Um, and so. France was freakin amazing. I set up shop in the kitchen of the flat and cranked out words and words and words. Janny had a couple of friends with pools: Annette, with a walled garden on a hill surrounded by vineyards and wind farms; Ian and Jill, with a pool among prickly pears on the downslope of Villerouge. The kids swam every day, I think, which was lucky because temperatures were in the thirties, or hundreds, depending on where I am. We climbed the hill and sat in the window of the ruined castle. My God, France is just beyond gorgeous, the red earth and the ink-green forests and the vines in their lime-green lines. And yellow grass and the bronze-bright sky.

We had lunches in the cool dining room and dinners on the terrace looking out over a yellow field of grass next door. My God, the food. Tomatoes and cucumbers and greens and avocados and hard boiled eggs and black olives. Cheese! Creamy brie and nutty gruyere. Dense rich baguettes. Jesus God the stone fruit: nectarines so juicy eating them was like trying to eat a mango. Apricots jumping out of Jan’s tree, red-speckled and hot from the sun, intense as concentrate.

We didn’t do much else but eat and talk. I read A Place of Greater Safety, Hilary Mantel’s French Revolution novel – this after reading her Tudor novel Wolf Hall in England. Best holiday reading since Hemingway and Gertrude Stein in Paris. We bought a game of Carcassonne in Cambridge and found it to be great fun, like mah jongg; we played it for an hour every day after lunch. Jan took me to the market in Lezignan-Corbieres, where I bought a quilt for our bed that may be the most beautiful and grownup thing I have ever owned. It cost fifty euros.

McKenze and I were chatting so hard we missed the exit to Carcassonne airport. Being Californians, we assumed the autoroute was like the freeway and that we would be able to turn around in a few miles; in fact, it was 17km to the next exit… we made our flight, which was late anyway, and Jan and Jeremy were having fewer kittens than I would have expected. I would have had dozens of kittens, me. A tearful farewell ensued. Jan will be visiting us in San Francisco soon.

Ryanair is horrible. Stansted is miraculous and the express to Liverpool Street was at least fast, but then we were on the Underground in rush hour with all our luggage, and that blew. I remembered we could get out at Lancaster Gate and walk, and that saved us a transfer and four stops, which was good. Our hotel was expensive and our room was tiny, but very very welcome. Grant and Jo met us at a funny little Italian place around the corner and we had a very merry dinner.

Our one day in London was way too long and intense from my trying to pack too much in; but the girls got to see Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament and Tower Bridge, at least from a distance, and we met Cait and Nora and James and rode on the London Eye, and then Grant and Christian met us for lunch at Canteen and I had Eton Mess, which is always a highlight. Then we caught the bus to the British Museum and I showed the girls the Parthenon Frieze and the Rosetta Stone. And Kirsty and Chris met us in the Great Court for tea and scones. And then we went to Kensington Gardens and had a bottle of wine while the kids played in the playground there, so very civilized, and then we went to a Thai restaurant, and then I had to take the kids back to the hotel and collapse.

And then we came home. The flight was fine/awful. The cat is overjoyed that we are home and I have the scars to prove it. Monday was a public holiday, luckily, so I did two loads of washing and weeded the flower garden and went to the vegetable garden with Salome and Kathy and all the kids, and we harvested the arugula and had that for dinner last night. Yesterday morning I rode Bella, far better than I expected to, but we did have a parting of ways after she took a long spot at a fence and I lost my balance. Talk about coming back to earth with a crash. I’m a little bit gimpy but fine.

Hard to blog when there is so much going on. We went back up to London on Thursday night to watch the amazing Miss Jo as Tallulah Mockingbird as the Log Lady in the first annual Miss Twin Peaks 2010. She was brilliant and hilarious, but by the time we got standing room on the 10.52pm stopping train to Cambridge, my brain was melting and leaking out my eyes. I took the last Mersyndol and slept groggily till 9am. Friday I worked. Saturday we took the girls to the Scott Polar Research Institute Museum, which is rather fun; there were Inuit kayaks and models of the ships that went to each Pole and tins of pemmican and wrappers from chocolate bars. And they were careful to disambiguate Ant- from Arctic, which is good because I am fussy about it. Julia scored a seal, whose name, we are told, is Sealie.

Next we went to the Museum of Zoology, where Julia saw the whale skeleton and said rather gobsmackingly: “I remember this. You brought me here when I was two.” Gobsmackingly, because I did. The museum is fantastic, full of skeletons and stuffed animals and things set in resin, all side by side in an old-fashioned large white room. We loved it. After that we had scones and jam and cream, and then home where I could not keep my eyes opened and napped while Jeremy made spag bol, and then awake (barely) for another splendid episode of Doctor Who. Today we caught the train to London – I earned some cross looks from nice ladies in the seats across the aisle for explaining to the girls that the British had actually stolen the Parthenon frieze from Greece. In Shoreditch we met Grant and Kirsty and all walked over to Hackney City Farm, which is remarkable for its excellent donkey and humble, radiant pig. And then I had my perfect moment after all, sitting in the sun in the garden there while the children played. Now the boys are making bangers and mash and the little girls are watching In The Night Garden and Kirsty and I are communing with the great world in the Net.

To clarify: I am blogging. Kirst is trawling OKCupid, looking for lerve!

Look, I know how foolhardy it is to even try to recreate one perfect day; so sue me. We were up as I mentioned at hideous a.m. and out of the house by 8, having coffee and a sausage roll and a meringue at my favourite Cambridge delicafe, Origin8. Then we caught a double-decker bus to the station and Grant just materialized at our side, handsomer and funnier than ever. And we took a taxi out to the Orchard Tea Rooms.

Where it was frickin freezing and we huddled, chilly, in deck chairs grimly eating scones. Oh, whatever; it wasn’t until we were walking back through the meadows and I stood in a fresh cowpat that I realized that none of this actually matters, that I was just so very happy to be with my best boys and girls. There were cows, well, steers, grazing by the river. I had been reading Temple Grandin’s Animals In Translation, in which she describes the charming curiosity of cattle, so I got down at eye level and one of the beasts did come up to us, all liquid eye and prehensile tongue. Then Claire made a sudden move and he trotted away.

I had a funny exchange with Grant, then or later; about how hilarious I find it that I have such a great job, since I had assumed from an early age I was too delicate a flower, by which I mean too utterly useless, ever to survive in a market economy. That I needed a tenured job because otherwise I would not be able to hold down a job at all. How weirdly things turn out.

“Have you considered,” he said, “that maybe you were wrong in the first place?”

The kids made it all the way back to Cambridge, more or less, and we met Kirsty and Chris at Fitzbillie’s and had rather great brunch, and then walked to an art store and bought sketchbooks and paints and markers for the girls, and then to the pub in Midsummer Common, the Fort St George, for cider. Lovely wandering conversation, gossip and politics and ideology, dialectic and praxis, books; mad fun for wonks.

I failed fast that evening, shivering like someone woken at 3am, and indeed the girls were already out like lights. But Jeremy had the perfect cure for what ailed me: Doctor Who! In real time! Sleep fell from me, and it was a splendid episode and all. Chris cooked for us, a fabulous eggplanty pasta sauce. And then I was gone.

Hangover! It was brutally hard to get started on Sunday morning but at length we were all in a punt on the Cam and I was bonding with Rory, our guide, a townie, over politics, to Jeremy’s considerable amusement. Then to Dry Drayton where I was introduced to Thokki and reacquainted with Freydis, two very respectable Icelandic horses (they are not ponies, no matter how small; they are dignified.) Keir dropped us at home where Grant was waiting to roast a chicken with us, and Chris came by as well. We blanched broccoli and made spinach salad with pumpkin seeds and roasted an eggplant and put away two bottles of only-passable sauvignon blanc, made delectable by the company.

On Monday I was hungover and jetlagged and exiled from my happy home, bound for London with a rolling suitcase that broke en route. The bus took a ludicrous 45 minutes to get to the station. All was dire! Until I got to the hotel and saw all my colleagues and realized, possibly for the first time, how smart they all are and how much I like them. Then I met Grant and Kirsty and Jo for dinner and had the same revelation about them.

I think this is the first time I have been in England medicated and healthy and sane. I kept having strange third-party high realist visions of myself as a competent and likeable person. Odd. And with this it is suddenly possible to not feel threatened by new things or people; to respond to things as they are, instead of continually dancing around all the abysses only I can see. At one point during the conference our CFO was making incredibly stupid jokes, and we were all half-laughing half-groaning, which was his point, and I put my arm around him and said “I love you,” which is a thing I never do; but it was true.

The conference went okay. The other best moment, for me, was when a newish colleague called me “Amanda” by mistake, and later explained that it was because she thinks I look exactly like Amanda Seyfried. Since I’d been feeling oldish and frumpy around the new women hires, many of whom are seven feet tall with glossy hair to their waists, no lie, and since I have loved Amanda Seyfried since the first season of Veronica Mars and not only despite but secretly even because of Mamma Mia, this made me gloriously happy. I walked on air all the way back to the Underground.

What with the good mood and the sanity and all, I spent the whole journey to Kings Cross looking at the other people on the train. Good Lord! Women of London, you are so beautiful and stylish! Your colour choices are fashion-forward, and your statement necklaces fill me with awe! Straight men and lesbians of London, how do you not fall madly in love every time you turn your heads?

I was going to get up early and run today. When I talked to Claire about it she squinched up her face and said, “I’d rather sleep.” Fair enough, but after I lolled in bed and slopped around not getting into my running clothes until about nine, she had finished breakfast and got dressed to come with me.

How is it possible that I could have had an athletic kid? I talked her through the DoctorMama running program – basically when in doubt, slow down – and then she paced me all the steep way up Bernal Hill and all the windy way back down it. She didn’t have loud complaints until halfway up Precita. I measured the distance on Gmap Pedometer and that 7yo ran 1.3 miles. Dude!

After that we all packed ourselves into the car and drove to Canyon Market and bought baguettes and foccaccia and two kinds of cheese and prosciutto and salami and caprese salad and blueberries and raspberries and cherries and peaches and vanilla yogurt. We ran into Kathy and Andrew in Glen Park and abducted their little daughter, and then Salome and Najah and Milo and Salome’s friends Julian and Heather and their daughter Lilly came too, and eventually Jack and Kathy and Andrew finished their errands elsewhere, and we all sprawled on the daisy-strewn grass in Glen Park Canyon and ate ourselves foolish while the children went Lord of the Flies in the woods.

There was a basset hound of exceeding beauty, whose name was Desdemona. When we all descended on her to pat her she rolled over for tummy rubs and writhed her whole body to wag her tail and howled with joy. Aroo!

I jumped Bella, and then Claire and Milo played really well at her second piano recital and his first, and then Heather and Gilbert and their kids came over for dinner. So it was pretty much a perfect day.

SAN FRANCISCO, 9:59PM PST: Aaand I’m home.

T. remained a rock star for the rest of the flight. I think maybe two other passengers figured out I had a cat in there. Rose met us at the arrivals area with a hot chocolate from Emporio Rulli for me. Handover accomplished.

ARE WE THERE YET? 5:30PM PST: America is really big. America exceeds the battery life of this laptop.

SKY, 5:11PM PST: America is big.

MIDWEST, I GUESS? 4:50PM PST: In which the futuriffic Internetz in the sky are harnessed to mundane ends:

Francis: sounds like smooth sailing up there
me: THIS IS A FAKE CAT
Francis: cats are supposed to claw and hate you!
me: so it is written!

LET’S PUT THE LAKE BEHIND US, 4:37PM PST: Upheaval! Tenzing changes chirality. Now she is sleeping counter-clockwise.

THERE IS A LAKE DOWN THERE, 4:11PM PST: I like flying Virgin. We’re on the Chic Mobile. I ate a wrap. Tenzing is mellow. I went into this liveblogging gig expecting more fireworks, frankly.

35,000 FT, 6:08PM EST / 3:08PM PST: Dayumn, this is awesome. I’m going to make kittens a permanent addition to my flight kit.

We’re above the clouds. Tenzing is nestled on my foot, inside her carrier. Every now and then I reach in and give her a scritch. I cannot believe how calm and brave she is. Beebs would have ripped one of my arms off by now. Is this what normal cats are like?

JFK, 3:35PM: I met Francis in the hotel lobby. Tenzing’s carrier is tiny and black and discreet; she can turn around, but only barely. She is being incredibly brave. So is Francis, who strode away after saying goodbye with only the most manly of tears in the eye. Real men love their kittens.

Note for future cat-accompanied travel: the cat does not go through the x-ray. She has to come out of the carrier and face security like any other person. The first time I held Tenzing it was to walk her through the metal detector. She curled in my arms like an apostrophe and watched as I collected all our bags.

This will not be possible with a cat like, say for example, Bebe.

MANHATTAN, 1:04PM: The kitten is on the subway.

MANHATTAN, 9.37AM: Celebrity cat Twyla wishes Tenzing bon voyage.

MANHATTAN, 9.02AM: Later this afternoon I will be escorting celebrity kitten Tenzing on her move from New York to California. Watch this space!

Last night’s turnout included a Rachel, a Rebecca, a Naomi and an Elizabeth. We need to recruit a Mary or an Eve so we can start a Biblical Heroine Fox Force Five.

Me: “I’d like to write a writing group. ‘Have you thought about writing it in the first person?’ ‘I think your story really starts on page 9.'”

Liz: “The poetry group would be ‘Why don’t you make it rhyme?’ or ‘I think you should replace every third word with the word after it in the dictionary. To make it more postmodern.'”

“People really say that?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t they have medication for that?”

Later I read out a line of dialog and Liz says “I have to show you a woman I know who writes really good dialog.”

“Are you saying my dialog is shit?”

“No!”

“I’ve had a quarter of a glass of wine so I’m paranoid. WHAT OF IT?”

Naomi: “They do have medicine for that.”

Liz silently hands me chocolate.

“There’s some dialog I would have liked to have written.”

Such a day I have had! Brunch with Seth and Meryl at Sun Rise, then present shopping for Ada (a sparkly unicorn, of course) then home to paint cat faces on children, and then I went off to ride Bella Bella Bella Bella! Three months of flat work on Scottie and my maniacal determination to fix my lower leg all paid off in a few moments, when I rode her over fences with my ankle against her side and still! I dropped her in a terrible spot in front of a fence and because she is the honestest mare in the world she jumped out of it and because I have a lower leg now it wasn’t even very sticky…

And the rest was balanced and forward and unbelievably freakin FUN! And Erin used me as a GOOD EXAMPLE of how to ride corners with a correct leg! THIS NEVER HAPPENS! Oh! I am still warm and happy at the thought of it!

Then home and up through my lovely neighborhood to Ada’s party where I met all our delightful friends and SLID VERY FAST. Note that I shall no longer attend parties that do not feature slippery slides the length of a city block. Then grocery shopping with a still-cheetah-faced Julia, who greeted her public with great naturalness and charm. Then baths and James May’s Toy Stories and roast chicken and bedtime and Bebe curled up in my arms.

You should try it! It is so great!

ETA: Um. And then something completely amazing happened.

1. Sanjay Patel’s Ramayana: Divine Loophole (he’s the Pixar animator who also did the totally cute Little Book of Hindu Deities)
2. Gama-go’s poppy tee
3. Jeremy, who gave me both for my birthday
4. Leo the taxi driver, who brought back my wallet, CONTAINING MY GREEN CARD, after I left it in his taxi; and who laughingly refused any kind of reward
5. our neighbour Naomi’s mom and dad and their beautiful home in stunning Big Sur, where we spent last weekend
6. sea otters like the one we saw swimming off Jade Cove when we hiked Point Lobos
7. yummy last-minute dinner at La Provence with nineteen of my closest friends
8. a series of intensely technical and awesome rides on Scottie as I figure out how to fix my lower leg
9. OK Go actually outdoing themselves in their latest video, with help from the Maker community
10. Synth Britannia
11. kissing goodnight to my girls as they sleep in their new bunk bed
12. my lucky, lucky, happy life.

Epic, unforgettable birthday weekend. If 39 continues as it began I shall be a hollow shell of a woman by forty.

Just a fragment, really, hopelessly idealized, I mean really, a meadow beside a waterfall, there might as well have been Tom Selleck and a sandwich. What the fragment was really of though was the sunlight shining on, indeed reflecting off, a side view of his white ass and thighs that were always his best features (“What an ass!” heheh) and us being sweet to each other and happy together, as we seldom if ever were in life. And waking to remember that we will probably never speak to each other again, with excellent reason. A reminder as if reminders were needed that I am turning 39 tomorrow. Mothers! Lock up your sons!

And falling asleep again to visit the house, loved house, lost house, changed in dreamlike ways, ways that Richard both would and would not approve. The polished concrete floor half-stripped of red and green paint was beautiful, and all the rough bricks were true to life. But this version had an imperious view of rooftops and the Harbour, and it was not at all clear why Jeremy’s room did not have a door, so that we had to climb through an internal window. And waking to remember that the house has been sold to a half-Scottish half-Danish lover of Sydney School houses, whose three young sons will, I hope, love it as much as I do, although how can they?

No wonder I spent most of yesterday verklempt and listening to depressing songs of youth. I was emo before the word was coined! Last night was a lot better, a very liberal Anglican church up near Coso and Mirabel somewhere, with a friendly (two-humped?) llama eating nasturtiums out of the front garden and chickens wandering around during the service. Thussy would have loved it. We all went, Bryan and the boys, Shannon, Salome and Milo, us Fitzchalmers and even Janny and Gemma when they came to visit; there was a treehouse in a spreading live oak where they could conveniently stay. Testimony took the form of people writing famous mathematical proofs on the whiteboard, with all of us in the congregation chanting along with them. “DIVISION BY ZERO! CONTRADICTION!” A straightforwardly happy San Francisco dream.

Epic days these days usually have a substantial barn component; today was barnier than most. Erin was giving us a dressage lesson and Toni rode past to report that whoever was supposed to ride Bella hadn’t turned up, and that Bella would need to be ridden.

“I’ll ride her,” I said cheerfully. Toni and Erin looked at each other, and Toni said: “Okay. This can be your Christmas present.”

So I had an hour on Scottie, keeping my hands still and soft, trying to get him to work off my leg; achieving with satisfaction two good canter transitions where I squeezed him with my calves and felt his hind legs stepping forward – outside/inside – into the gait. Then I got off and saddled Bella and got back on and had an hour on her; a brief school in the indoor arena, and then a long walk around the Stanford Linear Accelerator with Erin, who was riding The Flying Dutchman. We walked above 280 for a bit and revelled in the knowledge that at least some of the people driving past us wished they could be us.

So I wanted Bella for Christmas, and I got her.

On the drive home I had a good idea for a YA novel.

As 280 swung down to San Jose I saw this fire starting – first the old cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, which could have been no more than shadowy slip of fog, but by the time I got to Randall Street a thick black mushroom of ill omen. I am glad all the people got out, and I am very sorry about the cat.

Then we picked up Rowan and drove to Heather’s house, where we decorated and ate approximately one million cookies, and the children were reasonably charming, and we met a man who had grown up in Ryde in Sydney and who is flying out on the same flight as us on Wednesday, and we started listing people we might know in common and his first one was Rachel Moerman. So I laughed and said: “Have you met her boyfriend?” “Who, Big?” “Yep. Notice the family resemblance?” “Oh!”

Now there are eggs baking for dinner.

…is to try to host a small dinner for Optimal Husband on the occasion of his birthday, and to have it pack out the beautiful back room at a favourite local restaurant, and to look up the table at our friends’ faces bathed in candlelight and to be amazed all over again at how smart and funny and pretty they all are, and how much I love them.

Funny brilliant daughters. Optimal husband, restored from Shanghai. Cat with IQ of a pickle. Family in Oz, that I will see soon. Friends, art, music, books, horses, Bernal, progressivism, public libraries, state parks, community gardens, single-payer health care (where applicable). Physics, astronomy, maths!

Jules: “The world is beautiful!
The sky is so pretty
and the trees are sweet
like my mom!

“Mama do you like my song?”

Me: “I think it’s the best song I ever heard.”

*

Fall! And the hills are green and the leaves have turned and the air is clear and cold and the sunlight pours out of the sky. Since we started going back to Australia for Christmas again this has become my favourite time of year; pie and butternut squash soup and the chill in the air all carrying the promise of summer.

*

The new swim school is insanely great. Claire can now jump in from the edge and swim loops around her instructor. Julia and Milo can each swim a couple of feet unaided.

It’s like watching them learn to fly.

*

My favourite moment of Julia’s ridiculously awesome fourth birthday party was watching Jamey, Liz and Shannon’s niece Shelby compare their spongiform tonsils.

*

Best little mare Bella is for sale. CHRISTMAS HINT, PEEPS. I’ll be sad to see her go but if ever a little copperbright horse deserved to be some lucky girl’s own beloved pony, it is Bella.

*

Reviews to come of Aaron’s residency in the Headlands, Colin’s exhibition of photos of the Berlin Wall coming down, Jennifer’s trio playing at Socha and McKenze and Hallie’s recital at Noe Valley Ministry. We live in such a fantastic neighbourhood and have such incredible friends.

Kind of broke myself hauling water to the new trees at Monroe. It’s too much work for one person, even one ably assisted by Miss Claire. Got home and Jeremy had emptied his office out and there was a ziggurat of recycling at the top of the stairs, so I just sort of burst into tears half way up. “You know we have guests coming in twenty minutes?”

To be fair, it wasn’t random guests, it was Bryan and the boys who are as low maintenance as can be, and Jeremy had already put the chicken on to roast. I made a spinach salad and cut up nectarines and pluots and grapes for dessert. They liked everything and demanded third helpings and played adorably with the girls.

Ruairi: “I love you Daddy.”

Bryan: “I love you, too. You’re awfully cute.”

Ruairi: “You’re awfully cute too.”

Brunch at my lovely Mission Beach Cafe with Peter the Rocket Scientist, discussing Lee Smolin’s book The Trouble With Physics. Off to Dolores Park to see an all-women, feminist production of The Taming of the Shrew. I love San Francisco. Home, where Salome and Milo and later Kathy and Martha dropped by. Children playing sweetly. Roast chicken with caramelized carrots and ultralocavore salad – lettuce from the Prospect Street garden. Nerdcore dinner party with three of my favourite nerdcore guests, Danny and Liz and Ada.

Me: “Of course I went to Trinity, which is older than some Oxford colleges.”

Danny: “It’s not as old as mine.”

Me: “I can’t win here, can I?”

Danny: “It’s like some dark side of me takes over.”

Later:

Julia, from the bathroom: “Fire! Fire!”

Me, skeptically: “The bath is on fire?”

Danny: “Fire in the hold!”

Me: “Fire in the hold? Fire in the hole?”

Liz: “Yeah, fire in the hole.”

Me: “What did they teach you at Oxford?”

Danny, loftily: “Nothing practical.”

When Ada and Claire got out of the bath, Ada had anointed Claire queen, and kept accidently-on-purpose pretend-peeing on her and saying “Oops! Sorry, your majesty!”

“Well,” I said, “trouble is her middle name. What did you expect?”

“Trouble,” said Danny darkly: “not treason.”

I blog drunkenly yet again (alcohol like water in these islands):

I had a completely unexpected and undeserved reward tonight for getting off my ass and going out instead of sitting in my hotel room brooding on the wrongs I have been done. I hauled my middleaged and maternal ass to Bethnal Green for Grant’s Night of 1000 Chicos. I was having a perfectly nice conversation with Ian and Rod, explaining about riding Irish cobs in Hyde Park, when my eyes deceived me and I thought I saw a young Fraser Wilson walking through the door.

But it was a present-day Fraser Wilson, miraculously unaged. I may have squealed, though a dignified mama of two would not have done so. We hugged and kissed for a considerable amount of time. We held hands and babbled for an hour. It was very very hard to tear myself away; only the prospect of a flight back to my husband and daughters could have made me do it.

Fraser! It was like meeting a fictional character, or a dream. He left California before I met even Salome. He is still so beautiful and brilliant.

The whole week’s been like that; getting to spend proper time with Grant and Kirst and Jo and Mia and Jess and Mark and Chris and Cait. My friends are so smart and interesting and gorgeous! Completely unlooked-for blessings. It was hard to get on the plane to come here, and it will be almost equally hard to leave. That’s a rare and priceless thing, to have so much love in so many places.

I am more grateful than I can say.