peace of mind

I have had a v. eventful few days. Work continues to be a slog, which is why I haven’t had the energy to post at the end of the day - but it’s a (mostly) fun slog, so I am not that resentful of the increased demands on my time.

So, let’s see what we missed (what you missed in reading + what I missed in documenting):

Thursday was my birthday (#neverforget), and I celebrated as soon as I woke up by having a funfetti cupcake instead of a granola bar with my coffee. I spent the day slogging through a variety of tings and also fielding texts from a variety of people - the advantage of a 9/11 birthday is that it is remembered by people even if they don’t have it on their calendars, so I feel like I hear from more people than average (and then feel guilty because I definitely don’t remember everyone else’s birthdays).

After I was done with work, my mom, [censored] and I went to Garden Grove to celebrate my birthday at one of the only restaurants around that was open. I always love their cheese curds and fried pickles even though they certainly are not gluten free; I also had a southern Iowa lemonade, and the bourbon made up for the fact that my burger wasn’t as good as it usually is. So, we had a nice birthday dinner, and I ended the day feeling very loved (especially because someone at work refused to add me to a 9-11pm meeting because it was my birthday, so I went to bed while everyone else slogged).

Friday was chaotic = I got up and went into town to get allergy shots, and then I slogged through more meetings than I like to have on Fridays. I also had to pack to leave for SF, which made things more chaotic. But since I was originally supposed to fly out Friday night, the fact that I didn’t leave until Saturday morning made it just a wee bit more manageable. So I got packed up, watered all my plants and gardens, organized things, and also made dinner - I baked some chicken breasts, cooked the last of a pack of bacon that was going to go bad before my return, sliced up some fresh tomatoes and some leftover mozzarella, and [censored] and I had a surprisingly delicious dinner (and I left him with leftovers, assuaging my guilt at also leaving him with plants to water).

Saturday, I flew to SF. My flight was at 9, which meant leaving home at 6…and I only left twenty minutes later than planned, which is luckily not a problem when flying out of Des Moines. I parked in the garage, walked straight through security with my carry-on, and had time for a glass of nerve-calming rosé at the bar before boarding on time. My flights were both smooth from a timing standpoint, but unfortunately I was banking on eating on the Denver->SF flight, and they didn’t end up offering any food because there was too much turbulence.

So I landed in SF early but starving. Since I didn’t have to pick up a checked bag, I grabbed a late lunch at a restaurant at the airport before taking an uber into the city. I checked into my hotel, fully unpacked, and then went to my absolute favorite mani/pedi place, were they cleaned up my hands and feet and made me feel ready to seize a week of girlbossing in the city of sin. After that was done, I came back to my hotel, took a much needed twenty-minute nap, put on fresh clothes, and rendezvoused for some much-needed family time.

Adit (no one calls him the cat), Chandlord, Claude and I met up at True Laurel for drinks (aka cacktales), and my boulevardier went a long way toward restoring me after my travels. Then we had dinner at Flour + Water, which has gotten v. good for gluten free. The four of us now arrange our seating by our joint dietary preferences - Claude and I avoid gluten and eat meat to compensate, while Adit and Chandlord are veg only but eat as much gluten as possible. We split all the veg/gluten free salads on the menus, and then Claude and I split an excellent gf pasta + some salmon. This might be my new fave gf pasta in the city, which is v exciting since a place called Flour + Water is not typically welcoming of our gf sensitivities.

We also (of course) ordered a bottle of wine + another couple of glasses after. This is sedate compared to the outings of our twenties and thirties, but still felt like going big given our advanced ages. We spent most of dinner playing a game we dubbed ‘Vibe Check’ - the person in the hotseat had to pick a number between 1-10, where 1 is worst and 10 is best. The other three then went around and asked category questions - e.g., if someone asked ‘Biblical characters’ (as Claude did of me), then the main person had to name something within that category that matched the number/ranking they were thinking of.

As it turns out, we know each other quite well - they got that I had picked a 4 (for reference: my biblical characters was Paul bc I acknowledge his role in promoting the church and writing great letters, but do not appreciate his misogyny or how judgy he was after his Damascus conversion - and Claude guessed exactly how I felt; my other answers were all similarly mid), and for the rest of our rounds we all got within 1 of the person’s number. As games go it was quite fun and not nearly as dangerous as games involving shots, so I would 100% recommend.

Sssanyway, after we finished dinner (with an excellent chocolate budino), we walked a few blocks to meet up with Michael, who is friends with Chandlord and Claude. We hung out in his lobby with him and his partner, and drank some truly atrocious canned Paloma drink (lukewarm 52-proof tequila and grapefruit is really not good, but I drank it anyway because I’m polite and also have no boundaries). We chatted about a variety of topics related to book bindings, house renovations, SF neighborhoods, etc., and it was all generally delightful.

Adit and Chandlord then went with Michael to the Stud (and later to Grubstake, which I’m very sad to have missed, but I couldn’t have survived until 1:30am PT / 3:30am CT after waking up at 5am CT). I walked Claudia back to her car, grabbed an uber from there, and then came to my hotel and fell asleep with the lights on because I was too tired to think.

Today was a great recovery day though. I woke up fairly early, grabbed coffee downstairs, and then chilled and ordered room service breakfast. I also ran over to Chandlord’s to get a set of keys from her - SF hotels are cheap this weekend but out of control this week, so I’m checking out tomorrow and staying with her. Then I came back to my hotel, showered, and walked to the Embarcadero…

…where I had lunch (don’t call it brunch) with John and Jess at Coqueta. I was in the mood for tapas and paella, which I never get in ye olde Iowa, and Coqueta delivered. My salt air margarita was perfect, and the paella was fantastic - and the patatas bravas (fried potatoes if you’re Iowan) were so good that we got a second order. It’s warm in the city right now, so we sat outside, and we people-watched and water-watched and caught up on life in general, and it was all a delight.

After we parted ways, I did basically nothing for a couple of hours (and finally gave up and took a proper nap). Then I grabbed a chai from the Yemeni coffee shop down the street, came back to my room, and wrote for a couple of hours. Eventually I realized I was finally hungry again, so I grabbed a burger and a glass of wine from the hotel bar. And now, I need to start unwinding so that I can hit the work slog hard tomorrow - goodnight!