We walked up to the small front entrance flanked by two cast iron elephants, the place must be open because we could see people inside.  I wanted to remind Ted that I wanted to see Oprah instead.

Well, look, this place was called The Sacred Space.  (Just how sacred?)  And now that we were here, I felt leaving without going inside would be something equivalent to blasphemy. 

We stepped inside — wow, beautiful orchids everywhere, I thought.  I loved these bowls!  There were small photos on the wall of celebrities posing with the shop's owners; I recognized Jeff Bridges, Matthew Perry, Ted Danson, and Kelsey Grammer.

Ted liked the light incense smell whiffing through the place — I liked it too, the afternoon breeze made it a just-barely-there scent.  We asked the owner what the scent was, he said it was "India Temple" — not sure if our house was worthy of smelling like a temple, but we picked up a package of the incense sticks anyway.

Immediately upon stepping outside I wished the afternoon would last longer, I wanted to linger here, how beautiful this place was. 

There were sitting areas, someone had sipped tea and read a book.  We will definitely come back to The Sacred Space.

**********

We headed farther into Summerland and dropped in at Just Folk, an antique store that we had been in once before.

But apparently I had a terrible memory.  There was a small bas relief plaque on the wall near the entrance.  I looked at the price and thought, "Oh, 17 bucks, it might look nice in the kitchen."  Then I looked at the price card again — it wasn't $17 at all — it was 17 thousand dollars.  (Oh, here it is on the store's website.)  I then remembered that the average price of an item in this place was equivalent to that of a Prius.

I stepped out into the balcony of the antique shop and took this picture.  The blue sky and blue water blended effortlessly — it was 75 degrees.

**********

We went to The Nugget to rest our feet and get a cold drink.  The heads on the wall always scared me, so I didn't look up again.  There's something about local dives — like good food and friendly people — that makes me thankful I'm witness to the moment. 

We headed back; I soaked in the afternoon's small miracles and nudged into Ted a bit more as he was pushing over 90, closer to 100 on some stretches.  I smiled thinking about my brother Vinh telling the story of when I was little and riding in the back of his Vespa — I'd always urged him on, "Go faster, go faster!" 

We came home, took off our helmets, Ted smiled at me and said, "That was cheap therapy." 

Yes, it was.