Right back where I started from.  Well, not completely back quite that far.  I was born in Arkansas but grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area until I married in 1973.  And here I am again.  There have been times when I said I would never come back to California and yet, here I am.  Actually planning a trip to San Francisco proper for later next week.  The rest of the time I’ll stay in the East Bay Area.  Seems a little safer.  San Francisco is beautiful to look from a distance but up close it is crowded and quite messy to navigate in.  My word of wisdom for today is if you have a stick shift car don’t take it to San Francisco.  It is dangerous on those hills.

Left beautiful Monterey this morning.  It is always too soon to leave Monterey, the city by the sea.  I am still living in the memory of the beauty I experienced there.  And today, well today, I am in rows and rows of houses and long congested streets and lots and lots of people.  It was around 40 plus years ago I watched this community of San Ramon grow and bloom into masses of people.  At that time the trees were little.  Now the city is a paradise of huge growth trees planted when I was a young woman.  The streets are dark and shady and the homes have aged gracefully with beautiful lines of integrity.  All in all, despite the miles and miles of homes it is a beautiful place to live.  The surrounding hills show a light touch of green desiring to burst forth from last week’s rain.  The brown grasses prevail on most slopes and often overshadow the hint of green.  It give a beautiful aura standing proud above all the homes.  This area consist of several canyons.  A flat area of land where the streets and houses expand out to rolling hills setting stage for the mountains.

I have never seen so many mountains in my lifetime as I have experienced on this trip.  It seems every state has their own particular design of mountains and they just keep going on and on, especially as I travel north as the mountains go north to south.  The problem is, there is just no snow on them.  Only saw a few very tall mountains with some snow and that was the day after the snow storm in Denver Colorado.  By the time I left Denver most of the snow had already melted on the slopes. Pray for rain.

When I was in Oakhurst at my aunt and uncles home (by Yosemite) one of my uncles horses took a bad slide on the mud and fell hurting herself pretty badly.  I called the other day to see how “Toby” was doing.  She is doing okay and will survive but it will take a long time for her recovery.  My uncle loves to ride and has actually taken his horses up to Yosemite National Park and  ridden the trails there where no one can go without a horse.  I can’t even imagine the beauty he must have seen.  Well, I said all that to say this:  When I was on the phone my uncle Jetton asked me if I missed being home.  I told him I would think about it and blog my way through that question.  He said, no, I just want a spontaneous answer right now.  So I said, no, I don’t miss home.  I miss my husband and family but I don’t miss being home.  He asked me when my halfway point was and when I’d be turning around to go home.  I told them I had no half way point, and as as far as I was concerned, that from the moment I left home I was on a journey that was leading home.  I think the reason for that is that I truly do live in the moment.  There is no other moment but the one I am living in. Each experience is an experience unto itself, to be savored fully for the moment(s) I am experiencing it and then I let it go for then I am living in another moment.  Yes, there will be a time when am home again and then I will be experiencing the joy and thrill of that moment.  But, to wish I was someplace else, or miss someplace else because I am not there would just rob me of the fullness of the joy I am feeling where ever I am at that moment.

Today was a special day in the fact that I had no plans except traveling from one location to the next.  And the good part was that it was less than 100 miles away.  It was a beautiful drive and I missed all the commute traffic by leaving in the middle of the day and arriving here about 3:00 p.m.

And I am here with my childhood friend Jeanette and her husband.  Today was Jeanette’s last day on the clock at work. As of closing time today she is retired.  She had her hip replaced in February and was on disability leave and today that leave expired.  She says she doesn’t know yet how it feels to be retired.  Funny thing, neither do I.  But I’m practicing.  Jeanette and I met when we were 12 years old at church in Oakland California.  Our mother’s became good friends and thus we stayed in contact also.  We had our babies close together and our boys used to play together.  Well tonight one of Jeanett’s boys was on a TV show called “IT TAKES A CHURCH”.  He was the bachelor looking for a prospective wife.  The only thing was that it wasn’t him who did the choosing.  The show was filed at his church with his friends and his pastor watching the auditions of the girls that would like to be chose and then the church chose the four finalist.  Then it was up to Ryan to make the final choice.  Of course mom and dad were proud as punch watching their young son (in his 30’s) do an excellent job of being himself.  I’ve know Ryan all my life and he is a wonderful young man.  I once did a model shoot for him in San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts.  He is a gorgeous man as well as a great guy.  We were all rooting for our favorite gal.  We all chose the same favorite for of course we knew just which one would be the best for him!  And he didn’t fail to deliver!  We haven’t heard from after the show’s debut so we are wondering if they hit it off and are still dating.  This was filmed several months ago and his parents did not know a thing about it until they were told a couple of days ago that the show was coming on.  What a surprise they received when they watched the program because they didn’t know what it was about or what his part in the show would be.  It felt very satisfying to be here and have the opportunity to watch this show with his parents.  It was a fun night.  Ryan lives and works in Southern California so he is not home very often.  Ryan is an R.N.

Oh, one more incident I want to tell you about.  I have a friend that lives a few blocks from Jeanette in this same neighborhood.  We have been friends for 60 years.  We met because we lived in the “housing projects”.  My family of 5 girls lived in a small three bedroom apartment on the top floor.  Albert’s family of four kids lived in the apartment below us.  That made for a lot of angst with his dad because I often went to sleep with my coffee can full of marbles on my bed only to have them topple over in the night and hit the linoleum floor above Albert’s dad’s bedroom.   Not a pretty sight to have him come upstairs banging on our apartment door saying things I can’t say here on my blog.  Well that is how we met.  We have been true friends ever since.  Albert is retired now and he and his partner live close by Jeanette’s house.  Jeanette and I were off on a journey to find out if I could get some passes to a gym and on the spur of the moment I asked her if we could stop by Albert’s.  Albert did not know I was coming or in the area.  Jeanette and I knocked on the door and Mark answered, looked at me and I just stood there with a silly grin and forgot to say anything.  I could tell he did not recognize me.  My friend Judy and I stayed with Albert and Mark 4 years ago when I was here for a planning session for an event I was “co-producing with a cousin”.  Finally Jeanette asked if Albert was there.  Mark recognized her.  When Albert came to the door he immediately knew who I was and then poor Mark was embarrassed for not knowing me.  I guess that is what happens when you grow as old as I did in such a short time as four year.  He actually did not recognize me because of the hair style and the 80 pound weight loss.  It was fun none the less to surprise them.  They immediately made us feel welcome and we had a great short visit.  I told them I had to do something to write about in my blog.  The back of their house opens up to a beautiful yard.  In standards of Wisconsin yards it is pretty small but he has made a small place absolutely beautiful.  Other than the pics I took there I have no others today.  I will post some for you to see.  He has a rose garden oasis.  This is blooming time in drought ridden California so these flowers are very precious.

I asked Mark what his words of wisdom would be.  Here is his answer:  “When you look at your life and see you have less time ahead than you have behind, take a a trip”.  He said he did just that and had an amazing time.  It seemed he really connected with why I wanted to go on this trip.  He understood the value of the journey, one moment at a time, experiencing what life brought to you in each moment.  That is somewhat how I feel.  The value for me is what God brings to me.  Everyday I see God’s hand and direction in my life and I am so grateful for the opportunity of this journey.  It really is a journey of a lifetime.

Thank you for those who take time to read these pages.  I do not feel bad if you do not read them, if they are too long, too boring or too time consuming.  For me it is documentation of my journey of today and melding the moments of my past into the beauty of the present.  This journey is bringing back so many memories and I find that regardless how uncomfortable some of the situations I’ve experienced are,  I no longer have pain from any memory.  All the negatives have been let go and there is no longer any pain associated with any one memory.  All the pain has been released through the healing presence of Christ living within me for He has shown me the truth of what really is.  It is a wonderful place to live.

And every day I learn something.

Good Night