Maybe some of you who have credit with Citibank got the same letter I did, that they are raising the APR to 18.99% by the end of the year. It even made the news last night, so many of these letters went out recently.

I have been with Citibank for more than 20 years, since I was in college in the late 80s. It was the first credit card I ever had (I bought Crate & Barrel furniture for my first apartment with it), and I have never been late on payments or missed a payment. I suppose if I were better at math I could figure out just how much money I've made them. So the letter was kind of a slap in the face.

It would be on thing if they wrote and told me, "Hey, we notice you recently bought a Porsche online, have been watching a lot of pot-related movies on Netflix, and don't seem to get up before 10 in the morning. Are you even working?" But even then, they'd have to admit I haven't missed a payment, and pay way more than the minimum. So WTF?

No, they just said this gigantic raise in interest was so they could "continue to offer credit to everybody". Since when am I responsible for "everybody"? I didn't buy a house I couldn't afford. What are bad credit decisions beign passed on to me? I could start talking about socialized medicine here - is this socialized credit?

So, I was on the phone to them immediately to "opt out" of my credit card with Citibank. It hurt. It was like putting down a pet I'd had for 20 years. But it had bit someone, namely me. I can remember when all my credit cards had APR's under 5%. Almost 20% is just crazy. So I had to let it go. And wouldn't you know it, they had set up their phone tree so that if you received that letter, you "Press 1". The woman I spoke to was very polite, but didn't try to change my mind. Not like Comcast, which begged and pleaded and offered me lower prices when I tried to break off with them (AT & T cable tv is way better, by the way).

So there it is, Citibank is now out of my life, like 80s hair and high heels. Just like that. I've applied for credit elsewhere.

So, Dave and I went out to Pennsylvania for a week to spend time with his parents and make some wedding plans for the small family wedding we're going to have out there in May. We hope to also have a reception celebration here in California, maybe in summer.

Anyhoo, it was quite a trip. We got to the Oakland airport on time, but the flight was delayed almost 2 hours. However, the flight only took 4 hours, Coming back, the flight was on time, but took 6 hours. So it amounted to the same thing both ways. I knitted in the airport and on the plane (fortunately you can bring your needles on board now, I guess as long as they aren't too stabby), and I have almost a full scarf done. I did find out that my ID, my driver's license, expired almost a year ago, so I had a little trouble getting thru security. I never got a renewal notice from the DMV. Since our flight was delayed, I thought about going back home to get my passport, but then I realized that it was probably expired as well, since I got in 1999 for a trip to France, and passports last 10 years. How time flies.

We arrived at night in Dulles, and Dave's Dad picked us up in his brand new Honda van, courtesey of the Cash for Clunkers program. It's a very nice car. Dave's home is out in the country of Penn state, and it took us 2 hours to get there from the airport. The roads were smooth as glass, and it was very dark. I had to ask what we might be seeing if it were daylight. As we got closer to home, there were more and more cornfields, their sillhouettes casting creepy shadows and thoughts of Children of the Corn, or the X-files episode "Home". I started to wonder what I would do if the family turned out to be scary weirdos. Taxis definitely don't come out there.

Of course the home turned out to be lovely and welcoming, with a recently remodeled, large & lovely kitchen, and a dining room that looked out through grand windows on their own pristine woods. The views were fabulous: just trees, no neighbors. They also have a big deck and a hot tub, a huge "garage": a two story workshop and storage area as big as some homes, with its own charming woodburning stove. The house had brand new plush carpeting, and was full of primitive country halloween decor for the season. I was soon to find out that almost every boutique in the area sells all this primitive decor: berry wreaths and garlands, faith/hope/love boxes and plaques, crafted pumpkins, cornhusk scarcrows, ravens, teddy bears, and of course, barn stars. I think every 6th house has at least one barn star on the outside. They often come in "mustard yellow", which I would call gold, "barn red", "country blue", or painted to look like the american flag. There were stars everywhere. They were incorporated into curtains, quilts, tiebacks for the curtains, perforated tin candleholders, even pottery and dishes. I think its a pagan symbol and all these people don't realize what they're advertising. There were also more American flags being flown than I would see here on the 4th of July, and even some Confederate flags.

Some things I thought were odd. For instance, the proliferation of Pepsi vending machines. They were everywhere, even in front of a couple private houses. I suspect Pennsylvania is owned by PepsiCo. Also, despite it's being farm country and full of wonderful fertilzer from local cows, horses, goats, & chickens, there's not much in the way of gardening. Most houses had some mums up close to the house, but that's about it. Primroses, petunias, wax begonias and geraniums were the only other flowers I saw, other than one house that had some decent dahlias. But all gardens are small and up very close to the house, unlike California gardens. But of course unlike California, everyone has HUGE lawns, and riding mowers are de rigueur. There is also more than one John Deere outlet that we saw, and we took some pics by the pretty green & yellow machines. Oh yes, and the other odd thing - at the craft festivals we went to, they "sex" the portapotties, labeling them "She" and "He". I've never seen that done before.

We went to the Applebutter Festival in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. We will also be having the wedding there at the Country Inn, which absolutely charming. But there were more crafts at that festival that anyone could look at. So much to see, so much to eat. Funnel cake, corn dogs, carmel apples, baked goods (we got a rhubarb pie, apple turnover and sugar cookies to take home). The antique stores are loaded with shabby chic stuff that would easily fetch 3 times the price they are asking if they sold it here in the Bay Area. And shabby doesn't seem to be as chic in that area. I was mentioning how I like shabby chic and vintage stuff to Dave's mom, and how I kind of want to incorporate that theme into the wedding, and she didn't get it, saying she would prefer new stuff. I guess everybody wants what's over the fence. We got to see apple butter actually being made in giant pots over fires, and they had a wonderful band in a gazebo - I especially enjoyed their rendition of the Grateful Deand's "Friend of the Devil". I wanted to dance, but Dave still needs lessons. We also went to another craft fair in Bedford, but I was getting a little tired of seeing people clutching cornhusk scarecrows or wood cut out snowmen. One funny thing: I saw a guy in the porta-potty alley holding a cornhusk scarecrow. He was leaning against a wall, probably waiting for someone in the portapotty, but he looked like he was trying to sell shady, ill-begotten cornhusk scarecrows on the sly.

Seeing the vast hills, I began to realize how Dave might have been bored growing up. All the houses are the same colonial-type style. There's no museums nearby. Other than craft festivals and high school football games, there's not much to do out there. The trees were just changing and looking gorgeous, but anywhere you'd want to go is about 2 hours away. On the flip side, there is no tension driving like we have in California, and Dave's parents leave their door unlocked. It's great for a vacation, but I think I would miss the proximity of the ocean and all the weirdness of California if I tried to live there. But Dave's mom has gifted me a set of depression glass which came to her from her mother-in-law, and the wedding plans are coming together, and I feel really good about it all.

Seems like I've been to a lot of estate sales lately. It's always kind of sad, pouring over the christmas decorations and photos of a forgotten family member. Sometimes even drugs and enemas and remnants of the illness that did them in. All that stuff, stuffed into usually small houses. Today's house was actually of decent size - I would even be willing to buy it - it has manageable backyard, it's in a good neighborhood - still has lime green carpeting from the 60s or 70s, but most old people places do.

This estate sale started today, Friday, and will go until Sunday, so the wheeler-dealers asking for discounts were disappointed. My best advice if you ever go to an estate sale is to go for the kitchen - you can get some good deals on kitchen utensils and spices. This place was full of kitch, dolls and paintings of children, young ladies, roses. Unbelievable drapes. Bits of furniture. Hundreds of china knick knacks. A garage-full of christmas decorations. I had been drawn by the ad that promised a 1920s flower-stenciled dinette set, but it was gone by the time I got there.

I ended up in a bedroom going through linens. I like to collect vintage hankies. It's usually an inexpensive indulgence: for usually just a dollar, I can pick up something flowerey, delicate silk or airy cotton bit of history that I can keep in my purse to use and remind me of a slower time. Today, however, I was attracted to some slim boxes printed with "Saks Fifth Avenue". There were several boxes, one with an old computer punch card with data of the stock of nylons. These boxes held old-fashioned nylons that are worn with a garter belt, never used, pressed neatly, gossamer-light and the soul of femininity. So lovely.

I doubt they would even fit me, but I stood in a hot sweaty line to get them anyway. Just $6 total. One woman in line was getting a bagfull of jewelry totalling over $70, but came up $20 short. The cashier made her step out of line to pick over what she was going to leave behind, because the rest of us standing in line were ready to kill her. Another woman was trying to buy a chicken doorstop that wasn't for sale. A man was trying to buy some silver candlesticks, a wooden jewelry box, and some other things, but when the cashier wouldn't give him a reduced price because it was the first day of the sale, he just dropped everything (literally, some things broke), and left.

I couldn't wait to leave. I feel sad when I see a lifetime of treasures being pawed over. I hope to go out the viking way, with all my stuff on a burning boat, or safely willed to friends who love the items just like I did.

I still am not sure why I bought those things, but I've learned to trust my instincts and buy intuitively. You can't usually go to an estate or garage sale with a set agenda. Now I open the boxes and am still startled by the beauty of old-fashioned nylons. Probably useless, but so pretty.

Three years ago I had a garage sale and made $400. Same two years before that. Today, only about $250, and more than half of that was Dave's stereo stuff. A bit disappointing for me. I thought I had brought really great stuff to the table: antique chair and hat stand, mannequin, stuffed chair and ottoman, vintage curtains/drapes/linens/toys/clothes. I thought I had prepped well: advertised 3 times on craigslist, put up really good signs. But still we didn't get much traffic. Maybe Saturday would have been better - we found out today was also Alameda flea market day, and apparently very crowded there, so that's a factor. I thought we had a very nice display, and one person said we should have our own shop. I wonder if I could get a spot at a cooperative type antique/boutique place.

I don't even bother to put prices on stuff anymore, because people always haggle. Even if it's just a matter of a dollar, they want it for less. An amazing number of people stopped, wanted to buy something, and found they had no money on them. So next garage sale, we will ahve an ATM. :-/ Not to be sexist, but I did find that men tend to be better shoppers from a seller's point of view - they tend to go for the higher priced items and make a decision quickly, instead of circling and hemming and hawing and then buying nothing.

We did meet more of our neighbors, which that was nice. Some stopped to make sure we weren't moving. We got compliments on the house. We don't have a super-fantabulous mansion, but I guess our place is well-kept. One lady admired my lavender bush, and went on to say she is going to have a lavender farm in Colorado. She was just visiting her daughter who lives in the neighborhood, and walking her dog. We liked her dog, an Irish Setter named Franklin, very much. We did not like the little girl who threw a tantrum over a doll and her parents not buying it for her immediately (no wallet on their walk). They did come back and buy the doll, some dvds, and a toy chest I had refurbished, but hung around talking and the girl kept asking the same questions over and over again.

It's a strange phenomenon of garage sales that people seem to think they can chew your ear forever for free, like it was our pleasure to hear every possibly volume of their personal history while our toes get sunburnt and they don't buy anything at all. Dave is in sales, and says he's used to it, but I'm not super-social, and although I usually consider myself a good listener, I thought a lot of people were going too far. But that's just me.

So, we made enough so I can buy a new ottoman I've had my eye on, and Dave can buy something special for himself. We are both tired and sunburnt, and wondering how we can sum up the energy to do it again, because so much didn't sell. We had to leave a bunch of free stuff on the curb, but we took a lot back into the house as well. It's my secret shame that the downstairs shower is actually a storage unit!

So, a couple months ago Dave & I found this cabin on craigslist in the Santa Cruz area for less than $100 a night. Total privacy in the wooded mountains, bed, bath, hot tub, and they even stock the fridge! It is very tiny, and reminds us both of studio apartments we've lived in. From there we can head to Santa Cruz in a few minutes and visit the crowds at the Beach & Boardwalk, or go up Hwy 1 and find a more private beach. There's always so much to do there, and we never manage it all. We still haven't been horseback riding, nor have we walked to the falls that are just a mile away in the woods by the cabin. We love the hot tub.

First we went to a gathering in one of the parks in Santa Cruz - all the hippies were there, dancing and hula hooping to Grateful Dead-type music. It was clear this was a neighborhood thing, and most people knew eachother well. It was beautiful, and there were some strange trees there I've never seen before with odd, spongey trunks. Someone had embedded a spoon in one.

On this trip the water at the beach wasn't as cold as it has been on other trips, but unfortunately it was full of seaweed, so swimming was kinda gross. The smaller beaches were too windy to hang out, but the main beach wasn't windy enough for our kite, a one-eyed purple dragon which we've flown on other windy beach days.

We got a free picnic basket on Freecycle that has table cloth, napkins, plates, even champagne glasses. I think some people at the beach thought we were putting on airs, pouring our soda into such glasses. I'm always interested in other people's beach gear - somebody else had an umbrella just like the one I had picked out, which I had thought was so unique. Some people set up tents instead of umbrellas. One family had zipped up their tent with a toddler inside and just left him there. I guess that baby didn't have a digging instinct.

We made friends with a cute litte Pomeranian on the beach. It looked like a puppy, but turned out to be 14 years old. It was playing with a chihuahua somebody else brought, and the latter dog looked like a miniature version of the first, already tiny dog.

I guess we were pretty good with the sunscreen, because neither of us have a burn. It's always good for me to get a little color, though. I've been reading that doctors are realizing it's good for one to spend some time in the sun for Vitamin D - people, especially children, aren't getting enough these days.

I like my house and living in the Bay Area, but we love the cabin in the woods and being near the beach. We fantasize more and more about moving there. We even looked at a house, way out of our price range, but it was still fun. Can't wait to visit again.

Oh yes, we also watched the Depp version of Willy Wonka from the cabin's dvd collection. Colorful & creepy.