No me gusta.

So here's a funny thing about living in the southern hemisphere: seasonal affective disorder is totally upside down.  Like, there's just no point in being depressed in January, despite overspending on Christmas presents and siphoning gallons of whipped cream directly into your esophagus.  It's summertime in January.  All that post-hoc rationalization that northerners go through to explain why January sucks so much actually becomes pretty transparent.  It's not that they're suddenly roly-polies in elastic waist pants; it's that sunlight is never actually hitting their skin.  They can and should boohoo, but not because it's January.  Because it's the dark of winter.

Now, me, well.  Not that you asked, but anyway.  I've never been a big fan of springtime.  As a kid, spring meant Easter and way too much church.  You want me to dye an egg, hide it in the sun and then eat it?  Foul.  As a teenager, spring meant watching everyone around me strip down to pastel shorts.  I spent months with eyes averted.  Later, I got hay fever.  Fuck spring, I thought.  It's a loser's season.  Made for weaklings in pink.

As it happens, my birthday is in October.  Personally, over a plentiful number of years, I've enjoyed the experience of birth and some sort of metaphorical rebirth in the fall.  Sure, it's crispy and cool.  Sure, it's getting dark a little earlier.  But, it's also a very clever palette that fall brings.  Much more complementary to my skin tones and soothing to a rational mind.  (Yes, if you prefer the peachy pastels of the primavera, I'm judging you.  You want to punch me with that pink satchel?  Because I promise I'll get ink on it, pronto.)  Spring is fragile, undeveloped, thin.  Fall is hardy, robust, and dependable.  You can't jump into a pile of cherry blossoms.  

So, now I'm confronted with anemic spring hosting my birthday.  And I don't want to appear ungracious (though I absolutely am), so I'm contemplating an antipodean revision.  Is it okay to celebrate six months hence?

See, I don't want to get the spring mopes while I try to get amped for cake.  I want to ridicule the transience of the flowers, go get waxed and prepare for summer.  And when the time comes, when the air cools and the leaves start to change, then I'll be happy to do the good kind of deep thinking that birthdays inspire.  Yes, older.  Yes, wiser.  Yes, cooler and richer and stronger and cozier.  Like fall.

Ah, geez. Home is here and there.

Well.  Hello, friend.  It's been too long.  You might want to know just where I've been.  Or not.  Either way, I'm telling you.

Sand doesn't come softer.

I went home.  The other home.  The northern hemisphere home.  And although it was perfectly possible for me to sit for a minute to tap out a few snarky comments about the super abundance of inane television or fat people or super abundance of fat, inane people on television, I didn't.  I was busy.  Doing things that make me not fat or inane, I guess.  So there.

Mostly, we played on the beach.  That's South Mission, if you're wondering.  Home to the rickety old Giant Dipper and the highest per capita rate of dude bros anywhere in San Diego County.  I love home.  Almost as much as I love this home.

We cruised the boardwalk on cheapass cruisers purchased for the month we had.  In the U.S.A., it's cheaper just to buy a brand-spanking-new bicycle than to find a used one.  I know; I tried.  The only bike I found for cheaper than the smooth Chinese coaster required that I wait three weeks before I could actually take possession as the store wanted to check the police records.  Yeah, see, that wasn't going to work for me.  And renting a bike would have required a mortgage.  So.  Yes.  I purchased two bikes.  Fortunately, we gifted them to the needy bike-less when we left so they'll continue to prowl the sandy strip.

Not realizing the masochism this could later impose, I counted the number of rolled tacos I ate while in San Diego.  That would be 14.  I also had chilaquiles 5 times.  And I drank 6 glasses of horchata.  Remind me not to review this post in about a month when the cravings awaken from their satiated slumber.

God of Tacos?  We need you here.

Almost everyday, under an indecisive summer sun, we paddled out onto Mission Bay for a little stand-up paddle action.  Really works your core, my long-time bud sarcastically teased, and yes, indeed, it does.  A little.  Like, if you haven't really used your core in 15 years because you've been watching all of the gajillion Iron Sous Prep and Bus Chef shows from the comfort of a barco-lounger.  Or, I suppose, if you actually go into some killer waves.  Which I didn't.  Still.  It's cool and relaxing, civilized even.  Like taking an evening stroll on the water.  How you like them eggs, Jesus?

Cheap but not lame.

Home meant a time for lofty goal-setting.  Here's what we came up with: retire as soon as possible.  For reals.  Despite the obvious and tragic disadvantages of the rampant unemployment in the States right now, I got to say it was really nice spending time with jobless friends and jobless strangers who had the time and energy to meander through farmer's markets.  The farmers, for their part, seemed responsive to the conundrum and advised that everything was cheap.  Yes.  It was.

I love you, San Diego.  And all the people in it, or near it, or who traveled to be in it with us.  Friends and city alike are missed, and I'm not just saying that because we had like a foot of hail attack us today and most of it is still frozen in the cracks of our deck.