There’s an old song I’ve heard in barbershop called “Lovely San Diego,” and I wish I could think of the lyrics now. Google searching hasn’t worked, and Greg-the-husband wouldn’t be any help, since he probably only remembers the off-color version of the lyrics that he came up with. (Don’t know why he always does that. And us good Christian folks, too.)

I’m here just till Monday night, and I’ve been impressed again with the beauty of it and the charm that it managed to hold onto. Big cities are always throwng phrases around like “The big city with a small-town feel” or “the big city with a heart.” I’m not saying I could quite get myself to say them spontaneously about San Diego, but I’ll concede that those slogans seem more plausible here. I love the sweeping hills that you get here, which keep you from noticing quite as much that there are just bajillions of people going anywhere you want to go. It doesn’t take more that an unblinking look at the I-15 at rush hour (or at any other hour, for that matter) to end all the illusions. But it’s the common situation these days — anyplace beautiful enough to be a desirable place to live is already besieged with so many masses of people that it’s not all that desirable a place to live.

Ah yes, another big-picture point. How this bracing coastal atmosphere affects my attic wit and makes it, I don’t know,… attic-er? I make myself some tea to sip in the hopes that it will tenderize my brain for my next morsel of sagacity. Or even my first. You never know. Plus, making the tea gives me an excuse to break out a couple of those lovely little chocolate-covered biscuits I bought yesterday and treat it all as an International Foods moment, rather than just me pigging out in a better neighborhood than usual.

The house Greg is house-sitting — with me here for the weekend just to make it fun — is in Del Mar Heights, a foo-foo suburb of San Diego, and I feel like I’m giving off subtle waves of the lack of self-confidence I feel in being here. I can’t help thinking that if this were all one big gated community, I’d probably get turned away for not having a matching belt and handbag (or in fact, any belt or handbag at all). But I try not to be a reverse-snob. Nobody here is turning up their nose at me — I’m turning it up at myself. I don’t think I have any more right to be in a $750,000 home than I would to pitch a tent in the Lincoln Memorial. I try to remember that the housing market in Southern California is so unbelievably inflated that $750,000 doesn’t mean what it does in Missouri, where it would mean you could make an offer on the state of Nebraska. But it still seems a bit much, and I still feel like I’m certainly doing all kinds of little things to tell everyone that I’m not from here, with all that that entails.

Never mind. What are you going to do? The old sensibilities of who’s who don’t mean as much as they used to in the new economy. The seedy down-and-outers may turn out to be cyber-millionaires, and the gaudy, ostentious, Old Money types may be all flash and no cash. I’ll go on a bit of a drive-about while Greg is working and see if a little sketching and people-watching help with my little bout of paranoia about being class-challenged.