The Kitten Murder Chronicles: Resolution

So I called Jane, the "crazy old lady next door" who thought that I murdered her kittens and was sure to put on my sweetest, non-violent voice when she answered. I could tell at first that she was not buying my faux-nice routine and well, if we're being honest, I was laying it on a little thick with tales of my childhood cats Genevieve and Grumbuskin, the latter named after the mischievous alley cat in "Growltiger's Last Stand" in the musical Cats. At a certain point, I think she was like WHOA, ok, you didn't kill them. Or maybe you did and you just went to elaborate lengths to overcompensate and are a diabolical psycho. Just kidding, she didn't think that because guess what? The ma ma [sic] cat and all her little kittens, even the one with the black muzzle or whatever, came back! Seems feral cats aren't all that reliable. Really??? Who knew? I mean, come on Jane, before you're going to go pointing fingers at nice people who do genuinely like cats, maybe you should take a beat.

She wasn't kidding about the "crazy" part and went off on an odd and disturbingly detailed history about Egyptian times when cats were considered sacred versus the bad rap they got in the 16th century when they became associated with the devil and witchcraft and we've all studied just enough history to know that wasn't a good group to be lumped in with. I chimed in with a few animated "oh yes, you're so right!" and "yes, yes, Cleopatra liked them" and "oh yes, the evil cat of Nostradamus" and "Salem was rough back then" to make her feel good until it became clear that I am not just a good, friendly neighbor but I am also a supportive, sensitive, cat-loving, history buff of a neighbor. (Which btw, is not true at all, I am a history moron.)

You know, come to think of it, this is actually the first real neighbor I have ever had as an adult. Sure, I've had plenty of neighbors in apartment buildings in NYC but that doesn't really count. If they annoy you, you just bang on the wall or slip an "anonymous" note under their door. This is my first real neighbor at a long term property that we intend to actually call a home some day and have to get along with. Possibly forever. I just got the Grown Up Chills. Ick

Did you Happen to Kill our Kittens?

We found this handwritten note in our mailbox at the farm this weekend. Isn't this lady insinuating that we killed her cat and its kittens? Tim says she's not but it's pretty obvious to me that she is. I mean, I know our farm is still a bit overgrown and scary looking, but accusing people of killing innocent little kittens is pretty harsh.

FROM: THE CRAZY OLD LADY NEXT DOOR

(She actually wrote that)

Dear neighbor,

Have you seen the black and white ma ma cat? We haven't seen her or most of her smaller kittens in 11 days. She has one adult kitten that looks just like her except he or she has a black nose (mom's is pink with white muzzle). We have seen that cat, but not the ma ma.

We went away 2 days and they didn't get fed for a day. I know she was looking for a new home. She and her family camped out here for the summer, but i think there was too much activity on our front porch (they lived under). I hope she found a new home as opposed to being killed. If she went back to your barn we would still be seeing her every morning like always. We are worried about her. If you know anything please let us know.

Thanks, Jane

with phone number

I guess I have to call her now and convince her that we are normal people who do not enjoy killing kittens.

The Final Adventure in Which I Get The River Water Sickness

The end is very f*$%ing nigh and if you know what movie that is from, you are amazing. Because it's not even spoken, it's graffittied on a wall. And unless you're British, you probably aren't even totally sure what nigh means.

The Adventures of Citygirl/Farmhand and Tim

Part Five

Saturday, August 14, 2010

For our last full day of vacation, we decided to swank things up a bit and get a room at the W in San Francisco. It's in Soma, next door to the SFMoma, try saying that 4 times fast. And yes, while we would have preferred to stay somewhere a little less tragically 90's era hip, the St. Regis was overbooked and would have depleted almost all of our Starwood points. Plus, the SF W is surprisingly nice and the dated hipness actually seems to work for some reason. I mean, I truly got a kick out of the LED Buddha next to the TV.

And the views were pretty incredible, both during the day and at night.

Miraculously, we even had a sunny day! People were out in throngs to celebrate. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start from the beginning...

We woke up early at the Holiday Inn Express in Monterey in order to hit the free breakfast buffet in the lobby. Boy was that special. Lots of posturing old dudes in Ferrari jackets and Pumas. A lot of them were even wearing their car rally badges just to prove that they had officially paid the entrance fee. We ate our boxed cereal and hardboiled eggs and hit the Starbucks across the street for some real coffee because the H.I. Express coffee tasted like hot water with some coffee bean scented Yankee candles melted into it. It was at the 'bucks that I was suddenly hit by a wave of stomach pain, followed by a very awful gurgling sound. And so began the 3 day Dirty River Water sickness. I will spare you the gruesome details but let's just say it was coming at me from both ends and leave it at that.

As you can imagine, I was slightly terrified to go anywhere that didn't have a private bathroom less than 10 feet away, so the thought of getting on a motorcycle for a few hours was really really terrifying. But because spending the last day in a gloomy hotel room with views of a parking lot and fog was just not an option, I hopped on that bike like a champion and away we went.

The ride wasn't as nauseating as I expected and was actually quite fun. Until we stopped and all the stomach gurgling started again. But I pushed myself through it and we walked down to this private little beach along the coast that was absolutely beautiful and desolate. We climbed around the big rocks until the tide started to come in, then ran back to the main shore and got back on the bike. Next stop: San Francisco! (Minus the detour we took at Tim's favorite burrito spot along the side of the road which I unfortunately couldn't enjoy and just watched while Tim ate an entire giant burrito that must have had 10,000 calories in it. Even he knew it was a mistake, but he just couldn't resist.)

We rode into SF and it was sunny! Unheard of. We did a sunny little bike tour before checking into the W. Once we got our room and got settled, I needed a little time out to deal with my stomach issues and was hoping and praying that I would be hungry for dinner because San Francisco food is so damn good. Tim bought me a bottle of Pepto and I took a nap for a little bit.

When I woke up, I was still a little woozy but I knew that I had to push myself to eat some dinner and figured that if I were inebriated, I would not be able to feel my stomach pain. So we got some old fashioned cocktails at a speakeasy called Rickhouse in the Financial District and don't you know it? My plan worked. With enough gin in my gut to kill a small child, I barely noticed the nauseau and it was off to dinner! We had a great meal at this spot called 54 Mint that boasts authentic Italian food. I enhanced my meal and suppressed my gut pains with a great Tuscan Nero AND a Kir Imperiale. Again, it worked. Tim and I shared the gnocchi with meat ragu and pesto trenette. Both were amazing. I was kind of partial to the pesto but a good gnocchi that melts in your mouth is always hard to deny. Yummers. This despite the fact that my stomach was in turmoil means the food was probably even better than I realized. (I also ate a few hunks of fresh parmesan cheese as an app to bind myself up. Just an fyi. Possibly a tmi fyi.)

Earlier that night, we said we were gonna get crazy with it and go to some clubs after dinner, maybe even visit one of our old rave-era haunts like 111 Minna but you know what? We didn't. We just went back to our hotel, admired the gorgeous Bay Bridge views again, then went to sleep.

The Adventures of Citygirl/Farmhand and Tim

Part Five

Sunday, August 15, 2010

This is the end, my friends, the end.

The next morning, we woke up happy that we didn't pull an all-night rager and went to the SF Moma where they had a show called "From Calder to Warhol." It was a nice sampling of art that we both like. Mostly. The piece that inspired us the most was this crazy little video art piece- which is surprising because we both hate most video art- but it was this genius and highly entertaining piece by William Kentridge assembled to The Magic Flute and called The Black Box (you can watch some of it on YouTube, although you need some patience which obviously works better in a museum: The Black Box). We spent almost 30 minutes watching it, completely transfixed by the imagination and excruciating detail.

I bought Tim a book called Prefab Houses in the SFMoma bookstore which has some inspiring ideas for the farm. The farm! We were both missing it so much!

Last stop before departure: Oakland. We had our last meal in the Bay Area along the docks in Oaktown with our motorcycle lender, Craig, and his wife. It was super chill and fun but before we knew it, it was time to get to the airport for our Red Eye.

And now we are back. Refreshed and excited about life all over again. Put your work gloves back on, kiddo.

The Adventure Continues...

The Adventures ofCitygirl/Farmhand and Tim

Part Five

Thursday, August 12, 2010

I'm nearing the end of the Around the Bay Area in 10 Days (on a motorcycle) wrap up report but August 12 and August 13 were probably two of the most interesting days so put on your reading glasses and get excited.

Thursday we woke up very early in Carmel because, as you may recall, we went to bed at 8pm. Ok, we stayed up until 9 watching "America's Got Talent" but that show is so mind-numbing that we can count our brains as being asleep.

We got our *free* breakfast at the Normandy Inn around 8:30 and were surrounded by more old people. They were even talking about cliched old people stuff like medicare and social security. For real. One of my favorite quotes was when one of the oldies saw the another oldie's USA Today byline about a new Youtube singing sensation and said "you know, America really does have talent." Apparently she watched the same Youtube special edition that we did the night before. Needless to say, we packed up as quickly as we could and got back on the bike by 9. We did a Carmel coastline house tour on the way out. Damn, there are some amazing ones. This one was particularly amazing and props to Tim who called it as a Frank Lloyd Wright. I guess it's pretty obvious in retrospect but I didn't know for sure.

And off we were to the Land of Younger People due south on Route 1 to Big Sur. After being rejected by an angry old hag of a park ranger in Andrew Molera State Park at the tip of the Big Sur region, we drove deeper in and chose Big Sur Station as our launching point because it was home of the trail that leads to the legendary hot springs.

We loaded our backpacks up with trail mix and Clif Bars and stuff to make S'mores and a pot and a mini-propane tank and burner so we could boil water. Our backpacks quickly became really heavy. Especially when we added two bottles of wine to the mix. And then they became even heavier when we added on our sleeping bags and Tim added the tent onto his.

We were finally all geared up and on the Pine Ridge trail around 2:30pm. The trail was really fun and easy at first but started to get really hot and steep pretty fast. We were adamant about making it 10 miles to Sykes, home of the hot springs, before sundown anyway. No sweat. I'm not sure exactly what we were thinking though. I guess we both figured that we can walk and run 10 miles with just a little bit of effort and thought that hiking up a mountain would be essentially the same. It's not. Hiking 10 miles directly up a mountain while wearing a ridiculously heavy backpack turned out to be pretty challening. We really thought we were booking it too- we were passing people left and right. Ok, that's an exaggeration because the trail was pretty desolate but we did pass people and we were pushing ourselves as fast as we could go (on a side note- I'm in way better shape than Tim and was totally kicking his ass on the climb. Had to keep stopping for him. Seriously. Just wanted to throw that in.) Imagine our surprise when we realized that after 3 and a half hours we had only gone 4 miles. That's like a mile an hour! WTF? At that point, we realized there was no way were going to make it to Sykes before sunset and decided to call it at the site, Ventana, which is only 5 miles in. We hiked down a ridiculously long trail along the mountainside and chose a spot right along the river. Since there were a few other campers in the vicinity, we decided to cross the river and camp on the other side. The location was amazing and completely private even if we did have to take our shoes off and cross the ice cold river every time we went to the bathroom and to set up our camp. Whatever- we found a private sandy beach along the river and a beautiful gorge that was actually still and deep whereas the rest of the river was moving pretty fast.
These were our rocks for sunning:
















And this was our secret ravine.


It was so amazing.





We made S'mores for dinner which is one of those things that sounds fun because you're not supposed to do it, but when you're as old as we are and your metabolism is not like a child's any more, S'mores for dinner actually makes you a little bit sick. No matter, we washed away our stomach pains with a great bottle of a Napa cab.

I didn't sleep at all that night because I was the Watchdog. A certain someone must have been tired from the hike because he just snored all night while I panicked and freaked at every sound. It's funny that I'm not actually scared of bears or mountain lions or snakes, I'm afraid of being murdered by some California meth heads hiding out in the woods or some stragglers left over from the Charles Manson cult, just itching to kill again. Not that I would be excited if a mountain lion came over to us, but it just seems like less scary or realistic for some reason. Anyway, no animals or meth heads attacked us and I finally fell asleep when the sun came up. Great timing. Tim woke me up a few minutes later and it was time to wake up and get out of the tent. I was a tad bit exhausted, especially because the River Water Sickness was just starting to take form. But more on that later...

Friday, August 13, 2010
*Friday the 13th, wooooooo

We ate a really nutritious breakfast of Big Sur bars and banana walnut muffins before playing around the campground for a while. We thought about spending one more night there but I think we were both too exhausted and wanted to sleep in a bed that night so we decided to take the 5 mile trip back during the day. Also, we were both starting to feel really dirty- our socks were black and our armpits were starting to ripen. It was time.



We hiked back and honestly didn't realize how hard our hike there was until we came back- our trip back was effortless and easy because it was all downhill. Which means that on the way there we went uphill the entire time. This made us feel a little bit better about how ridiculously long it took to get there. We cut our time in half on the way back and even stopped for lunch under a trickling waterfall where we had salmon jerky on everything bagels. Salty. Yum. (More carbs than I've had in years in one day. My butt is huge now.)

We were back on the road by 2pm and drove south all the way past the small town of Lucia then headed back up Route 1. We stopped for a brief dinner at NEPENTHE which boasts amazing views and good but totally overpriced food. It was a nice change from S'mores however as we had meat and vegetables. Vegetables never tasted so good.

We were going to head all the way back up to SF but it started to get really bitter cold on the bike again and we stayed at a snazzy Holiday Inn Express in Monterey instead. There was a car show in town so there were Ferraris all over the hotel parking lot which made it seem much fancier than it actually was. We weren't fooled. After a sleepless night in the woods however, I didn't mind the ol' Holiday Inn Express. We even got really nerdy with it and rented Date Night in our hotel room rather than go anywhere. We justified it by saying we were saving up for our last day- our final fun and amazing day in San Fran! Plus, my stomach was just starting to turn. I knew something was wrong when I couldn't drink my glass of pinot noir. Alert. But I was okay until morning.

Grrrr- A Taste of Carmel Art

Citygirl/ Farmhand/ Adventure Pt. 4

Wow, I better hurry up and finish this as the smell of the trees is fading and my memory is starting to clash with reality...Timmy the Whizz was real though, that I know for sure...

The Adventures ofCitygirl/Farmhand and Tim

Part Four

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

We abused our Starwood Preferred Guest *Gold* Status by checking out of the Westin pretty late and then hit the road. After a long run up and over the crest of Powell street and down to the Wharf, and then back up and over to Union Square, I felt like I deserved another huge meal so we walked over to North Beach and had a giant pasta lunch at this cute little garden spot up in the hills near Coit Tower. I honestly never eat pasta so this was a wonderful vacation indulgence for me although I pulled the classic move that we all pull when we deprive ourselves of something and ate way too much. It carried over until dinner time though, so whatevs. We saw a good friend in Soma for coffee after lunch then hit the road again, this time heading south on Route 1.

By the time we got moving the sun was already on the descent, and the Bay Area being the Bay Area, it was pretty chilly on the bike. By the time we got to Carmel, I was so cold that I sort of wanted to not be alive anymore because being that cold made being alive not worth it. Tim wanted to soldier on but I was like hell no, we are staying in Carmel. And yes, that is Carmel by the Sea, not the other Carmel (cough) that is not on the water. To shame on all those peons. We stayed at this place called the Normandy Inn that looked really cute and Normandy-like from the outside but was more like a Knights Inn on the outskirts of Wichita on the inside. But with a fireplace in an attempt to fool you. We weren't fooled.

Carmel by the Sea is situated on one of the most beautiful beaches on the coast and filled with amazing houses and a very cute little main street. That said, we really couldn't get over the weird vibe of the town or the fact that you had to be over 65 years old to fit in there. Maybe we were in the wrong part of town or something but we felt like total pariahs. And also, for a town that has 6 galleries on every block, wow, was the art bad. It made the Box Show look like the Francis Bacon show at the Met.

We had this particularly strange incident occur when we stopped by a local inn. You had to enter through this low ceilinged David Lynch like lobby, complete with giant red velvet arm chairs and variousantlers to get to the bar/ restauurant area. When we opened the door, every single person in the room stopped and stared at us. I think I even heard some silverware drop on the floor. "My lord, what are those two youngsters doing in here?" "My goodness, Clifford, I do believe they are wearing jeans." Gasp! Ok, we didn't actually hear anyone say that but if you could put cartoon air bubbles over their heads, it would have been spot on. Needless to say, we backed out of there as quickly as our unburdened-by-arthritis limbs could move and ran back to the Normandy Inn to go to bed. It was 8:00.

Timmy the Whizz (intermission)

Please join me in a brief intermission as we recount the amazing but true Adventures of Citygirl/ Farmhand and Tim.

TIMMY THE WHIZZ

Timmy the Whizz is the nickname that we gave to my husband as a sort of Mafia-styled nickname like Frankie Fingers or Jimmy No Nose that he earned when it became undeniable that he has the world's smallest bladder. I'm a woman and as a freethinking, fairly liberated one, I feel like it's okay for me to downtalk my own kind and say that yes, we pee a lot more frequently than men. Usually...

I am no stranger to the frequent pee- ask any of my former office mates if you don't believe me. I must have been back and forth from my desk to the toilet at least 15 times a day. That is what is so unbelievable about how frequently Timmy the Whizz made an appearance on our trip. We'd be riding the motorcycle for 5 minutes and Tim would pull over. I'd get all concerned, like "what? did we get a flat?" Oh no, not the case at all. Just another visit from Timmy the Whizz. Again? Seriously???

This happened continuously every 5-15 minutes for our entire adventure around the Bay Area. Timmy the Whizz is a very talented and special individual, you have to give him that.

Thank you very much and now back to the show.