What a contrast to Delaware Park!
Normally I am fiercely proud of Buffalo. I am always thinking how beautiful our city is. But in Balboa Park, I found myself thinking: Why can't Buffalo be more like San Diego?
When it comes to parks, our city has blown it. You don't even have to contrast our parks with world-class parks like Balboa Park or San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. I have been to parks in St. Louis and Kansas City and thought the same thing. Our green space is nothing like the green space these other cities have. It does not come close.
Part of it is the Buffalo mentality. I think a lot of Buffalonians have a problem with quiet green space. They want to put something there. They want action. They want noise. So in Buffalo, beautiful flowers and landscaped paths take a back seat to screaming little kids playing soccer, big bellowing guys playing rugby, a truck route running through the center of Delaware Park.
Frederick Law Olmsted Schmolmsted!
Well, there are ways in which Buffalo is more peaceful than San Diego. We do not have the Angry Shopper. Here in San Diego, you can't browse Marshall's without feeling under assault by these weird women, striding briskly and aggressively in their heels ... What is your hurry? I want to ask. What are you trying to prove? Drivers here are more aggressive too. Changing lanes on the expressway is a fine art. It is an art I have thrown myself into mastering, seeing that I bought the rental car company's ripoff insurance and so have nothing to lose.
I have needed moments like the lunch in Balboa Park to de-stress from things like highway lane-changing. Also Leonard and I sat in the hot tub, did I mention that? I got to wear my new bathing suit from Target. I am going to say "bathing suit" instead of "swimsuit" from now on. I do not want the old-fashioned phrase "bathing suit" to fall from public usage.
This is a nice new bathing suit. It is not quite skimpy enough to be a bikini but certainly skimpy enough so that my mother would have a thing or two to say about it. It's funny how you never outgrow your mother lecturing you about the bathing suits you wear. (My mom, on another two-piecer I have: "I hope you didn't pay much for it. There's nothing to it.")
It's also funny that I realize that I have started collecting bathing suits the way other women collect shoes. I think I have about 30 of them now. Isn't that weird?
Maybe it's that California influence. Maybe I'm turning into a California girl.
Now it's time for my socially conscious cup of coffee.






It sure beats losing the cap. 

