ADVENTURES IN MOVING TO CALIFORNIA

If you’ve read my columns about minimalistic living: adapting to Solana Beach health, wealth and wardrobe conformity (female: leggings, workout bra, or at night show it or stow it. Male, bare-chested or T-shirt with their business logo on the back.) I add this confession, if the community residents were any happier than what I’ve observed I’d get therapy.

This week I became LEGITIMATE.

My New Mexico driver’s license expired in Sept 2024. I was living in my home in Saratoga, and attempted to gather the fourteen documents to show proof of residence, and get a NY driver’s license. I loved my turquoise NM license plates, and did not think I’d be there longer than a year, so I didn’t renew. I drove sparingly, as the village was in walking distance and I had Amazon delivery.

In January 2026 I moved into a hotel in Del Mar, CA and my car was transported by an auto moving company. I spent about thirty hours reviewing the documents I needed to get a CA license moving from out of state. I managed to get registration through my CA insurance agent, and CA auto insurance but DMV wanted proof of residence, (hotels not accepted) so I used Uber. I finally found my studio in May, and used all my time furnishing, and avoided the DMV. Friends offered to drive me there, and they or I got sidetracked.

Finally, a friend here said,

“ Loulou you’ve got to get it done. We’ll go Monday, this week.” I bought the cheat sheet, (out of staters have to take the written test) and studied it all weekend. Andrew, my friend, we met at five years old, called and said,

“ Did you get an appointment?”

“There’s a line of twenty-five, and besides the dice didn’t roll to seven.”

“Loulou, forget the dice and the line, they go fast.”

“ I’ll be over at ten o clock.”

I panicked and reviewed my folder of documents the online DMV said I needed: Birth certificate, certificate of sale, insurance, registration, social security card, proof of residence , passport, and DMV security code.

My phone maps app was taken over by google so I couldn’t access directions, I kept getting an error. So, I handwrote them on a page and met Andrew.

“ You have the directions on GPS, I don’t know where San Marcos is exactly, do you?”

“Not to make this more complex, I couldn’t access the app so I wrote them down.”

“ That’s good, you have all your documents?”

“ Everything but height and weight,” He laughed and we took off on the freeway. Andrew is a conversant man and because we grew up in the same class through high school we can speak, uninhibited. Childhood friends shared innocence, and the rarity of calculated devious behavior. Our trust is dependable and accountable.

“Do you know why I wore all pink?”

“Cause you … I have no idea.”

“ Men and women love pink, so if I get a male clerk, he’ll like it and so will a female.”

“ Where’d you get that tidbit?”

“Me, people like pink, and a search, pink evokes love and compassion.” Our conversation leaped from old friends to our parent’s, to tech complaints, going canoeing on a lake we passed, diet, aging, politics, antisemitism (we’re both Jewish) and then…

“ Do we turn here?”

“ Yes, we go east and then turn on San Marcos Boulevard for one mile and then Rancheros for three miles, and then..

“Okay, two directions at a time.”

After five miles of driving through residential neighborhoods, I knew we were lost. Andrew listened when I suggested we turn back, and we finally arrived at the DMV.

“My ex wouldn’t listen to my directions for thirty-five years. Thank you for listening! You know men are famous for refusing driving directions.”

“Hey, I’m perfect”

To be continued.

High School.

I’m Just a Regular Guy. Part Two.

July 28, 2020September 24, 2020 ~ LouLou ~ 1 Comment

“Did you want to be like the people in Rancho Santa Fe?”

He laughed out loud and said, “I don’t want to be what I’m not. I am the happiest man alive.”

“Tell me again why you are so happy?”

“I told you about when I was stuck in Buna– I made a vow to God that if I got out of there alive, I’d never complain about life again

“You kept your promise.”

“ Yes, and I have the most wonderful friends in the world—and you’re one of them.” I gave him a hug and a kiss and asked him to tell me more about his life in Solana Beach.

“ Was your wife happy too?”

“ Oh yes.”

“ How long were you married?” I asked.

“ My wife and I were married fifty years, nineteen forty-one until she passed away.

She was so good to me when I come back from the war. I used to get up in the middle of the night and wander around, didn’t know where I was and she always got up with me. I had bad dreams and got lost, didn’t know where I was, and would hide in the closet. She was so careful with me. I just didn’t know what I was doing like spilling things at the table, and not remembering things she told me. It went on for a long while, but she never got angry or lost her temper. She was so good, and after I got better, we started having fun again, and we were doing good. I was at the dairy and they bought me the house on Barbara Street.”

“ The dairy bought it for you?” I interrupted.

“Yeah, 208 Barbara, that was it. We lived in that little house while I worked at the dairy– I worked seven days a week, from midnight until noon, then I’d have my lunch and rest awhile. Then we might go out and we’d party. “

“ Before you went to work?”

“ Oh yeah, it was the only time we had together.”

“ I feel like a wimp,” I mumbled.

“ Well, you work hard, and I don’t know it just seems people need more sleep today or something, I don’t know what it is.”

“ We haven’t been in a war.”

” Maybe so. I think people seem to marry for different reasons these days. Janet and I had the same background, we both knew what hard work was about. She didn’t complain, she was very good with money, she wrote down everything we spent. I guess we were lucky.”

“ I think it’s more than luck, you appreciate life every day,” I said.

“ I do, like you too, I am so glad you are my friends, and we can sit here and talk and have such good times.”

Then Rudy took my hand, and apologized for shouting at me earlier about not turning the hose off all the way. He said he wanted to take me out for dinner because he felt so bad. Maurice grinned, and I gave him a hug and a kiss. He went into the back and came back with a little bouquet of sweet peas for me.

“ These are for you,” he said.

“ Oh Maurice, you’re making me feel terrible,” Rudy said in jest.

“ I don’t mean to, it’s just that I love women so much. I told my wife every day, every morning she woke up I told her I loved her. We never went to bed angry.”

The house Maurice lives in and has lived in since 1950, is a tidy two-bedroom farmhouse. The house is painted white, with black shutters framing the front windows.

Tucked in the front entrance on one side are a twisted juniper and the other side a bush of poinsettia. He planted roses and hollyhocks and a few more varieties that were always postcard perfect. The porch out front changes with the season. The first year we met Maurice placed a sofa on the porch and two chairs. When Rudy and I stopped at the end of the day, Maurice would be outside sitting in the rocking chair, his hair still wet from his shower, and in his hand a jigger of Jack Daniel’s. In the front room, Maurice covered the walls with mementos and pictures of his friends. He didn’t hang any paintings of any kind, so when you sat on the couch and looked around you were looking at his life. He has a television and watches the news, old westerns, and the country music station. He especially likes the rodeo shows. He has remarked on occasion that he thinks television is very bad for you. His old sofa so worn from visitors when I sit down next to Maurice I sort of fall into his lap. We sit so close, unlike we do now in these large stiff hi-tech furnishings. In front of the sofa is a long glass coffee table, one of Rudy’s favorite stops as he walks in the door. He dives for the peanuts and the chocolates. There are always treats on the table, and you will not wait long before Maurice goes into the kitchen and brings back a plate of home-made pickles.

The first time Rudy ate his pickles, he yelled out, “ Damn Maurice, these are incredible I could eat a whole jar!” So Maurice went in the back and brought out a jar of his homegrown pickles. The kitchen is small and in the corner is a antique table where he keeps his baking utensils and one chair. He has a collection of antique jars and cooking tools on a shelf that whines around the kitchen ceiling. His refrigerator is an adventure in itself, shelves are packed with wrapped leftovers, sauces, meats, cheeses, and vegetables, so packed that on several occasions when I tried to put something back in I couldn’t find an empty place for it. Naturally, he uses a gas stove but growing up in Iowa all they had was a wood-burning stove. In the hallway, the walls are framed with more friends and family. There is one beautiful girl, that seems to be in every room. When I asked who she was Maurice replied, “ That’s Linda. She’s my sweetheart.”

From the photographs we learned all about Maurice’s life; his mother and father, brother and sister, his wife, Janet, his grandpa and grandma, and the hundreds of people in between. His home is a storybook, all you need to know about Maurice is revealed unaltered.

His bedroom is at the end of the hallway by the back door. His bed is covered with a handmade quilt and about twenty decorative pillows. The bathroom is very colorful with green and red towels, and more photographs of Linda. Then he opens the screen door to the backyard.

” This is my garden,” he said smiling ear to ear.

It reminded me of Fantasia. To be continued

THE ARC OF THE WAIT.

November 18, 2007August 22, 2023 ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

The throw of the dice this week lands on adventures in waiting.

As children, our waiting depends on how long it takes Mom and Dad to finish what they’re doing and pay attention to our needs. It takes hold of us, like a fever, and we resort to nudging them, whining, even sobbing, if we are made to wait longer than we expected. During the school year, I waited all semester for the summer. In Los Angeles that meant it was hot enough to go swimming in the ocean.

When I lived in Hollywood, I rode two buses, to get to Santa Monica. The second bus dropped me off on Ocean Avenue, above Santa Monica Beach. I ran down the ramp that connects to Pacific Coast Highway and headed north to Sorrento Beach, another long block away, and when I got there I stumbled in the sand in my tennis shoes trying to run, and find the place where my schoolmates clustered, in a caravan of towels, beach chairs, radios, and brown bag lunches. I couldn’t just run to the ocean, I had to sit and talk and have something cold to drink, and then I made myself wait until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I ran down to the shore, embraced the waves, tumbling inside their grasp until I lost my breath, and floated into abandonment.

After I moved to New Mexico, I stopped thinking about the ocean, I had to remove the memories from my thoughts, and so I could continue to experience this spark of New Mexico. The dry sage ocean of pink soil, and radiant blue sky that pinches your eyes when you’re driving, the sunlight, the warmth of a desert night, and the white snow on pink adobe rooftops. It had postcard perfection, even with fallen leaves spread like trash everywhere, and the dead plants in the garden. I tried not to think of the ocean, the look of the sea from watery suntanned eyelids, or from the bluff at Del Mar, or the splashing of waves around my shoulders as I tumbled beneath the surface.

I waited, like I did as a teenager, for that summer to come, so I could return to the sea. Last week, I stood at the water’s edge in Del Mar, it was like summer without all the kids playing ball and screaming, running of the dogs, and lifeguards thrashing the beach in their jeeps shouting, no dogs off the leashes, no glassware, and no surfing today. They were missing in September, and so were the caravan of beach runners, families, radios, volleyball players, and lifeguards. In fact, I was the only one swimming, on that first day at the beach.

Before I went into the water, I reclined on a big black boulder and faced the sea, and let my eyes wander amongst the scenes of the beach on a Tuesday afternoon. In front of me was an older man with graying hair, in a Walmart beach chair reading. He must be retired, he looked perfected adapt to his spot about five feet from the shoreline. I thought about that Dennis Hopper commercial, about retirement, and how I still cannot come to grips with retirement, and spending my days on park benches or in cafes watching younger men and women live.

There was one swimmer, on a bogey board, he was far out, and floating along, and I wished I’d brought mine with me, but it was in Dodger’s van, and the last time I used it was when I lived in Solana Beach. I also wished I had a new bathing suit, because the one I was wearing was ripped, and the neck straps were tied together in a knot so I could swim without losing my top.

The sun baked my body, and I let it without abatement, without shading my limbs or wearing a hat, just enough sunscreen to keep the rays from trotting over my skin. I closed my eyes and when I opened them, this is when the waiting business suddenly felt so important, so much so that I began to think about waiting as an aphrodisiac or something like a good cocktail that you have to make last for an hour, you wait for that moment that makes you feel immortal, childlike, and emancipated into softness.

I felt the beach flies, and the tang of salt water on my lips, and when the seagulls swarmed above the water’s surface, like so many beads of a necklace, I thought, that this is about the most beautiful day I could have, and it’s all because I WAITED. I didn’t give up on the ocean, or my place in it, or believing that I would have my day in the sand, under a faded denim blue sky, with cotton ball clouds floating above me. I baked until the sweat drenched my pours, and then I raised myself up and walked slowly to the edge of the water. The flat surface made tiny breaks not enough to shatter my body warmth and I felt the first sting of the water on my feet, and then my knees. Submerged to celebrate this day, keep flopping backward on top of each wave as it crashed, and I did this for a dozen rounds, until I felt silly, weak, and dented with the surf, That waiting thing again, meant something that I should write about because all of us are waiting for the election, and the economy to recover, and our real estate to be worth something again, we are all waiting for this big change so we can feel secure and optimistic about the future. There is something useful about waiting, something predisposed, that gives us the support and substance we need. When the waiting is over, and we are all flush with optimism again, it will feel like the first time, it will overwhelm us with power and joy, like the ocean.