Chapter 1 - Fall in Love

Capter 2 - Honeymoon phase 

Chapter 3 - Real is fun

Chapter 4 - Moving In!!!

October 29th I moved in with Josh into his place where he has lived for almost 10 years.  It has been a few weeks and people keep asking us "so how's it going?  how's moving in been?" ... I'm always at a loss on how to answer that, lol.  I'm like, well... we haven't yelled "ABORT!!" yet.  We work such different schedules that we aren't around each other all that much more so we are still getting along and the physical details of moving in are... a process.  *sigh... a process.  We both knew this and talked enough about it that we aren't freaking out yet.  Like I said, Josh has lived here for almost 10 years.  He has a lot of stuff and this has been "His" place for a very long time.  Now it's his place with some of my stuff.  I mean, he has been GREAT, don't get me wrong and he is ready to make changes, merge stuff and buy new things, etc., it's just not going to happen over night.  So for now we have a lot of crap, are not all that organized and never have days off together to really make any big decisions.  It's a process....

Did I mention that it's not as easy to prepare a cat and a dog for the "process"?  Actually they are doing remarkably well considering they didn't get any warning or pep talk to prepare.   And thankfully Sebastian has never minded dogs and Indie has nothing against cats.  That being said, Sebastian has still always been the King of his castle and moving into a new place with the owners of the new scents still inhabiting the new castle was not something he was super cool with at first.  He didn't pee on Josh thank god, but he did pee on Indie's bed, lol.  And only the one time so that's a good start.  He and Indie "play" in their own weird way and it's amusing to watch.

I've also learned that the outside knobs on the oven do not turn on the burners on the back of the stove after managing to explode a baked dish of cornbread :/   I thought I was heating up the tea kettle on the back burner and instead heated up the already cooked corn bread resting on the front burner.  The baking dish exploded, glass everywhere and obviously ruined my yummy cornbread.  I should rewrite a new version of "The Joys of Cooking"... it would be less informative for most people, but I think very helpful for people like me.  I think Jamie Walsh could also offer up plenty of stories for this book.

Early October my Mom flew me to Texas on a Friday morning so we could go see Dolly Parton together!!  We had some brisket as soon as I got off the plane, went home to get ready and then drove to Cedar Park to see Dolly.  I love her.  (My mom as well, but I was referring to Dolly just now)

She told stories in between her songs, sang some old favorites and some stuff off her new album as well as a few of her favorites like "stairway to heaven" and a few Beetles songs.  Such a fun and wonderfully sweet lady.  I was so happy to see her live with my Mom!  After the concert we met my dear friend Jennifer Bayless, who I've known since I was 21 from my Joe's Crab Shack days and being roommates for a year in Austin.  It was a beautiful and warm night so we sat on a patio at a restaurant and had a giant beer-rita.  Mmmm.  It was so great to see Jennifer!  It's been way too long :(

Saturday I knew I'd have a window of free time to meet Chandra for coffee as my Mom is not the fastest morning person.  She was still in bed when I left the house, lol.   Although very brief, we got to do a little catch up over breakfast and coffee, it was nice.

My Mom and I spent the day doing a little shopping and eating and went home to hang out that night.  I had to be at the airport at noon Sunday.  *sniff.  Short but still a very fun visit.

September really flew by.  For my birthday all I wanted was to leave work early and go get a massage and then have dinner with Josh.  I happened to have booked my massage with a special coupon, but also had been emailed a birthday coupon, which I used to book Josh a massage too!  He had his earlier in the day, then I had mine, went to my house to clean up for dinner and Josh picked me up.  I chose to go to one of my old favorites from my old SF neighborhood, Assab.  After a great dinner, Josh said he'd bought tickets for us to go see "The Help" at the Kabuki theater.  It's no Alamo Drafthouse, but it does serve alcohol and my favorite part is you pick your seats!  Anyone who knows me has dealt with my neurotic need to arrive at the movies early.  They seem to think my early is too early.  Thank goodness for Kabuki and my assigned seat, I am ok with walking into the theater 5 minutes before the movie starts.

Great massage, great dinner, great movie, great boyfriend.... great birthday.

P.S. ------->  Like my new glasses?  My birthday present from Josh :)

Reeeee...laaaax....inggg....

Cari Cohorn I love you!!

My good friend Cari Cohorn won 2 mud bath's at a charity auction and chose to take ME with her to Calistoga for a night's stay at Indian Springs Resort!  We had lunch with her husband, Kevin, before hopping on the road and heading up through Napa, St. Helena, to Calistoga where we checked in and immediately jumped into the plush robes in our room and walked over to the spa.  I had absolutely no idea what to expect really and I think that increased the blissful experience.  Cari and I didn't have our actual mud bath appointment for about 2 hours so we thought we would check out the spa and see what kind of options we had while we waited.  We followed the pathway to the Buddha relaxation garden and My Oh My was it relaxing!  Around the pond with fountains were palm trees shading padded chaises and I tell you the fresh air smelled like a spa, it was so soothing I can't begin to describe it.   A perfect afternoon with warm, mild temperatures and a good book, a good friend and a heavenly spot.  Wow.

I happened to bring along the book "A Minds Alley" and after a few minutes asked Cari, "I'm reading a book on buddhist thinking, at a 'buddha relaxation pond' with a statue of buddha staring at me... do you think it's too much?"  lol... ahhh... zen.

Then it was time for our appointment!  At this point I was just so happy and relaxed I didn't think it could get better.  It was about to.  As we were lead to the mud bath room, giddy with excitement, my zen mood came to a bit of a speed bump.  What was this concrete, hard, functional, non-spa looking room??  Kind of reminiscent of going into a busy kitchen behind the scenes of a posh, quiet restaurant.  Okaay... I'm definitely not sure about this...  We disrobed and were lead to our concrete basin filled with black mud.  Awkwardly naked laying above the mud, my helper quickly piled mud onto my "bikini areas" which I thought was kind, ha!   As she continued to pile globs of mud on me, I sunk a little farther into the mud.  Can I tell you... I could've been ANYWHERE and been sent back to my happen zen world.  This was awesome!  I would relax, breath and just feel weightless and in heaven.... then I would wiggle and try not to laugh out loud at how rediculously fun it felt to fill like I was floating in thick jello.  Hee hee.

After about 20 minutes, as great as it was, I was worried that was all it was about and we were done.  Nope, there was more.  My assistant helped me out of my mud and coated in black, I walked over to the showers and rinsed off, then was lead to my own claw foot tub to soak in a warm mineral bath, given a cold towel for my head, some cucumber water and a nail file to pick the dirt from under my nails.  Cari was next to me in her own tub.  We chatted a little, but that mineral water is fantastic and the relaxation ensued.  After about 15-20 minutes we got out and were lead to the steam room to sit as long as we wanted.  I think we did that for about 5-10 minutes as it was very warm.  Then we got our robes and were lead to our individual rooms where we had soothing spa sounds and were wrapped in a linen blanket to relax, nap and slowly bring our body temperatures down.  Cari and I later said we both went to a very meditative state during that time.  It was phenomenal.

After that luxurious afternoon, we headed back to our rooms to shower and get dolled up for dinner.  To thank Cari for her generosity, I was taking us to dinner at a highly recommended spot in St. Helena called "Tra Vigne".  Cari and I shared made fresh to order buffalo mozzarella and tomatoes, a sweet corn soup, a basil infused pasta with lamb, a spring vegetable pasta and then the best desert ever: a butterscotch crema with rosemary pistachio cookies (these things were amazing?  heavenly?  awesome?... I'm running out of adjectives!).   There was good cocktails and wine too ;)

We were told to make sure we go to the heated mineral pool at night, so we made sure to get back in time for that.  The pool doesn't close for guests until 10:30pm... and we spent every last second in that pool!  I have never felt so relaxed just hanging onto a pool noodle.

A great night's sleep later, we woke, put on our robes and went to find the complementary coffee.  Low and behold it was set up oustide our back door!  It was a little overcast, but we didn't mind.  Robes, lounge sofas, fountains and coffee and right outside our room, it was a great morning.  Then we got organized and checked out, but that left the rest of the afternoon to enjoy laying out and enjoying the mineral pool.  We managed to pull ourselves away from heaven and leave in time to hit a few wineries on the way home.

BLISS.

Our Quick Visit to Pioneer, CA


Was actually earlier in the month of August, before my Mom's visit.

Josh's Mom (Cheryl) & Josh

Josh and I drove up (east) to his Mom's place for lunch and a quick visit before heading over to his friend Chris' parent's house for a get together.  Chris and Josh are good friend from high school and Chris now works in Italy as a chef...  Cannot wait to visit ;)  I met a lot of people from Josh's home town/high school years, it was fun.  I was the outsider of course, but they are all really nice people so it wasn't too painful.  We stayed the night at his Mom's and the next day we attempted to go pick blackberries, but the summer had been so cool this year that they still weren't ripened.  Along with Chris and his girlfriend Francesca, we all hiked down to an area by a river.  Josh and his mom showed me how to pan for gold, ha!  ...no gold for me, but we saw a father-daughter team with a bunch of tools, looking a little more focused so hopefully they had more luck than us.  It was a beautiful day and sadly a short visit and Josh wanted to head out in time to show me Sutter Creek on the way home, which is where he grew up and where he worked in his grandparent's little restaurant.  His brother Jake lives in the apartment loft on the top of the big white house where the restaurant was, but he wasn't home.  This leads me to our little encounter that delayed us about 30 minutes:

Got this lil gem ;) ..Love his smile!!

We left our dog Indie in the car for a few minutes to see if Jake was home and when we returned there was a crazy lady screaming at us saying she called the cops on us for leaving our dog in the hot car.  Um... we tried to not laugh and remain calm, but omg... it was late afternoon/mid-day sun, about 80-ish so a tad on the warm side, but the windows were all rolled down at least 5 inches (he could hang is head out), it was shaded in the back seat, but the silly dog of course has to go in the front when we leave, and again we were gone about 10 minutes.  He was fine.  If she hadn't been obnoxiously yelling at us and acting like we were irresponsible, abusive, crazy people, then I would have given her credit that she had no idea how long we were gone.  *sigh... oh well.  The police officer was really nice, said it was obvious the dog was fine and we were normal people, but that he'd rather be called before there was a problem.  We were ready to get back to the city.