CRAZY DAYS IN SAN DIEGO

I left Jim's place in Cardiff on Wed. Nov. 16th and headed to a cousin's home in Bonita. I headed south on I-5 , got on 805 South; then 54 East; then off at Briarwood.

I am related to my cousin through my father's side of the family. Today was his birthday so I was glad to be heading to see him. As his Godfather, I was supposed to send him something on each of his birthdays. I never have.

When I arrived at his house, I just couldn't help but notice the clutter in every room, every cabinet, every nook-and-crannie. All closets were overflowing with a myriad of designer-quality, clothing. Two complete rooms have been packed with boxes of "stuff"...I mean right up to the doorway, prohibiting entry of any kind...there's lots of nice furniture (my family heirlooms) and pictures behind all those boxes, but they couldn't be seen.

The hallway remains clear but between the kitchen and dining room there is just a path amidst the clutter where one is totally surrounded by "stuff". It's incredible! It's overwhelming...

The kitchen and dining room are covered with everything from dirty dishes to rare antiques sandwiched between last night's dinner.

The former garage is now a workshop, designed for picture framing. It too is crammed with things like machines, computers, cell phones and just plain workshop-related items like hammers and such. Thousands of items about the place. It's easy to lose something there. Like your sanity...

Such is the domain of my rather eccentric cousin...

It appears that my cousin disregards any form of preventive maintainence/or home chores. In other words, dishes pile up, things remain where he throws them, waste paper goes unemptied, litter boxes go unattended. Housework is a foreign word.

And my cousin has admitted to me that he is.....gay....(I've known it for 20 years or more).
And being a well-to-do and generous gay man, there's always group of his friends around. A nice group of guys.

After the first day, my cousin and I biforcated into two opposite time schedules. He sleeps during the day and rages at night, whereas I tried to keep what I think to be normal hours of being up-and-about during the day.

Last weekend found me at the Spring Valley Swap Meet. Just 5 miles or so away from where I'm staying in Bonita.

On Saturday, I arrived early and watched each arriving dealer being overwhelmed by prospective buyers. They swarmed over any new-arivee. Then, once satisfied--or disappointed in many cases, they'd look for another arriving truck full of whatever...and swarm all over that one, and then the next and so on... The lingua franca was 100% Spanish.

The Swap Meet offered some pretty "common demominator" type items (poor people selling their junk to other poor people) but over two days of hunting through piles and piles of stuff, I scored more than 20 ahola shirts and about 40 CDs for my own inventory.

Then I drove over the Coronado Bridge in search of a certain Coronado Hotel poster I'd seen before. The hotel was grand, indeed; but I had no luck in finding the desired poster, so I settled for some vintage luggage labels which I'll put on my trunks back in the Heartlands.

Freeway driving makes be a little nervous. It shouldn't, as all roads and exits are well marked. Plus I lived in California for a number of years. I'm just not used to or comfortable with the density of the the cars at any given time on the freeway. I guess I got used to those wide-open highways of the Midwest.