returning to boulder after a month in berkeley is challenging every summer. i get so immersed in my california life that i’m a bit discombobulated when i get back to colorado. i forget my regular routes to places, i mix people up and can’t remember how i know them and generally feel a bit muddled for a while… a sort of travel dementia. this year was tougher than usual because everything was broken when i left and unfortunately, everything was still broken when i returned. my garage remains bent outward from when i bashed it while backing out the day before my trip. the grass in my backyard is all dried up - i DID call the sprinkler guy before leaving and he just didn’t come. (he showed up yesterday and said that a BEAR had chewed a portion of the piping for my sprinklers. i thought maybe it was actually hank, but then i saw a GIANT poop next to the fence. it looks like paul bunyan squatted down in my lilacs - sometimes there is just too much nature in boulder.) the AC in my house is still spotty, despite the AC man “fixing” it before my departure and to top it off, my car wouldn’t start AGAIN! i realize that these are all minor, fixable problems in the grand scheme of things, but it’s taken me longer than usual to get myself sorted and functioning properly.

perhaps because so many things were in disarray when i returned, i couldn’t seem to unpack before going through all my closets super carefully. i get a little crazy with this… not only did i clean out MY clothes closets, i cleaned out the kids’ closets and then EVERY closet in the house. some people meditate or run or juice fast to reset themselves… i clean. i feel so peaceful when i know where everything is in my house and that there are not weird, useless things lurking in my cupboards. sometimes, this need for order works against me… i literally cannot focus when there are dirty dishes in the sink or random stacks of mail or crumbs on the counters. i need to tidy it all up before i can direct my attention to anything else and sometimes, by the time i’ve picked up my house, i’ve run out of time to do whatever project i wanted to complete. 

but sometimes, my cleaning produces wonderful surprises. when sorting through the upper cupboards in the mud room, i found the halloween candy from last fall. i must of shoved it back there on november 1st because it was a serious cache. of course, i had to go through it and throw out all the unpalatable stuff (dusty sweet tarts and stiff twizzlers - as a californian, i will only eat red vines - and rock hard taffies, but there were tons of twix bars and m&ms and gummy bears that i was pretty excited about. even better, my kids are with their dad this week so i don’t have to share. 

in the credenza in the entry, i found my favorite fur hat that my dad brought back from st. petersburg years ago… it went missing all last winter and i had to make do with a crocheted one that just wasn’t as warm. 

and then there was a bonanza in my closet… i found a brand new handbag that i must have bought right before we left amsterdam seven years ago. it was still in the flannel bag which is why i don’t think i’ve seen it during all my years of boulder closet cleanings. i typically go on a bender when we are moving and purchase things from the place we’re leaving that i think i’ll never see again (i understand that this behavior is ridiculous given global online shopping, but it’s part of my process!) this bag is from an amazing shop called van ravenstein and it is orange - the marquee color of the netherlands, as the monarchy is from the house of orange. i’m sure i bought it as a tribute to queen beatrix, who i absolutely adore.

but my best discovery was the ipad. it disappeared about eight months ago… i used to hide it from my daughter and then she started preemptively hiding it from me. somehow, with all the secret stashing, we lost it completely. i haven’t really missed it, per se, but the fact that i couldn’t find it was making me bananas. of course, it is completely dead and i still haven’t found the charger. i don’t think i can even purchase a new charger because this ipad is about a million years old - it’s as big and heavy as an encyclopedia and it doesn’t work well at all, but my satisfaction in rediscovering it is immeasurable…and i was finally able to unpack.

queen beatrix by andy warhol

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