Went back to Santa Cruz. Couldn't help it.

I think the boardwalk there may be one of my favorite places on the planet, and I am certain that it is one of our son's: he just (like, this week) made the leap from "rides are kind of scary and I may or may not panic at the idea of either getting on one or having to get off, ever" to GIVE ME ALL OF THE RIDES AND GIVE THEM TO ME YESTERDAY. We bought him an unlimited ride bracelet because we're suckers and because his reaction when we said we were going back to The Place With The Rides was priceless, and it was worth every penny. (The four-dollar Dixie cup of watered-down root beer I could have done without, but that's my fault for forgetting the golden rule of carnival-going, which is Bring Thine Own Food Or Pay Unconscionable Amounts Of Money For Stale Pretzels With Neon Cheese.)

You guys, I am having so much fun.

The most surprising thing about our temporary apartment is how familiar it feels to me. It feels familiar for obvious physical reasons - it's a straightforward, pretty generic place, the type that you find in little complexes all over California, with stucco walls and beige carpets and low ceilings and a tiny patio and sliding closet doors, and I recognize it from the Los Angeles apartments that my friends and I lived in in our early twenties. But more than that, it's something about the spareness. The absence of "things," and the space that absence creates.

When I first moved out to California all by myself, not really knowing anyone at all, in my bedroom was a dresser and a bed, and in my postage-stamp living room was a couch, a desk, a coffee table and a TV table. Every piece was from Ikea and either white or that particular shade of Ikea birch wood. And I loved that apartment so much: it was simple and clean in a way that made a hard period in my life feel easier. It felt like "me" in a way that I don't know any space I've lived in has ever felt since not because it was "stylish" or "unique" or "filled with personality"…but rather because the things in it were so pared-down, carefully curated because that was the only option available to me. Each and every thing I owned was there not because it was part of a collection or even just because I liked it; it was there because it mattered.

At twenty-two years old, I couldn't afford and didn't especially want things like fancy vases and art books and tchotchkes; I bought one candle at a time to set on my coffee table, and always spent a long time choosing a scent I really, really liked, burning it only sparingly. I didn't have the money for the fancy pillows and quilt I saw at Macy's, so I threw a hot-pink, fringed blanket that I'd found at a market in Santa Fe over the sheets I used in college, and all of a sudden my white box of a bedroom felt transformed.