Elsinore Cruise

 Scenes from a Sunday drive.  We drove north on surface streets, avoiding the interstate, up to the town of Lake Elsinore.  Lake Elsinore gets a bad rap.  Maybe it's not unjustified, I don't know.  Even before I moved here to Temecula, which is about 20 minutes south on the freeway, I knew about it's white-trash reputation.

I know people who call it "Lake Smell-somemore." (The lake itself doesn't smell.)  I think the town is sort of charming in a rough and rowdy kind of way. There are a couple of seedy "casinos" near the lake, a few budget motels.  The old downtown district has a few good antique shops, a few bars and eateries, and constantly resists attempts to gentrify it and make it a destination. 

Whatever others might say, folks who live up on the hills overlooking the lake have an awfully nice view of water and trees and the mountains of the Cleveland National Forest to the northwest.  Interesting fact:  Elsinore is the largest freshwater lake in all of Southern California.  Interesting, because it's a natural like, not man-made, or a reservoir, like so many other lakes in the region.   Like most of the Inland Empire, as this region is nicknamed, it has it's share of suburban sprawl and cookie cutter tract houses.  You can get a big house here for cheap, at least by SoCal real estate standards.  But those neighborhoods are further north and east of the lake area.  Around the lake, homes and apartments still have a lot of...character.

As we were driving through town, ZZ Top's "Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers" was on the radio.  That felt pretty appropriate. Let's just say that the residents here seem a lot more laid back than us residents of prissy, uptight suburbia.  After touring Elsinore (but not around the entire lake, which is a much longer drive), we headed north again to the little farm-stand shopping area called Tom's Farms.  It was getting late. We had some mediocre Mexican food from one of it's two cafe's, then explored the Cheese & Wine shop.  Which looked just like a Cheese & Wine shop should look:

We didn't buy anything here. But the kids begged for and purchased some candy at the very well-stocked candy and nut shop across the parking lot. When we came out, the sun had slipped behind the hills, and it was getting chilly. 

 

Time to get back in our car and head down south for home,  another weekend in the can.

Fine & Mellow

 Happy that it's Friday, happy it's almost the end of January.  January feels so much like we're all just pacing around in the wings, eager to get onstage and finally get the real show started.

I've been trying to work on the house and get back into routine, but I've felt lazy and unmotivated for the most part.  I think it's a long hangover from the hustle and bustle of Christmas.  Just last week, I had to ask my husband to take apart the vacuum cleaner, which would turn on but not suck anything up; turns out, it was literally choking on too many needles from the Christmas tree, and had formed these odd, solid clumps of dust and needles that were like large owl pellets. Lovely. So there's my metaphor for the month of January: a solid mass of detritus, blocking the way to getting down to the real work.

So far, I'm doing okay on my resolution to dig in & embrace routine, though there have been a few hiccups. In my efforts to post more often and earn a wider audience, I've logged in lots and lots of time on the computer.  Which I know is par for the course and part of the "work" to achieve my goals, but since it's hardly a real paying job, it's also hard not to look around some days and wonder....just what am I doing here, exactly? And why?

The above shot was taken on a sunny, warm day a couple weeks back. It was late afternoon and I'd been puttering around and listening to music.  The waning sun was golden, there was a slight breeze in the palm and pepper trees out the window, and I felt compelled to lay down on my unmade bed and just soak it all up.   I felt fine and mellow, and like a lucky person, to live where I do, to have the opportunities before me. To bask in warm winter air and wiggle my bare toes and listen to my children, laughing together downstairs.

Golden days, golden sunlight: January, come over here so I can give you a noogie.  Ya ain't really so bad, after all.

Afflicted

I love this print by talented illustrator Kris Atomic.  I've suffered from this same affliction for nigh on decades, now. 

When I was a teenager and young adult living at home, I had to listen to my dad asking me on a daily basis, "what's the matter?" and "what's wrong?" when I'd simply be sitting there, deep in thought or staring into space.  I'm very thankful that my husband gets me, so I don't have to walk through my days assuring him that really, I'm just fine.

Now, that is not to say that I'm not ALSO a moody bitch on occasion, but even in my most giddy, or content, or happy moments, I still look pretty cranky.  Sorry.  Like the bottom of the prints says...

THIS IS JUST HOW MY FACE LOOKS.  "Bitchface" print available for purchase here. 

I'm A Rocker

I'm rockin' some black Chucks these days.  I've loved and worn Converse sneakers for years, but always in other colors. I've gone through a few pairs of my beloved burgundy, have some gray with pink accents that are getting pretty tired, and bought a bright aqua pair last spring.  But black...oh, I've never felt quite hard-core and worthy enough for black.  Until now. (It's not that I'm any more cool. Maybe it's that I don't even care if anybody else thinks it's cool, or tired, or even appropriate, for an over-40 mom to be sporting black sneakers.) 

Black chucks are for rockers, for the skinny jeans and black leather set. I feel like I should be muttering, “Gabba Gabba Hey,” under my breath, a la The Ramones. (By the way, Gabba Gabba Hey is NOT the same as Yo Gabba Gabba, which is still pretty rock n' roll too, for kids programming.)  Am I rocker? Hells yeah.  At least I've thought of myself as such for a long, long time.  (Granted, it didn't kick in until the passing of a certain obsession, #3 on this list.) 

I don't know what kind of credentials I can pull out to prove my true rocker-status, except that I could show you a small photo album, filled with tickets stubs from rock concerts that testify to how I spent the majority of my time and money in my late teens/early 20s.  I didn't attend college immediately after high school. Instead, I worked at a series of small office jobs, after putting in a year at a chain record store (anybody remember The Warehouse?).  I was broke a lot, spending my paychecks on used records,  new cassettes, used books, and lots of black clothing. (But not black Chucks!)  And concert tickets. Lots and lots of concert tickets.  When I was really broke, I'd take some of my lesser favorite albums and cassettes and sell them back to the cool record store in my neighborhood. 

My husband and I both share a deep love of music (not always the same music) and find it pretty integral to daily life. I talk a little more about his (and our kids) current music taste here.  We own a LOT of music, and except for the really old “standards” stuff (Sinatra, Dean Martin, etc.), I think most of the music we own could be classified as rockin'.  Because in my book, Waylon Jennings rocked as hard and lived the lifestyle just as much as say, Ozzy did, back when he was snorting ants up his nose, along with cocaine. 

I don't see very many live shows anymore.  Tickets in general are just so, so much more expensive these days. And living out here in the sticks, it's hard to see a good live show without traveling into either San Diego or L.A., which in turn leads to questions on who/how/what to do with the children, and yadda to the yadda.  Considerations that are NOT very rock n' roll at all. But because I grew up in L.A. county, I've seen shows at just about every major venue in the area. (First concert ever: Supertramp's farewell tour, at the The Forum. A friend's older brother had tickets.  First concert where I paid for my own ticket: The Cult, at the Palladium in Hollywood.) 

I don't smoke Marlboro 100's any more, don't hang out in scrappy dives playing (bad) pool any more. It's been years and years since I sidled up to some strange guy at the bar and flirted for a dollar, so I could play some good tunes on the jukebox (yes, yes I did that).   If I went to a concert tomorrow, I don't even HAVE a lighter that I could hold aloft during “the slow, moving song.”  ("FREE BIRD!")

But damn, I've got me some black sneakers.  I'm hoping that sometime this year, I can attend a live show and hear some loud guitars and feel that drum beat pounding through my body, and get some beer spilled on my Chucks.  Because it's important to have goals, y'all.