Hot

Past the third anniversary of our arrival, I am feeling tired of living in rented homes. It just does not feel the same. Boxes upon boxes sit silently in the garage gathering dust, un-opened for over three years. I don't even know what they hold anymore. Sometimes, I suddenly recall something I used a lot back in Singapore but have not seen for a long time and there is sadness. Like a family without anchors. I want to have my own place where my things are where they ought to be and where I don't feel like I am keeping someone else's home and not my own.

And I want my children near.

The heat wave this week has not helped. Triple digit temperatures that makes the house too toasty, like an oven.

We sweltered and burned in the bleachers yesterday at the AT&T Park watching the SF Giants lose miserably to the Chicago Cubs. The sun beat down mercilessly. The boy was the first to seek relief standing in the shade, then the girl and finally, I surrendered and abandoned our seats to stand behind the lines of people walking back and forth getting their drinks and food. We made our ways to another part of the stadium but had to suffer the constant onslaught of smell of frying onions and security guards keeping us in check,

Standing was tiring so eventually, when the sun had lessened its intensity, we made our ways back to the bleachers to a crowd of young men and women drinking a lot of beer and carpeting the steps with peanut shells from a big bag they brought to the game. Meanwhile, the group of UBC grads (East Bay alumni) that I was supposed to socialize with at the game and which I had basically ignored all afternoon because of the unbearable heat, decided to call it a day and left en masse. And I watched them leave silently vowing never to trust the alumni with getting me any more tickets to any game. I could have gotten better seats from the company or cheaper bleacher seats than what I paid to support the alumni. Or maybe I was just unsociable. They were all so young and all Chinese.

After the game, we made our way back to the ferry terminal and took the ferry ride back to Alameda where we embarked, to return to Berkeley and East Bay. To a house still warm from the day's bake.

Disunity

On arriving home, suddenly there is a gaping hole in my heart left by one who flew from us just hours ago. My eyes start to tear and the sadness is unbearable. I must reunite my family forever. She who came to celebrate her quarter century with us. Whence will we come together again?

Deliriumcious

Wah, this week has been busy. So it seems but if you ask me to recount the things I accomplished, I will be hard put to enumerate them even on one hand. It just seems time flew by with more than the usual speed. I have also been having an unusual sleep pattern. Maybe it is a second childhood but it seems these days, I am greedy for sleep. If I can, I will jealousy guard my time in bed, dozing on and off through the night into the late hours of the morning, something I had not allowed myself to do for many years. It was a surprise to me that when I finally pulled myself out of bed yesterday, it was well past the 9th hour of the morning, almost into the 10th. And we were supposed to take a long drive to Half Moon Bay down Highway 1 to Santa Cruz, the girl, the bf and I. Given that they were even later sleepers than I, by the time we set out, it was about the 11th hour.

Yet last night, I could not sleep a wink till almost the 4th hour. Must have been the coffee at 4 pm on the Boardwalk at Santa Cruz. I still have not completely gotten away from the inability to sleep if caffeine is pumped into the system past the noon hour. So I lay in bed and calmly read my Kindle, enjoying the Fool's Errand. And listened to the extremely rare sound of thunder actually rolling through the hills of Tri-Valley in the early hours of the morning. This was the first time since we came, that we actually heard thunder in the Bay Area. It was delicious, bringing the recall of the glorious drum rolls of thunder after lightning after thunder after lightning ad infinitum on the little island called Singapore where thunder and lightning are as commonplace as afternoon showers.

It all fell into place. The dense fog along Highway 1 almost shutting off all views of the crashing waves against the cliffs and beaches as we cruised down to Santa Cruz, the thick blanket of cloud sitting on the ocean further south just waiting for the wind to push it onland and the weather forecast on last night's news about the risks of lightning and thunder on tinder dry foliage. But while it lasted, the thunder sounded like an old friend come a calling and I relished the moments lying sleepless in bed. Ahh...

And so today, we have dinner with Tom and Gill and their wives. But what shall we do before then? Housework calls - but I am on strike this week.