I just got back from a great weekend. I was invited to perform at a house concert/party on Saturday night in northern California where I will be doing some touring in the near future, so it was great to get out there and connect with new people.

I made plans to come into town early Friday, and then leave late on Sunday, with the intention of hooking up with friends. But after I had made all my non-refundable plans, I learned that everyone I knew was either out of town or unavailable that weekend, so I decided take a mini-vacation for myself.

I went online to Hotwire.com and got a room in a cutesy little art gallery/Bentley-infested beach town for $79.00 a night. Cool!

The first day, after I finally got there, I was a little tired from all the traveling (only got lost 2x though & new IPhone GPS was a big help!), so even though I managed to get in a little beach time, I shortly retired to my room with a take-out from the downstairs chop house (kobe beef & gruyere cheese on thinly sliced chip-style potatoes – yum!) and watched the debates. It was actually pretty great. The beef, cheese & chips combination I mean.

The next morning I got up around 7 and had to walk outside in order to get to the hotel lobby where the free coffee was, and the air was incredible. Cool and sea-breezy. So I got my coffee and just kept walking. For about a mile,  down the relatively deserted streets, past all the cute houses and shops and purple flowers everywhere, humming the Joni Mitchell song “When morning comes to Morgantown.”

I kept walking, all the way down to the beach, where I passed a few fisherman and people walking their dogs. It was a perfect morning.

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A few hours later when I was preparing to check out and leave for the place where the concert was going to be (about an hour away), I decided to pick up some flowers to bring to my hosts. I drove to a nearby (very cute!) market and there was a very nice looking man holding a motorcycle helmet standing in line in front of me. He said “Are you buying those flowers for me?” I said “Yes. Thank you for last night.”

We spoke briefly outside as I admired his Harley, and exchanged #s. He had a wonderful, Armenian accent and he said “I’m going to call you when I get back to… but it might not be a few days till.. etc. etc.” He said he was just trying to reassure me that he wasn’t a “typical guy” who said he would call and then not.” I reassured him. I said “That’s ok. I don’t care.”

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Then I drove to my hosts’ house where the party would be. It was an amazing house – the second to the last one, high up on a hill. There was only one house higher, but you couldn’t see it from the road because it had it’s own little entry gate and road to get to it. I asked my host if that other house was fancier than his, and he said oh yes – it was about double the size! Which was something – because the guestroom I was staying in was already bigger than my first house.

The concert/party went wonderful. A lot of great music, and I made a lot of great, new connections with wonderful people.

Then the next morning I hung out with a fellow singer/songwriter/philosopher who had also spent the night there. We sat on the veranda (as someone had clarified for me – this was not a “patio”, or a “deck”, but a “veranda” – seats around 60-80 pretty comfortably) overlooking the valley, as we sipped our coffee amidst more purple flowers.

He’s been divorced a long time and we got to talking about how people sometimes move right into new relationships, too quickly, and end up with a clone of the previous one.

I get it. I get lonely.  Sometimes a little scared. It would’ve been nice to have someone to hold hands with on the beach the day before, or to eat cheese and chips with (although they would’ve had to order their own:). And then, so many of these not-quite-right but-sort-of-ok men or work opportunities have come along, and I can almost see those little birdcages with their doors open calling to me: “come in! come in!” Ready to whisk this  hayseed out of the sky and lock the door tight behind me.

But this precious freedom right now… Lock yourself in the wrong birdcage and there is no romantic beach to walk on, even if you do catch the bird.