From Mexico to Viet Nam

I am Deb
Deb in the City
wtf?
I feel so...shiny

World wide webs, please hear my desperate cry for help. OK, I am loving my new SoCal lifestyle, including my retirement to Champagne Village but I am really really getting fed up with my tiny responsibility, the reason I came here at all, The Child.

I want to stick with this job and all but she’s in a bad place. Her deadbeat dad is off globetrotting and I am here hung out to dry. But she’s just a little kid and so I went on a mission to try and broker peace with her. And I found what i was looking for in Old Town.

Fresh cactus, right on the bush but I did n't think it was right to just steal it out of the parking lot and I wasn't sure if it was the right kind.

So I headed to San Ysidro, down Mexico way. OK, it is fantastic there, and the streets are lined with stores that sell all things Mexican. I figured out a possible solution to my parent trap pretty soon in a fabulous supermercato.



Edible cactus, fresh and con espinosa, which I realized were a bit beyond my cooking skills. Ouchy. But lucky for La Gringa, safety cactus without the espinosa comes in a jar.

I cannot take the child to Guadalajara to see her father but I can bring a little bit of Mexico to her.

Wandering back north and once again taking the wrong exit, I ended up on the service road behind what turned out to be an entire strip mall that was Vietnamese. A huge beautiful supermarket awaited me there too, like a giant Ralph's but this one was full of all things Asian. Check out the instant noodle mesa.

And those were only the ones on sale. There is a whole noodle canyon down one aisle.

I wandered in the meat department which was huge and full of all parts of the animals. There were lots of feet.

They might want to consider calling it the Feet Department.



The produce section had all kinds of stuff I’ve never eaten.



This is a jackfruit. It looks so familiar to me, I have a feeling it must have been used as a prop on some low budget sci-fi movie I saw as a kid.

Lingering at the jackfruit I struck up a chat with an older asian woman, dressed casually for shopping. She was very shy spoke no English and I speak no Vietnamese.
She wore beautiful rings I tried to ask her about them but we only managed to exchange our names with the universal language of pointing. When she said her name was Fanny, in sort of husky voice, I realized she had not been born as Fanny but became her at some point.

Fanny the tranny. She gave me a sweet shy smile and took off. Jackfruit and Fanny, my strange, beautiful fruit of San Diego.

This is Deb in the City, surfing the diasporas, saying goodbye, adios and tam biet from San Diego, California

Champagne Taste on a Beer Budget

Deb I am
Deb in the City
I'm superbad
and looking pretty.

Wow, I just cannot get over the whole paradise aspect of this part of the country. It’s like paradise improved though, with on and off ramps everywhere you’d want to go.

Was out by Escondido today and came across a window into my future. That is, if the whole stimulus package thing works out and the world economy doesn’t skewer us all and if my employer is indeed paying into my social security like he claims.

Yes, at the corner of Champagne Drive and Lawrence Welk Boulevard, is the Welk Resort and Champagne Village, where I can easily see myself in about 25 more years. OK, ten. The village has all the amenities I could want for my retirement:


the Fountain golf course, the Canyon restaurant for fine dining and a Pizza Hut for a quick breakfast. But more impressively it has a Lawrence Welk Museum, located in the lobby of the resort’s theatre!



Yes, friends, that is a giant champagne glass made out of crystal made for the 25th anniversary of the LW show’s broadcast. Speaking of broadcast, it’s possible to stand in beside the man himself and be on his show.
I’m no Lennon Sister but I’m looking forward to a bubbly, time-shared future in genteel southern Cali style.

So then I was back in town and I missed my exit but there was a pot of gold at the end of the concrete rainbow. The swap meet! Now, I’ve been to a lot of flea market, swap meet, yard sale type things and San Diego knows how to do it right.

They sell everything from 12 pairs of tube sox that say USA on them to cell phone chargers to Mexican cowboy outfits to genuine junk dragged out fo someone’s basement to Tickle Me Elmo pinatas. Amazing. I had the most delicious snack.
Watermelon, cantelope, jicima, coconut, cucumber and orange slice, served in a plastic baggy and covered with lime juice and chili powder. Que delicioso! And for only three bucks. So good.

On the way out I bought a 20 pound bag of fresh oranges for three dollars. I am really getting used to the bounty of the Golden State.

This is Deb in the City, saying adios amigos from LaJolla California, movie home to Top Gun, Some Like It Hot and Charlie’s Angels Full Throttle. I feel the need, the need for speed.

David Hasselhoff, Where Are You?

Hey there world wide webs. My name is Deb and yes, I am part of the blog revolution and you have clicked on my brand new blog, Deb in the City.

Deb in the City is new coping mechanism since I quit going to bingo. I’m trying to manage my stress without doing harm to myself, and I hope that’s not going to take all the fun out of it. I have just moved to a brand new place and OK, I didn’t ever expect this but I now live in LaJolla, CA.

It’s incredible here though, paradise with easy access of the 5, the 81, the 78 and the 1. See, I can talk California already. And I get to live in this incredible house.

The house is brand new and everything works inside, all five bedrooms and five and a half baths. It's not quite finished yet and as you can see it's what we call "shovel-ready" nowadays. If anyone out there has a shovel, please feel free to come on over.




Before I got here I thought about southern California as this sort of life-sized set for Baywatch and I expected to get here and find everyone talking about grabbing their buoys. There is beach and surf culture, no doubt. And there’s the zoo of course, the other thing the world knows about San Diego. And Sea World and the Wild Animal Park. It’s all about the surf and turf here, but before it gets to your plate. San Diego loves its wildlife.

Yesterday, I was driving up in the hills on a tiny two lane highway in the beautiful high chaparral countryside when I hit a traffic jam in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. The reason:

Yes, those are camels and they live right here in San Diego County. They reside at the Oasis Camel Dairy (http://www.cameldairy.com/) in Ramona, the only camel dairy in the US. Oasis is run by these wonderful folks, Gil and Nancy.


They have a couple dozen camels that they milk and turn the milk into incredible soap.


The camels are also in show biz and do a brisk business around Christmas time, playing to sold out crowds at several nativity pageants around the area. Gil and Nancy can set you up with the whole nativity scene too, since they have pigs and donkeys and all sorts of exotic birds. Oasis going to start camel safaris in July.

Camels are herd animals, like children, so I plan on taking a safari to try and get a little horse sense about the pack mentality. As a nanny, I feel this will give me a nanny edge when I’m at the playground, confronted with a swarm of eight year olds. Head ‘em up and move ‘em out.

In case you’re wondering, and I know you are...



They are truly sweet creatures, toes and all.

This is Deb in the City saying so long from the Oasis Camel Dairy in Ramona, CA where every day of the week is hump day.