Good Morning!<\/p>\n
My name is Kym, and I live in the foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada Mountains. With good traffic, Lake Tahoe is about a 2 hour drive. I have 3 cats, and live in a cozy apartment. I work from home, doing computer stuff, am an Episcopalian (raised Baptist \u2013 talk about a culture shock!) and may one day go to seminary. I collect cat things, coffee things, clocks, and Christmas trees. I am a member of Food Addicts in Recovery, a 12-step program for those of us who have problems controlling how we eat. Like AA, only for food. I fight chronic, clinical depression, and have since I was about 8. Seem to be on a good cocktail of psych drugs for now, and I hope it lasts. Medication roulette is no fun. What else? My BFF lives in Texas, near Dallas, and volunteers at In-Sync Exotics<\/a> – a big cat rescue in Wylie TX, I\u2019ve been there, and it is way cool.<\/p>\n Jen and I first met online in a LiveJournal group called \u201cCustomers Suck\u201d where we hit it off pretty well, and it has just grown from there. We have only met in person once, and while I was hoping it would happen again before she moved, life intervened. We met Memorial weekend of 2011. I had been in a really bad car accident (I don\u2019t recommend flipping an SUV), and I was in the TICU in Roseville, and she came to visit me, which I greatly appreciated. I\u2019ve been a reader of her blogs for years. I think she is a very special, stronger than she realizes, incredible woman.<\/p>\n (Jen’s note: Kym baked cookies for the nurses and staff at Daniel’s NICU and sent me one of the cutest onesies on the planet — it said “got milk?”)<\/em> I remember one time, I was maybe 8 or 9, when I decided to collect clams to see if they had pearls in them. So I gathered up about 50 itty bitty (about \u00bd inch across) clams, put them in a shoebox and brought them home. That had been our last night of vacation. About a week later, my mom comes into my room and asks, \u201cwhat is that smell??!!\u201d Alas, all my clams had died, and not a pearl in a single one. Ah well. <\/p>\n I have been back to visit many times since then, but it is not the same. Some of it is just the rosy memory of childhood, but some is also that it is no longer an unknown place. UCI<\/a> students have discovered it, and so now there isn\u2019t room to breathe in the summer on the island. It kind of makes me sad, because it was so quaint and special. Progress, I guess. But when I need to go to a happy place, Balboa Island<\/a> as a child is one of the places I go.<\/p>\n Good luck with the move, Jen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Good Morning! My name is Kym, and I live in the foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada Mountains. With good traffic, Lake Tahoe is about a 2 hour drive. I have 3 cats, and live in a cozy apartment. I … Continue reading
\n
\nMy Favourite Summer Memory<\/strong>
\nActually, I\u2019m combining several summers and their memory, because my family did the same thing every year for more than a decade. We rented a house for a week on Balboa Island<\/a>, near Newport Beach. It might be July, it might be August, but we did it every year. My mom and I, my aunt and cousins (first one, eventually 3) and my uncle would come down on weekends. We played in the sand, fed the ducks, took the ferry back and forth across the bay. It was 10\u00a2 to cross as a pedestrian and 50\u00a2 for a carful, and the 3 ferries were named Captain, Commodore, Admiral. We\u2019d go to the FunZone and arcades, take the harbor tour where you could see John Wayne\u2019s house and yacht, Buddy Ebsen\u2019s home as well. My aunt and I were almost run over by John Wayne one time. We were crossing the \u201cmain drag\u201d on the island \u2013 it had lanes in \u201cboth\u201d directions \u2013 and he was driving a battered old station wagon and not paying attention. When he stopped, he got out of the car and profusely apologized, and went on his way. Balboa bars (like an Eskimo Pie, but dipped in toppings, not just chocolate \u2013 my favorite was butter brickle), eating breakfast at the Pavilion restaurant, walking the circumference of the island at night, all the fun little shops \u2013 that was always such a happy time.<\/p>\n