Adventures in Housesitting

Posted on September 13, 2016 by 4evamaria

Hello all!

I spent the last week of August housesitting. I should probably refer to this more as catsitting, as the house didn’t need as much attention as the two furballs I was charged with: Lily and Scamp. Since I didn’t do much traveling this summer, I thought I would have a bit of a staycation instead. Because of the crummy bay area weather lately, I unfortunately only got one day poolside, but I did spend a whole lot of time entertaining the rascal cats! They turned out to be quite the handful, in the best way possible.

You know it’s “vacation” when your evening email perusal involves a can of champagne & a bendy straw.

Despite my staycation consisting of things that I normally do (laundry, making dinner, etc.), it was nice to have a bit of a change of pace, a change of environment. Having two kitties follow me around certainly helped make me feel more at home. Despite being brother and sister, their little personalities couldn’t have been more different. Scamp (the giant cat sitting awkwardly in his cat tree above) behaved more like a dog than anything, constantly bringing me his toys and meowing at me incessantly. I would occasionally have entire conversations with him—he was a very Chatty Cathy. Lily, on the other hand, would only come out when I brought out food or when she was feeling like having a bit of attention. She was most definitely the more sensitive one of the two, but grew more used to having me around as the week wore on.

On top of having the cats to keep me entertained, I really enjoyed having a bit more space to spread out. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my little apartment, but it felt oddly luxurious to have a living room to have a cup of coffee in each morning. And of course there was the pool access! In short, I would highly recommend the occasional “staycation” vacation. It would have been lovely to have a few extra days off, but I’m currently squirreling away my vacation days to visit family back in Austria in November. I know that vacation is mere months away, and I’m so looking forward to it. In the meantime, I still get to visit the cats and lounge poolside, weather permitting. I certainly can’t complain.

EVA♥

Bay Area Living

Posted on September 16, 2014 by 4evamaria

Hello everyone and happy Monday.

An Eva in her natural habitat. Photo c/o Patrick Baron

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

I thought I’d share some photos with you from my latest adventures across the bay. I finally got to visit the Wave Organ installation in the Marina recently. It’s quite unique, made with recycled stone from the old Laurel Hill cemetery, and home to some beautiful views of the bay and the Golden Gate bridge. I anticipate many a day spent out on the hidden stone bench, with a cup of coffee from my favorite doughnut place right around the corner.

Those of you that have visited, or may live in the Bay Area, know that San Francisco is entirely its own creature. That’s what so many people like about it. It’s a veritable melting pot of people, home to the beautiful and the bizarre. Despite having grown up in this area, the last five years of my life spent here have been filled with new neighborhoods, restaurants, and people. And while I’m entirely taken with the city, and everything it has to offer, I sometimes find myself wishing that I wasn’t as “lucky” to have grown up here. Most of us have a desire that drives us to start our adult lives elsewhere, away from our parents and the quiet streets we grew up on in the urge to create something entirely our own. I can’t really complain. When I get restless, I have the luxury of getting in my car and driving somewhere entirely new, where no one knows me. There, among the unfamiliar faces, I can act as much of an idiot as I want. If I feel like being the girl in the impossible shoes, teetering around like a baby giraffe, I can. If I feel like having pink hair and thrifting my afternoons away, I can. If I feel like wearing no makeup and only my favorite Lululemon, I can. I can temporarily reinvent myself as many times as I wish, all I need to do is pick a new city, or a different neighborhood. As much as Bay Area transplants feel as if they belong here, in whatever city they find themselves, with little wiggle room, I feel as if I can belong anywhere. Does that make sense? Or is this just the combination of insomnia and too many Tv Land re-runs?

Just some thoughts.

EVA♥

The Bugs.

Posted on July 31, 2014 by 4evamaria

Hello everybody!

Alright, so today, I’ve decided to do something a bit unconventional (at least thus far) on Watch Me Juggle. It’s my first official, random series. It was all inspired by my initial lack of inspiration that I documented a short while ago, aptly entitled: Brain is Cobwebs. First off, I just have to say that you, dear readers, are pretty dang funny. While my total dissatisfaction with my latest content was leaving me frustrated, you were coming up with ideas for me, and were oddly fascinated by the emptiness/randomness that was my brain recently.

Bless y’all. That’s all I’m saying. So, without further ado, I present you with Part I of the “Cobweb” series. Please enjoy the irony, in that I’m writing about bugs today. It’s unintended, I assure you.

That’s a huge freakin’ moth, in my humble opinion.

Now, I realize that in many places in the world, there are much larger bugs than this. But, when you leave your house early in the morning with your car keys in hand, the last thing you expect to come in contact with is a powdery bug the size of your fist hitching a ride on the back of your car. Now, I’m not the usual girl who screams at the mere sight of a spider. I admit that they disgust me in almost every way, but the happy pacifist in me will also scoop one up in a tissue and set it free outside anytime. With well disguised revulsion, of course. For those of you that are less inclined to practicing your poker face, or remotely getting near a spider, may I recommend hairspray and a kitchen pot? This is particularly effective with cane spiders, although I luckily don’t have the firsthand experience.

Despite the fact that I can handle most spiders with ease, there are bugs out there that have made me scream, cartoon-like, and clamber up on any available surface. When I first moved back to the Bay Area, a conscientious roommate of mine would regularly compost. While said roommate was out-of-town one weekend, our kitchen compost bin stood unnoticed and neglected- that is until I glanced down one evening and saw a single maggot crawling near my foot. There was screaming, some hysteria, and I may or may not have brandished a spatula frantically at another roommate while simultaneously trying to climb atop the microwave that was occupying most of the counter space. This was a proud moment for me, clearly. In short, I’m sure there’s a deep, intrinsic fear of insects embedded in all of us, yet, to make a long story short, it’s ok if you just think they’re icky.

Before I go- Big shout out to you, Emily. You gave me complete justification to write about the most random things I could think of….ever.

EVA♥