Cool Cats

Right now, we are living in an Airbnb in San Diego. This is the view from our ‘kitchen’ window.

It appears that no one in the neighborhood is over thirty and they are all wearing shorts.

Our unit is a studio apartment – one big room and a bathroom – in a nondescript building with seven other units. This sounds institutional but it is oddly homey.

Everything in our new little home is in grey tones, super clean and sleek, at least when we moved in a few days ago. It is very much like a hotel room but better because we can perk coffee and fry an egg on the gas stove in the morning.

Plus the door goes directly to the outside. This is important when there are two dogs in your party.

To get to our unit, we need to enter the code to the gate and then the code to the unit. This is after we have to somehow someway shoehorn our truck into a space meant for a two-door Honda. This is very hard because sometimes when we park, we cannot get out of the truck without sucking in our stomachs. We also have to fold in the side view mirrors. It is a production which demonstrates our regard for our young neighbors and their tiny cars.

Last night when we came home the group of young men in shorts sitting in a circle in the courtyard raised their cans of beer to us in greeting.

Why am I telling you this?

Because with this Airbnb rental, we have become hip again. We have eschewed the Holiday Inns of the world and their free breakfasts and magical waffle makers, their doll-size bars of soap, and one-cup coffee makers that only work on Thursdays. Now, we go with the flow, we know our codes, we walk our dogs across the liquor store parking lot at ten o’clock at night and listen to the young couples talking and laughing at the bar across the street. They pretend not to notice us and we appreciate that.

We are just folks in the ‘hood, at least for a few more days.