Stylish Lunch in a Former Kindergarten Room

For a long time, I've known that one of my pool pals, Kate, lived in a converted school in Oakland, more specifically, in what had been the kindergarten room.

This has always sounded intriguing, and a few weeks ago in an untamed moment (oh, how we cut up in the pool, we who range in age from 65 to 87!), I suggested she invite the rest of us to a potluck lunch at her place.

Margaret, Joy, and Anne readying the food

She agreed, assured that she wouldn't have to cook one damned thing, because cooking is not something she likes to do. (Nor mine; I took a bakery cake.)
 
Reader, if you want to get a fantasy going about living in a sophisticated loft-like space, you need to visit Kate.  Her condominium reflects her whims and taste and imagination in a way that's refreshing and seductive. 

The huge main room is full of light,  although my iPhone photos don't show it.

The main room, formerly a classroom, opens on to a terrace

Beautiful light

Looking the length of the room toward the kitchen, with a glimpse of one of two loft areas. Note the hanging woven shade on the left.

Behind shade:  the bedroom

Looking the other direction, toward the fireplace, with a long scroll that shows off the height of the ceilings.The pendant lights are original (1927), and the former blackboards and bulletin boards are painted over and outlined in white.

 

 The fireplace with its collection of blue-and-white pots

Art leaning up against the former blackboards

 

Mirror-lined stairway to the loft

Catwalk (?) in the loft

\

 View down to the great room

Kate's lived here for 18 years, in a spot that feels so apart from urban life, and yet it's only a few blocks to the 580 freeway and Pill Hill.

Door to the terrace

It's all about pots and a huge oak tree overhead

The exterior of those windows

And the lunch:

 Anne, Margaret, Val, and Kate

Kate, Joy, and Betty

 

Rose in a snifter

I was so taken with this place that I suggested Kate rent it out for weekends--starting with each of us, of course.

Impersonating a Cruise Passenger

Yah, that's us.  Jerry took one look at this picture and said, "That's not us.  We weren't standing in front of the boat."

"It's photo-shopped!" I said.

He took another look.

"The ship is way out of scale."

Life with a (literal) scientist.

So, we're back from our trip to Costa Rica and Panama,  have been for two weeks, during which I dealt with taxes (federal and property, awful), renewing my driver's license, and celebrating my 65th birthday--if you haven't done this, let me tell you it is traumatic.  Also, filling out my retirement papers.

Back to the photo.  We were stopped just after we boarded, mid-sprint to the laundry room with a week's worth of dirty clothes, cranky and tired.  I won't say our smiles were photo-shopped, but they were definitely on command.  Later, we saw the photo and bought it for $25, which Jerry thought was nuts.

But our entire approach to cruises is nuts.  This was our third cruise, and once again, we shied away from being social and ate only with each other, often in our stateroom.  During the days at sea, when other passengers threw themselves on chaises in the full-blast tropical sun, we were in our room working on projects.  We didn't gamble or play bridge or bid at an art auction or go to workshops on how to avoid wrinkles (no full-blast tropical sun?).

 The afternoon tea cart.  We did participate in that.

I cannot lie: the food was good

For us,  the ship was a way to get from Point A (Calderas, Costa Rica, after a week of independent travel) to Point B (Miami) and go through the Panama Canal (I recommend), while having really nice meals served to us.

Otherwise, it was boring, and it felt like high school, except it's rich Texas ladies, not mean girls, who checked me out from head to toe. Dubiously.  (Yes, this happened, and I am way too old for it.)  

Of course, there were lots of other people, perfectly nice, but every time I dipped into conversation with a random person, I felt I was from another world.

First question in any shipboard conversation:  "Where are you from?"


Twice my answer stopped the conversation cold.  One of the Texas ladies looked at her shoes, at a loss for words.

So, we came home and cancelled our trip to Europe in August, half of which involved a Baltic cruise.  There were other reasons for cancelling it, financial ones, but the strain of impersonating a cruise passenger figured into it.

Lots of reading and napping

By the time we got to New Orleans, I was delirious to see people in a museum café dressed in an off-hand, interesting way.  No resort clothes!   I spied a New York Times on a table and rushed to read it, even though it was three days old.










 It was a good trip, though, with some truly memorable moments:

 

Hiking in Costa Rica

Touring the Biomuseo in Panama City, designed by Frank Gehry

Transiting the Panama Canal

All fun!  More on those.

But the strain of impersonating a cruise passenger--meaning, delighted to be hanging out in a sea-bound resort, complacent about the luxury, wanting to small-talk with strangers--it's too much for this old Berkeley bag.

Will I ever learn?

Outta Here! Just a little more hand-wringing...

We're outta here on Thursday--bound for Costa Rica and the Panama Canal, with stops in Panama City, Puerto Limon (CR),  New Orleans, Key West, and Miami.  A land trip for the first week and then a cruise.


I'm packing, meaning  trying to talk myself out of taking so many clothes. Sometimes I've done primitive sketches in my travel notebooks (often involves Crayolas) of the clothes I've taken on a trip, and that's been  helpful.  What did I wear all the time?  What was dumb to take? (Lots.)

 Note the number of black tops.  It gets boring.

For me, there are three major categories to cope with pre-trip:

1. Paper.  This includes torn-out pages of guidebooks, maps, vouchers, receipts, etc.  That all goes into a big manila envelope. As we work our way through the stack during the trip, I toss as much paper as I can bear to (you never know!)

Then there is a minutely-detailed itinerary, which I carry in my handbag.  The one for this trip is 2-1/2 pages.  Hotel addresses, phone numbers, room rates, flight numbers,  reservation numbers, shore excursions, you name it.

 The envelopes for this trip

Envelope for a past trip:  they get pretty beat-up

2.  Electronics.  Batteries, chargers, cords.  I'm taking a minicomputer, Walkman, cell phone, and camera.  I keep chargers and cords in this thing, which is really meant for jewelry, of which I take almost none:

I used to throw them all in a Ziploc bag, where they got tangled up.

4. Clothes.  See above.  First step is to wash a bunch of stuff, then try it on and see if the waist fits.  If not, no-go.

I'm going to be posting about our trip on Travelpod.com    If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll probably get an e-mail reminder with a link to the latest post.   Or e-mail me, and I'll put you on the list.  Or go to www.travelpod.com and type in "LRandal."  Or don't bother (really, you have my permission to skip the whole thing!).

Au revoir!

Good-By, Deanna

 Deanna Davis died last night, a little over year after being diagnosed with cancer.  She was a remarkable person: empathic, kind, creative, and a force-to-be-reckoned with when it came to something she believed ought to be done. 

This is a post I wrote a year ago about her show-within-a-show at the East Bay Heritage Quilters show in March 2014.  At her  upcoming memorial/celebration of life, her house will be turned into a gallery of her quilts, so her friends can once again admire them and reflect on the hugeness of her heart.

* * * * *

 March 2014

 Deanna Davis, out-going president of the East Bay Heritage Quilters, had a show-within-a-show at last weekend's "Voices in Cloth."  She was recently diagnosed with a serious illness, and this look back at her work was a wonderful way for her to see old friends and old friends to celebrate her years of quilting.

Deanna, center

Deanna quilts with the most open heart I know.  There's a personal story behind most of her quilts, a response to experiences (the disastrous Oakland Hills fire of 1991, quitting smoking around the same time), and she doesn't shy away from experimenting with techniques and pushing the envelope in design, format, and media.

I'll stop commenting and let you take a look!  It was hard to get good photos because there was bright sun behind her quilts, but I did my best with my rebellious little Nikon.

Can We All Get Along

Global Warming



Release

Song of Friendship

Collections I, a response to the 1991 Oakland Hills fire, which came within two miles of Deanna's home.



Collections II, "which celebrates the strength and memories used to grow and rise beyond the loss of collections [in the fire]"

New Years 1991, when Deanna resolved to quit smoking after 30 years

Detail of New Years 1991:  The top lifts up to reveal messages about her struggle to quit



Detail of New Years 1991

Detail of New Years 1991



Another detail of New Years 1991

Secrets

Wild Africa Elephants

Woman Dreaming, a quilt I remember seeing at the Oakland Museum in the late '90's as part of a Smithsonian traveling exhibit, "Women of Taste: A Collaboration Celebrating Quilt Artists and Chefs."  Deanna partnered with chef Frances Wilson, whom she depicts here.

Figure Study #2

Scenic Byways #2

Michael's Hat

Figure Study #3

Adrenalin  (with Deanna's daughter Kathryn in the corner--sorry, Kathryn!)

Deanna's family was at the show on Saturday: 

Deanna with her son, John, and her daughter, Kathryn



...and with her other daughter, Donna

(I ran into Deanna's husband, Bob, a few times but never had the presence of mind to get out my camera, alas.)

For years, Deanna has run the guild's Children's Quilt Project, which supplies quilts to needy and sick children through various nonprofit agencies and hospitals.   Guild members donate fabric, piece quilts, sew on bindings--everything needed to produce 1200 quilts annually.  Deanna's designed a zillion quilt kits that guild members pick up and sew together, and she's coordinated every aspect of distribution.  Nobody has a bigger heart!

So I Fell on My Noggin...

What I look like two days post-ER.  I'll spare you the "before-stitches" photos. 

Yep, I fell on my head.   Or rather my left eyebrow.

One minute I was walking along the sidewalk near the El Cerrito Plaza BART station, on my way back from San Francisco, and the next minute my left temple was hitting the pavement hard.  No sense of tripping, no catching myself with my hands.  Ack!

I got out a mirror and saw a deep cut over my left eye where the lens of my glasses had sliced into my eyebrow (I know, the verb).   My first thought--truly--wasn't about scarring.  No, it was not.   It was, "Shit,  I'm going to have to go to the ER."

 View from my cubicle in the ER.   I wasn't wearing these shoes when I fell but some cute flats that don't fit right.  Vanity!

Jerry came home from work and drove me over to Alta Bates Hospital, and there we sat from 5:15-9:15, when I finally escaped with four stitches.

The wait:  long and boring.  After while, we swapped books--I read about endangered butterflies, and Jerry took on my  Barbara Pym novel:

Jerry reading Jane and Prudence

Me:  So what do you think of Barbara Pym's book?

Jerry:  Not much happens.

The actual thread

While the ER doc stitched me up, she told me that she was a Berkeley grad who went to Philadelphia for med school, then on to a residency at UCLA. She worries about her gray hairs and asked where I got my hair colored and how much it cost.  (I was aghast--dollar amounts in front of one's husband?!)  This to distract me from the distinct pattern of pricks I was feeling despite a local anesthetic.

Finally, with three pages of "Wound Instructions" and minus a steep $200 co-pay, we escaped into a very cool, breezy night.


Thanks to everyone who sent supportive messages on Facebook during this this mini-ordeal.  Very cheering!  Also, the follow-up e-mails.

I'm fine.  My knees are skinned ("abrasions," per doctor), and I have a black eye, but the cut ("laceration") doesn't hurt, and tomorrow I'll be allowed to get it wet so I can wash my hair.  My bangs will cover the scar.  Stitches out on Friday.

* * * * *

Today we went for a walk in Lucas Valley, in Marin County, and it felt good to be in one piece and able to walk a trail on a glorious spring day:

Miller Creek Watershed

My caregiver and ambulance driver

On the way home, we stopped at the corner where I fell, because I wanted to figure out what happened:

I think it must have been the raised seam in the middle of the photo that tripped me up, because I was walking up the street and suddenly landed in the smooth rectangle just beyond that seam.  The curb was recently modified to accommodate wheelchairs.