They paved paradise to put up some Spanish-styled starter homes, prices beginning from the low $1 millions

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot/
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot/
Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone/

Joni Mitchell, "Big Yellow Taxi," 1970

Why do I forever seem behind in my blogging these days? At one point in my blogging history, my goal was to post twice a week to Blogtucky. These days I'm lucky if I can post every two weeks. Sad, sad, truly sad.

As a result of this constant blogus interruptus, you, dear readers, are forever delayed in enjoying my latest thought burps, as well as my steady experience belches, not to mention my periodic comedic passings of noxious odors. (Please, I said don't mention it.) For my sins of omission (or do I mean emission?), I truly apologize.

Granted, you may not need the apology--you may, in fact, feel eternally grateful and perpetually relieved, kind of like life in a post-norovirus world where you've finally managed to stop wretching your entrails into the toilet bowl and--fabulous!--have lost five pounds in the process. Nonetheless, poor, poor you; at this rate, you'll never get to read my observations on lesbian hairstyles, news of my Midwestern holiday cavalcade, and deep thoughts on pornstyles of the rich and famous, all currently logged in my journal, awaiting transcription from my pathetic, "doctor's orders" scrawl to the more legible, Trebuchet-inflected, binary code of this here Blogspot.

Yes, I do go on.

* * *

Anyway . . . one reason you haven't heard from me consistently of late is because I've been traveling again, this time to sunny Southern California, specifically langorous Los Angeles, or more to the point, cunningly Claremont, positively Pomona, and optimistically Ontario. Down with the O.C., yeah, you know me--except that I was actually in some sort of jurisdictional no-person's land. East of Los Angeles, west of San Bernardino, north of Orange, under the sun, and at the feet of Mount Baldy (appropriately enough), all covered in . . . well, maybe that's snow. Or maybe I need to clean my glasses.

All for work, of course.

I'm back as of 7 pm Eastern last night (or do I mean 4 pm Pacific?) and feeling reasonable fresh (no, thank you, disposable, pre-moistened towelette courtesy of Delta Airlines) and rangily frisky, despite the long travels and the confusing space-time continuun issues. In a zen frame of mind that only a brief sojourn to Lotusland could engender in me, I keep repeating this mantra--

I am Eastern . . . I am Pacific . . . I am somewhere in-between . . . but not sleeping on the floor . . . at the nadir of air traffic control . . . known as O'Hare . . . praise Buddha . . . .

But the discombobulation does not matter. Instead, I'm hoping to work the cerebral distortion to my advantage, that is, continue in the weeks to come to wake up at 3 am, feeling raring to go, eager to start the day, as a way to achieve that new year's resolution about showing up for work on time. Six hours to get ready for work should just about do it. I'll only be 10 or 15 minutes late, instead of my more common 30.

It was a lovely, if all too short, trip to the Golden State. Because of the fast-paced nature of the conference I attended, as well as the fact that the conference organizers had to bus us in and out of the Sheraton Fairplex to a nearby meeting space (aside to urban planners: talk about your no-person's lands within no-person's lands--stuck in a gorgeous hotel in the middle of the L.A. County Fairgrounds with limited, close-in public transport does not lend itself to easy exploration of your environs), I saw exceedingly little of the sights--other than, of course, the foothills on the northern horizon, the palms toward the south, Claremont Village by moonlight (very charming), and a 10-lane slab of asphalt known as the San Bernardino Freeway.

Not exactly the lush life, but then it was relentlessly sunny, with cerulean blue skies, clean (yes! clean!) air, and 80-degree temperatures. There really was no downside to this little cross-country jaunt, other than being away from home so soon after the holidays.

On Monday, during a break in the action from the professional meeting, we persuaded the staff at the meeting place to open the doors of one of the rooms so that we could enjoy our break outside in the perfect clime. The Easterners and the Northerners among us sipped our bottled waters and coffees, nibbled on our fresh fruit and granola bars, and basked in the kind of California meteorological dreamin' you can do on such a winter's day out that way.

"Welcome to paradise," said one of the natives, in reality a transplant from Texas in the '80s.

And, given the following factors--i.e., the climate, the scenery, the low humidity, the friendliness, the architecture, the fine dining, the shopping, the tidiness and cleanliness of it all--it was very difficult to argue that point.

But then, you open the real estate section of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin and see ads for overwroughtly designed, medium-sized, Spanish-styled homes, heralded for their affordability with prices starting in "the low $1 millions," in some tinderbox subdivision in an embarrassingly monikered town like Rancho Cucamonga, and you start to think, hmmm, sounds like you gotta pay through the anus to enjoy some of this paradise on earth.

Granted, they were new homes, but even the older, smaller, less effusively rendered dwellings--the little ranchers and split-levels from the '50s, '60s, and '70s, occupying the mid-century strata of suburban development--were all ballparking at $450k to $750k. And, yes, that's in U.S. dollars, not pesos or lire.

Of course, it's not just the homes that are expensive down California way. Pretty much everything will cost you, from healthcare (the new trend is for some health insurance plans in the area to cover access to medical care in Tijuana, 120 miles away, because it's so much cheaper--at least for the insurance companies) to groceries (I'm still scarred from the experience in San Francisco several years ago where I paid in the neighborhood of $5 for a half-gallon of orange juice).

With the aim of full disclosure, I have to admit, though, I do have an on-again, off-again, love-hate, Eminem-and-his-wife-Kim-styled relationship with California. The Golden State is like some guys you meet--friendly, beautiful, sexy, full of possibility, not to mention too easily able to charm the trousers right off of you. But like so many flirtations run afoul, there's this nagging sensation that it's not going to last, it's just a too-good-to-be-true hopeless fantasy, it'll all turn out horribly wrong, blow up in your face, and you'll end up alone and feeling worse than before. Then, before you know it, you realize that that "nagging sensation" turns out to be some sort of "personal body parasite" in your nether regions, and poof! Reality bitchslaps you off your cloud and into the "aisle of shame" at Rite-Aid once again.

Figuratively speaking, of course.

Still, like a moth to the embers of Suzanne Somers' smouldering Malibu manse, I find myself often feeling seduced and sucked in by the California Mystique. On my first trip there in 1989, I somehow maneuvered myself via the LA freeways to the Huntington Library and Botannical Gardens in San Marino, which to this day registers as one of my favorite memories. At the time I was living in Washington, D.C., a city I pretty much detested at that point. Then, Washington seemed cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and mean-spirited year-round. But the Huntington! The landscape, the hills, the vegetation, the climate, the ambience! My then rampant East Coast snobbery was overturned, upended, and shown a good time by the West Coast sublime. It finally made sense to me why everyone wanted to live in Southern California. It was just such a shame that so many of them came--and that they insisted on bringing their cars.

Of course, it's not all reruns of the opening credits of Santa Barbara or Sunset Beach out that way. And that's part of the appeal--that wonderful, enticing juxtaposition of the exceptionally beautiful with the extremely insipid, the excessiveness smack dab rubbing up against the pretty vacuousness of it all. The golden possibilities of freedom and self-discovery coupled with the outrageous reality of wage slavery and unaffordability. The multi-million-dollar crackerbox palaces prone to go up in flames when there's a static electric charge from someone wearing a wool sweater and touching a car door handle ten miles away. The mesmerizing, lighted grid of the streets at night as seen from the air up against the grinding, daytime reality of two-hour commutes one-way. The beautiful people, pulled, primped, and plumped within an inch of their lives, contrasted with those among the extravagantly OTT set, like Carol my cabdriver back to the airport--blonde and zaftig, all dangly jewelry and fake nails, talking several miles a minute without taking a breath or waiting for a response. (All with a yinzer accent, no less. Quack!) The mountains and the palm trees. The ocean and the desert. Forever and ever, ah dude . . .

Even as recently as 2003, I contemplated a move out there. In fact, over the years, I've interviewed for a couple of jobs there--one in the north in (*shudder*) Fresno, one in the south in Irvine. I even tried to live in San Francisco one long, cold summer in the early '90s--with the original intent of staying put and starting over during one small part of my first midlife crisis at age 30.

But despite the fantasy, the allure, the constantly boosted serotonin levels, and the hot-and-cold-running homosexuals in every walk of life, something keeps me East, South, North, and West--just not that far west. Never say never, but it's never worked out that I should live in California, and I doubt it ever will. When the push of relocating comes to the shove of moving, I realize that I just don't fit into the cultural milieu (or whatever) of the Golden West. My roots are Southern, my roots are Eastern. I'm just not quite right unless I'm uncomfortable in my own skin, the way my forefathers intended it.

I could see living in the Midwest or even the Plains, and Texas certainly felt like home and may again someday, once they turn down the heat. But California is a whole 'nuther country, and I think I've been banned for life because of an ugly passport photo.

* * *

After trips like these, it makes me feel a little wistful, thinking about what might be, who I might become if I'd only take the plunge and cliff-dived into the Pacific state of mind. After all, life's too short to live some place boring or ugly, and I'm overwhelmingly footloose and somewhat fancy-free at this point in my life. I have expenses, I have obligations, I have responsibilities, but . . . .

But then I go to the Giant in Camp Hill and spend less than $5 on a bottle of Bolthouse Valencia O.J. and a carton of Stoneyfield Farms organic milk, instead of paying $5 for just one of those items. Or at the beginning of the month, I write out my rent check and realize that I still have tons of pay leftover with which to blow on Steve Madden shoes and Skagen watches (not to mention Bugatchi Uomo shirts--even if I have to drive to Philadelphia to find them), remembering that I spend the recommended quarter of my gross monthly income on housing, rather than half or most, as I would if I lived in the all-that-glitters-isn't-quite Golden West.

And then I start to think that, all in all and fair skies be damned, I am a happier man living in my some kind of low-rent, blissful paradise, where I have room for a garden, extended visits from friends and family, an all-out assault on my fully stocked pantry with cookbooks and a kitchen island as my weapons of choice, a 6-foot Martha Stewart Christmas tree, and a 1,000+ item CD collection, to name but a few of my Central PA pleasures and pursuits.

And then I realize further--Good lordy, like the kid president in the movie Wild in the Streets, I'm old.

A realization that comes just in time for yet another midlife crisis.