the ‘change’ post has stirred some concern – no need friends. life is good, but growing hurts sometimes. i remember waking up in the middle of the night with leg cramps when i was 10-11 yrs old. i didn’t make 5’9 without a little pain, and i’m sure that’s all this is – adjustment and a little growing pain. 🙂 xoxo – nat
Month: February 2011
change…
it has easily been 45 days of unrelenting change.
change of environment (nw to bay), change in job (beans to fruit), change living conditions (quiet neighborhood close to work to dt tiny condo w/an hour plus commute), change in that secure feeling you have when you know your stuff (being a newbie sucks!), change in personalities (or maybe just an amplification of what’s always been). they say change is good – who are the “they” that say this? change has been disruptive, expensive, unsettling, filled with anxiety and uncertainty. not to sound like a ‘debbie downer’ on this day of hearts and flowers, but it’s been a weekend of continued back breaking work to get out of boxes – doing most of the work isolated and alone with attitudes and unnecessary negative energy in the midst. why? it has to get done, and im sure as hell not doing it all by myself! imo, this is not the environment i want to create a new home in, nor the way a weekend should be spent. im exhausted, period. my conclusion to the weekend is we continue to evolve, stay the same, or stop living. im taking door number 1, and hoping for the best outcome for all involved.
as I recount the last 45 days and most recent 48 hours, I also wonder where we would be if nothing changed? I am a firm believer that change is necessary. it is the catalyst for new things, the producer of growth, of new connections and innovation. maybe “they” are me – change is good….it’s just hard, and sometimes illuminates the inevitable.
change > experience > growth > change
new home…
finally, we are setting up our new place in san francisco. its small, cute, modern and we think it will fit us perfectly. it’s going to be a bit of a work in progress – but we want to get it together as soon as possible so that we’re able to enjoy it and the city. it’s only a 12 month lease so we don’t want to spend 6 months figuring it out, and then have 6 months to relax in it if that makes sense.
so we are in the Lower Nob/Lower Pac Heights neighborhood called “Polk Gulch“. it really is a little gulch or valley at the bottom of two amazing
neighborhoods filled with beautiful old mansions. there is some construction on the California Streetcar line right in front of our building – but it appears to be finished in our neighborhood, and the tracks are blocked off while the rest of the line is being upgraded. once it’s complete, we’ll have the streetcar as an easy way to get to Union Square/Ferry Building and downtown steps from our front door.
i’d definitely say we have a modern building (built in 2005), and not one of the traditional SF flats we had been hoping for. no worries though, there will be time to get into a flat, and i’m not disappointed with the amenities this condo has for us. the roof-top deck will be well used!!
we spent a good part of saturday receiving our household items from the movers. the truck looked half full and we really anticipated a few hours and we’d be done. LOL – funny us! it took about 4 hours, with 2 great guys
unloading, and bringing up boxes
asking me where to place them. ‘mr’ took the taxing job of checking off the box numbers as they came off the truck – he did this while meeting and greeting 
almost everyone on the sidewalk as they passed. i think he and the movers entertained each other and our new neighborhood – and made the whole process a lot fun. i took the “super easy” job of unpacking the kitchen boxes, and figuring out where everything would go. [i should have chosen the moving box bingo job!] the number of kitchen boxes that were stacked up seemed never ending – i think i opened 8-4ft boxes (some with smaller box surprises inside), and 8-10 small boxes before the kitchen was complete. all i keep saying is – “we have a lot of stuff!!” our issaquah kitchen was 3-4 times larger than this one, but i managed to get everything creatively put away.
the rest of the place is still filled with boxes – everyday we do a little more, but with sunny skies and temperatures in the upper 70’s its hard to stay in and unpack.
a goal always helps – and with our first guests coming in a few weeks we’ll buckle down and get it done.
next post – our new neighborhood…
———————–
black history month insert for this post…
i found this timeline on the biography.com website. take the test and see how well you know your history! leave a comment on how you did.
hello february…
only 38 days until africa! i think i should be looking into vaccines, and start really planning some “to see/do” lists for once we arrive.
it’s february, one of my favorite months. my father’s birthday is this month, the v-day is officially this month -but in my world “everyday’s the 14th” [outkast], and its black history month. while i am no longer at beans where bhm was a long-planned month of events – i will be posting little factoids on every one of my february posts related to a historical or current african american figure.
born today: James Mercer Langston Hughes better known as Langston Hughes
my personal connection to the great writer and poet comes through owners of one of my favorite restaurants in Seattle – Kingfish Cafe. the sisters are not so distant direct relatives of Mr. Hughes, and they were also classmates of mine at University of Washington.
—————————–
BIO for Langston Hughes: (courtesy of bio.com)
Poet, writer, playwright. Born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. After publishing his first poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1921), he attended Columbia University (1921), but left after one year to work on a freighter, traveling to Africa, living in Paris and Rome, and supporting himself with odd jobs. After his poetry was promoted by Vachel Linday, he attended Lincoln University (1925–9), and while there his first book of poems, The Weary Blues (1926), launched his career as a writer.
As one of the founders of the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, which he practically defined in his essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (1926), he was innovative in his use of jazz rhythms and dialect to depict the life of urban blacks in his poetry, stories, and plays. Having provided the lyrics for the musical Street Scene (1947) and the play that inspired the opera Troubled Island (1949), in the 1960s he returned to the stage with works that drew on black gospel music, such as Black Nativity (1961).
A prolific writer for four decades, he abandoned the Marxism of his youth, but never gave up protesting the injustices committed against his fellow African Americans. Among his most popular creations was Jesse B Semple, better known as “Simple,” a black Everyman featured in the syndicated column he began in 1942 for the Chicago Defender.
In his later years, Hughes completed a two-volume autobiography and edited anthologies and pictorial volumes. Because he often employed humor and seldom portrayed or endorsed violent confrontations, he was for some years disregarded as a model by black writers, but by the 1980s he was being reappraised and was newly appreciated as a significant voice of African-Americans.
she said, saw and ate 