California for Stefani

Well, it’s Saturday and tomorrow is Halloween.  I have always loved Halloween… i like the dressing up (as a kid) and love all the candy.  As I got older I loved the fact you could get Halloween lights and now our house is fully decorated for the season.  I tend to stick to the mellow parts… pumpkins, Casper type ghosts and the occasional bat.  I am not a fan of the scary parts of Halloween, so I stay away from that.   As a Christian, I have never had a problem with this day and with trick or treating.  Why can’t we make the day what we want to make it?  I think Christians tend to take things too seriously.  Call it Harvest day, or whatever you want, but it’s still Halloween in my eyes.   I did put up my first winter lights… they are LED Snowmen, so they aren’t Christmas lights… they are winter lights.

We just got back from a great weekend with my parents.  We went to 6 wineries in Yakima, Washington.  I gave a list of various ones to Doug and told him to figure out which ones he wanted to do, and I would be the designated driver.  We wanted to take the Mustang, but 4 adults and many bottles of wine just didn’t make sense, so we took my parents Aerostar.  It was a good drive, but I missed my car.  Thankfully the Aerostar does pretty good on the hills, so that was much better than the Tercel we used to have LOL.  We stayed at a Best Western in Yakima and shared hotel room.  We always manage pretty good in that regards.  Nobody snores or farts too much HA HA HA!!  Between the 4 of us, we brought back 11 bottles of wine.  Thankfully the border guard was ok with that.  Oh wait… he was only told about 8 of them {giggle}.  We even did a winery tour of Kestrel Vintners… we were supposed to pay $25/person for the VIP treatment, but he waived the fee if we bought some wine.  

So we have driven with the top down a bit in the last week.  The weather has been cold, but if it isn’t raining we tend to drive around.  We have scarves, toques and jackets in the back of the car to keep us warm.  Too bad we don’t have heated seats, but beggars can’t be choosers… so we live without heated seats LOL.  It is amazing how often we look at our car and just grin.  This piece of metal with a vinyl roof makes us so very happy.  It actually brings us a little piece in our fairly unpeaceful (emotional) life…. which segues (spelt correctly) into some of my thoughts these days.

We still feel a little unsettled.  We love where we live and we love living so close to my parents… but sometimes we just feel so unsettled.  We booked our flights to LA for April and are very excited to be going back to California.  We love it there, but I think it is a matter of the grass being greener in another country (HA HA HA).   We have to learn to like it here because what if this is where we will be for a long time?  Thankfully White Rock is as close to California as we can get without moving out of Canada.  We can just say we are on our way!!

The root of our issues though needs to be dealt with… why do we feel so unsettled in such a beautiful city and with such a decent life?  I probably know the reason, but it probably is best to not get too much into it on a public forum.  I just have to get over our disappointments in people and move forward.  I was looking through my photo albums and that didn’t make it any better.  So many pictures of great parties we used to have… and none of those people are friends any more (except for my amazing parents).   I can’t even look at those pictures because it doesn’t bring me good memories, but all the sad reasons they are gone out of our lives.   Some reasons are because of church ( we aren’t Christian enough I guess), some reasons are because we weren’t the mover’s and shakers of the church and so being friends with us wasn’t good enough anymore (and yes, this is not a perception, but reality) and some are because our views on life didn’t mesh with theirs, and so “agreeing to disagree” wasn’t an option.  Of course some aren’t friends because people change (ourselves included) and you don’t have things in common anymore. 

How does one get over these disappointments when they stare you in the face every day?  Moving to Mexico was going to be a new start in life… with a clean slate on the “friendship” blackboard… now that board is only partially erased and we need to rewrite it instead of starting over.  I want to start over… live in a new place… make new memories… meet new people… people with no preconceived ideas of who we are, etc.  But that isn’t an option right now… so what do we do?  We hold our head high, forget the past, look to the future and rely on God to light our path into the unknown.   (This rambling is not any reflection of how wonderful my parents are as friends though).

On another note… for those out there who forget to take their marriages seriously… please make sure you take time for yourselves.  It’s one of the reasons we do these weekend things and just do stuff… we change up the routine so that life doesn’t get mundane.   Drive a different way to work (or back home) to see the world differently.  Do things spontaneously… get out there and enjoy life together.  Marriage is serious stuff and it takes work.   Your partner should be your best friend and best friends should get out and have fun.  Doug and I still fight even on our road trips (just ask Doug about Googling Target), but we work it out and plan the next one.  We need to mix it up to stop the routine getting us down.  We take our marriage seriously and want to make it work (helps that we both want the same thing).  I can’t believe it’s been 22 1/2 years already.  Sure glad I have Doug to enjoy life with.  Here is to many many more.

Less than 2 months until Christmas… YIPEEE (my favourite time of year)