Everyone Calls It "The City"

Yep, everyone in this neck of the woods knows that when you say "the city", you mean San Francisco.  I actually feel a little weird saying San Francisco rather than "the city".  "The city" just rolls off the tongue. Sometimes I feel like I grew up here.  

Anyway I spent last weekend in the city going shopping with my mother and spending some down time at the fabulous apartment on the 47th floor of Millennium Tower.  It really was a wonderful weekend.  I won't bore you with every little detail but I can say the weekend was so full of shopping and being out and about that I only took a handful of pictures.  That is so unlike me, I know, but my hands were either full of shopping bags, or I just wasn't inspired.  The city is such a second home that sometimes it feels ridiculous taking pictures there.  

One of my favorite experiences happened at Macy's in Union Square.  Every year the store gives over several corner shop windows, decorated spectacularly, to the ASPCA.  The windows are filled with, wait for it, puppies and kittens that are up for adoption!  Little pupkins and kittenpies!  The animals are adopted and switched out daily.  There is also someone on hand to play with them in their posh surroundings.  I couldn't get a good picture of the animals...  

But I did capture one of my favorite pictures that I have taken in a very long time. 

This little girl, hands pressed against the window, peering in at the puppies.  I imagine her dreaming her own Christmas dreams.  Her little nails dirty with the play that comes with childhood.  Beautiful and solemn. 

Maybe it's just me though.

I did capture some of the decorations at Nordstrom.

And a photo outside the restaurant where I had lunch with a former, and much loved, co-worker.

But this is what really stuck with me.  This little person, with her life ahead of her, giving us a reason to believe.