I don’t get it. What is the "American Dream" really? It can’t just be the two story Colonial home, 2.7 kids, two cars in the driveway of the Colonial home and one Golden Retriever chasing the mailman down the tree-lined sidewalk in front of your neighbors two story Tudor home that also has two SUV’s in the front yard. In my world, people can’t afford this. The median cost of a home in San Francisco was just reported to be almost $700,000. Seriously! So when I saw this beautiful landscape driving home one day, I had to take the shot. Yes, I was driving across the Bay Bridge and trying to take a photo at the same time, but I promise I was careful.

I actually took a level photograph of this scene, which wasn’t easy because I did not look through the view finder but just sort of stuck my hand as near to the window as possible. Admittedly, I got lucky. But I took this crooked photo, on purpose, because I was thinking about this American dream crap and just how off kilter it was too. Ergo, the photo is reality, in my opinion.

The reality is I will never own a home in San Francisco -- never. While the crazy dotcom era is gone the price of a home here is still out of reach for many people including me. Honestly, I love apartment living. No maintenance, no responsibility and no property tax. I don’t get these people who say I am throwing money away. Please. I have a one bedroom apartment in San Francisco, I have a garage and I pay in rent the equivalent of a car payment for most people! OK, a Jaguar payment not a Hyundai but you get the point. I can be downtown in 10 minutes and at the beach in five. Life is easy! That is the American Dream if you ask me. Americans have it so easy but yet we make things difficult for some strange reason and not in a good way.

There is a great commercial out right now with this average guy who can’t stop smiling talking about his huge house, his new car, his golf club membership and his new lawn mower; and he continues to say how he is in debt up to his ears to have this life. Dude! Simplify! Why do we give a rat’s ass about competing with our neighbors if this is the outcome? Americans have become a society of overweight and lazy and yet demanding bunch of idiots. Gimme, gimme, gimme. Well, look where that has gotten us. It’s Visa, MasterCard and American Express who are making a killing in our society now and that is just so wrong. They are preying on the mentality of “I need to have everything that is advertised in front of my face to be happy”. But then there you have it, the American Dream—to have as much as you can of whatever you may want. I wonder what our forefathers held as the American Dream. I highly doubt it included an iPod, GameBoy, Hummer or plasma screen TV.

I’ll take the simple life with the simple payment plan, and for me that is:  to experience life and the world around me and not care one iota of what my neighbors may have that I don’t have. I will admit to owning an iPod or actually two and a new pair of shoes never hurts the pocket book. But that is just the joy of being a girl, an American girl who lives an American Dream which is in the moment for the moment. I also understand that my actions affect someone else somewhere else in the world. I take that seriously and I know that my selfishness may hurt some one else and I don’t like that feeling at all.