Familiar Faces in a Strange Land

I'm really going overboard to call San Diego "A Strange Land", but then, waggling atop a shimmying surfboard in shark-patrolled waters and calling it entertainment is quite foreign to my concept of "fun", so it is a bit strange, to me at least. The truth of the matter is that I hear more English spoken around me than I did while living in the culturally diverse Bay Area.

One thing mind-boggling about our new location is that you can't go to the grocery store without tripping over a tanning salon, usually adjacent to a nail salon as well, but my summary on those require another post entirely.

What? Are we not getting ENOUGH sun in this particular latitude filthy with UV rays, but have to go have a lie-down under an artificial mechanism to further the leathering process? Someone clue me in. During the winter, I noticed several women trotting through their errands in workout shorts sporting evenly golden legs, "KFC, Crispy-Style", I dubbed them, but then, with markedly white arms and faces. Spot-tanning??? Why? My mother's brilliant comment to this would be, "Repeat after me; we are all STUPID."

All that is to say that we gleefully welcome friends from the past who pop in to say "hello" and sit a while. It brings a sense of comfort and security when those who knew us in our "other land" and believe we are somewhat normal, stop in and have a cuppa something hot and visit and allow us to feel comfortable in our own, not-very-dark-by-San-Diego-standards skin for some moments. It's a treat; one we've been blessed by at least once a month, as people have been so kind as to pass through and ring the bell.

One of my favorites is when our long time pals stop in with their 9 children. It's just a delight from the moment they tumble through the front door in all sizes, ranging from wee baby diminutiveness to Andrew's towering 6'4" (or are you taller, Andrew? You're so tall, I'm afraid I can't accurately judge hovering in my own lower altitude.). Every nook of the house chirps with happy little kid sounds as games and toys from our own children's pasts are taken down, dusted off and spread out for serious and inventive scrutiny. Inevitably, mouth-watering tasties are produced in the kitchen. This last time, the big girls giggled their way through making homemade apple pies for breakfast. I'm not kidding. We had to ply a few of the hungrier set with buttered toast til the pies were done bubbling in the oven, but the novelty to us Stokeses of being served dessert for breakfast was enough to make the day quite perfect.

I'm not saying I won't enjoy your visit unless you make me apple pie for breakfast, but Sarah and Mary raised the bar for company standards pretty high with that stunt. I can hardly wait for them to come again.

In the meantime, I'll keep trying to figure out the tanning salon phenomenon, but I'm pretty sure you won't find me stooping to PAYING to crisp up my legs or taking up surfing in order to accomplish my ultimate goal of successfully assimilating into the culture down here. I'll find other ways......