Rox and Roll

The last three weeks: seven planes, five states, countless friends, and life, revisited

After a few weeks of mostly blissful rest and relaxation, I returned home today full of a bizarre mix of refreshed energy and utter disquiet.  Having been surrounded by people about whom I care a great deal for weeks on end, my personal gas tank is full of many positive things.  I am determined to hold on to these feelings of gratitude, peace, comfort in my life-stage (even amid a great deal of ambiguity), the love of and for friends and family, and the confidence that I can pull off a life in this world remaining true to who I am while flying solo.  That last part is the source of my disquiet and my greatest hurdle, as I have not found the right balance yet among challenging myself to re-examine not only my priorities but my whole value set, (re)defining myself where necessary, and giving myself permission to have new experiences outside of my (former) comfort zone.  Yet I am getting there the way a start-up enterprise does: first I crawled, now I am walking, and, soon enough, I will be running. 

These last few weeks along that walking journey have been amazing.  After a quick drop-off of a boy and a dog in Florida, the first stop on my journey involved settling Petunia into summer camp at my prep school alma mater.  Wrapped up in concern over getting her and her stuff settled into the space, I had not prepared adequately for an unexpectedly emotionally-difficult journey to this place, my favorite on earth, where I met her father, where we became engaged, and where we married.  It is hard to reclaim space for oneself when so many memories there are shared ones.  Fortunately, a dear friend who also has gone through a difficult life transition had shared with me a Hawaiian ritual called hoʻoponopono, a way of making peace, in a sense -- and I decided to use it with this, my beloved space.  I walked around for a couple of hours in the gloaming, respecting my feelings, thinking about forgiveness, finding gratitude, and remembering the love I feel for this place that engendered in me both deep curiosity and love of learning which remains at the heart of my takeaways from there. 

It always felt like home, and it still does.

Next, I traipsed around Boston and surrounds for a few days, seeing friends here and there, joining one for tea in the courtyard of the Boston Public Library.  I had not seen her in 18 years, and it felt like so little time had passed.  I cherish moments like that -- those reminders of connectedness with friends who have left an imprint on our hearts that time and space does not alter. 

From Boston, I headed North to my favorite place on this earth, the brave little state of Vermont.  Nearly two years ago, Hurricane Irene destroyed part of my beloved Vermont town, including its covered bridge.  It was a pleasure to see it rebuilt:

And to see the beautiful Ottaquechee River raging on:

 I love the reflection of the trees on the glassine water. 

After a quick stop in Hanover, New Hampshire for a coffee at the Dirt Cowboy Cafe, birthplace of the novel that I am working to finish, I headed back to Boston for a flight back to Florida, where I really really really did not want to get out of the Atlantic Ocean.  Noted, the green room is more mud-brown, and there were a scary lot of jellyfish my last day in the surf, but oh!  to have warm water in which to swim, boogie-board, and surf regularly!  While my hair may hate it, my overall opinion of Florida in the summertime has been turned on its head.  Mom, Dad, see you next July, right here:

My adventures wrapped up in Marin with some friends sharing a house in celebration of one's 40th birthday.  Yesterday, we took a two-hour hike that became a four-hour hike, but it was so worth it.  Look:

I am home now.  I am tired.  I am happy.  And I am planning my next adventure already with a full heart and a whole lot of stuff on my mind that I have yet to hike enough to clear out of the way.  My favorite book in graduate school was a conversation between educators Myles Horton and Paulo Freire, titled "We Make the Road by Walking," and that phrase has remained among my personal mantras.  But after spending a weekend with a new friend who is an ultramarathoner, I am thinking that running is not so bad.  One covers more ground that way.  And if I do not take up running, well, flying will work.  Seven planes, five states, and more friends and family than I can count on my fingers and toes ... My gas tank is full, and the open road awaits.

Growing up West Virginian

Last evening, the first of many small dinner gatherings I hope to have over the summer took place on the deck of my country home.  We talked, laughed, and ate as we watched the sun's golden rays set the native grasses of the Stanford Hills aglow as the distant magical city of San Francisco faded into the purples and pinks and delicate fog of the night sky.  In some ways, it felt about as far from my native home in Appalachia as one could get; and yet, from the vantage point of what passes for a farm in Silicon Valley, the duality of my existence as a well-educated coal miner's daughter sprang to the forefront of the conversation in an unexpected way: over dirt.

Later this summer, some friends and I are going camping in the desert, and there's a real quandary over whether one should rent vehicles to do this sort of camping or take one's own car and gear.  Apparently, the dirt, once it gets into your stuff, may never come out.  The desert dust has a "soapy" feel, one friend described, and, apparently, it sticks to the crevices of everything somewhat permanently.  Nothing new taken there will ever be new again.  There was a general consensus that one does not take new stuff to camp in the desert, for it will be ruined if it gets dirty.  It took my oldest friend at the table piping up with "maybe she doesn't view getting things dirty as a negative" for me to frame the situation, and the solution, in my mind.  He is right; I do not care about getting things dirty -- not my hands, not my car, and not my life.  Out of the greatest messes, the greatest experiences are born.  (Should I invoke the metaphor of childbirth here, where the initial mess is cleaned up but oh, how the scars -- and product -- remain?!)  Knowing myself well, the dust in my camper will bring a smile to my face every time I come across it, for it will remind me that I lived a little.  I will not die wishing that I had not gotten dirt in my car -- but I will certainly die, at least a little inside, if I do not start opening myself to a new mess of experiences.  As yesterday's dinner came on the heels of news that one of my dear friend's other friends had just passed away suddenly at age 51, we are all too aware that life can be a lot different than we planned -- and unfortunately, sometimes that means a lot shorter.  We come from dirt, and we return to it -- ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

As I write this post today, it is West Virginia's 150th birthday -- so the reminder of who I am and who I want to be that was borne from last night's conversation is, in many ways, appropriate.  I am at a point in my life where my present-day identity is changing: I am no longer a wife, still somebody's mother (times two), a worker by contract ... And I am exactly two months away from turning forty years old.  Who am I?  What am I doing here?  What is my purpose?  I started reflecting on this especially hard when my grandfather passed away a couple of months back, and it has occupied a great deal of mindspace ever since.  I am at a juncture where I can redefine myself.  We should all have this luxury -- and that, really, is what it is.  It is so easy to get stuck being who we think we are supposed to be, or, far worse, like I did: being who other people think we should be.  We need to stop from time to time and do a reality-check with ourselves.  And if we are not living as we wish to live, it is never ever too late to push the reset button.

And I am resetting to be a West Virginian again.

What does that mean?  No, wild and wonderful family, it does not mean that I am moving "home." It means that I am returning to the things I learned as a child that I forgot until I needed to remember them -- thinks like getting dirty, literally and metaphorically.

Getting dirty can be an uncomfortable thing.  One way to get dirty is by gathering dust, which happens when one is unmoving.  (The back of my TV is evidence of that.)  That is pretty unexciting.  But another way to get dirty is by taking some risks and trying something out of our comfort zone.  I am not encouraging sullying oneself for no reason -- but for me, one example is that I am thinking of taking up snowboarding again, bruises be damned.  I can live in fear, clean and unbroken, or I can come close to flying and risk defiling myself while becoming more whole than I ever will become while sitting here collecting dust. I harken back to a childhood riding BMX bikes off of auto tire ramps into piles of leaves and think: that was worth it.

The dirt beneath my fingers has become important to me once again as well.  My kids and I have planted a couple of gardens, and last night's dinner ended with lemon cupcakes made from my own tree and lavender truffles made from my own lavender.  As a dinner guest noted, "am I really eating that local, like ten feet away from the plant?"  I love answering "yes" to that.  In the fall, I will invite him back for pumpkin pie from our own patch, several other kinds of squash from my own garden, persimmons and olives from our giving trees. 

The kids and I also are spending more time together off-line, especially taking hikes to animal-spot.  We have both cottontail bunnies and jackrabbits living under the deck of our barn.  Deer sleep on the porch off of my master bedroom.  Foxes, quail, California condors, red-tailed hawks: all here.  Lizards are everywhere, and we see the occasional king snake.  We saw none of these things in the city just seven miles down the road.  It is magical, and it is just like my own childhood.

Yet the biggest difference of all is in my own priorities, especially with regard to connectedness.  I entertained a lot in my old life, but those gatherings were bigger, less personal, and pretty rarely for my own purposes.  Now, I value "visiting," as my grandma would call it, all the more.  I want to have regular summer deck dinners for friends from different circles to meet.  One of the things I feared about divorce was the social shift: would I lose friends over this?  Lo and behold, my circle has grown with more new friendship than I ever could have imagined.  It is nothing short of miraculous, and I am loving integrating the old and the new (or in some cases, the renewed) into my changed life. 

West Virginians do it right, you see, to a fault.  We garden like nobody's business.  We get our hands, and our vehicles, pretty dirty.  Then we go to each other's houses to visit, eating pie made from berries from our gardens and getting to know each other's kids.  We look out for each other.  We do not care if our houses are perfect or who has more or less.  We show up, and we nourish each other inside and outside at the same time.  I doubt I knew a millionaire in my home state, yet we all lived with an abundance that is absent from Silicon Valley.  Being a West Virginian involves a richness and depth of the soul that one cannot imagine if one grew up in a big, clean house with professionally-organized stuff and Whole Foods and rental campers and maids to clean it all up after us.  Being West Virginian is far messier and, thus, far more real in the best possible way.

I have spent more of my life running from being a West Virginian than I have embracing that I am who I am because of the very place in which I took my first steps, played with cousins daily, swam in a creek, hopped in the back of a pick-up truck for a hay ride, planted a seed, and saw the stars in a country sky unblemished by the ruinous lights of a business life. 

That running stops now, and I will remember who I am as my new car tows my new camper to the desert, where we will all get a little bit dirty this summer.  The desert dirt may be quite different from that of my farm, but that primal connection that I feel toward the earth I was born to appreciate will be quite the same, for we come from that dirt, and it is to that dirt we will one day return...

... but not yet.  I have some lovely messes to embrace, and I will bask in every glorious one.

Happy Birthday, West Virginia, my Mountain Mama, my truest home.

 

 

Christmas by Night

As I tucked in my children tonight, I read to them from the book of Matthew, reminding us all of the birth story that begat today's celebrations.  Though it is the story of the joyous birth of our Christ, it holds in it some rather dark elements.  King Herod sends his wisest men to locate this newborn baby, whom he perceives to be a threat to his authority; Herod intends to kill Jesus, but the wise men -- wise to his plan -- do not assist him and, likely putting their own lives in jeopardy, never report back.  Joseph, Mary, and Jesus flee to Egypt, returning to Israel only after Herod's death, remaining in fear of the son who ruled after him.  In some ways, the New Testament could read like a mystery novel, one in which forces against Jesus try and try again to bring him down.  (Of course, they eventually succeed -- but we do not need to go there, as Easter is months away.)

What parallels this story has to life right now, whether my own personal story or that of the goings-on in the world.  When I read this piece by Max Lucado -- one of my favorite kids' authors for his fables with a strong moral message -- my heart grew at once heavy and hopeful.  Lucado writes, "Oh, Lord Jesus, you entered the dark world of your day.  Won't you enter ours?  We are weary of bloodshed.  We, like the wise men, are looking for a star.  We, like the shepherds, are kneeling at a manger.  This Christmas, we ask you, heal us, help us, be born anew in us." 

In a world where violence is ever present, where children are being taken in what ought to be sacred and safe space, how profound is that message: we are looking for a star.  We seek a light.  We search for a way out of the darkness in which we could drown if we closed our eyes and let it consume us.  We hope for a better world.

I found the light this holiday season -- or, rather, it found me.  It came to the sound of a gentle knock as a friend placed poinsettias, a wreath, and doormat on my stoop -- alongside a delicious dinner.  It continued with another friend with whom I shared one of the best child-free meals out and deepest conversations I have had in a long time.  It kept going as holiday card after holiday card arrived addressed to me in my own "original" name, some with the kindest letters and notes of support I could have ever imagined.  It grew with the arrival of my "big sister" from Sweden, a former exchange student whom I adore who traversed halfway across the globe to be with us for just a couple of days.  It blossomed in the Christmas pageant, where my heart beamed as my angel Gabriel (Petunia) and my little shepard (Dash) delivered their lines with such joy.  And it kept on rolling right through this Christmas day, when my greatest gift came in the form of a visit from a dear college friend and his lovely family; nothing can make a home glow quite like a two year-old and a six year-old, alongside my own twelve and seven year-olds, with an unlimited cookie supply!

Plus, of course, there were the lights -- literally.  I stepped out of my front door one afternoon to find myself surrounded by them, from my handrails to my doorway to the gables of my roof.  A friend had sent a light-hanger to be-Christmas my house.  I think the only tears I shed this season were while watching my kids' eyes as they saw them light up for the first time.  Awestruck does not even cover it!  It was as if I got to watch them getting infused with the Christmas spirit -- a special and magical event that I could never replicate if I tried.

Most importantly -- most impressively, perhaps -- aside from those few tears of joy, I spent this holiday season waiting for tears that never came, waiting for ache that I never felt, waiting for the hurt that I anticipated -- waiting, in a sense, to suffer.  What a shame that I wasted that time during a season of such joy.  What a shame, really, that I thought I should suffer at all.  It is as if I lost my own light.  It is my great fortune that others see it and shine it back at me when I am in my times of greatest need for that reminder.

It has been a dark year, likely my own darkest ever.  And yet, I sit here by a glowing fire, warmed even more by the love of family and friends, knowing that I have chosen to emerge from the darkness unbroken and whole into a world that I will continue to refuse to see as dark, and, poignantly, one in which I refuse to accept suffering as the norm.  The Zen proverb says "Pain is inevitable.  Suffering is optional."  I choose to be strong.  I choose to remember my inner light that comes from being secure with who I am and with what I need, and especially with how I act and interact in the world. 

Max Lucado is right, Jesus was born in darkness -- and yet, a Star lit the path of all who sought Him.  My Christmas prayer this year, for myself and for all who have struggled of late to make sense of the world, is that when we are lost, we find the light -- whether it is the Light of God or the light within ourselves that reminds us of why we are here: to love each other and to be of good use to one another.  And I give extra thanks this year for the friends who shone that light on me when I refused to find it myself.  A new year lies ahead, and I am excited to begin anew.

Thankful in ways I never imagined

A year ago, our family of four celebrated our last Thanksgiving as a together family.  I remember it so vividly.  With no extended family in town, we decided to splurge on the local Four Seasons, enjoying most especially a dessert buffet that filled an entire room.  We never took the kids to places like that, and the impression lasted.  Huge smiles, thanks shared, especially for one another... It was one of the happiest holidays I'd experienced with our family.  Yet it was a mere three days later that life as I knew it changed forever.  Especially post-9-11, I should have known that life could change in an instant, but, in my naivete, I never thought it would happen to me -- not to this happy family, captured in an iPhone snapshot, standing by the chocolate fountain with smiles exuding love and gratitude.

Approaching Thanksgiving this year, my emotions are high, knowing that I want to make it an extra-special day for Petunia and Dash, who wanted to return to the Four Seasons; but I knew such a thing would exceed my emotional capacity.  Then, blessedly, the invitations started pouring in.  A friend who has become like a bonus sister is hosting her first-ever Thanksgiving at her home, in honor of her late mother who always hosted the big day.  "We're bringing together those we love and hold dear," she wrote. "Join us."  I accepted, offering to bring a tray of let's-pretend-it's-traditional mac-n-cheese -- the only Thanksgiving food that I'm sure Dash will eat -- and a pumpkin custard, and some special surprise appetizer that I hope to have figured out by the time this post is published.

Context is everything, really.  Spending Thanksgiving with a friend who's experienced multiple losses in the past couple of years seems appropriate.  I know I am not alone in my pain, just as I know we will all share in the joy that a houseful of kids and friends and family always breeds.  Somehow, we'll get through the day with what I'm sure will be loads of laughs, and then, somehow, we'll get through Christmas, and next year, and the year after that.  I know that.  It's just hard to forget that our reality has changed when I still have the picture in my head of something completely different.  New pictures will be taken, new memories will be forged, and someday, it'll get easier.  But this Thanksgiving, I'm not going to pretend like everything is swell.  It's weird, and it hurts, and it's all wrong, and God, it's not even Christmas -- and yet, it's my new normal.

What I can do that's positive is to focus deeply on my own thankfulness, and I'm thankful now in ways I never imagined.  My "sisters," they have been lifesavers in ways I cannot bring myself to write.  There are a few "brothers" in there, too, who have shown up in some pretty magnificent ways.  There's my family, especially my parents, who have taken a lot of trips West just to be here with us, to help fill the void a little and to offer some relief and some extra love.  There's my dog -- my sweet, ever-loving, furry third child -- who is just so ... herself.  So Lola.  So hysterically funny, and affectionate, and wildly entertaining.  There are friends all around the world who check in, who distract, who pray.  There are two jobs, a huge church family, food and shelter and a working fireplace ... stories to read, hot chocolate to share, snickerdoodles and giggles and so very much love.

And there are the two most important people in the world for whom I am thankful: two kids who came into this world from a place of great love and, each day, make me want to be a better person.  They are my reason for getting out of bed, for doing good work, for being my best self, for living with integrity and purpose.  They make me want to make the world a better place not for them, but with them.  They are so fundamentally good.  They are grace at work before my very eyes -- their glistening, happy, hopeful eyes in which I see a reflection of God in His heaven declaring that all is right with the world.  Even when it doesn't feel like it.  Even when the Thanksgivings I envisioned are FUBAR.  Even when I don't know when I'll say that I'm okay and really mean it.

Friends, readers, hold your loved ones a little tighter this holiday season.  I don't encourage everyone to treat every holiday like it might be the last -- but what if we did?  Would we worry less about menus and decorations and the ideal of perfection and perhaps laugh a little louder, delve a little deeper into sharing that gratitude, create some memories that'll be the stories we tell our grandkids one day?  Would we care a little less about the condition of the house and more about the condition of the people in it? 

I'm not ever going to be thankful for this blind turn my life has taken, but I sure am thankful for the belief in myself that has been borne from it.  I'm thankful that I get to live a healthy, happy, fulfilling life in spite of it all.  And yes, I'm still thankful for chocolate fountains, mountains of happy memories, and many more to come -- well, perhaps minus the chocolate fountain, though I'm pretty sure that made it onto someone's Santa list.  And that there is what I'm increasingly most thankful for: perspective.  For the kids, it's all about the sweets, whether it be chocolate or kisses, as well it should be for all of us.  Have a blessedly fulfilling Thanksgiving, all.

Because a childhood is a terrible thing to waste

This marked day three stuck inside with a sick kid, and let's face it: entertainment options for mom are limited.  I've already read an entire book, read Dash all of his books, done much of the laundry, rearranged some kitchen cabinets... you get the picture.  I don't do "cooped up" well, and I really, really don't like cleaning (and can't do it all day long anyway)...

... so Facebook to the rescue! 

Now, let me backtrack a bit.  I have been extremely annoyed with Facebook lately.  These lists of 25/26 things going around are driving me batty.  Through those lists, most of which I've read because I'm stuck in the house, I've learned some incredibly interesting things about a few friends.  I've also learned a whole lot of things that I never needed to know.  As in, if you still pick your nose and eat it, I don't want to read about it on your adult Facebook page; I have a three year-old at home, so I have enough boogers to deal with.  You have OCD?  Tell your therapist.  You have fears?  Sissy.  Go cry to your mommy; just don't freakin' tag me.  I refuse to be "it."

SO, anyway, like I was saying, I was averse to Facebook for a while, but then -- after reading every post ever written on my beloved Silicon Valley Moms Group -- I decided: hey!  I know what to do as I'm holding this barf bucket for my kid!  I can make more friends!

And I thought: who am I the most curious about?  who am I missing from my list?

That's when I realized that, short of my BF since the 2nd grade, I was missing my entire childhood.  Seriously.  Aside from my immediate family, anyone who grew up with me in my small hometown in West Virginia -- every last person (except for that one) who knew me before I was 16 and left for boarding school -- was missing from my radar screen.  That realization made me quite sad on two levels.  On the one hand, there was this small group of people that I really liked, and I wondered what happened to them.  On the other hand, I remembered how hard of a time I had growing up there -- how I was bullied mercilessly, especially for being smart, and I certainly didn't want to conjure up those bad times.  Then again, I sort of "won" in that regard; I never broke under the pressure, I still don't need a therapist for it, and I learned just how strong and resilient I am mostly because I had to deal with mean people at a young age.  (I often wonder how my kids are going to learn how to "deal" in our lily-livered modern age -- though, obviously, I'd rather they learn strength in a more positive way!) 

So I started searching, first for the high school that I attended in 10th grade (that my mother had attended before me), and one thing led to another... and there they were.

The people who sucked were not there, but all of these wonderful people -- people who were my friends, who came to my goodbye party before boarding school, who stayed in touch a few years beyond in the years before we even had e-mail -- there they were, on Facebook.  They are still amazing.  They are all over the world.  They are doing amazing things.  And best of all, they showed me that I wasn't the only one to leave my hometown to see the world.  (I often worried about that, since the college-going rate for WV is just over 10%, which is about a third of the national average.) 

First I heard back from one, a boy who suddenly looks like a man, who played trumpet with me in band and jazz band.  Then another, a boy who I remember others teasing; he has facial hair plus a graduate degree from a school that I deeply respect.  And another, a guitarist with whom I had some awesome jam sessions; he's halfway around the world running his own company, and he looks exactly the same.  A girl with whom I was in the "gifted" program is all grown up and a professor in the Southwest.  And the list, it keeps growing. 

Facebook, I still think you suck for disallowing breastfeeding pictures, and I'm still not doing my list of 25 things... But I heart you anyway, because now I can make a better list, one of people who made my childhood better -- people with whom I shared a unique experience in rural America, people who still care what I'm up to some 20 years later.  Living in WV, I always thought that my world was too small.  Now, thanks to the internet, my small world is back.  It is a warm and cozy place -- and the memories and catching up should get me through yet another day with an improving but still recovering Dash.

The weekend that'll make my week

Starting out the weekend, there was a chance it was going to be the weekend from hell.  I braced myself appropriately, apparently, since it turned out to be an absolutely fabulous few days.

Of course (WARNING: EAST COAST FRIENDS, AVERT YOUR EYES!) the weather being around 70 degrees and sunny might have had something to do with it.

Saturday morning dawned bright and beautiful as I gathered the kids for a neighbor's Laser Quest birthday party.  Truly, the place was insane.  There were four birthday parties going on at once, and the arcade was in the reception hall.  It would've been easy to lose Dash, who was attached to me while Petunia played laser tag, because of the sheer overcrowding, let alone the poor layout.  Suffice it to say, it wasn't my favorite party ever -- but the kids loved it, and that's what mattered.

The laser tag and arcade party was followed by pizza, etc., though, and imagine the surprise I enjoyed when the party hosts whipped out a gluten-free, soy-cheese pizza!  To some people, this would be far from thrilling, but put yourself in my shoes: I don't remember the last time I ate a slice of pizza.  It has been over a year, maybe two, ever since my wheat allergy became severe enough that I can't even cheat and sneak a bite.  To compound things, Dash's recent diagnosis with a mild dairy allergy has complicated things.  This family eats (ate) a lot of pizza.  So when my neighbor introduced me to Amici's (the one they ordered from is in Mountain View), she greatly improved the quality of my life.  We ordered from there tonight: a soy cheese pizza for Dash, a gluten-free Margherita pizza for me, and a half-cheese, half-pepperoni "normal" large pie for Petunia and the Guv.  The downside was the $53 bill (the GF pizza was $24 of that) -- but my first taste of pizza in over a year made that priceless!  (And it was really, really GOOD too!)

After Laser Tag on Saturday, we returned home to prepare for a visit from my college friend Seamus, his lovely wife, and their two year-old daughter.  Sometimes, these type of visits are more trouble than they're worth -- the work of cooking and cleaning up compounded by constant childcare ("refereeing") can be a real drag.  But not this time!  Our Petunia stepped up to the plate without even being asked, taking over the care of her brother and our young visitor.  Plus, the Guv and I made a very low-maintenace menu of chili, quesadillas, veggie and cheese trays -- that, some wine and beer, and it was a very easy, enjoyable evening.  I don't remember the last time I had meaningful adult conversation with kids in the house.  What a special night!

And then this morning, I slept in... which was actually a problem, since I woke up at 8:35 am and was supposed to be at Dash's preschool from 9-3 for a "maintenance day."  For the uninformed, "maintenance day" is code for "wiping boogers off of toys, tables, etc." and it was totally gross.  My son loves this preschool, but it is just not my bag... too much work, too much cleaning that I don't even want to do in my own house, too much dirt... All that said, the Guv recently figured out that to take my son to the drop-off preschool, I'd have to earn about $12g to pay for it... So we stay at the right school for Dash, the wrong school for me (though I have made some great friends there, so someday I'll stop saying that). 

While I attended Booger Day, the Guv took Petunia, her two friends N and Z, and Dash on a super-long bike ride to Stanford's campus, where they launched stomp rockets, dunked in a fountain (did I mention it was 72 today?) and slurped Jamba Juice.  The Guv is exhausted, and I am hugely impressed that he took that on himself.  When I commented to him that this weekend was like one long playdate for our friend Petunia, he chuckled, "yeah -- just like our life was growing up.  This is how it's supposed to be.  Like the good old days!" 

I'm not sure that I'm up for weekends jam-packed with mutiple others' kids yet -- though breaking it up with some friends and wine sure did help!  And the Guv is right about one thing: these are the good old days, made new again through our young 'uns.  What a fun weekend.  I hope that it's just the start of a magnificent new year in our new California home.