I saw dolphins

I knew months in advance that I would be moving here. I didn't know exactly what that meant, but I knew it was coming. I expected to miss my family and the wonderful people I know and love back in Oregon. Now that I'm here though, I've come to feel some unanticipated losses, little things I didn't see coming in all my preparation to leave.

I miss my 4runner. A lot. Sure it doesn't get the greatest gas milage in the world, but I spent a lot of quality time with that car. We understood each other. I knew how to drive it, how to park it, where the e-brake is, that the lights turn off when you open the door... I miss that car. And although Landon's shiny Sentra is a nice, zippy car... I'm still learning to appreciate it. Stupid stick shift.

I miss my fully stocked kitchen. After finding myself defending the merits of non-stick cookie sheets to Landon last week (plus feeling very lost in the grocery store), I really miss the kitchen in my parents house. So many cupboards.... so many demarle sheets and pans, and all the ingredients you would need sitting there waiting to be made into something yummy... and even when we declared there "was no food in the house", there was still food in the house. You had to work a little harder but there was definitely still food there.

I miss a predictable shower. I love my new home but the shower is like a hotel shower- you never really know what you're going to get. And each time you turn it on it's a different amount of adjustment to get it just right... and that's if it's cooperating.

I miss my dining table. Trust me, when you don't have one, you notice it's gone.

The table is one of the last things on our list to complete our home, so I'm not too worried about that. Landon fashioned us a wonderful make-shift table for the meantime out of rubbermaid bins and a whiteboard, so we can at least sit down to eat together when the opportunity presents itself.

Of course there are a lot of things I like about being here as well. It's sunny and a generally nice temperature outside just about all of the time. We're only a couple of miles from the beach so it's very pretty and I love being so close to the ocean (even though I don't go in it). We were driving down the 101 yesterday and Landon says "hey look, dolphins." and sure enough, I saw dolphins surfing in the waves. I felt a little silly to be so excited but I had never seen dolphins before. Downtown is pretty cool too, with all the shops and restaurants- and free parking under 75 minutes. I like that our neighbors have wind chimes, and I like all the trees. I love our home- despite a temperamental bathroom, we are very blessed to be here.

After living in just one place for so long you start to find even mundane things interesting enough to stick out to you at a new location- like an abundance of screen doors, or an usually large population of obnoxious birds.

monopoly money

Most journeys to Walmart prior to yesterday, with rare exception, had followed the same pattern. I dread going but walk in with purpose, quickly become overwhelmed, and after as few demoralizing minutes as possible I make my escape with or without the items I intended to purchase.

For those tracking the story of the newest Bingham family, Landon and I have been married for a month now and in Santa Barbara for several weeks. We are extremely grateful for the generosity of others that put anything at all in our new home- kitchen appliances, cleaning supplies, a couch, etc. We found ourselves pretty well off, but definitely missing some essentials. Also, I love Target, but they were very selective about what could be returned. So, on the night before we left for California, we took all the items Target had rejected to Walmart and surprisingly, they took all kinds of things we didn't want to move with us and handed us a gift card for our troubles. Apparently they take anything they carry in their stores, even if it wasn't bought there.

Our mission yesterday was to fill in our missing essentials. Armed with our gift cards and a GPS, we made our way to Kohls, Walmart, and Target with a list I had put together after a week and a half of living here and noticing what was... missing. Like a garbage can, for example. As pretty as using shiny wedding gift bags was for our garbage needs, that was a short-lived solution. We decided to approach the warehouse-like establishments in a particular order due to the amount we had to spend at each store. After purchasing silverware at Kohls, we drove to Walmart to see what we could take care of there before moving on to Target, where we had the most to spend.

After parking and approaching what appeared to be a small city (Landon assured me it was just a Walmart), we apprehensively entered and began finding the items on our list. We managed to find and purchase my ENTIRE (rather sizable) list at Walmart, plus some extra items, for under $150. Say what you want about them (and I would have been right there with you before yesterday)- Walmart did us a huge favor by selling so much stuff for so cheap. When my biggest letdowns are accidently buying garbage bags without a drawstring and white lightbulbs instead of yellow, it's a successful venture. I don't want to copy my receipt here to prove my point, but we needed a lot and Walmart had it. For a lot less than we could have hoped for.

That's not even the happy ending. Having taken care of nearly everything at Walmart, we found ourselves at Target with a lot of gift card dollars, and even after we bought the set of pots and pans I had scouted out for weeks we had enough left over to purchase a TV- a luxury I hadn't anticipated so soon.

"So, do you like Santa Barbara?"

I've probably been asked that about a dozen times in the last couple weeks. Honestly I don't have a good answer, so I say something honest like "It's pretty here." It's not that I DON"T like Santa Barbara... I'm pretty sure I do like it, actually... it's just been such a huge adjustment to married life and coast guard life and moving away from home life that it's hard to separate out what the state of California is responsible for and what's just life. So I'm withholding judgement for the time being.

I love my apartment. I love that I get to see Landon more than once every couple months. I love being close to the water. It's only been ghastly hot one day out of the weeks I've been here (and the city was kind of on fire at the time, so even that might be excused), so weather is nice. Downtown shops and little restaurants we've discovered like Jack's Bistro and a yummy thai place are nice. And we have a pretty awesome coast guard couple as friends.

Maybe I just don't have anything to compare it to, or maybe everything is just all so new that I can't get a clear picture on it. In any case, I don't know if I like Santa Barbara yet.

But it sure is pretty.

Courtney in California

So... it's been quite an adventure these last couple weeks. Landon flew to Oregon, we were married, then we drove a moving truck down here to Santa Barbara, where we will be residing for an undetermined amount of time. After much trial and tribulation we found the perfect place to make our new home, where I am currently in the process of unpacking and finding where everything should go. I'm thinking about starting a new blog for Landon and me, not that he'll write but it'd be a good way to keep track of us, as we'll be exploring some geographics with our living situation for the foreseeable future.

I still feel like I'm playing pretend when I introduce myself as "Courtney Bingham" or refer to Landon as my husband or anything like that. There are a lot of adjustments, ranging from the deep emotional to the inane. But that's life. And this is mine.