Awwwww....

Friends, or friend as it may be. Wave 2 of the San Diego move is complete and I am settling down into the routine of living in North county San Diego. I'm in a little town called Oceanside. I'm a block and a half from the beach. I hear the surf at night along with the train that wolf whistles a lullaby that will soon fit into my routine.

The adventure here was a true adventure. I did a small coming undone as I was leaving the Midwest, and my longest truest bluest friend...held me together with kind words and love. This was not only an epic adventure of the sort the pioneers made, but a beer run for my oldest brother and his buddies. I got a well engineered spread sheet of all the brews and ales they were unable to get in Southern California, but were readily available in Indiana. They begged me to make a run, and about 50 beers were lovingly iced and packaged in a tote.

We made it out of town and stopped by farm stand to gather vegetable for the trip and to say goodbye to the ladies I had been visiting weekly for peaches, greens, tomatoes and the best pole beans I've ever had. Rounding out of the farm drive with the huge yellow Penske 22 ft truck (which we nicknamed Crusher) we took out a dead branch that I was sure we would clear. There was so much momentum from the squeal forward, that I just kept going with fluttering leaves in our wake. I didn't realize that we took out the branch and possibly carried it with us for quite a while. It rendered a hole we discovered two days later in Texas. Luckily the weather was with us and had been dry as a bone. We detoured to Lubbock, Texas...home of damn good BBQ and traded out the truck. This one we didn't name, superstitiously considering that naming lended to bad behavior. So we went through the desert on a truck with no name. We saw the glorious New Mexico sunsets and the Grand Canyon. We sang, we laughed, we talked, we cried...and it was one of the best trips I've ever had.

We came into San Diego and stayed with my brother. The beer was delivered and a facebook picture of them lined up artistically was thank you enough (I'm still counting on the spa day promised though). It tickles me that they were so lovingly positioned so that the height of the bottles and labels were at their best demonstration.

I moved in the next day. It has taken me a bit to acclimate to the apartment. Putting things places and then re putting them other places has been my thing. I want so badly to step into this new chapter in an organized fashion. The putzing has helped me regenerate and come into the reality that this really is my new home. I still am recovering from the trip and with about 10 more days before the school year starts, I hope that I will be at a lovely point to take on that challenge.

The neighbor boy brought me 4 mackerel today. He and a buddy were fishing from the pier all day. They claimed to have caught a bunch, but only brought 9 home. They were going to cut up the rest to get bigger fish. I asked them to take me fishing someday. They might.