Oh, God, where did I leave you? Shoreditch? Damn. We struggled back to Cambridge that night and got the girls to sleep by about a million o’clock. Monday they played, we worked. Tuesday I schlepped down to London again for work. I’d booked a hotel for Tuesday night, then changed my mind and tried to cancel, then realized it was already too late to cancel without paying in full, so I lured Jeremy down to the Big Smoke to keep me company. Thanks to confused arrangements I sat in Gower Street for twenty minutes growing increasingly cross, then walked around the corner to Paradiso to find Jeremy and Grant already seated at an outdoor table.

“We were about to call the hotel and ask if there was a woman sitting outside looking VERY ANGRY,” said Grant.

I ordered a bottle of Pinot Grigio. It was an incomparably mild and lovely London night. Miss Ghostwood 2010, the beautiful Tallulah Mockingbird, was gracious enough to join us. We talked about every possible thing: Books (we all worship Hilary Mantel with an unholy passion and have progressed beyond Wolf Hall into her memoir and her earlier novel, A Place of Greater Safety. Edward St Aubyn is clever and bitchy and shallow but fun reading for a middle-aged European trip), People We Know (we love you all and are thrilled you’re doing so well. Except for that one guy, we hate that guy), Marriage And Relationships And Kids And So Forth, and Stuff We Are Planning To Wow The World With (no spoilers, sweetie!)

The hotel was, well, cheap. And close to work. And breakfast was included, and the full English was pretty much a full English, you can’t go far wrong. But the liquid purporting to be coffee was, how shall I say? Regrettable. J and I snuck off to the British Museum for a quick culture-gorge. They’ve planted a Representative South African Garden out the front, with jade plants and agapanthus and rare precious Elephant Foot Plants. J said: “The bees have been visiting all differently-coloured flowers and have stratified pollen sediments on their legs. You can see the different layers.”

Reader, I married him.

We started at the Royal Graves of Ur – irresistible carnelian and lapis lazuli and gold – and walked through rooms and rooms of Sumerian and Assyrian and Lydian and Phrygian art. Walls and walls of cuneiform, part of Assyria’s royal library: sketchy, inaccurate astronomical observations and thousands of words on the meaning of entrails, deformed babies, other omens:

“So many sophisticated civilizations,” said Jeremy, “almost no science.” They were doing pretty well by the standards of their day – fire, agriculture, writing, cities, leisure, art. But how frightening it must have been, the unknowable world; eclipses, fire flood and famine, the world beyond the walls. On to the Oxus Treasure, four horses driven abreast, a chariot worked in gold. Wicked Lord Lytton looted another like it when he was Viceroy of a famished India.

And suddenly we are in Ancient Europe, with the birth of farming in Iran – the garden of Eden, between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Room after room, culture overload. At last, Sutton Hoo. We spent a long time looking at the cloisonne work on the shoulder clasps. You can’t see it, but the blue squares are themselves checkered dark and light blue: it is millefiori glass. The workmanship. Jeremy said he couldn’t figure out how the thing was made. It made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

Too Much British Museum Girl! Work, back to Cambridge, last day in Cambridge, work, lunch with the XenSourcers and their babies. Packing, too much stuff, bags too heavy. Jeremy threw up all night the night before we left. Taxi to the station, train to Stansted, easy well-designed interchange to the terminal, standardly horrible Ryanair flight to Carcassonne. Julia whined all the way: “I want my Janny NOW!” That’ll teach me to call it a short flight. Ninety minutes is long when you are four.

Janny! And Julia’s comical Joy Face. Hiccups with the car rental nobly surmounted, culminating in us pushing away an abandoned rental that was parking us in. A Peugeot 305! Brand new and great fun to drive. The children were each allowed to choose one name for it; they both chose Twinkle; so it is Twinkle Twinkle, Little Car. Les Oliviers and its large cool rooms and breakfasts and dinners on the terrace. It is too hot at lunch time. All the trees came down and now there is a view across a fallow field to a stand of trees with the hills beyond. Oh my God, the food: pistachios and olives and creamy Brie. Apricots and nectarines that you can’t eat without juice running down your chin. Crisp cucumbers, unctuous avocados, sausages, ham, hard boiled eggs, hummus, lashings of rose wine: it is Elizabeth David and Enid Blyton all rolled into one.

Saturday night, a party in the village square. Tomato salad with mozzarella and black olives, roasted leg of duck with green olives. Dancing and dancing and dancing, a smoke machine, lasers, the macarena, conga lines. Three generations of Fitzes getting their funk on. Carrying Julia home, where she fell asleep instantly in my arms. Sunday afternoon, a visit to one of Jan’s friends. Swimming in her pool in a walled garden on a hill surrounded by vineyards. The garden itself, cherry and apple and almond trees, rose rooms, a gate with frog ornaments, a green porcelain lion. The wind farms turning in the distance. This morning, climbing the hill to the ruined castle. The village full of walled gardens. The girls sitting in the window of the curtain wall.

The first time I came to Les Oliviers, a girlfriend, not even a daughter-in-law, I looked at the yellow-walled room with the twin beds in it; and the thought that I might one day fill them with Jan’s grandchildren was too presumptuous even to be allowed to form.

I forgot to say that they were selling little bronze horse votives in the shop at the British Museum; and that Jeremy bought me one.

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?

Jeremy’s office and the underneath of our bed are purged of e-waste. The kids’ toys and the underneath of their bed are purged of goo. Good baby toys and clothes have been carefully stored for friends’ future babies. Dust and pollen have been carefully stored IN MY NOSE.

Julia sings:

“I love the world.
I love everybody in the whole world
and I love to do anything!
This is my weekend.
Oh the weekend is so-o-o beautiful.
Everything is so beautiful,
so beautiful,
SO-O-O BEAUTIFUL!”

Between the decluttering, the new garden and the fact that I basically had my car rebuilt this week… I guess it’s spring :/

I actually slept last night, because Julia didn’t wake at 1am or something and demand to sleep in my armpit as has been her wont. I lay in my warm bed this morning blinking wonderingly and snuggling my cat. Jeremy brought me hot tea.

Then Salome called so I dragged on some clothes and we ran to the farmers’ market for dried apples and apricots, pistachios, pink lady apples, broccolini, tangerines, bread, eggs, dandelion greens and a pot of live basil. Then home to weed the wilderness that our front patch and the jacaranda’s tree well had become over winter; then to Flowercraft for pansies and violets and petunias. I cut back the bougainvillea so that now it is possible to reach the faucet without being eaten by triffids. The Icelandic poppies survived, to my joy. We planted the annuals and the garden looks adorable.

Then to Crissy Field where the girls swam excellently, then home to eat Jeremy’s roast chicken with a caprese salad with the fresh basil on it, and last week’s bok choi revived in peanut and sesame oil and a lashing of soy sauce. Nom. Then greek yogurt and strawberries and blueberries for desert, drizzled with orange blossom honey. Om nom nom.

And then we crept out into the San Francisco twilight and released a tub of ladybirds into the garden to eat the aphids. One caught a ride in on my shoulder and is now buzzing around the back of the sofa while Jeremy exhorts the children to sleep.

Another bright jewel of a day, rounded out with this.

Nature by Numbers from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo.

When I met her in Sydney in January my childhood friend Anna asked if I still believed in God, and I said “Oh, no,” which felt at the time and still feels like an evasion (and also unfairly dismissive.) That said, I still don’t have anything well-formed to put in its place, though, so consider these notes towards… um, something? Maybe a provisional explanation of why the Hubble Ultra Deep Field helps me to be happier, more compassionate and more mindful of my own death.

In her fantastic Somewhere Towards the End, Diana Athill says:

People of faith so often seem to forget that a god who gives their lives meaning too often provides them with justification when they want to wipe out other people who believe in other gods, or in nothing. My own belief – that we on our short-lived planet are part of a universe simultaneously perfectly ordinary in that there it is and incalculably mysterious in that it is beyond our comprehension – does not feel like believing in nothing and would never make me recruit anyone for slaughter. It feels like a state of infinite possibility, stimulating and enjoyable – not exactly comforting, but acceptable because true. And this remains so when I force myself to think about the most alarming aspect of what I can understand, which is that we will eventually become extinct, differing from the dinosaurs only in contributing a good deal more than they did to our own fate. And it also remains so when I contemplate my personal extinction.

Recessional puts it this way:

Innocence looks at the stars and says “look at the lights of the gods in heaven! I am in awe.”

Experience says, “Eh, it’s just burning gas lightyears away. I’m bored.”

Grace says, “look at the burning gas lightyears away! I’m in awe.”

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.

San Francisco looks ugly and squalid after Sydney, especially around the 101/280 interchange coming back from the airport, especially in the rain. I was glad to be back in California anyway, even if I am missing the fire-opal water at Shark Beach and schmoopily watching grainy videos of Peter Allen singing “Tenterfield Saddler.” Happy Australia Day.

But San Francisco’s beauties do reveal themselves shyly, to the patient eye: breathless empty roads at midnight, the Dolores Street palms standing straight in the orange pools of streetlights; unnecessarily cool air startling your throat and needling your exposed skin; the lemon-and-silver sun after rain.

Despite various tragic events, I am enjoying an extended period of uncomplicated happiness.

She’s the turquoise blob in the middle :)

It’s been an amazing trip, basically a very good Patrick White novel come to life. I won’t forget having coffee with Aly at the Brisbane port cafe, watching container trucks plough through the wetlands like a Jeffrey Smart painting in reverse. I won’t forget seeing Barbie and Ron again, or saying goodbye to David. Egg tarts, David Malin, Rushcutter’s Bay, Pymble, Redfern, Summer Hill, Bronte, Glebe, Gleebooks, Ariel and Berkelouw.

Three and a half weeks seems about the right length of time. For three weeks I get completely immersed. Then one morning the kids and I wake up and in spite of the fact that there are mangos and rainbow lorikeets here, in spite of the fact that my love for my Australian friends and family gets more intense with every passing year, in spite of summer, we all suddenly miss shabby old San Francisco and our micropartment and our American family and even our wholly reprehensible cat. That time is now.

This morning we went to see a Festival show based on Shaun Tan’s The Arrival. It’s about people who run away, and what they find, and the stories they share when they get there. I cried, of course, but for the beauty and sorrow of it and not because I was feeling sorry for myself. How novel! Australia always used to hurt me and make me feel angry and guilty but this year, for whatever reason, it didn’t. Skud told me it wasn’t Australia I disliked so much as Sydney, and when I got here I realized it wasn’t all of Sydney but only a tiny and unrepresentative sample. The rest is vanilla milkshakes and bats in the Moreton Bay figs.

And all kinds of things that have made me crazy for years and years are suddenly okay. I can’t put it any more precisely than that. Sydney hasn’t changed – well, it has, enormously, but it’s also exactly the same. And I haven’t changed either. I’m just as groundlessly opinionated and bitchy and well-meaning and tactless and incompetent and embarrassingly fond of you as ever, don’t worry. But Sydney and I are okay now, like childhood friends who had a massive falling out and made up and can’t remember, now, what any of it was about. The past isn’t sticking its knives into me any more. It probably won’t last but while I feel like this, while I sit in the house Richard built and listen to the cicadas and breathe the humidity, I am more grateful than I can say.

The Observatory was a highly educational experience. In the bathrooms:

Julia: Are mutants really real?

Me: Oh yes. Not like in Futurama, living in the sewer, but there are lots of mutant frogs, for example.

Julia: What do they look like?

Me: The frogs? Oh, they might have an extra eye or an extra leg.

Woman coming through the door: I definitely walked into an interesting conversation here.

Me: My daughter was asking me about mutants!

Woman: Oh! Well, I was born with an extra finger!

Julia: Wow!

Me: Yeah! Polydactyly is awesome!

My birthday came early. There’s a new Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

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.

Hopelessly epic day. I dropped the family at Mission Playground and because I wished for chai, we made a twenty-minute detour to Four Barrel. Which doesn’t sell chai. So I was very late, but Jeremy got me a yummy latte instead, and I figured I could hop in the fast lane and zoom down, and maybe it was the latte or the classical channel that I had cranked up to listen to Beethoven at volume, but I was doing about ninety when I saw the highway police. Ulp! It’s a fair cop, guv!

I blame my mother.

I pulled over on the left shoulder and saw the lights flash and turned Ludwig down to hear the nice officer explaining patiently over the loudspeaker: “NOT ON THIS SHOULDER. PULL BACK INTO THE TRAFFIC AND PULL OVER ON THE RIGHT SHOULDER,” at which I realized D’oh! I’m in America aren’t I. They drive on the other side here don’t they. Once we’d sorted ourselves into NOT THE SHOULDER RIGHT BESIDE THE FAST LANE, he dinged me for speeding and gave me a fixit ticket for my out-of-date tags, but spared me what he assured me would have been a massive fine for stopping on the wrong side.

I am afraid the nice officer formed the impression that I was not the smartest woman in San Mateo, especially after I forgot his clear instructions for pulling back into traffic at high speed and absolutely not stopping, confused, on the 92 upramp. The last I saw of him in my rearview mirror, he was dancing with frustration and shrieking something I couldn’t make out. I hope his morning improved after that.

Mine certainly did; the peerless Bella was waiting for me in the crossties, cleared after her lameness and ready to jump. We marched all the way to the big arena, where I rode with the ectomorphic teenagers and their preternaturally good lower leg positions. As a buxom matron with a torso-to-thigh ratio exactly the inverse of what’s required in the Olympic equestrian disciplines – I am basically a human corgi – I’m at something of a disadvantage in this class. But Bella and I just click. She forgives my innumerable faults and I don’t even register any possible shortcomings she may have.

My God but we had a great ride. California was doing its best impression of the south of France with the crystal clear sky and the air like chilled champagne. The aspen leaves were made of light and air. Bella’s ears were pricked and she strode out with glad goodwill, as she is wont to do. I can’t remember ever meeting another mare so cheerful and merry.

Erin, who is cruel and exacting, has a particularly brutal exercise where she has us canter between the two rails of an oxer, or spread fence, so that we are perfectly straight as we approach a crossrail. Today’s pattern started with this death-defying chute, took a flying change to the right and circled into a 2’6″ vertical (still pretty high for me), then took a flying change to the left and down through a SUNKEN LANE! And then back to the trot and over another crossrail and a canter circle.

“Fun!” I said, and the teenagers looked at me in disbelief, so maybe I do have something they don’t have after all. I thought, Whee! I can pretend I’m doing cross-country exercises at Badminton. Then I thought Wait. I don’t have to pretend I am riding a spectacular horse through a fun jumping exercise. For once in my life I do not have to pretend to be doing that because HERE I AM! D0000000D!!!1!1eleventy

This was a moment of purest distilled awesomeness, and it was the third coolest thing that happened during my lesson today. The second coolest thing was that on our second try, Bella and I rode the exercise quite well, well enough that tough and sparing-with-the-praise Erin nodded and said: “Not bad.”

The first coolest thing is that after only TWENTY FIVE YEARS I have finally learned what to do with my legs. You’d think this would be a pretty fundamental aspect of riding and you would be right. I am probably not, in fact, the smartest woman in San Mateo. My entire life, my whole riding career, I have had a weak and stupid lower leg. It is not perfectly still. It swings back over fences. Its heel comes up. It loses its stirrup. It has been known to kick. People, my lower leg has been a national embarrassment. If I could, I would divorce it and marry someone else’s lower leg altogether.

WELL. It turns out you don’t just dangle the things like limp spaghetti over the sides of the saddle. Nor do you point your heel down or try to hold on with your calf, my various attempts at a refinement of the spaghetti technique. No. Apparently when your Podhajskys and your Morrises talk about an active thigh and seat, what they mean is to use your damn thigh and seat. Somehow in my last couple of lessons I have found a pair of muscles in my lower thigh that I can use to hold my whole lower leg in place. (Salome says they’re the quadriceps, and also: “Duh.”)

Revelation. When I needed to press Bella into a jump, my leg was just… there. I didn’t have to rock it back or swing it forward. I could just squeeze. When she jumped I was ready to move with her, and my leg didn’t drift out behind me. When I needed to collect her up in a half halt or downward transition, my seat was where it needed to be, balanced on its seatbones. Bonus: I could feel the muscles in her back through the saddle. I really could. They were tense as we warmed up, then softened and relaxed as she rounded and collected herself.

Absolutely miraculous ride, among the all time top ten. I proceeded back to the city at a stately 65mph, lesson learned.

I’ve been shopping at the Webb Ranch farmer’s market, around the corner from the barn. The blue lake beans are just quietly great; crunchy and juicy and sweet.

Jeremy stir-fries them with chicken breast strips, cherry tomatoes from the garden, garlic cloves, peanut oil and soy sauce. Nom.

I steam them with broccoli, zucchini, peas and corn, and then drown everything in too much butter. I call it a butterbath. Nom.

We packed up the Jetta and hit the road on Friday. North over the GG Bridge to Santa Rosa, where we hit Trader Joe’s and stocked up on salad and filet mignon. North again to logging town Cloverdale then out on 128 to Boonville, funny little Anderson Valley enclave that used to have its own language. We grabbed a late lunch and I called my Dad to note that Boonville is Barraba’s Californian twin.

Up and over Mountain View Road, which predictably made Julia sick. Jeremy cleverly had her catch the product in his empty coffee cup, so clothes and car were unscathed. And then we were out in the coastal meadows, and we drove down the dirt road that leads through a redwood glen and down to Oz.

We parked on the gravel by the Garcia River and carried all our bags and groceries over the makeshift bridge and up through the oak glen. On the other side of the river, in a meadow ringed with redwoods, are two wooden geodesic domes. One dome has a kitchen and the other a bathtub, and there are five beds tucked into lofts and so on. The whole building is ringed with decks that look out on the river and meadow. There’s a hot shower out on the deck, under a tree.

We stayed there all weekend. Jamey and Carole and Rowan arrived late on Friday night, after seeing deer and a skunk and a bat and a wild boar on the drive up. We woke the next morning to hear all the children playing together happily. We made scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and a huge salad, and ate it out on the deck. We swam in the river. We made a fire in the potbellied stove and read library books. We napped. We made rack of lamb for dinner.

It was heaven. I feel really human again. I have lots to blog. Watch this space.

I drove Claire out to Coastal Camp this morning.

Some explanation for the non-USonians may be called for: school is out, and thanks to the weird counterintuitive school calendar around here this means we rejoice in our graduating-kindergartener’s company for the next eleven weeks. Fortunately everyone else is in the same boat, so there are many options for parking your beloved short person with responsible adults during the working day. I went a bit mad with credit cards back in February, and Claire got the classic career mom’s overcompensatory holidays: spring break at Acrosports, then this camp, a science camp in Noe and a Mandarin immersion program over the summer.

My God, but Rodeo Lagoon is beautiful in the morning. It’s a green-grey, steep-sided valley, full of wildflowers, that opens out to the green-grey Pacific. Flocks of turkeys walked around gobbling; Claire found them hilarious. I left her with the very sweet and competent camp counselors, and she grinned and gave me two thumbs up as I drove away. It felt like ripping my heart out. These days my separation anxiety is worse than hers. I suspect that trend will continue.

Three deer walked in front of my car and stopped and looked at me with their lovely inhuman expressionless faces, like models. One had a scruffy little fawn, white spots still bright on its rump.

How come grownups don’t get summer camp?

Our number came up at Good Prospect Community Garden! Right now the plot is a mess of artichoke, sage and lemon verbena, but we’re going to cut it all back and plant cherry toms and summer squash! There are lemons and limes and apples and pears and concord grapes and raspberries and it is SO VERY BEAUTIFUL that words cannot adequately describe.

And today I rode Fluffy the Seagull the Horse the Bicycle part of the way to work. Check me out! I am all San Franciscan and sustainable and stuff!