Manila

This last week and a half has been nothing short of hell.

Amanda and Peter have been fighting constantly, and always for the same reason. Peter is incapable of packing and unpacking boxes. From what I can gather, Peter's been this way since he was a child. He's never been able to get over the trauma of his parents separation when he was little, not to mention his father's nomad academic career that left him without much of a sense of home. Amanda's constantly frustrated that she and I have to constantly pick up Peter's slack. Thankfully Peter doesn't get upset that Amanda's upset, otherwise this would never end.

The Eureka house is nearly empty. Little remains except for wall hangings, loose ends, and broken dreams.

Amanda already hates the Manila house. She's beginning to realize the luxury of space, and how she's become accustomed to that. When we lived in the M St. house she would romanticize about their old rental in Manila where the house was small, the messes were little, and they were close to the ocean. While she doesn't complain about being close to the ocean once again, this move so far hasn't been the cure-all that it was built up to be.

Like everyone else on my mother's side of the family, Amanda's never satisfied (thank you Grandpa). However, unlike some of her siblings who have used this constant drive as a source of motivation to better themselves, Amanda focuses on something already present in her life and destroys it. [Example: I will be happy when I have a PhD vs. I will be happy when I sell this house, move into a rental, and eventually move to Greece where I can start an organic farm]

Manila (Pop. 1,000) is an interesting collection of hippies, students, and tweakers, and is probably one of the few places left in California where someone in a trailer can afford to live by the ocean.

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Right now I'd like to take a break and thank the wonderful people at the M&M Mars Corporation for introducing their latest product onto the market: White Chocolate M&M's.

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Anyway…

I took the kids to the Manila community park where we met some Manila locals. I had a brief conversation with a girl named Lea. She was about nine years old, and when I asked if she lived nearby, she said "sorta." She told me that her family has been staying here for awhile, and sometimes she lives in Oregon. Her father was playing Frisbee nearby. He was bearded and shirtless, and didn't seem to mind that that the trajectory of his Frisbee went right through the playground where his daughter was playing. **Cut to Frisbee hitting my foot**

The house that the Moore's are renting is the old site of the Manila preschool which is now owned by the Bodie family. The Bodie family rents over 450 units in the Humboldt County area. I met one of the Bodie daughters when we went to look at the house for the first time. She mistakenly thought that Gucci glasses went with her Ford F-350.

Nice.