june, 2013

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 18:43:00 -0700

Helstroom poured me some Cabernet into my sippy cup (okay, travel mug), for a brief Whiskey Thursday between finishing interview feedback and getting on the shuttle to rescue my veggies (and this week, summer fruit! Peaches, a watermelon!). But this week, instead of walking the 2.5 blocks home from my CSA drop-off site on Guerrero, I'll jump on a 33 and ride up to Jack's place -- lovely Jack -- which I've moved into while seven burly men knock out my walls and ceilings. My house is temporarily a ripped-apart ghost condo, plastic sheeting hung over everything, plywood lining the softwood floors, drywall dust everywhere. All this to remove one tiny, load-bearing wall, so I can remodel the kitchen as I've wanted to ever since I bought the place, just over two years ago.

(Seeing the place mid-surgery, as I've gone back in the evenings this week to fetch opera tickets or an extra pillow, makes me almost glad that my upstairs neighbor's shower leaked through my ceiling last year, just so that I've already had the experience of watching someone take a knife to my walls and then put them back good as new.)

And may I tell you how lovely it is to have a place to come home to in Jack's apartment? I brought my teapot and loose-leaf; he wordlessly made sure I had a supply of nutritional yeast for my morning bagels. I got in a cab Monday morning, having just handed over a set of keys to the structural contractors and packed a suitcase, with my arms full: Clothes for a week (construction will take 4), including a skirt for our 6-month (!) anniversary dinner and a dress for the opera this weekend; half a vegan birthday carrot cake in the portable cake dome; frozen bagels and the odd packet of still-fresh herbs from my fridge; toiletries; the bottle of cask-strength bourbon I bought him for his 28th on Friday. A brief moment of limbo as the cab drove over the hill of 17th St., and then arriving home at a tastefully-turned-out 1-bedroom in the Upper Haight.

I love it -- love the feeling of being headed first to pick up my veggies, then home to meet Jack, with plans for making dinner and a peach pie. We'll fall asleep, each go to work in the morning. Joy in the quotidian, where there is love.