So thank you so much for the suggestions on food for travel. All of it will come in handy in the future, and I used much of it for this trip.
I had a sandwich, a split roll with dijon mustard, pesto, fresh mozzarella and a cured italian meat that was not prosciutto. A tiny bag filled with chocolate-covered pistachios with a candy shell and raw almonds. A bottle of SmartWater and early on, a tiny can of espresso and cream, and a morning roll which I will talk about in gross depth later this week. Some soft spice cookies that went uneaten and made my bag smell like unsulfered molasses which freaked me out the next morning, because no one expects clean underwear to smell like that.
I also had an iPod. And I'm probably the latest 87 year old to praise that tiny white box, but when the train stopped and announced that we were waiting for a commuter train to pass us, even though we hadn't stopped for the five other trains that passed us earlier in the trip, and the three year old sitting behind you with her aunt is asking in an increasingly urgent tone when she'll be able to get off the train, when that happened and I was at the point where I wanted to pee my pants too, just like her, and then recite the names of the people I was going to see that tiny white box saved my life. For sure. A little Remy Ma, a little Amy Winehouse, a little Tom Jones is all it took.
My seating companion was a man of maybe 35. We had met earlier that morning, when a very nice Canadian family offered to watch my bags while I freaked the FUCK out and realized I hadn't retrieved my seating assignment, just picked up my ticket. The line for boarding wrapped around the interior of the station. The line for seating assignments was almost as long. I was traveling alone, and never felt more seriously unable to function -- it was like finding your locker then realizing it didn't matter, because you never picked up your combonation and by the way, you weren't wearing pants either and you probably forgot to take off your headgear. And all freshman were being auctioned off for Homecoming Dates (Maybe it could happen) and someone bid fifteen cents, or maybe a handful of Lira someone's dad brought back for them, and that someone was the Janitor.
Seat 16 was behind me in that line, and I looked up at him to ask the time and then when he boarded the train he looked at me and said "Well, I guess I'm next to you." And I was like "Wow, had your voice been one or two notes higher or lower I would have taken offense to that." But no. He said it liked I smelled good. Like apples.
Which I did. And do, on a regular basis.
He had a laptop and a trademarked breathing pattern. No words were said when the perfume samples in my magazines filled our shared area with the scent of Nicole Kidman and underage girls in chiffon, respectively. Our thighs touched once our twice, and I almost offered him a spice cookie. We exchanged maybe fifteen words over the course of four hours. We're getting married next week.
The Canadian family was wonderful. I would watch a sitcom based on their lives. They told one of their daughter she should be a hair model.
A train ride is a train ride, only this one wound up and around the Pacific Coastline, and so it was better. The conducter sounded just like Borat, seriously, and I almost asked out loud if this was a movie tie-in for the DVD release but when he started getting really specific with route details, I realized I was wrong about this and my shoe choice for the day, which would result in oozing blisters. Attractive ones.
My new home. And my garage.
I love traveling, and this trip reinforced that tenfold. I like watching the landscape as it whizzes and glides by, I like people watching and I love, love what happens when my debit card and I change zipcodes.
While there is no doubt that I like to buy things, for myself and others, travel gives way to a new code of living and money managment, where there is no need too little, no sales tax too daunting. I say this like I'm buying rhinestoned aviators, and not a four pack of DRYsoda and a bottle of Sofia champagne for my hosts and parents-to-be.
The DRYsoda was meant to be -- earlier in the day I passed their headquarters or soon-to-be storefront downtown. And who can pass up Rhubarb soda? Maybe Hitler.
The soda was fantastic. It was all fiz, all business. I'm devoting some adjectives to this, because it was really one of the most enjoyable moments of an enjoyable trip. If you like rhubarb, that tangy fruit buzz and tingle, you'll love this. It has such a true to taste finish of grass and green, that little hint of "vegetable or fruit?" that makes rhubarb so fun, and the bubbles go crazy. A great champagne mouthfeel. I'm ninety.
The champagne, if you haven't seen it, is Coppola's tribute to his daughter. I love the tiny cans, and with a baby girl on her way the cellophane wrapped bottle was too perfect. S, my hostess, sighed and started when I said I was buying it for them. "Every time," She said, "I stop and stare at it."
S & E were why I was in town in the first place, with a Belly Casting and co-ed Shower the following day. She is an incredible, earthy and brave cook, with a practical streak that saves many occasions from turning too complicated. We made moussaline buttercreams, Salted Cassis and then White Chocolate & Creme de Cacao for cake-mix cupcakes, and topped them with Peeps. And tiny guns.
Eight months pregnant she made Scones from Macrina's cookbook and Mimosas, stood in a half-crouch for twenty minutes encased in plaster and pumped her fist in the air when it was removed. I can't wait to see the baby. I have so much love for her already, theft might be the only logical option.
At the party I made serious, braid-each-others-hair best friends with a three year old and saw people I haven't seen in ten years and five months, respectively, people being guys and not to get all Sweet Valley it does a lot when they get that look on their faces, that says "You are a now a lady I could drink with and you would probably unlock my door after I unlocked yours."
Another little girl, who was five and therefore too old for the kind of bad-attitude business she was displaying, began to feel up the presents, second-base style and mine which was small and soft and wrapped in delicate tissue paper was the one she chose to tug back and forth accordion-style, ripping it just enough to make me edge forward. Pretty neat!
But not as neat as the whole weekend was. I hope you all had weekends that were just as fantastic.
