Living the alone life, just for a few days

Oh, alone life, how I have missed you!

Steve is on a rafting trip for five days. I am house and dog sitting for him in Kenwood. It is, to me, paradise. I am alone there and I wish I didn't have to go to work, it would be 100% even better.

Kenwood is just a small village-like town, faced on Hwy. 12 with at least 15 tasting rooms and wineries, but when you leave that behind, when you step away from the commerce and the congestion, it's a lovely place to live.  Neighbors know each other, there are gorgeous gardens and huge shady trees and it smells really nice.  Steve has a small house with a very nice covered porch and there I spend my time.  I woke up at his house on Friday morning and I did nothing except read and walk the dogs and I made a very short foray into Glen Ellen to get some groceries.  I didn't even take a shower! (But I did wash my face and brush my teeth.)  At one point I sat there and just looked at the trees in my line of sight: blooming magnolias, fruit trees, Acacia, Hawthorne, old oaks, buckeye and walnut trees, and so many more.  Steve's backyard has 50 grapevines planted and the rest is a mess, rangy and weedy but with a ton of sage that attracts bees and hummingbirds. When the sun hits the sage the entire yard smells so delicious.  Red poppies, orange poppies, purple and yellow sage, red and pink roses, it's beautiful in its wild way.

This morning a hawk was on the phone wire for about a half hour, and a small squirrel wanted to cross another phone wire in a parallel line to the hawk. The squirrel would get about three feet from the hawk and the hawk would flap its wings and jump forward a bit, scooting the squirrel back, not letting it pass. The squirrel was persistent, trying several times until it retreated to its corner and waited. Finally the hawk flew away, after some hummingbirds buzzed it, and the squirrel cautiously scampered across the wire.  Cooper watched this, of course, hoping with his entire small body that the squirrel would miss a step and fall down into his waiting arms mouth.  He stood under that squirrel for ten minutes before he gave up.

This short sojourn of living alone has reinforced in me the need to get my own place. Steve is a slob in many ways but his house has his touch in it, has photos and paintings that he loves, has some cool furniture.  My house has none of that. I put away most of my things when the roommate moved in and because the house doesn't feel like mine, I am not going to put it back out. But I want a place that feels like mine.  I want a place of my own.

And by the end of the year, I will have that.  It's a promise I am making to myself.

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