eight days a week.

I'm thoroughly enjoying my family after hardly seeing them all week. Today we relaxed, ate eggs for breakfast, and went for an afternoon hike where we discovered a grove of cairns and a labyrinth, the first of the wild irises, and rainbow serpentine.

It was a good first week, though I finally experienced the pain of a plugged duct. Oh heavenly ouch! Next week I'll continue to get used to commuting.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend!

an amazing weekend

While I'm not keen on the way we Americans so often wish our days away awaiting the weekend, I am in love with the weekend we just had. Even though I'm working during the week, I usually spend my weekends wishing my husband was here. Occasionally I have a full weekend planned, with friends who pick up Rowan and I to whisk us away from the house. I really do love you guys; thank you. 

Since S was home this Saturday, we asked my aunt to babysit for the first time. This is probably good for all of us. Since S + I didn't have much time, we decided to forgo driving across the bridge into San Francisco. We hopped over to Berkeley, and started out with brunch at La Note, a French cafe. We sat in the garden with bright blue and yellow tables on uncomfortable weathered wooden chairs. Everything about the cafe screamed Frenchness, right down to our French waitress and the men speaking French next to us.

{pathway to the ethereal garden}

Let's be clear: I am not a francophile. I am not an anything-o-phile. But I do love colorful tables in pretty garden settings with delicious food. I've never studied a lick of French, so all I know about it is that aurally it's sophisticated and assured; visually, there seem to be a lot of extra letters. So... ordering in French could be a little daunting, but it was so much fun. Our waitress correctly repeated everything back to us--even espresso--in such a dreamy way. It was her matter-of-fact, not-friendly-not-unfriendly manner, which might annoy some people. For me, it just added to the Parisian charm. I giggled, I loved it.

{inside the garden :: i wish we had more pictures + that i wasn't in all of them--

we forgot the camera and played around with a mini outdoor video camera}

They served my cafe creme in a bowl, and it was the most delicious latte I've ever sipped. I ordered gloriously glorified French toast (pain perdue): cinnamon brioche, soaked in orange water batter and topped with lavender honey. I haven't stopped talking about it since. It was the last piece (lucky me!), and it moseyed me to heaven.

Then we bought R a couple of board books (Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?), and we browsed the hippie stalls on Telegraph. Vendors told us how in love we look. Before I could swig down a flute of champagne, it was already time for us to go back and pick up our panda bear.

If that was the only thing that happened this weekend, I would still be glowing. But we also took Rowan on his first camping trip near the American River, where S works. It was a little too hot in the 100s, but R loved it and so did I. It'd been way too long since I've been away from the populated bustle. I needed to get out. If only we could get our act together enough to do it regularly.

{setting up camp}

Last night we managed to get back to town in time to meet up with my family for their fireworks show. R fell asleep on the way home and slept for an almost-six-hour stretch, till about 3.30 a.m. This morning, after a decent night's sleep, we cleaned up the house and ate pancakes. Tomorrow I start working again. I also have a surprise that I'm really excited about.

How was your weekend?

Hope you all have a wonderful week!

just us peas in a pod.

This week I'm thankful for...

friends :: Those lovely people who come visit baby and me when we're stuck without wheels at home. Bearing gifts of conversation, food, rides to other places. You know who you are; thank you. Offering to babysit the babe so the adults don't forget what it was to love just each other too. I guess that's one of the reasons I moved back here.

three :: Suddenly I totally understand the title of hollie's blog & baby makes 3. In this context: we doesn't mean just S and me anymore. Now we are three. (until there is four or more.) It's a beautiful, remarkable thing. Our whole sense of we has shifted.

{tall three}

chocolate + coffee :: Just after breakfast. Yep, I confess.

afternoon walks with Rowan :: We suit up and explore our neighborhood--strip mall wasteland that it is--trying to find tree-lined residential streets and green parks. We smell roses and jasmine and wisteria, and we stop to put our noses in the roses. We see kids running and old men gardening. We hear crows caw and masses of LBBs chirp. Suddenly we see a house finch that we'd yet to see around here bathing with two mourning doves. Then another red finch on the telephone wire--regally alone--kicking it with two blackbirds. And then a Peregrine falcon feasting on carrion just across the street from us. We stop and watch Peri's reluctance in flying away as the 1980s blue Toyota speeds toward him (maybe because he's supposedly the fasted member of the animal kingdom). We talk about how we are building our sense of place-- even in this particular expanse of America's weirdness. And how we have just found our personal NatGeo street.

{also thankful for :: kissing tiny fingers}

another day, just believe :: It's my first Mother's Day on Sunday. A reason to have Chocolate Mascarpone Stuffed French Toast With Strawberry Syrup served to me in bed with coffee. Tèlèpopmusik, how odd is that? {happy mother's day, mamas!}


P.S. There's still time to enter this Shabby Apple dress giveaway!

What are you thankful for this week?

homebound.

{enjoy the green spaces}

This weekend we zoomed around enjoying the wide green outside. Today's grey and misty and I'm bound by home. S has the car all week, while he takes a rope access certification course in Santa Cruz. The walk score in our neighborhood would be a big fat ZER0. It's about a 40 minute walk to decent shops and groceries. A walk I'd planned to do before I tumbled out of bed this morning, but that was before baby and internet land ensnarled me. 


Let's be clear though, it's not that I really want or need to walk to the shops. It's that we don't have coffee. Or, rather, we do have coffee, but I forgot to grind it at the store before bringing it home. And we don't have a grinder. I managed with tea in the morning, but then my genius husband called and reminded me that we have Turkish coffee. No cezve to brew it in (because like so many other things we left it with a grateful friend in Patagonia), but that won't stop me. 

{cafe turco, the cezve is the copper container}

But it makes me wonder, what do you look forward to most when you get out of bed in the morning? I tend to think too much about what I want or need or should do instead of thinking how good that first cuppa is going to taste. Lately I do love waking up to a bright eyed (not yet crying) little person, who smiles a big ol' open-mouthed smile when I say good morning. 

What's your morning pleasure?

Aladağlar Red Mountains

We escaped to the Red Mountains (Aladağlar) for a few days of backpacking from Ankara, the capital, busy yet efficient city. It's the first time I've been trekking since Chile, and it was so nice to be back to it! The mountains are exposed and not forested at all, so the morning sun would already start to bake us in the tent by 7 a.m. Even so, the nights were cool enough for me to wear a wool hat and hiking during the day still proved much cooler than in the city.

Our first night out, we watched the stars deepen and wondered which planets those brightest stars were. When suddenly: A faraway flash in the sky. No clouds.

Serkan: Lightning?
Me: but there's no thunder.
S: It might rain on us.
Me: Maybe somebody is taking pictures. There's a tent down in the valley.
S: Yeah, it's god. As a witness to our love because the moon's not out to see us. God says, What a beautiful couple, Let me snap some photos of them.
Me laughs herself into a ball.

No rain or thunder that night, just distant gray lightning.