back of my hand, and I'm not even exaggerating. I truly miss those days. Today I had to look up a trail map on my phone, scandal!

I'm pretty sure my kids will be in high school before I can take them from the visitor center up to the smoke stacks, down to the valley, up the steps (and more steps, and then some more) to south fortuna, down to the saddle, up to north fortuna, down to oak canyon, past where I saw my mythical shirtless dreamy mandolin player, through the grasslands, and back along the junipero serra trail to the visitor center again. Sigh.

Until then, a spot of oak canyon here and there will have to suffice. Unless you want to babysit? Unless you want to come with me instead of my kids? Unless you play mandolin with you shirt off? Lmk.

build a rocket boys!

This album, in a word, is spectacular. It is seriously captivating.



elbow, my boys. I love them, absolutely adore. You can quote me as saying that Guy Garvey is one of the top few (as in: top two) songwriters alive today. I don't remember exactly how I found them, but I think they opened for someone back in the early 00s, right after their 2001 release, Asleep in the Back. In short, I am telling you that I liked them way before you did (and you, too. Yeah, even you). Every album they have ever made has been nothing short of beautiful.

In 2008, they won the british Mercury Music prize (for their fourth studio album, The Seldom Seen Kid), which still shocks me a little because I always kind of forget that they're not mine, that they're not just something made just for me to fold up and carry around in my back pocket. Every single word, every single note has been written just for me, I promise you. I've been known to say that Elbow was the most underrated band of the last decade, but I guess they're a little bit appropriately-rated now.

This album, "build a rocket boys!" seems to reflect upon their experiences growing up, and all at once I feel so many things, so many conflicting things. It's beautiful and sweet to think about my childhood in Northern England, and it's sad to think about the adolescence and young adulthood and beyond that I didn't have there. But mostly, it's just a collection of songs about home, about having a home and loving your home, but also about feeling so floaty and disconnected and apart from home. And anyone can relate to that. Even in San Diego. (I guess).

(One long June/I came down from the trees/and kerbstone cool/You were a freshly painted angel/Walking on walls/Stealing booze and hour-long hungry kisses/And nobody knows me at home anymore)

(click the album cover for listeny samples on the pitchfork blurb).

Manchester: fuck the what, ftw for sure.

Hell yes.

I am writing this from the official google blogger ap, newlyish launched. It's lovely and simple and so fast. Just in time for the world to stop spinning tomorrow (uh, later today); perhaps now I can say with certainty that I will resurrect the daily posts.

Welcome back me.

I wonder where that picture is going to end up. It's a picture of me, first thing in the morning (robe still on and everything) and looking a little rough around the edges, wouldn't you say?

Everything in progress.

Erik and I have been married for, what, seven and a half years now. We've been dating for ten and a half. You'd think we'd be good at it. Right?

Well, the thing is, and I'm almost certain this is true: almost nobody is naturally good at being married. Sure, most of us are good at being monogamous. We're good at hanging out with someone super awesome and hold their hand all the time. We're good at having constant access to marital sex. We're good at letting someone else lighten the load of our lives: the chores, the money, the suffering, the chores, the chores, and I can't even remember the last time I took the recycling out.

But what *I* have to remind myself sometimes is that I'm not alone. I'm not the only one sitting here sometimes wondering when the perfection is supposed to start while everyone else has it mastered in their spic and span houses with shiny kitchen floors and well-scrubbed, highly literate children gazing admirably upon their parents' happy, loving, inspiring relationship.

And what *I* have to remind myself sometimes is that once you reach a certain number of years together, you don't just pass the test and then not have to study anymore. At least so far, there hasn't been a time when we can slack off without consequences. Marriage, like everything else, is a work in progress.

And what *I* have to remember is that sometimes when it feels like I'm the only one in the marriage progressing, that I'm the only one working to evolve, that I'm probably not. I'm probably spending too much of my energy and time dissecting what is wrong. And I need to remember all those other times when the 70-30 breakdown was tipped in my direction.

But mostly, what I need to remember is that I don't have a perfect marriage. Did you all hear that? I don't have a perfect marriage. But I do have an awesome marriage. We have fun, we are (usually) sweet to each other, and we love each other so much it hurts sometimes. Our children and our marriage are our life's work, and we can't lose sight of that. When we do, we suck. When we remember, we're so, so awesome.

When Ollie was a newborn, one of Erik's oldest friends suggested we write a family mission statement. It could be anything from a detailed vision with lots of semi-colons or bullet points, to a simple one sentence mantra we write in a giant marker on the front of the fridge. We didn't write one, of course, but I'm ready to. I can think of so many things to include in there, and you know I like the semi-colons and lord do I love the bulleted lists, but I really kind of want this to be a one-liner.

But if someone forced it out of me, like in some kind of fucked up family wisdom armed robbery, I'm not entirely sure what I would say. Could I sum up our needs and hopes for Erik and I in the same sentence as our needs and hopes for our children? I know I want my children to become compassionate and loving human beings. I know I want us to always trust each other more than anyone else. I know that I want us to always treat each other in the way that you should treat the utmost special people in your life, not in the sometimes shitty ways we tend to treat the people we know the best. I know that I want us to find a common purpose in making the world a better place. I know that I want us to continue to find solace and comfort and joy, so much joy, in our friends and community. But I also want us to always search for it within our little family unit first.

And I feel like I'm just getting warmed up, but seriously, that's too much already.

It needs to be something to help us keep our eyes on the prize, to help us grow together, to help us remember to be more awesome than perfect, and to help us stay centered and focused on why we're together, why we're a family. And, perhaps you've guessed this already: this mission statement will always be a work in progress.

So, before I ask Erik, what would you say? What is your family (or marriage! or personal!) mission statement? What would you write with a giant marker on your fridge? What would you put on a post-it note on your kitchen cabinet/desk/dashboard/toilet seat/underwear drawer? Pretend I'm brandishing some kind of psychologist weapon in your face. How do you spell hai-ya?