Joanna Newsom and Robin Pecknold

This is where I was on Monday night, serenaded by lovely music perched high up in the balcony of the Fox Theater.  Now, it's Thursday afternoon and five and a half hours to a genetics final, seven and a half hours and a train ride away to the start of my summer.  Many things happening, many many things!

Our house, in the middle of our street

We've all been here for around three weeks now, and I haven't been around here for just as long.  Exciting, busy things are making me run around and compile long lists.  So this is it, for now.

The best parts of today

Moving has made me too exhausted for anything more substantial, but little glimmers today when I bit into my Tiger's Milk bar today that I thought was just peanut butter but turned out to be peanut butter crunch, and shy new friendship opportunities after a year of admiration.

It's family beaches that I desire

I realized all too late that my new planner starts with August while my old planner ends with June, which makes July 2010 the Lost Month.  One month of can't stand work, one month of going to the mall for hot dogs on sticks and Orange Juliuses and shoelaces and awful video games, one month of falling asleep without brushing our teeth and stale mouths in the morning, one month of unofficial fireworks show flying in the face of safety, one month on the beach one easy bike ride from the new house and legs reaccustomed to biking up hills, one month of near drizzling gray outsides hopefully breaking cracking open with sunlight pouring into the front room, one month of packing this little room up tonight because tomorrow we move into the most beautiful house in the world.

Projecting, one month of hopefully visitors in what I assume is an extra bed, one month reunited with the crazy boys that I will be living with, one month of haircuts once scissors are unearthed from the back of the garage, one month of soccer in the backyard and naps in the tree fort, one month of hot baths and no more lukewarm showers, one month of cooking and eating and laughing and loving, one month of figuring out how to get myself places like feeling so grown up suddenly, one month figuring out the ins and outs of homeleasership.

In deep, far beneath

I always assumed that the summer lull was brought on by temperatures in the hundreds where even breathing feels unnaturally sticky hot, not wanting to do anything for fear of drowning in even more excess sweat, but those don't-wanna-leave-my-bed summer mornings persist in the cool, gray of Santa Cruz.  Our current room is small and uninspiring, and I do not leave it entirely as often as I would like because going outside would mean bundling up and bundling up would mean foraging through the garage for my winter clothes, and I do not leave my bed until a few more minutes past the alarm in order to psyche myself up for the quickly diminishing heat of the tepid shower.  If it were at all hot, I would be motivated to get my bicycle down from the bows of the garage and get myself down to the beach, but it's not hot at all.  Bundled in a down comforter, I must reassess my assumptions.  And, happily, I must succumb to the warm laziness of under the covers--at least for one more week until my whole closet can reassemble in the new and gigantic closet of the Dream House, and I will be close enough to the beach where I won't be as disappointed if freezing water and fragile nerves are at war.

Two and a half weeks in limbo

Typing from a tiny temporary sublet while we settle back into life in Santa Cruz, salads and tacos and consignment stores in this foggy not-quite-summer, happy to figure my way up to campus three days a week before we move into the Dream House on July seventh.  Printing out resumes and in my best outfit, one bottle of nail polish remover until we troll downtown for my second job to supplement ten hours a week before a bout of cinematic regression in 3D; everything feels a little not real, like waiting anticipating until our actual life starts.

Pink summer

Tonight as I drift off into downy doziness, pink shoulders sunburnt and bug-bitten, legs biked-sweat-sticky with spilt juice and nectarine drips, dreams baking in the Central Valley dry night heat with the official first day of summer still six days away.