I’m lying in bed (with my laptop) feeling dreamy about our recent weekend together. And while I linger in this hazy bliss I thought I’d write you a letter to tell you just how dazzling you are.

First off, on Friday—remember how I was so crabby? The kids were wild, I was exhausted, and the minutes ’til Mark would get home from work seemed to stretch out mercilessly. I was like a beaten-down soldier whose dismissal date kept getting moved just out of reach.

But then you, Oakland—as if you somehow knew I needed you—you sent in back-up, in the form of my wonderful neighbor, who I spotted from the kitchen window waltzing across my yard holding a plate of cheese and crackers, her children in tow. In minutes my kids were swept from my skirt hem (where they’d been clinging, whining, and fighting all afternoon) to dash off to play with their homies. And me? I was left on the sunny front porch, splayed out in a wicker chair with a dear friend, some processed pub cheese, and the most delicious, well-deserved beer I may have ever consumed.

My mood took such a fast turn I wouldn’t be surprised if I laid down rubber. And all because of the dumb luck served up to me by having settled in my groovy neighborhood. So thanks, Oakland. I needed that.

And if all that all wasn’t day-changing enough, we breathed a collective screw-cooking-dinner sigh, and walked JUST BLOCKS AWAY (frighteningly close, really, considering I’d never been) to a delightfully homey, Friday night food truck event. It was sunny and warm, children frollicked on a grassy knoll (for realz!), and folks gathered on blankets to eat gourmet foods they didn’t cook and wouldn’t have to clean up after.

I love the trendy fanci-fication of roach coaches. I mean, as trends go it’s MUCH better than the whole jeggings thing. And not only do they serve up a mean chicken tikka masala, or mac and cheese with truffle oil, or spicy Thai shrimp with the heads still on right from their little sliding windows, but all the hip food trucks have clever names too. Names that, like nearly every joke I’ve ever heard, I’m immediately unable to remember. But trust me, those trucks had some clever, pun-a-licious names.

Oh, Oakland, you know exactly how to turn a grumpy worn-out mama into a happily fed mother hen, pushing her brood home in a stroller awash with snug contentment that all those people in other parts of the country who own much larger, fancier and less expensive houses—and who send their kids to excellent free local schools—THEY don’t get to walk three blocks to a super-groovy food truck ho-down. No, no, Oakland, I don’t mean to boast about you, but those folks don’t got what you have, honey. No way, no how.

Then Saturday you kept the love coming. Like the cleverest people who ever did live, we went to your shores, and climbed aboard the ferry to our sister city San Francisco—and not with the intention of getting off once there. No, we took the boat as a wonderfully mobile, water-borne, crowd-free way to watch the Blue Angels air show. So smart! So simple! So CHEAP. Yes, we just did a loop through the bay, admiring the sailboats and massive aircraft carriers. It was sunny. It was easy. And it was a lightening-charged THRILL to see those planes roar overhead in tight formation, doing loop-dee-loops, epic free falls, and even drawing a breast cancer ribbon in the air.

Mark, Kate and I were punching the air and screaming “Yee-ha!” like some amped-up rednecks watching Nascar. Paige, on the other hand, wailed and covered her ears from the noise. But really, Oakland, don’t feel bad. You can’t make everyone happy all the time.

Waking up next to you Sunday morning, dear city… Is it wrong to say I’m getting used to you being there? Used to rolling out of bed and having you serve up our feel-good neighborhood farmer’s market groove? I’ve grown so contentedly used to this happy scene. There’s music for the kiddos, great produce year-round, and delish hot breakfast and lunch foods. The farmer’s market on Sunday mornings is our form of church.

And the frosting on the cake—because I’m not done yet—was seeing the movie Moneyball. Total sports movie that you don’t have to like sports to like. Or to love. It’s about the Oakland A’s, ya know. An underdog story (the best kind). And it stars Brad Pitt, who actually looks kinda old in it, which has the strange effect of making him seem mortal and therefore somehow even more likeable.

Plus, there’s something extra specially cool about watching a movie about Oakland IN Oakland. Or rather, a movie about you, in you. Well, you know what I mean…

Anyway Oakland, thank you, thank you for the non-stop excellent happy good love. Sure, I fantasize about other places at times. I won’t lie. I daydream about what small town life could be. I flirt with the idea of nearby, fancy-pants Piedmont (‘though I also admire Porches, but will likely never own one). Anyway, I haven’t always been the most loyal lover, Oakland, but at the end of the day the fact is, it’s all about you and me, baby.

So let’s just keep being excellent to each other, shall we?

xoxox,
Kristen

P.S. Write back.

Monday was Mark and my seven year wedding anniversary. Say what you will about this marital mile-marker, but we have thus far experienced no itchiness. Phew.

Yesterday was Kate’s first day of first grade. It was like some meta first-ness. Like first to the first power. But things like this don’t phase my unflappable girl. Within the first minute of being on the playground she was acting like the First Lady of Elementary School. By tomorrow she’ll have the kindergarteners handing over the cookies from their lunch boxes. Bless her heart.

And today is another biggie. Today marks 20 years to the day since I moved to California.

20 years!!! It’s totally unbelievable.

I’ve lived here longer than I lived in Lil’ Rhody. Which must mean that in another bat of an eyelash I’ll be wielding a walker with tennis ball wheels. I plan to have lots of flair on my walker by the way. In-n-Out Burger stickers, fuzzy clamp-on koala bears, and magenta bike handle streamers.

So there’s that to look forward to.

Anyway, in light of my 20 years as a Californian, I thought I’d share the top 20 things I’ve learned since living here.

1. To some people local artisan cheese is Kraft Singles. This is a good thing to think of when you are paying your astronomical rent or mortgage bill and feeling jealous of your friend’s McMansion in Sioux City. Compared to much of the rest of the country, the Bay Area offers many pains, but also many pleasures.

2. Redwood Trees are really tall.

3. Parallel parking is a Darwinian skill that one develops while living in SF. After driving around your neighborhood for 45 minutes on a parking spot quest, you can bet your pins-and-needles ass you’ll wedge your chippy-paint-bumpered Jetta into a space better suited to a Mini Cooper. On a 30% grade hill no less. After living in San Fran, going anywhere that has an actual parking lot makes you feel spoiled rotten.

3 1/2. (Turns out I had more than 20 things to say, so I’m trying to slip this one in here unnoticed.) You know how you go into an ice cream store and you ask the people who work there, “Wow, do you just eat ice cream all day?” and they just squirm and look uncomfortably annoyed because you’re the seventh person who’s asked them that in the past half-hour? You know that? Then they say, “Actually, no. When you work here eventually you get over it.” Well, I never REALLY believed them. Come ON. They’ve gotta be running in the back room stuffing themselves silly with Pralines and Cream, right? Well now that I live so close to Napa Valley I know exactly what those ice cream scoopers are talking about. Napa is stunning,  close by, and a world-renowned destination—oh, and it’s overflowing with wine, of course. Yet we don’t go there every weekend. We somehow also manage to not to always bring visitors there. It’s so close! It’s so fabulous! But I’m ashamed to say that we’ve grown to take it for granted. (Wait, you all don’t have hundreds of world-class wineries an hour’s drive from YOUR house?!)

4. Divorce West Coast style means that your father and his wife (who is younger than you) comes to your house for Thanksgiving with your mother and her girlfriend. And not only do they all talk to each other, they’re all best friends.

5. My scariest California rookie experience was ordering a burrito at a Mission taqueria. There’s a huge long counter behind which 15 or so women take orders from a constant stream of patrons. They sputter out questions like, “Black, pinto, or re-fried?” and you must use all your energy to ante up an answer—any answer—so as to keep pace with the next question they’re going to hurl your way. They move down the line two steps to the chicken and meat section where more un-decipherable questions are asked, and you whimper lightly and point. By then, sweating and disoriented you lose track of your burrito-maker, who is down by the salsas bellowing out “Hot or mild?” while a dozen other people are calling back to their nice burrito-making ladies a cacophony of “Pinto! No lettuce! Carnitas!” Then what happens is you start talking to The Wrong Woman. You lose your Burrito Maker and then suffer a sudden crushing white-girl shame because all the long-black-haired Mexican women look the same to you but you don’t want to accept that you really think that because that would be BAD and WRONG. Yet, uh, was that her? In the gray t-shirt? Or the one with the braids? And then suddenly she is back and in your face and yelling something and beckoning you down the long counter because you are creating a hungry human traffic jam so you wave an affirming that’s-great-thanks gesture her way so she’ll just stop asking you questions then you’re shunted to the cash register having no idea what it is that you ordered. And you have also not been handed your burrito. It’s been tossed in a pile with 8 other tin foil tubes that all have different letters scrawled on them. At the register they say things to you in questioning tones like “Super Veggie Burrito?,” or other phrases that include words like “Deluxe” which appear to be names for the kindsa burritos they make, but you have NO IDEA what it is that you got. Someone could offer to pay you $10,000 to tell them what is in your burrito and you’d just sit down and cry and say, “I don’t know! It all happened so fast! And she had an accent that I’m ashamed to say I really couldn’t understand!” But you manage to somehow buy something (that may or may not be yours) and don’t cry from the trauma of it all. And whatever the hell it is you eat it and decide that the holy terror you endured was SO worth it. Then eventually, 8 years or so later, after coming back about once a week, ordering a burrito becomes easier.

6. I sometimes feel un-cool for not being gay.

7. I’m more afraid that one of those Looney Toons anvils might somehow fall on my head than I am about earthquakes. When you live here, you don’t hang pictures framed with glass over your bed, and you don’t think much about earthquakes. Because really, not wanting one won’t prevent one from happening. Besides, we’re all too stoned out of our minds every day to worry about anything other than when the pizza is going to arrive. (See #12.)

8. You have not really gone out dancing until you’re the only woman in a gay club and by the end of the night you find yourself dancing in a black lace bra. (Just kidding, Dad! Well, as far as you know…)

9. It turns out Spanish would’ve been a more useful language to take than my 12 years of French. Who knew?

10. San Francisco Victorians are painfully cold in the winter and summer. They sure may look purdy, but most Turkish prison cells are more comfortable.

11. Everything Mark Twain ever said about San Francisco summers and witch’s tits is totally true.

12. Of my native-Calif friends, some scored pot from their parents with the same regularity and lack of big-dealness that I had hitting my parents for an allowance.

13. Whenever I was home sick from work in New York, I felt like I was the only one in my apartment building aside from the crazy old ladies who never threw out newspapers and bred cockroaches. EVERYONE else was at work. But in the Bay Area I think that people in offices feel like the outsiders. Cafes and coffee shops are thrumming with people hanging out (working? checking Match.com? betting on the ponies?) all day long. And a good drinking game, if you ever need one during the day, is doing a shot every time a man with a baby strapped to his chest walks down the sidewalk past your house. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE.

14. When it rains here it rains and when it doesn’t rain it doesn’t rain. These weather patterns are strictly relegated to seasons and they nearly always play by the rules. This seems odd to you at first, but later when you go on vacations outside of Northern California and after a sunny morning there’s a rain storm in the afternoon it freaks your shit right out.

15. There’s something warm and romantic—but also prone to knocking over your porch plants—called the Santa Anna winds that pass through the Bay Area every once and a while. It’s fun to say Santa Ana winds, and even funner to have an unusual weather pattern crop up that you’ve lived here long enough to recognize. “Oh yeah, those Santa Ana’s are blowin’!” you call out to your neighbor over the bluster while getting into your car some mornings. And you think you’re really cool.

16. Don’t be surprised if you are waiting at a stop light and a man wearing black leather pants, a black leather captain’s hat, and a “shirt” comprised of crisscrossing leather straps, is walking another man across the street who is on all fours, and on a leash. I don’t know what those wacky gay boys are up to, but it seems like good clean fun!

17. Speaking of leather pants, don’t wear those to the Rainbow Grocery cooperative. Really. Take my word on that.

18. And speaking of crossing the street, people in California actually stop for pedestrians in crosswalks! All that time on the East Coast I never knew what those lines on the street were for.

19. The Berkeley Public Library’s library cards look like they’re tie-dyed. Somebody had a great sense of branding (and humor).

20. There is a field of bison in Golden Gate Park and the first time you see them you will feel certain someone slipped you a hallucenogen.

Thank you, thank you, Mark, for a dazzling seven years of marriage, and for being the funniest, smartest, cutest, best-cookin’ husband a gal could ever have. I adore the ground you walk on, and could you pick Kate up from school today? Listen, I’ll just call you about that later.

And thanks to you California, for the wild, wonderful ride these past twenty years. I must have been having a good time, because man, that time FLEW. Here’s to the next twenty.

So, the good news is: All my blood tests have come back negative.

The bad news is: I have no idea what the hell is wrong with me.

If you haven’t been riveted by this story and following along from home, here’s the sweetened condensed version: I came down with some mystery illness after our East Coast vacation. It started with numbness, then achyness, then I threw in some jarring joint pain, just to keep things lively. I’ve had MRIs (and drugs for MRIs), been poked, prodded, and questioned, and had enough blood taken for a gang of vampires to binge for days.

Somewhere along the line my dad emailed me a guess at what I had—to keep those two-bit docs on their toes. Lyme Disease, he said.

I was giddy. Like, all hand clappy excited. Convinced my lawyer father outwitted the doctors. And they did agree that Dad had something there. (I had forgotten to tell them I got a weird bite in Rhode Island.) But then the Lyme test came back negative.

Which was when my first freak-out about WTF I do have ensued.

Thankfully, my dad isn’t the only un-qualified yahoo out there who’s been willing to float a diagnosis my way. Well-meaning friends have wondered (aloud) if what I’m experiencing is a by-product of bottled up anger, an energy blockage, or everyone’s favorite malady du jour—gluten intolerance.

Now, you might say that I’m asking for this, living in California as I do. But what I want to tell those people is, “Yes! You are right. I do have pent up rage. I do have energy log jams. But those things aren’t why I feel like I do. I have them because I feel like I do and no one knows why.”

As for gluten intolerance? Puh-leez. Gluten is my friend, people. In fact, I’m going to go and eat a big gooey glob of gluten right now and process it like a champion. Gluten is my wheat grass, California.

And while everyone else has a theory on what’s plaguing me, my doctors remain utterly baffled. Having a case they can’t crack  seems bad for business, like unsolved murders in the police department. So in a valiant effort to move down the path to some resolution, my doc started me on antibiotics—the Lyme Disease treatment—even though that test came back neg-o.

They say there can be false-negatives in the early stage of infection. It’s like I filled out one answer on the SAT in the wrong column then got everything totally wrong by accident. So I’ll take the test again in two weeks, with the happy hopes it’ll come back positive. “Lyme Disease! Yay!” Then the doctors can finally get back to their golf games, and I can assure my veins they’ll no longer be tapped for blood like a tree for maple sap.

But until all that happens, my work husband has enthusiastically claimed dibs on performing my eulogy. I have no doubt it’ll be fabulous. He assures me he can “fake cry with the best of ‘em,” which I find wonderfully supportive. He’s gone so far as to make recommendations on good dates for me to expire. His mom passed on 9/9/99, so he fancies himself an expert in this area. I’m lucky to have style-conscious friends with a flair for event planning who are stepping up at this time.

And, as long as I keep laughing I convince myself that when they do figure out what this weird numb, tingly, achy, joint painy so-you-can’t-sleep thing is, it’ll be something itty bitty and easy to eradicate.

But I’ve gotta say, the longer this lingers and leaves the docs scratching their heads, the intermittent moments when I do worry become more and more mittent. If ya know what I mean.

In the meantime I’ve managed to make my father sick from all this. It’s the craziest thing. The man is some supremely empathetic illness conductor. Like, when Paigey was a baby and was lizard-like with eczema, my 80-year-old dad who’d never had so much as a rash was suddenly covered with the stuff himself. A year later, Paige’s walking delays required x-rays of her hips. Then Dad called to report his hip was giving out, and he’d need a new one. And now? Just yesterday I call home and what do I hear? Dad is on antibiotics—for Lyme Disease.

It’s madness! The man is nothing short of a copy cat. I mean, when my father says he feels your pain, he’s serious.

When I was at BlogHer I experienced the bliss of bad hotel TV. I watched crappy shows I never normally watch, on a huge TV at the foot of my bed. Alone. It was a simple but profound indulgence. And I saw that show House, about the ornery-but-lovable doctor who’s the Sherlock Holmes of sickness. Every patient who comes to his hospital seems to be near death with bizarre symptoms that Dr. House eventually, handily diagnoses—and cures. Like, the girl who was becoming paralyzed from the legs up? In a creeping, oh-no-it’s-stopped-her-lungs-now fashion? She eventually gets discharged and heads off to school the next day.

Oh, it’s good stuff.

As I rubbed my numb feet together under the starchy hotel sheets I considered climbing into the TV and sitting myself down in House’s office, hopeful that he was in-network. But who knew how long the wait would be without an appointment. And I was tired anyway. So instead I rolled over and snapped off the lamp, put my faith back into my real-world docs, and drifted off to sleep.

But where was I? Oh yeah, so there’s this spooky tree face under a Red Sox cap, and right across the street the neighbors have the same freakish face on their tree, but wearing a Yankees cap.

I have no interest in sports whatsoever—and not just to test my husband‘s love for me. But I adore good-natured rivalries.

I once played mini-golf on vacation with a boyfriend’s family. And I talked smack the whole time about how everyone was “going down in flames.” As it turns out, I lost so comprehensively that day that my BF’s grandmother even beat my score. No joke. But did I regret my trash-talkin’? Nah. A little playful competitiveness keeps things lively (See: Kristen and Mark’s Honeymoon: The Scrabble Wars).

Whenever I’m home in Rhode Island—as I am now for three weeks—people ask me how long it’s been since I moved to California. When I did the math this year, I was shocked. On September 1st it’ll be TWENTY FREAKIN’ YEARS that I’ve been “checking out the West Coast.” Somehow my couple-of-year foray into Cali livin’ has extended to two decades. I’ve lived in California longer than my entire childhood in Rhode Island, which is weird—like I’ve changed coastal allegiance just through time served. Like it’s some kind of common law thing.

The fact is, I feel just as home on the East Coast as I do in that over-sized other state where I’ve put down roots. Guess I’m a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll.

And so, to maintain a healthy neurotic state while vacationing, I tend to experience nearly everything I do in Rhode Island through a what-if-I-lived-here-again lens. Would it be better here? Worse? The same, but different?

Here’s a small smattering of what’s been bouncing around in my head.

East Coast Likes:

Atlantic Ocean: At the beach yesterday Kate grabbed an ice cube from our cooler and threw it into the ocean. She found this hilarious. I think she was picturing evacuating all the swimmers by causing a dramatic drop in water temperature. What I want to know is, who the hell is throwing all the ice in the Pacific Ocean? And can they stop, please? It’s so damn glorious actually being able to swim here without the threat of hypothermia.

Del’s Lemonade: I don’t have a tattoo. If I did, it would be an homage to Del’s’ (that’s one of those awkward pluralizations–pronounced “Del-ziz”) slushy lemonisicousness. Thank you, Del, if you were or are an actual man, for your lemonade genius. You are truly one of the culinary greats.

Chicken Parm (pronounced “Pom”) Sandwiches, Pizza, Spinach Pies, Gray’s Ice Cream, Quahogs: There are several home-town foods that I’m moderate to severely obsessed with. In fact, I run through circuits of these foods whenever I’m home. If last night was Sam’s Pizza, tonight’s a Leo’s chicken pom, baby. More than just tasting good, the food comforts me and deepens my connection to my roots, like I’m taking of slug of my own amniotic fluid or something. (Okay, that’s a little gross. Sorry.) And thankfully, NOTHING EVER CHANGES IN NEW ENGLAND. So the pizza place where I toddled out of the bathroom as a kid—with my pants around my ankles requesting a butt wipe—is the same place my family gets pizza today. Never let it be said that a humiliating act of nudity keeps me away from a tasty pizza pie.

Dunkin’ Donuts: One of the names I was keen on if we ever had a boy was Duncan. One evening, in a moment of genius brought on by a pregnancy-induced hormone surge, I tossed out the name “Dunkin’ Donuts McClusky” to Mark. I imagined a kind of corporate sponsorship for our child, whereby we’d get donuts free for life in exchange for the marketing our child would generate. And, amongst other expenses, they’d pick up the tab for college. (At least until AT&T made us a better offer, and we changed his name to that.) Blessedly, we had a girl.

Old Friends: All my friends from home act the way they did when we were 17, which happens to be the age we were when I last spent a lot of time with them. This is a good thing.

Family: Duh. My favorite Fred in all the world lives on the East Coast. Otherwise known as Dad. It grows increasingly mystifying to me why we live so far apart. But considering he’s resided in the same town his whole life and I’m the one who decided to move 3,000 miles away, I guess I’m at fault.

Bunnies: My hometown is Beatrix Potter’s wet dream. At dusk the bunnies come out and are So. Freakin’. Cute. We don’t have bunnies in Oakland. Unless it’s the name of some gang I’m not aware of.

The Parade: Fourth of July is my Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the Bat Mitzvah I never had all in one. It’s the most excellently fun time EVER. If you’ve never been to a July 4th parade in Bristol, Rhode Island, you’ve never really celebrated our nation’s independence. Nor have you lived. After 3-plus hours of marching bands, beauty queens, clowns, acrobats, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, priests, Clydesdales, more marching bands, baton twirlers and Elmo, when people asked Paige what she liked most in the parade she said, “A lady was sick. Some people came and took her on a bed to the hospital.” Yes, it was the heat-stroke sufferer in the crowd that fascinated Paige most about the day. Next year the parade committee will have to work harder to impress Paige.

Bubbler, Grinder, Cabinet, Rescue Squad, Directional: There’s nothing more comforting and provincial than making up a silly set of terms so no one else in the country knows what the hell you’re talking about. I mean, where else do you beckon a “rescue squad” by calling 911? And who else uses their car’s “directional” to indicate that they’re taking a left turn? Big sandwiches are “grinders,” milkshakes are “cabinets” (or sometimes Awful Awfuls), and drinking fountains are “bubblers,” of course. (Or, as the locals say, “bub-liz.”) It’s as if some steering committee determined that the way to retain residents was to make up words that rendered Rhode Islanders utterly incomprehensible outside state lines.

Ethnic Pride: Forget the warring Red Sox and Yankees factions, in my hometown it’s all about the Italians vs. Portuguese. And I’m not referring to soccer—I’m talking about everything. In local politics, food, and swarthy men, these groups come up against each other again and again. My Italian godfather, a world-class grudge-holder who’d drive down the street and spit in the direction of businesses that did him wrong, kept his finger on the pulse of the town’s Italian-Portuguese rivalry. If some Portuguese dudes were appointed to be Grand Marshalls of the July 4th parade two years in a row he’d go on a table-pounding tirade as if Gumby had been elected President. (Gumby being of known Portuguese descent…) The unwritten law—for folks of his generation at least—was that the honor of leading the parade went back and forth between the Italians and the Portuguese. He was extreme in his views, but he wasn’t alone. I’d never defend prejudice, but I think what my godfather had was more of a passionate sense of ethnic pride. At the Italian church’s Feast of St. Anthony last night I was in seventh heaven (no pun intended). I tapped my toes to the Volare-singing band. I commended the priest on his scrumptious lasagna. I bumped into people I hadn’t seen in years who greeted me with dramatic enthusiasm and marveled at my girls. There was history for me there, and a deep sense of belonging that I don’t always feel in California. In fact, I was so swept up in the spirit and community of it all, I even considered buying a ‘Proud to Be Italian’ t-shirt. And did I mention the excellent meatballs?

This Old House: Is it so wrong to covet these fabulous historic homes with five fireplaces, brightly-painted front doors with stately but whimsical brass knockers, and those old metal boot scrapers by the front steps? With water views? And on the parade route? Not to whine like a kid who sees a puppy, but… I WANT ONE!

East Coast Dislikes:

Mosquitoes and Ticks: These are without a doubt God’s most wretched and maddening creatures. Why the hell don’t we have to deal with them in California? Did someone at Stanford figure out how to make the ticks eat all the mosquitoes then drink a bunch of poison Kool-Aid and kill themselves off? And if the little bloodsuckers weren’t horrifying enough, nearly everyone I know on the East Coast has Lyme Disease. They swap stories about how long they were infected before figuring it out like old fisherman swap storm-at-sea tales at dive bars.

Humidity: Okay, I’m officially an old, old withered woman since I’m complaining about humidity, but there are days in the summer here where I think I could chew the air. I daydream about those turpentine-like Sea Breeze astringent pads that dry up even the greasiest teen T-zones. I long for one the size of a bath towel that I could swab myself off with several times a day.

The Not-So-Friendlies: There was a time that I disparaged all the hugging that goes on in Northern California. There is so MUCH hugging there, I can’t even begin to describe it. I’ve seen people hug in the conference room in my office. I’ve hugged nearly all my kids’ teachers—SEVERAL TIMES. I think I’ve hugged the children’s librarian at our library once, but I was probably PMSing. Even my un-huggy husband, who’s trying with all his power-of-one strength to keep the old school handshake alive—even HE has become accustomed to the Customary California Hug, and in social situations that don’t involve someone waking up from a coma. Live in Cali long enough and you too will become a hugger. But on the East Coast? Try chatting with someone at a playground when your kids are playing together and you may get a look like you’re depraved. Sure, I’m a turbo extrovert, but when our daughters are playing let’s-both-be-princesses-and-marry-each-other-under-the-monkey-bars, I think a little “How old is she?” level of interaction is not overly intimate. I see how hugging your manicurist after a mani/pedi is a bit much, but I’d take that any day over mamas keeping a cool distance on the playground.

I’m not sure where this all lands me. Other than happy to be able to spend a chunk of the summer in my hometown, and lucky enough to be going back to California when I leave.

Do you ever wonder whether where you live is where you should be?

Mark did this to me on Sunday. He told me that two of the best showers he’s ever taken took place since he’s known me.

Okay, I admit this is NOT the most scintillating tidbit. Not like finding out he’d been a prodigy on the tuba. Or that he had a tail surgically removed after birth. (Neither of those things, sadly, are true.) But, you know, when you’ve been married to someone for a while, any fresh little nugget is compelling.

So about these showers. The best of his life, he claimed. And before you envision some steamy Nine 1/2 Weeks acrobatic-sex scene, the showers he was referring to he actually took alone.

One of them was after a several-day backpacking trip we took through the Minnesota Boundary Waters. Back when we were dating. It was the kind of grueling balls-out adventure that had the potential to cement our relationship or squelch it. After several days we emerged from the woods exhausted, sucked-dry by mosquitoes, and with Mark missing a toenail. But strangely, still in love.

We were both chicken-fried in sedimentary layers of sunscreen, bug spray, and dirt. Oh, and sweat. Did I fail to mention we were comprehensively coated in deeply-funky homeless man strength sweat?

Well, yes sirree we were.

Mark remembers that first shower back in civilization quite fondly.

Then there was the bath Mark took in a fancy L.A. hotel room after completing the AIDS Ride. (Okay, so this wasn’t a shower per se, but his second best “bathing experience.”) Turns out that after a 580-mile bike ride, a soak in the tub does you justice. In the same way that doing anything other than pedaling your bike would probably be pleasant.

Since having had kids, neither Mark nor I have gotten much chance to do the kinda things that result in severe abstention from cleanliness. No long camping adventures. No immense feats of athletic endurance. And I don’t mean to show off here, but even when the kids were newborns we somehow managed to shower regularly.

So it wasn’t until a few weeks ago, when we went camping for a weekend with Kate’s school, that we returned to the Land of the Stinky.

Yes, we’re the people who put camping equipment on our wedding registry, got a bunch of great new gear, then I immediately got pregnant. And say what you will about the merits of a Thermarest, I had no intention of settling my preg-o whale-like carcass atop a thin air mattress and hoping for any semblance of a good night’s sleep. I mean, even a world-class optimist like me knew that was too much to hope for.

But now Paigey’s well over three years old. We no longer have a baby as an excuse. (Take my notions of poor sleep as a pregnant camper and magnify those to the tenth power at the thought of bunkin’ in a tent with a baby.) So when Kate’s kindergarten sent out an email about a school-wide weekend in the wilderness, how could we say no? It seemed like high time to dredge up and dust off our sleeping bags, Nalgene bottles, and moisture-wicking clothing. Oh and those great little super-absorbant towels.

Sure, we were staying in a cabin. With bathrooms just a path’s walk away. And—get this—there was even a dining hall where we were beckoned by bell for meals three times a day. So it was hardly roughin’ it. But it was a perfect re-introduction to the wonders of the wilderness. A great way for Mark and I to revisit the concept of camping, and to envision it as an activity for our party of four.

And beyond re-igniting our desire to starting camping again, our whole family learned a little something new that weekend. So much so, that I started noting our various discoveries.

Here’s that list:

Electric Kool-Aid Gummi Bear Test
For the first time, Kate and Paige drank Kool-Aid. Paige dubbed it “gummi bear juice” and became immediately, devastatingly addicted. After polishing off a large cup she’d plead, “More, more, MORE gummi bear juice, Mama!” I started wondering what we could use as a methadone to ease her off the stuff on the long drive home.

And to top it off she had a big, smile-shaped, red Kool-Aid stain on her face. Kinda like a milk moustache, but larger and more terrifying. By weekend’s end I feared it was essentially tattooed on. She looked like The Joker from Batman—and with her sugar high, was acting only slightly less demonic.

Boys Like Fire
At the bonfire our first night, I learned that boys—especially 4th and 5th grade boys—really REALLY like fire. Trust me on this. My eyeball was almost on the receiving end of a flaming marshmallow several times. Some boys were skipping the s’mores altogether to focus all their attention on setting branches and leaves on fire. The way things were going it was only a matter of time until bratty siblings and controlling parents were tossed into the flames. I bugged out before the real pyrotechnics kicked in.

Tricks for Keeping Warm
On our first morning in the cabin, Mark handed Kate and Paige their clothes for the day and suggested they put them in their sleeping bags to warm up. Mind you, it was May, but still chiiiiilly where we were. (Saturday night dropped down to 40-something.) Anyway, I thought this idea of thawing your clothes before getting dressed was sheer spousal brilliance.

It pays to marry an Eagle Scout, ladies.

And the other thing? On Sunday morning when I was nearly swan diving into a cup of rank camp coffee to warm up, I learned that I’d bungled my attempts to not freeze during the night. I’d layered on lots of clothes before climbing into my super-schmancy hi-tech sleeping bag. (I am, after all, The First Lady of Wired Magazine Gadgets.) Anyway, in a not altogether flirtatious fashion, one of the dads from the school informed me that “less clothing is more” in one’s sleeping bag. As in, your body generates warmth that bounces off the sleeping bag and gets trapped there—keepin’ ya toasty.

But me? I’d intercepted my 20-degree sleep sack’s ability to be warm and womb-like by foolishly layering on leggings, a t-shirt, and a hoodie.

This explains why mountain men like to sleep in the buff. (Someone said that who was listening to our conversation that day, so I thought I’d say it too. But I actually don’t know any mountain men, and certainly have no insights into their proclivities for night-time garb—or lack thereof.)

Moths to a Flame
The first morning at the dining hall many of Kate’s classmates were clamoring around the industrial cereal dispensers—those long clear-plastic tubes that’re filled with different cereals. You churn a knob at the bottom to dump some in your bowl.

And you know what was in one of them? FRUIT LOOPS.

This, like the Kool-Aid, was life-changing for many of those all-organic, low-sugar, earthy-groovy-healthy California kids. Suffice to to say they were like moths to a flame. Or rather, like little robots aimed at a target who kept blindly walking towards it, bumping into it, then charging it again.

All those lies us parents had been spewing all these years—that the flavorless cardboardy organic Cheerio-shaped cereal was the most delicious and indulgent of breakfast options—were brutally laid bare.

I actually had some Fruit Loops myself that weekend. What a taste flashback!

And you know, they ARE pretty damn good.

Four-Legged Stroller
I have long contended that I will be pushing my children to their proms in strollers. Because they are the world’s wimpiest walkers. I know I should really just dispose of our Rolls Royce-quality double stroller altogether. But now I don’t think I’ll have to. Now that Kate’s been on a horse I’m convinced she’ll be more game for a pony than a Porsche when she turns 16.

I too rode a horse for the first time! Took a glorious hour-long trail ride on an amazing gorgeous trail. Even saw a real-live beaver out swimming in the river.

Nature! Real living nature!

I’m currently considering an urban-girl-goes-country wardrobe overhaul. The next time you see me wearing turquoise jewelry, a silver belt buckle, jeans, and boots, please just play along with it. I’m sure, like all good phases, it will pass.

When in Rome, Speak Roman
On the second morning in our one-room cabin, Kate rolled over and started yammering on about something to Paige. This was a thrilling chance for Kate to start her 12-hour-long Daily Talk Marathon a few minutes earlier than at home, where she has to walk from her bedroom to her sister’s before lurching into uninterrupted streaming chat.

Paige was groggy. She was un-used to the late bedtimes brought about by night-time bonfires. She harumphed. She whined. She rolled over. She pulled her blankie over her head. And finally, fed up, I heard her clearly, unemotionally say, “Suck it, Kate.”

I was stunned. And I think Kate was too—even though I’m pretty sure neither of them knew what it meant.

Kate quieted down. Paige dozed back off, and I lay trembling and speechless in my sleeping bag, not believing what I’d just heard my baby say. (Mark, as it turns out, was in the bathroom during this.)

Clearly the girls picked up more than just how to wield hot marshmallow-tipped sticks from the older boys that weekend. They learned a new nearly-swear. But blessedly—maybe because I didn’t react to it—it was one lesson that they totally forgot.

Kate is doing an overnight camp-out with her most-excellent super-expensive summer camp tonight. They’re sleeping under the stars, having a bonfire, s’mores, and lots of other good clean fun. At nearly six years old, this will be a big dose of independence for her. She’s stayed away from us with her grandparents before, but an overnight camping trip is truly the Big Girl big league.

I’m in that weird maternal place of feeling half thrilled for her and half sad about how quickly my girl is growing up.

And I’m looking forward to getting out to camp more this summer with our whole family. No doubt Kate will have a thing or two to teach us then. Hopefully it won’t be about being naked in your sleeping bag.

The reason for my outpouring of glee? Well, yesterday my most-excellent frienda Brenda called to tell me there’s a chance—what seems to be a WICKED GOOD chance—that she’s moving to California. And that happens to be where I live. Hooray!

Now I know it’s a big state. It’s not like my homeland, Little Rhodey, where someone asks you if you know a guy from there and half the time it turns out that you do, and that you actually went to prom with him. But where Brenda would move is like—wait, let me check my phone—81.2 miles from here.

So, even though the gal is flush with offers from other places too, she started rambling on, saying if she took the one near us she’d be close enough to come hang out for the weekend. To be a regular at our bourbon-punch Christmas bash. Close enough TO COME TO THE GIRLS’ BIRTHDAY PARTIES.

Now, if she doesn’t move here, her having dangled that in front of me is nothing short of emotional abuse. I’m already far far down the path of picturing Auntie Brenda twisting balloons and doing face painting in our backyard, then staying late to read to the girls before she tucks ‘em into bed. I’m already misty-eyed over how she’ll make my stroller-addicted kids into fierce back-country hikers. I’m laying plans for watching her dog when she travels for work.

My sister- and brother-in-law move every few years, on accounta he’s in the Coast Guard. As the gal who wept when her mother sold her childhood home nearly two decades after having actually lived there—I find the concept of moving often scary. But ya do what you need to do. And my sister-in-law maintains that her best friends are scattered all over the country anyway. So where she lives makes little difference. It’s a varying degree of distance from someone whose area code she’s already used to dialing. If she’s lucky, she gets to stay in the same time zone as her besties.

And even though I always thought of this as her situation, the fact is, some of the people I’d populate on my desert island if I had only 10 others to take with me—some of my nearest and dearest chums in the whole wide universe I’ve come to accept I’ll never live next to. At least until the time comes when I’m ordered to collect them for our move to a desert island.

So anyway, suddenly the thought of frienda-Brenda closeness is at hand. And I really hope I don’t have to do the UN-yippy-doodle dance if she decides to take some other gig. Like, I hope the other far-away company doesn’t have a better 401K plan or something.

That would suck.

Speaking of sucking, the night before we flew to Rhode Island I was reading a bedtime story to Kate. A library book. And I know, I know. I was just talking to a teacher-friend, and I know I should be reading all these kids’ books myself first. But I hadn’t. And the plot took an unexpected twist and some robbers broke into a store.

And as it turned out, the robbers were stymied by the happy accident of a whistling tea kettle going off. That somehow had the burglars thinking a police siren was zooming their way. So they never got away with the goods.

But despite justice prevailing, I closed the book and turned to Kate who had her duvet pulled up to her chin and a terrified look on her face.

“Are there still robbers, Mom?” she asked with a squeak.

Me: “Still? Um, well, uh….

Kate: “Like do robbers just break into stores, or do they go into people’s houses too?”

Me: “Well, I mean generally there’s much more reason to go into a store, right? I mean, stores have cash registers, and robbers certainly do like cash…”

Kate: “But there aren’t robbers in Oakland are there?”

Me: “Here?! In OAKland?! [Fake laughter.] Oh, no, no, nooooo! No robbers here. No reason for you to worry, sweetie. You just get some sleep now because tomorrow we’re going on the airplane to see Grandpa!”

Of course, I have these conversations—I get trapped with some horrible truth I have to share—and it’s inevitably before bed. When I have one foot out the door into the freedom of a child-free evening. And I can just envision what the truth will bring. How I’ll be up all night counseling a sobbing, freaked-out child. The temptation to stop parenting—if only for the two hours before I konk out on the couch myself—is too great. And so I can’t help myself.

I lie!

Inevitably Mark is standing in the kitchen, washing dishes after dinner. And he’ll shake his head and just stare forward out the window into the dark night and mutter to himself, “Nope! No burglars in Oakland…”

Because Mark is a truth-talker. I mean, I know that’s a good thing. And I know what I’m doing isn’t necessarily the right approach. But sometimes I’m at a total loss for what either of us should do.

Like Friday night. We were at dinner at my sister’s in SF. We had two cars with us since Mark met us there after work. And as is often the case, Kate wanted to ride home with Mark, and my barnacle, Paigey, wanted to stay suctioned tightly onto me.

When we got home and tucked the kids in, Mark came into our room where I was changing into my most sexy and alluring flannel granny nightgown. (I am SO on-fire in that thing.)

And Mark says, as if he’s mentioning he had a ham sandwich for lunch, that he happened to tell Kate about 9/11 in the car ride home.

“You WHAT?!” I bellowed, yanking the ruffled yoke of flannel down over my head. “You just kind of casually happened to tell her about 9/11?!”

“Well, it’s not like I brought it up,” he said, all calm. “I mean, we were looking at the skyscrapers downtown, and then she asked me what the tallest building in New York was, and I said, ‘Well, it’s the Empire State building now.’”

“NOW?” I shout-whispered, so as not to wake the children. “You said NOW?”

“Well, yeah,” he said, innocently stepping into his striped PJ bottoms. “I mean, I didn’t stress the word, but I said it. And she totally zoned in on it, and asked me what did I mean by ‘now.’ And then I told her about 9/11.”

And oddly, just minutes after that conversation—which Mark claimed wasn’t rife with gory details—Kate was already drifting off to sleep peacefully in her room. We weren’t dialing some 1-800-SCARED-KID hot line. The terrorists apparently weren’t going to win this one.

“Huh,” I said. “Well… do you want to watch Top Chef?”

I think it’s awesome and brave of Mark to talk to Kate about things like this. I need to test the waters more here and butch up to the fact that she can handle it. I need to exhibit more risk-taking behavior when, at the end of a long day of parenting, there might be something that might trigger me to have to spend more time Mamaing. Like, maybe Kate would’ve just said “oh” if I told her sometimes robbers do break into houses, and sometimes it even happens in our happy little hamlet, Oakland.

Last year, when Kate was a wee preschooler (not the sophisticated, worldly kindergartener she is today), I told her about what happened in Haiti. Which led to her asking the inevitable, “Are there ever earthquakes here, Mama?”

And of course, I said, “Here?! Earthquakes in the San Francisco Bay Area?! Why… noooooo!”

I mean, even I felt bad about that doozey of a lie. But really, what was I going to say? “Yes! Why, we’re just a mile or so from a fault line! In fact, we have an earthquake kit packed in our garage with a crowbar and food, and water, and diapers and lots of one-dollar bills so we’re ready for what people refer to as The Big One—a quake of devastating proportions that could level our house, incite looting and rioting, and have public utilities down for days! We also have meeting places established in San Francisco and Oakland in case Daddy’s on the other side of the bridge at work and, well, in case the whole bridge breaks and falls into the water! (All the cell phone lines will probably be tied up.) In fact, most of the people who we meet when we’re away from home think we’re stark-raving mad for living here and ask us, ‘Aren’t you afraid of earthquakes?’ ”

Why yes, honey. We may have great sourdough bread and those big purdy Redwood trees, but the reality is, we live in a primo spot for earthquakes. Heck, and for robbers too!

But do me a favor and don’t let your Auntie Brenda know.  Let’s just let this be our little secret.

We were in San Fran, in a Chinese ‘hood, crowded around an open-air stage watching dragon dancers. You know, those performances where a few kids (or limber grown-ups) crouch inside long brightly-colored dragon costumes and leap around and undulate, usually to some kinda drumbeat or traditional music.

“My God,” I said to Mark, moments after the dragons spewed foil-wrapped candies out at the crowd, “THIS is why we live here. Right? This right now. Don’t you just love it?”

To which he replied mildly, “Yeah, sure.”

Later, walking towards the flea-bitten pony rides I was beaming, enthusing in a manic machine-gun cadence over everything my eyes landed on. “Wow, this is perfect. Not too big. Not too many people. Lots of black market DVDs of Chinese movies for sale. I luh-OVE it!”

And when he didn’t immediately chime in I said, “I mean, they had dragon dancing performances in Franklin when you were a kid, right?” (Mark grew up in rural Pennsylvania. Not so many Amish dragon dancers, I’m guessin’.)

“Yeah,” he shot back. “Just like the ones you went to in Bristol.”

Touché, my street-fair-averse hubbie!

It was hot that day, even close to the ocean where we were. This is never a good sign. Us hardened Bay Area long-timers think of this as earthquake weather. (People who were here for The Big One in ’89 often remark on the unseasonable heat that day.) So never accept sunshine in the city of fog without being leery.

But where was I?

Oh yes, we ducked into a restaurant to get out of the sun and have some lunch. Kate and Paige began feverishly drawing on their paper placemats, then Kate announced at top voice, “These flowers are CHINE-EEZ-IZ.  And these princesses are CHINE-EEZ-IZ too!” I guess in her mind one flower or princess is Chinese, but two are Chine-eez-iz. I suppose that stands to grammatical reason.

And just in case anyone in the restaurant might not hear her, she projected the word extra loud-and-clear.

I mean, it wasn’t like it was such a terrible thing to say, but I certainly had a couple of those moments where I’d look out from our table—and sure it was probably just my neurotic mind playing tricks on me—but it seemed like all the other restaurant patrons were Asian, and there was an endless sea of them, and they were all looking right at us. Staring at us as if to say, “Your children are culturally insensitive. Your children draw on placemats. And you are most certainly NOT Chine-eez-iz.”

As I said, it might-a just been in my head.

Whatever the case it was nothing like the time around the presidential elections when we were shopping at Safeway. Kate, who was around three at the time, called out to an elderly black man at the end of the aisle, “BARACK OBAMA! Hey, Barack Obama!” And then, because at that point I’d crawled into the Frito-Lay display to hide, she turned to me to ensure I didn’t miss her star-sighting and yelled, “Look, Mama! It’s HIM! Barack Obaaaamaaaa!”

My God. We live in Oakland. This was not the first black man my child has seen in public. Or knows, for God’s sake.

But there was something about how totally UNLIKE Barack Obama this dude looked that especially mortified me. He was heavyset. He was stooped and graying. He was hopefully deaf.

Anyway, I’m assuming Barack shops at Whole Foods. Really now, what are the odds he’d be at Safeway? Come on, Kate.

Now, years and years ago, long before the birth of my first pregnancy-related stretch mark, I saw a woman in a locker room who became my hero. I was in Lake Tahoe at some big spa-type place that had hot tubs. And a little girl pointed to a large large overweight woman right at the moment she was stripping off her wet bathing suit.

“Look Mommy!” she screamed. “That lady is soooooo HUGE!”

For a half-second, every woman in that locker room threw up in their mouths a little.

But then, without missing a beat, the twerp’s mom said, “Well honey, people come in all different shapes and sizes.” She said it so calmly. So smooth and relaxed, like it was no big thing. And do you know the tension in the room just—plink!—dissipated, and everyone went back to putting on deoderant and lacing their sneakers.

Of course! How simple and true! We are all different, and it is o-kay.

Isn’t that what it all comes down to? Now I’m not condoning going marauding around locker rooms pointing at others and calling out, “Gnarly leg veins!” or “Left breast significantly larger than right!” No doubt that woman’s feelings got hurt. But I’m guessing she eventually breathed a sigh of relief along with the rest of us.

That Mama’s reaction was a most excellent kindergarten-level life lesson. One that me and all the other horrified women in that locker room clearly needed a refresher course on.

Would I ever live to be as cool a mom as her? Unlikely. But then and there I stashed away that line, figuring it’d help me get out of a similar scrape with a future child—or heck, drunk friend—some day.

A couple summers ago I got a call from one of my BFFs, Mike. Fate threw us together junior year abroad in London, and refused to let our paths diverge. After falling out of touch, we bumped into each other on a sidewalk in New York. That was (gulp) twenty years ago. We’ve linked pinkies in a bond of everlasting friendship ever since.

So a couple years ago he calls me. And he’s all downplaying it, but he says he’s getting married. A last-minute plan, with a very long-time love. It’d be in LA at his mother’s house, super casual. We were in no way meant to feel obligated, but they’d love to have us there if we could make it.

Not GO? That’d be like having a gold ticket to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and staying home to wash your hair. Of COURSE we would be there.

From the second I hung up the phone I was clapping my hands together in glee. Not only was I thrilled for my dear friend to marry his partner (whom I also adored), I was thrilled that my dear friend COULD marry his partner in the great state of California.

Since he stressed it was a bring-the-kids event (they have three of their own), I immediately foisted the thrilling news onto Kate, wanting someone to join me in my spastic delight.

“Guess WHAT, Katie?” I bellowed in her face. “You are invited to a wedding! Your first ever wedding! Mike and Lorin are getting married!” And as I took both her hands and danced her around the living room I cried out, “They are getting MARRIED! Isn’t that just the happiest most exciting news EVER?”

Then, flopped down on the rug together, I caught my breath and shifted from giddiness to my more earnest teacher-Mama mode.  I looked her square in the eye. “You know, Kate, I want you to know that a man can marry a man. And a woman can marry a woman. Just like a man and a woman can get married.” I was getting choked up. Overflowing with excitement and emotion, and my first adrenaline-charged twinges of what’ll-I-wear anxiety.

Mike and Lorin met even before Daddy and I did,” I continued—because when I want to make a point, I like to really hammer it home. “And now, in the state of California, they CAN get married.” Me wiping tears from eyes and making quiet snorfly sounds.

Kate looked up at me from our tangled-on-the-floor hug. She thought for a second then said, “Mama?”

Me: “Yes, honey?”

Kate: “Do you think they’ll have juice boxes?”

Oh, Katie. Sometimes when I’m trying to teach you something you come out of nowhere and show me all the things I can learn from you. Thank you for that, my sweet.

May the time come very soon where the only concern people have with gay weddings is whether or not juice boxes will be served.

It’d be one thing if it was just on accounta getting up at 6AM day after day, since in some late-night at-my-computer moment of bravado I signed up for the FIVE day-a-week boot camp. (Oy! What was I thinkin’?) I mean, that alone would be a really excellent reason to be tired.

But add to that the fact that my darling dumpling of a two-and-a-half year old has decided to regress to the sleeping habits of a two-and-a-half month old. This from the girl who has always been a star sleeper.

Alas, no more.

Who knows if it’s her new Big Girl Bed, or a sudden spate of nightmares, or some over-achiever desire to get back at us in advance for all the ways we’re certain to deny her things, dislike her boyfriends, and piss her off in the course of her life.

Whatever the case, she wails for me from the moment I click her door closed at night. But—from all we’ve read—when I go back in to comfort her I’m just rewarding her yowls. So now Mark uses his resonant I-used-to-be-a-DJ voice to say through the closed door “It’s time to sleep now, Paige.” It’s friendly, but firm.

Oddly, this at times has the effect of Paige stopping mid-hysterical-sob, and responding in a sunny tone, “Alright, Dada!”

But the relief is only temporary. Once we get into the dark cozy REM hours of the night she rises up with the gusto of a pregnant vampire on the prowl for a midnight snack. She cries. She screams. She beseeches “MAAAAA-Ma! Dada! I waaaaaaant you!” And sometimes, just to mix it up, she tramps out of bed and ambles down the hall to our room. (It’s always creepy to be awakened by a child standing silently by your bed. Even if she’s yours, and she’s cute, and she’s not holding a meat cleaver.)

Mark and I alerted the neighbors that we are not waterboarding Paige, despite what her tortured nighttime vocalizations might infer. And we’re methodically working our way through different approaches to getting her to freakin’ sleep again. Although she’s had some intermittent nights of solid sleep—just to really fuck with us—for the most part nothing has worked.

So if you’re interested in coming to babysit for a week and taking a crack at this issue yourself, we’ll happily vacate the place at a moment’s notice.

Sudden thought: Is this some Darwinian toddler phase that emerges to remind parents who’re considering another child about the hellish newborn months of sleep deprivation? Not that we ARE considering another kid…

At any rate, something to think about.

In the final school-free days of summer, and with me work-free, it’s actually been somewhat manageable plodding through the days in a sleepy haze. Sometimes it’s even fun, in a distorted art student life-perspective kinda way.

I mean, have you ever had one of those days that unfolds like a play? Kinda like when you’re reading a book and you know that the writer was really trying to get a movie deal, just based on how it’s all laid out? Well, I had a day last week that felt totally like it wasn’t meant to be a day, but some sort of series of staged events.

For starters, my sleepiness was keeping me more distanced from things way more than I’m used to. Un-shy gal that I am, I usually feel pretty integrated in whatever’s happening around me. But it’s like I was in some weird deaf-mute alternate universe where things were unfolding around me in strictly choreographed little dramatic sequences, and I just happened to be there watching. Like some invisible Ebenezer Scrooge.

It started at boot camp. As most of my days recently do.

Instead of the punishing rounds of weights and bands and medicine balls and lunges/squats/lat blasts, we did our usual punishing frenzied-fast warm-up but were then told we were going to have a break in our routine. We’d just be running around the lake.

And can I just say that Lake Merrit is a fascinating place at 6AM? It’s like when you’re driving to the airport at some ungodly early hour and you can’t believe there are other cars on the road. Something that always prompts Kate to ask questions like, “Are the people in those cars taking a plane to see Grandpa in Rhode Island too?”

Yeah so there are ALL THESE PEOPLE awake and out and doing exercisey stuff at the lake. As I ran I got totally absorbed in watching them pass by. It was like I was in some Spike Lee movie and was gliding along smoothly on some conveyor belt that let me really stare at each person as they passed by.

There was a trio of old Chinese ladies in foamy trucker-style baseball caps and over-sized fleece jackets. One young woman had on a blue silk scarf babushka-style, and was clutching a cell phone to her ear as she scuttled past. There was even a buff black guy, pitted out in gray sweats, who was bobbing in place and doing little boxing jabs. (People really DO those?) Even the dogs looked like they were from Central Casting—one small, white, and scruffy, a big dopey Lab, then a vicious looking brindled Pit. An assortment as diverse Oakland’s human population. Everyone seemed to placed there intentionally to set the tableau of “the lake at dawn,” but it was so well-done, I almost couldn’t buy it.

Do you know what I mean? Like, I was totally anticipating the credits where the scarf-clad woman on the phone would be Babushka Caller #1.

And then later, when I’d shaken myself loose from the scene, gotten home, showered, and collected the still-on-summer-break kids, we went to the lake. A different, swimming lake. And there it was just more of the same. A series of mothers and kids on blankets under umbrellas lined up along shore. They were too perfectly spaced out to be real.

I saw one Mama I vaguely know and we start chatting, while our kids (her boys, my girls) ignore each other. Then, Mother #1—at the far end of the beach—her umbrella get swept up in the wind and tumbles a few times. She catches it, and runs up to my kinda friend. “Hey, could I borrow your hammer again?” Uh… HAMMER? And then Kinda Friend pulls a big rubber mallet from her L.L. Bean bag as if it’s a bottle of sunscreen.

“You, have a mallet with you?” I ask, trying to modulate the shock out of my voice. She carries it, she says, to secure her beach umbrella. Really bang that bottom stake down into the sand.

Hunh.

And this woman is so petite and mild mannered. She’s a nurse for God’s sake. In my sleepy haze it struck me as surreal for her to have a sledge hammer in her tote. And to act like it was no big thing.

After she leaves I get to chatting with Mom #3, the one closest to my blanket. She’s got her own two kids and another in tow who’s a total terror. He’s taking buckets of wet sand and running up from the shore to dump them on people’s blankets. In fact, since I’m standing a bit away from it, he chooses my blanket for this lovely gift. Mom #3 was mortified. She was virtually pulling his ear to get him to apologize, and clearly wanting to illuminate some NOT MY KID sign over the boy’s head.

Later in our conversation, Mom #3 and I were swapping school stories and she tells me that Holy Terror Boy goes to none other than Kate’s soon-to-be new school.

LOVE-ly!

It was three days before school started. I took this tidbit as any rational mother would—as a strong premonition to Kate’s future life of crime.

As the day wore on Mortified Playdate Mom’s umbrella goes flying. As I run down the beach with her to help grab it, she turns to me and says, “Ugh. I wish your friend with the hammer was still here.”

And I just kinda stopped, imagining the morning tableau of mothers and kids arriving lakeside, and—despite not knowing each other—all taking turns with the beach-umbrella mallet like some weird “We Can Do It” poster come to life.

Later that day, we drove through the car wash. Kate and Paige were with me, and they’re pretty enthralled with the drama of the whirling brushes, long slappy rubber strips, and squiggly squirts of pink wax. We happened to be listening to our Nutcracker CD at the time. And as I put the car in neutral, I turned the music way up and we sat back. It was as if each new swishing slapping squirting movement came in perfect syncopation with the music.

It was better than fireworks.

If you have never been very very sleepy and gotten your car washed to the soundtrack from The Nutcracker, I highly recommend it.

It was mesh, so it wasn’t like he was struggling for air or anything. And he wasn’t alone. He was hanging out with his best friend. His friend who, for nearly A HALF-HOUR, had been trying unsuccessfully to un-knot the top of the bag.

And here’s the thing. My sister was upstairs THE WHOLE TIME. Had the boys thought to get her for help? Apparently not. She even asked if they didn’t find her because they thought she might be mad or something. They said no. Word was, they just hadn’t thought to get her.

I can’t help but think this is a boy thing. Like the young male version of not asking for directions.

As my sister was working to free him he tells her, “I’m starting to feel kinda weird in here.”

Uh, YEAH.

I’d have lasted four seconds in there before screaming and thrashing around like a Tazmanian Devil. Not only would someone upstairs know I needed help, the whole block would.

But the fact is, sometimes you get yourself into a tight spot and it’s kinda hard to know how dig yourself out. I was like that for a short while when I get back from Little Rhody. Not in a super bad place, but just glum. The craptastic Bay Area weather plus a large dose of nothing-much-going-on had me in a vague fog. And seeing as I generally operate like a chihuahua on caffeine (at least, in the words of my dear friend Kevin), this nebulous floating about was distasteful.

So I did what any sane woman would do. I started washing down pillows.

You know, took on an extremely low priority project and threw myself into it as if I was single-handedly redoing the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Oh, did I wash pillows. Then I tossed them in the dryer with tennis balls to dry and fluff ‘em all up nice. Once one set was done I’d nearly yank a pillow from beneath Mark’s sleeping head to start in on more.

It was a strange yet effective form of therapy. I was making just enough progress on an utterly unnecessary project that my morose mood was replaced by a mild sense of satisfaction. And since I have an addictive personality, I took my usual more-is-more approach. (Note: If anyone in my neighborhood would like their pillows laundered, please leave them on my front porch. I probably won’t hear the doorbell ring since the tennis balls in the dryer are fairly loud.)

Today, having come near the end of what turns out to be our thrillingly-large pillow inventory, I stumbled across a twin duvet I forgot we had. Perfect for Paige’s new Big Girl Bed! And an excellent item to, well, wash.

Pillow mites are watching their nightly newscasts and shielding their children’s eyes from pictures of me. I’m like the Saddam Hussein of the pillow mite community.

I’m considering opening a bed and breakfast for severe allergy sufferers. Why hoard all this pristine hypo-allergenic bedding for my family’s sole use?

Anyway, speaking of Paigey’s Big Girl Bed—and believe me, she and I seem to spend half our days discussing its merits—the other thing I’ve been doing to occupy myself is re-arranging the furniture in her room. This, it turns out, is also good therapy—albeit somewhat disorienting to the poor girl. She leaves her room for a five-minute snack, and on her way back in slams into a dresser I’ve impulsively moved catty-corner in her doorway.

I just can’t help myself. I’ve explored varying degrees of good and bad feng shui (a bed facing towards the door = a no-no). I’ve exhausted nearly every configuration of the contents of the room. And finally on this “project” I’m also slapping my hands together with a smug sense of accomplishment. I’ve settled on one layout I’ve been willing to keep in place for three days now. This, it seems, is progress.

Other things have helped my disposition get sunnier, despite the thick Bay Area fog. We’re off to Palm Springs at the end of the week—a trip I hastily planned in a desperate heat-seeking mission. And one day after our return from there, we set out for our Minnesotan lake vaycay.

And back on the homefront I signed up for a boot camp. You know, I’m paying some petite drill sargeant to yell at and disparage me as I do wind sprints by Lake Merrit, then fall to the sidewalk for endless rounds of push-ups. At 6:30 in the morning. This started today in fact, and aside from the regular Advil-overdosing I anticipate I’ll be doing, I think this ass-kickin’ is just what my lazy ass needed.

Though waking up at 5:45 was especially brutal. Miss Paige, ever the ringer for sleep, has been discombobulated of late. For years babysitters have gloated about “how easily she goes down.” But in the past few weeks her Sleep Super Power has been out of whack. At bedtime she’ll appear to have fallen asleep, but 45 minutes later will call out, “I want MY MAMA!” in her most desperate and dramatic wail. We’re popping up two to three times a night to settle her down, like she’s a newborn again. You’d think the steady thrum of the tennis balls in the dryer would soothe her back to sleep. But no dice. Much more of this and I’ll be asking for my money back.

Then in the morning, the poor thing calls out to us as if she’s shackled to the mattress. This happens to be my favorite non-intelligent behavior in my children: the fact that once they moved into twin beds they didn’t figure out that they were FREE TO GET OUT on their own.

But really, like I said, sometimes you’re just feeling stuck—be it in a laundry bag, a funk, or a bed that you forgot isn’t your crib any more.

So what’s been happening most mornings is we send Kate into Paige’s room to tell her she can get out of bed. Then she pops right out like a trained Cocker Spaniel and shows up in the kitchen, beaming and wild-haired, announcing proudly, “I got up, Mama!”

Hopefully by the time she goes away to college we’ll get her self-prompting to get out of bed. In the meantime, she’s one member of the family I’m happy to keep in the fog.

As you may know (from my excessive blathering about it), I’m from Rhode Island. A place where vanity license plates—and those with low numbers—are regarded as the pinnacle of social worth.

Not to show off or anything, but my first car, a major jalopy, had the most-excellent plate, KB 2. It was because I was dating the son of a Department of Transportation employee. That car’s been off the road for twenty years now, but my Dad (FB 14) is still proud of that license plate.

Aaaanyway, I was driving behind WMNRSMTR. It was clear that there was a message in there, but not so clear what it was. And I’m usually great with word things. It’s those pastel dotty posters you’re supposed to stare at until you see the wolf baying at the moon that I have trouble with. I almost never succeed at having the image emerge, and end up just lying to whomever I’m shopping with at Spencer’s that I saw it.

But I digress.

So here’s me, alone in my car, trying to crack the code:

“Wim… Nurse.. Mutter…”

“Wih Minners Matter?”

Then more determined:

“Wim NERsum Terr!”

“Wimin URS Tur!”

And finally:

“Wim NER Smerrterr?”

[Click!]

“WOMEN ARE SMARTER!”

Yeah, yeah, I get the irony.

And speaking of women, but really just a total tangent, I realized the other day that my gynecologist’s office is on BUSH Street. No joke! How good is that?

So a couple months ago I went on a day-long yoga retreat in Marin. I’ve done this before but always with my friend and faithful neighb, Jennifer. This time I was flying solo. So at the lunch break I was sitting somewhat dorkishly at the big communal table, having one of my twice-a-decade moments of shyness. Just hoping one of the other yoginis might put their play-with-the-outcast-on-the-playground skills to work.

A trio of older women, in their 60s or so, were sitting to my right. And one of them got to talking in a loud and animated enough way that I felt I could scoop hippie vegan soup into my mouth and look at her. You know, pretend that she was talking to me too.

She’d lived in a chicken coop in Georgia, she said. Yes, a chicken coop. Starting when she was 20 until about—long pause, looking up sideways to think—until she was 26. “It had a packed clay floor,” she pointed out. As if we’d all maybe been picturing parquet. They cooked on a grill and had an outdoor water drum that was painted black that they used as a shower.

I was instantly jealous.

When I was 20 I was living in Ohio. Sure that’s rustic and all, but I mean, I had indoor plumbing.

She’d moved to Georgia from Minnesota with her “pack,” as she called them. A group of about eight who I couldn’t help but imagine as a bra-disparaging partner-swapping commune-like klatch.

Again, more envy. Or maybe just deep deep fascination.

And they were potters, of course. That’s to say, throwers of pots. (By this point in the story I think I’d pulled my chair nearly an inch from her, abandoning my soup, enraptured.) They—her “pack”–had waited for their potter’s wheels to arrive in the mail first, then they hit the road for Georgia.

I couldn’t help but wonder how many pottery wheels they had, and why they didn’t just have them shipped straight to Georgia. But I didn’t want to ask too many questions. After all, I was kind of auditing the story as it was.

After more good stuff about one klatch member who was a professor getting fired, and some details on the rigors of heat-free winter-living, she mentioned  she now owns a gallery in Berkeley. The woman at her left has a gallery there too. They said the names of the places, which I of course instantly forgot, but in my mind I envisioned visiting there a lot. Buying stuff. Becoming an apprentice. Keeping a pet cat there.

Even though I kinda hate pottery.

Then this other woman pulls up a chair with her bowl of soup. And for a moment my verging-on-creepy fixation with the gray-haired pot-throwers was broken.

The new woman started chatting with the instructor about how she’s out of town so often for work. So, I summon some social courage and ask her what she does.

And DO YOU KNOW WHAT SHE SAID? She said she is a bee broker.

A BEE broker!!

I didn’t know what that was but I instantly wanted to be one too. BEES! Of course!

So, I say, “So, uh, what is a bee broker?”

And do you know what she said? She said that she has some big rig that’s filled with hives that she brings down to Modesto to the almond farms. She then sets her bees free in the fields. It’s like the farmers rent them! Then at night when it gets all chilly the bees fly back into the truck to go to sleep with in the hive, or have sex with the queen, or do whatever it is they do in there. Then Ms. Bee Broker heads off to another farm.

I almost hugged her.

Now I was going to have to split my weekends between Modesto and the Berkeley pottery studios.

All this talk was more energizing than all the hold-one-nostril breathing and triangle-posing the first half of the retreat had served up. I loved every one of these women. If these gals by were so amazing, what were the ones crouched over their vegan soup over there like? I wanted to start going from woman to woman, looking intently into each of their faces and interviewing them all documentary-style.

I mean, I was feeling like the odds that the next person I’d talk to would be a Bed, Bath & Beyond employee was pretty low. But the thing is, if she had been, I think I would have suddenly slipped into a reverential trance, and praised all that was holy about mattress pads. I was ready to find the love in everyone.

Without drugs!

After lunch and before my yoga, we all hiked to the beach. This hike is pretty crazy gorgeous. If you’re ever in California, call me and I’ll take you to this place. It’s along a super lush valley where these Buddhists have a homestead. You pass all their perfect vegetable and flower gardens, then a silly idyllic horse pasture, and then the path narrows and it’s all just and trees and flowers and birds and butterflies and nature and shit.

What I mean is, it sure is purdy there.

Then when you arrive at the beach, you get that positive ion hit. Whatever that high is that you get from the ocean water. Someone told me about this once and I still believe that there’s something to it, even if it’s really not true.

But clearly in the mode that I was in I needed no more highs of any sort.

Beachside I wandered up to a group of co-yoga-retreaters and sat on a driftwood log with them. (See how socially brave I was getting?) We were looking out at the water, and I was feeling certain one of them was about to tell me something that would make me weep and hug her ankles and think that the world was a beautiful beautiful place. You know. I was just waiting for that.

Even better, I got some excellent book recommendations. These gals were older, but let’s just say we were reading at the same level. We all clucked with praise for that great hedgehog novel. And then they bantered about the name of a few other amazing reads. Eventually I’d borrowed a pencil from one of them and an ATM receipt from another and wrote the all the titles all down. We even talked about our favorite children’s lit because—get this—one of them had been a children’s librarian for, like, 30 years or something. Joy!

If I were to spelunk a few layers down on my desk today, I may even find that paper today and read those books.

Just a day or two after it opened, I went to see the Sex and the City movie with a Mama Posse friend. I never read movie reviews. Having even the smallest inkling of what to expect in a movie destroys it for me. I spend the whole time waiting for whichever scene it is that’s funny or dumb, and I can’t even enjoy my wine. (Yes, smuggling red wine and plastic cups into the movies has become par for the course for me and the Mamas.)

But in the days leading out to my Moms Night Out, Mark, bless his heart, made sure I knew how utterly decimated this movie had gotten by reviewers. It’s badness delighted him.

But whatEVER. We still went. And all of Oakland was out in their fancy. I mean, black girls in stilettos and what looked like prom dresses. I mean, it’s Oakland. If there was any Prada, I didn’t see it.

Me, I was in flip flops.

And do you know what? I LIKED the movie. Sure it was vapid and silly and predictable, and there were probably some culturally-offensive jokes, but it was entertaining. Yes, I actually chuckled—full-out laughed a bit too—and found it perfectly un-intellectually engaging.

On the way out, I think I even complimented a woman on her purple clutch, awash with feel-good audience-mate comraderie.

I’m not exactly sure what all those reviews said—because if I’m disinclined to read reviews before seeing a movie I’m even disinclineder to read them after. Maybe those writers were preparing to see Amistad, and were taken aback when the movie was more about Manolo Blahnik shoes, low-cal cocktails, and menopause. You know, I think they were missing the point.

While I’m at it, do you know what movie I also saw last week? The latest Twilight movie. Oh yes I did.

And I LIKED THAT TOO.

Sure, I’d had—-okay—a few Mai Tais beforehand. But even without cheap rum coursing through my veins I think I’d be squealing over the dreamy barely-legal cast and walloping my poor friend’s arm during the shirtless scenes. It was entertaining. I enjoyed myself.

And where’s the shame in that?

I’m hardly going to defend the artistic merit of either movie. But I will say, that in a theater full of women who likely spent their days working in courtrooms, or classrooms, or at The Sunglass Hut—or hell, wrangling with clay or bees or young children—for us gals it felt good to put our hair down and our feet up and let the low-browness of it all wash over us. I mean, isn’t that why men watch wrestling?

From what I can tell, despite what movies we may make a big show of going to, that license plate was right. Women are smarter.