166 Days In - October Already?

I can’t believe it’s the middle of October already.

It’s a cliché for a reason that “ the older you get the quicker time goes”; and an oh so grown up conversation (on skype) with my seven-year-old niece shocked me a little. She is awesome! I, of course, remember when she was born - it really wasn’t that long ago.

But what makes it particularly difficult to notice how time is flying by is that it still looks like summer outside. My two-year-old niece (again on skype) announced to her grandma today “the seasons are changing”. Not in California.

I have seen a few brown leaves fall from the trees, but there were just as many through July and August as there are now.

There were indications that the summer season had ended: the lifeguard’s tower was moved from the centre of the beach to the edge; a chain appeared on the track that beach-club trucks took down to the sand; and, as if the Piper had been, the children disappeared.

We are above the equator, so the OC is doing its best to show us it is “fall”, bless it. Sometimes in the morning or in the evening, the air is a little cooler, or there are clouds, so I put socks or a long-sleeved top on. But really, I don’t buy it.

I am told how lucky I am, and that it must be lovely to have sun every day, but it rained recently, and that just made me smile. I love cosiness, and to get true cosiness you need cold: you need thick jumpers and wool-lined boots, hats and cold noses, mugs of hot-chocolate and roasting fires.

And I am not just remembering England with the pink-tint of reminiscing, I was never one to really complain about the drizzle that soaked through my clothes day after day. As longs as you are on your way home, or can pop into a dimly lit pub or character-full coffee house, who cares? The warming-up part is delicious.

Quite apart from the weather, So-Cal doesn’t seem to do cosy in any way. It is hard to find a lovely little coffee place to while a way your day, in a land that’s oldest building is circa 1960. They seem to knock all the history out of this place in favour for… um… I don’t know what. Character Be Gone!

So the locals talk of how the nights are closing in (pah!) and that heating may be required soon to move the temperature in the house from 70 degrees back up to 75 (that is 21 to 24). And I can’t help thinking that if you are going to do something, you should do it properly - and a proper autumn needs golden leaves, crisp cold days, rain and drizzle, fog, blustery winds, and the beginings of beautiful frost.

159 Days In - Here for Two years

I don’t know what has happened.

It has been at least two weeks since I last went for a run, I cannot remember the last time we played tennis, and there is no hope of me becoming a pie maker extraordinaire any time soon.

On the plus side, Chris’ life does seem to be taking shape. The best news is that he got into the Masters programme that he applied to - my husband, an MFA don’t you know. Actually he applied to two and he got into both. This is of special significance because, like so many of us, Chris looks back on his time at University with the shadow of hindsight and the knowledge that his degree does not reflect his ability or current work-ethic.

He also has less of a beer-gut now.

Of course I am buzzing with the pride of someone who feels their association with a successful person somehow reflects on them.

We are staying in Belmont Shore again this week. It gives Chris a shorter commute to his temp-job, and allows us to play house again. His busy-ness with coming home from work and having to deal with proper work, while I cook dinner and lay the table like a good 1950s housewife, gives me a flash of what it will be like once he has started his course.

He starts in December.

But we have to look to the future, right? To how blissful our life will be when he doing what he really wants for a living. How happy he will be; we will be…

Actually he will really fit in here now. Going “back to school” seems to be a popular thing. In-fact, from what I have seen, employees of all kinds are expected to take more classes and more exams throughout their time working as whatever it is they do. In England, we see the work itself as the experience and training.

When I paid the money and waited the days and days for my English credentials to be okayed by the Californian powers-that-be, the boxes of possible extra tests and extra credentials I could tick, but didn’t, only served to make me feel somewhat unqualified. But am not unqualified.

I did take one exam; it tested my maths skills (which have nothing to do with my credentials) and my English writing and reading skills - because my Degree is not good enough?

Apart from giving Chris more letters after his name, something to brag about at the pub, and general acceptance by the American people, his course also means that we will be here, at least, for another two years.

Not a problem, but it is just definite now.

148 Days In - Tuesday is Gardening Day

On Tuesdays most of the neighbours are visited by their gardeners. Our residence gets its garden treatment on a Wednesday, but for some reason Tuesday is the chosen day for most others who live in this community.

From early in the morning, pick-up-trucks of varying colour, age and condition line the streets; balanced all around the edge are brooms and rakes, ladders and shears, hoses and leaf blowers. The gardeners are invariably immigrants. This comment should be taken as a fact - not racism!

I do not wish to confuse people; I know that the frustration of 69 Days In was that not enough stock is put in the importance of gardens. But I lamented over wide open spaces, and rolling lawns with children playing gaily. Here we have beds with flowers, shrubs and perfectly rounded bushes. And the reason that I know what all the neighbours gardens are like is because they are not within the confines of their property, but out on the verge, so those wandering past can see how pretty they keep their land, but they can’t themselves appreciate it from the comfort of their home.

One morning when it was cool enough to run, I pass a man up a ladder cutting random bits off a tree. Further down the hill a couple of guys chat in Spanish as they pull dead bits out of leafy shrubs. On my way home, they are still in the same places, doing the same thing. I can’t help wondering how much they are paid. I bet it is more than being a background artist!

You see, the gardening isn’t (like the gardens aren’t) quite the same as back home. If you leave sections of our green-and-pleasant-land alone, wild plants will grow in abundance; here the land is desert, and if left alone, returns to it’s natural form. Great Britain hums with conversations of which rose is now growing in this or that garden, grown men talk passionately about the British trees and are brought almost to tears at the thought of rising temperatures changing the native greenery.

So I like to think that if I hired a gardener in the UK, they would be doing the job because they were passionate about it, because they liked to watch things grow, to bring art to the outside portion of people’s homes.

Most Tuesday mornings, the most common sight is two gardeners outside of each property: one wears a pack on his back - not unlike those found on ghost-busters - but the nozzle blows at the leaves he waves it dispassionately towards; the second holds either rake, or hose, and assists the first in his arduous, skilful job of getting rid of dead leaves.

It does not come as a surprise to me, then, that once these workers have left for the week, if you look closely the façade of their work is only thin, and the rogue twigs/leaves/branches really can spoil the intended effect.

Everyone here has an opinion about Los Angeles - some might take the gardening as some sort of metaphor.

140 Days In - Playing at Domesticity

Chris has a mundane temp job for a few weeks. Of course he takes the car, so I am playing OC housewife, except without the money.

I am attempting to make the most of this domestic time by practicing my domestic goddess skills.

Those of you out there who grow vegetables, make delicious brownies or eat toast with homemade jam, please note that this is not a gift that I was born with. My mother, bless her, was always inventive, but not exactly refined with her cooking. My father has one meal: grilled beef burgers with tinned tomatoes.

My first step has been to purchase and pot herbs. What with the wonderful recipes of good-old Jamie including fresh herbs, it seemed a sensible step to have my own outside. It is also the perfect weather for growing herbs here. The sun shines with an intense warmth for most of the day, and the little plants are happier than Larry himself.

Unfortunately, the local insects are also happy. I used to love caterpillars; now they are just a sign of stolen food.

When you are living with relatives, and do not therefore have many of your own belongings around you, strange things can happen. I have become very attached to my herbs. I am suspicious too that this might have something to do with the tick-tock of the body clock. And of course there is also a little pride at stake.

Unhappily, yesterday I had to throw away my original basil plants, and pot a new little darling. Without wanting to apportion blame, I would like to mention that it was not my fault that it went brown from root to tip. Basil is very sensitive and does not like to be watered too much; when I would forget the gentle water for a day, a well-meaning fairy gave it a flood-bath. Then the brown began to appear.

Despite the ever-increasing rot, the little bugs still managed to eat what remained of the leaves. And the damn things are exactly the same colour.

My collection is now safely covered in some organic repellent, that I have been assured caterpillars despise. Time will tell.

The good news is that we have had some delicious food. Italian cuisine is a favourite in this household, and so it now comes adorned with fresh flavours. And my mother-in-law’s bread maker made a revival for some herb-bread.

So far, so good. A little careful measuring and it is amazing what you can achieve. Though I have not yet tried anything too tricky or temperamental; pastry is next on my list because no domestic is truly a goddess until she can make a tasty pie.

128 Days In - Not so Green and Pleasant

Last I heard, the LA wildfires were 71% under control.

It seems they have been burning continuously for weeks now; one has spread over 157,220 acres. A football pitch is about one and a half acres.

Photos show bleached out landscapes where street upon street of former suburbia have been left as crumbled concrete and simple scraps of black metal. A large percentage of Los Angeles houses are built from wood.

It is another reminder, more brutal than most, that my new home is a domesticated desert.

Soon after our arrival, when in LA for the day, Chris and I decided to picnic in Griffiths Park. Wanting respite from the hazy, polluted, concrete city, the promise of wide green spaces interspersed with historical fountains is always welcome. But LA is not London, and Griffiths Park (the only sizable green space we have found so far) is not Hyde Park; or Green Park; or Hampstead Heath.

The first evidence of this is that we enter the park in our car, on a road; not by foot! We stop at the first flat, green area we come across, but it is hemmed in by steep, dusty cliffs which hamper the feeling of space somewhat. The frequent stopping of white trucks containing single men in tight white T-shirts pushes us to move on.

Not far off there is a larger picnic area, complete with tables and swings and slides. Here, also, is the famous 1920s Carousel, which is beautifully restored in places and left alone in others. The horses are all individual with differing expressions and of different sizes. They come complete with 1920s leather safety buckles, and the music pipes from it’s original organ. Apparently Walt Disney's imaginings for his "Land" came whilst watching his children ride these very gee-gees.

It is wonderful to see history, left exactly as it was.

Here we are not so hemmed in, but there is still no feeling of freedom and green and nature.
On the surrounding mounds, short angular trees barely shade scrappy, sharp bushes. The leaves are as dry and grey as the land is unforgiving. Scenes from Clint Eastwood westerns spring to mind; and it begs the questions of how and why this land was tamed.

I know that it is probably due to geography more than anything, but it makes me chuckle that the East coast of the US was colonised over 200 years before the West coast; and that the West coast was colonised about the same time as Australia was - they obviously had a thing for harsh dessert terrains that year.

As you drive around the relatively balmy Orange County coast, the deception of natural green is given away through the regular eruption of sprinklers. A sprinkled lawn juxtaposed to a non-sprinkled highlights man’s interference here.

Of course, there is currently a water shortage.

Luckily we have not been affected by the wild-fires; but they found their way to steep and rugged terrain that the forest service described as somewhere “not even the mountain goats would venture”. All we saw of it (other than on the news) were hazy skies and bright vermillion sunsets.

120 Days In - The Family Visits

Chris’ brother, his wife and their two-and-a-half year old daughter came to stay. They have gone now and the house is eerily still; filled with the exhaustion of those have had to say goodbye again.

But for two weeks our lives have been brimming with the vibe of holiday. Wine has flowed, banquets were had, and most importantly the squeals of a tiny voice echoed through the house - as uncle Chris took on his duties of throwing, flying, spinning and even reading to a niece that he was relieved had not forgotten who he is.

And the presence of visitors who were keen to make the most of their short stay pushed us into doing things that we had just been procrastinating around. Chris got out his surfboard; I pottered around Laguna Beach; we went out to take advantage of Martini Mania night; and we had a night party on the beach, around an open fire, eating barbeque food.

This of course all highlighted how we have not been taking advantage of our surroundings. Chris’ parents have a pool and Jacuzzi, and there is a beautiful beach five minutes walk from the house. Before our recent visitation, I had been in the pool once the Jacuzzi maybe six times and the sea twice.

I know, it’s shocking!

My sister mentioned, when I described my new living situation to her, that it sounded like we were living on a holiday resort. A shame that life gets in the way and stops you enjoying it.

But I suppose if we don’t enjoy it, it is not life that is getting in the way, because we are not living life - what exactly is the point in moving across the world if you are just going to shut yourself away?

So we now have a new resolution: to explore somewhere new at least every week.

Let’s hope we can stick to it.

113 Days In - Fast Food Mania

We have now eaten at “In and Out Burger”; not the most appetising of names, but it’s probably intended to indicate convenience rather than taste. I am hoping that is the case.

Feeling nostalgic for her youthful years in America, Chris’ Mom (usually a stickler for the right amount of balanced vegetables with your meal) insisted we try “Carl’s Junior”. So much so that we were treated to lunch there. Chris made the mistake of not ordering the classic Star Burger, and we listened again to how his Mom used to have a Star once a week, as a young worker.

To me the burger tasted of mustard and pickle (much the same as most fast-food burgers), but the fries were chunkier and we got table service. At “In and Out Burger” a multitude of eager teenagers worked in a productive flurry to toast our buns, cook our burgers and chop fresh potatoes into fresh French fries. It really was something to behold.

So, three California fast-burger chains down (I had a cheeky “Taco Bell” the other week), many many more to go.

Like the ignorant Brit girl that I am, feeling I know America because I have see Friends until I know it off by heart, I simply expected there to be a McDonalds or Burger King on every corner, but the choice is so much more plentiful. One presumption that I did get right, is that the American’s like their burgers.

Not being a fast-food fan, I am not that impressed by the fact that Carl’s burgers are freshly broiled (that means “grilled” but sounds far far worse), or that Wendy’s boneless chicken wings are cheaper than those at a bar (as their current ad campaign gloats). But, like going to the Mall, eating at these places is some sort of initiation into American living - so my mother-in-law sees it, and Chris is very happy to reflect her shock at the fact we have not yet been to this place or that if it gets him a burger for lunch.

In the current economic climate, it does make one wonder how these chains survive. “Jack in the Box” has brought back it’s stuff-of-childhood-nightmares mascot (apparently “by popular demand”), and introduced the Mini Angus Meal, where you get four or six mini burgers in a meal; McDonalds (as may or may not have made it across-the-pond) have introduced the Third-Pounder Burger.

In July even the BBC announced that obesity had risen in every state in the US this last year, to over 25% in 31 of the 50 states, over 20% in 39. They attribute much of this to comfort eating through the recession, which can only be aided by the rising sizes of the cheap cheap fast food meals.

But I suppose once in while it can’t hurt.