Settling in – 2

Spoiler alert: no photos.

Spoiler alert: introspection and rambling.

I was going to title this post "Coping," but I reconsidered. Although coping appears to be the human condition at the moment. Many people around me are dealing with loss – terrible, painful issues concerning health, finances, loved ones, all of the above, some of the above. Others are dealing with the problems of excess: the Palm Desert house still isn't finished. The remodel is over budget. The Mercedes is on back order (there is a lot of money in he Coachella Valley). The kind of problems we all say we wish we had.

I would be a hopeless kvetch to describe my current situation as coping. A more apt description – and more challenging for me personally – is "being patient."

At the invitation of dear friends I drove to Los Angeles on Thursday to house sit their lovely mansionette in Chatsworth, a suburb of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley. It was a perfect opportunity for me to do some research on my business idea. As an added bonus, I was going to reward myself with a visit to the Getty Museum for yet more stunning blog photos. (I have low expectations for the art in the museum. It is the Getty, after all, but the building and grounds are reputed to be muy photo worthy.)

Friday morning, after seeing off my hosts who were driving to Santa Cruz to see their son graduate magna cum laude and cum laude – in a double major, no less – I took off in my car. My plan was to check out shops in Santa Monica and go the Getty.

It was 9:30 in the morning. Even with Friday rush hour, I gave myself until 2:30 PM to get to The Getty to wait out rush hour. Life was an adventure. I was revisiting old territory with a new perspective. I lived here for six years from 1988 to 1994. Banished was my conviction that LA is all seven circles of Dante's Inferno.

For about 15 minutes, I was able to maintain that illusion. And then I hit traffic. And stayed in traffic. Clogged traffic. On the freeway. On side streets. Everywhere. By the time I had finished in Santa Monica it was already 2:30 and I had done about an hour of shopping against 4 hours of sitting in traffic. It turned out I couldn't get to the Getty because both the main off ramp and the detour they directed me to were blocked. I made the twenty minute drive back to where I was staying in a little over an hour, stopped by Trader Joe's for dinner fixings, and retreated back to the pool and garden of the mansionette. Vowing not to venture over the hill again.

Saturday, I luxuriated in the lushness of the garden, went to a movie ("Rock of Ages" a guilty pleasure) and came back for more garden luxuriating. I got a text from a guy I had been communicating with and we agreed to meet for lunch the next day. My hosts got back that evening. We had a newsy visit before they hauled their tired bodies off to bed.

Sunday was the money shot. My hosts and I had a scrumptious and insanely healthy breakfast, I did a load of laundry (I am in-suite laundry deprived in Palm Springs), then took off to meet my potential new  acquaintance. We had lunch at Rive Gauche Cafe on Ventura Blvd (highly recommended) and talked. Turns out he worked for many years as a furniture salesman in Los Angeles. He was a font of useful information, and a nice guy as well. After lunch we sought out an Asian import store further down the boulevard where my hosts had purchased a buddha for their garden. The owner is a Thai-Chinese man from Korat, Thailand. He imports the southeast Asian equivalent of cottage furniture. Rustic, even whimsical statues, chests and tables that work very well as accent pieces in mega-mansion decor. Between him and my new acquaintance,  I got some valuable feedback about my idea.

I drove back to Palm Springs today and will continue doing research here. Clearly this business, if it is to be, is not going to spring full blown, Athena-like, from my head. It's going to take patience, persistence, and diligence (not my strongest suits).

Interestingly, my brief visit to LA (which is still all seven circles of hell, by the way) raised a few ghosts that will probably never be completely exorcised. They are less troubling now, but their spirits still cast a shroud over the city for me. I know I'll be going back, and it's fine for a visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.