Remember that awesomely righteous lady who confronted the flasher dude on the New York subway? Yeah? Guess what she teaches. (Also: the hair! The pearls! I LOFF HER.)

Got back to the studio after weeks out and all my joints click. Not a cheery click but a cartilage-over-bone click. To which I say: whuh? This late-thirties thing has its bogus moments, and makes me look sideways at my impending fortiness. What, though, are my choices? Anyway other aspects of late-thirtiness, like being Sane and Solvent and Happy, rock the known world. So it goes.

Riding and taiji are at some weird level almost exactly the same thing. Still not sure how to unblock myself, except by noting that I am blocked. Come, my chi, flow, and make a badass outta me!

I skived a little this morning and took the Mister to the peerless Sandbox Bakery before work. That end of Cortland Street is a reliable source of street crazy.

Very Well Dressed Woman: Is that your boyfriend?

Me: This? Um.

VWDW: Is he your boyfriend?

Me: We’ve been married for eleven years.

VWDW: Do you have a family? Do you have children?

Jeremy: Yes.

Me: Two girls.

VWDW: Having any more?

Me and Jeremy, in unison: No.

VWDW: God came into this world as a child. God came into this world as a consuming fire.

Me: …there is that.

VWDW: I don’t know about families.

And then she walked away.

Me: You know, technically I think she’s right.

Jeremy: Yes, you do.

…not to schedule my treats too close together. They were all pretty splendid, but now I need to sleep for a week. Also AMERICAN HEALTH CARE good Christ you are Kafkaesque. The babies broke my thyroid (which is okay, they’re totally worth it) and I’ma be on synthetic thyroid hormones for, well, ever. So! You’d think this would be all right, right? You’d think I could just autorefill and cruise into my chemist, sorry, pharmacy, once a month or so to pick up the levothyroxine?

Yeah. YOU WOULD THINK. But no, every three months, my handsome endocrinologist has to SIGN OFF on the fact that yes, Rach’s thyroid: still broken, please give her the meds, which have no amusing side-effects other than preventing her from devolving into a sloth. And since my endocrinologist is, in addition to being handsome, very dashing and flirty, he is always in with a patient. And so he does not sign off. And so I run out of meds, which turns me into a bitchy sloth –

You may not have ever had thyroid fog, huh? Perhaps these sloth references are being lost on you. Sans levothyroxine, I get very very sensitive to cold, and I slow down physically and, much weirder, mentally. The characteristic sign of thyroid fog is when Jeremy finds me on the couch with a blanket over me, shivering even though it’s warm, and nothing about this strikes me as strange. The first rule of thyroid fog is that it never occurs to me that it’s thyroid fog.

The oddest part is that when I’m not fogged in I don’t notice this, but when I am fogged, all the fizzy popping association-of-ideas that’s constantly going on inside my brain, the pattern matching, the shreds of cello music and lines from Yeats read long ago, Jeremy’s explanations of impedance matching, that short story of Delany’s, the air on my skin, how much I love my Frye’s harness boots, oh that’s how I can spin that new company, I should have been mellower with Claire this morning, what shall I get my mother for her birthday – all of that goes away. So, unfortunately, does my resolution not to get snippy with underpaid service employees no matter how much they stonewall me. So there were some sharp exchanges on the phone, which resulted in me not getting my prescription filled before we drove up to Oz. As a matter of fact, thyroid fog isn’t so bad when I can zone out looking at the Garcia River or huddled in front of the pot-bellied stove; it’s almost pleasant, like the pure physicality of sleep-dep and new-baby-love. But I suspect it makes me very boring to talk to.

Plus I tried to overcompensate by getting my Martha Stewart on. Note to future self: writing lists of clothes and food to take to Oz, plus a checklist of what’s in which bag, worked brilliantly, especially because it lets the girls pack for themselves. Having a plan for what to cook when is also probably a good idea, but you didn’t need to massively over-cater every meal and generate a metric fuckton of washing up. Take a chill pill! …oh, right.

God, though. Oz Farm. So achingly familiar now, the whole hellish drive up (the kids throwing up their milkshakes on the switchbacks over the coast range), the dirt road across the meadow and into the trees, the valley and the farm itself: a world transformed. A busy and happy 21st century CSA built inside the bones of a hippie commune. Then past the farm and through the woods to the river, and then across the log bridge and through a little bit of Middle Earth to the Domes. At which point I sit down in the sunshine and stare across the meadow at the redwoods, and will spend most of the next few days doing pretty much just that.

At harvest time the meadow grass is bone-dry and armed with burrs. It’s yellow and cream and ivory and grey, with much darker grey sticks sticking out of it. And it describes the wind like iron filings describe a magnetic field, in the approved Miyazaki fashion. And the meadow is fringed with bay laurel and live oak and, of course, the redwoods, the most charismatic and enigmatic of all trees.

I didn’t see the deer Ada startled when she was out exploring at dawn, or the bat that whirred over Danny and Liz in their bed, but I saw more raptors than I could count, and great ominous ravens. I saw large speckled lizards and snakes as small and beautiful as bracelets, swimming in the river with their heads above water and their bodies describing mathematical functions of awesome grace. And I spent too much time staring at the sky, which was over-photoshopped blue at noon, sponge-streaked grey-and-apricot trompe l’oeil at dawn and dusk and then at night, the endless dark well behind the Milky Way, with satellites swimming across it.

Nature’s cool.

Um. There is way more I wanted to say, like how great Liz’s dragon roleplay was, and how big Milo now calls me “Shadowstarkness’s human in reality – what is her name?” and how Ada curled up on my lap by the fire. And how I got a couple of Alice Adams novels at the fantastic bookstore in Guernville, and the one I’m reading is just wonderful, and why isn’t she as famous as Philip Roth and John Updike? Oh wait, I think I know. And how we bounced off to see Zoe Keating at Yoshi’s the night after we got back, and also I bought a chair. But almost-1000 words is really too long for a blog post, and so.

Do I sound miserable here? Someone asked me today if I was going through a hard time! I’m ashamed to say I laughed. Oh, my heart is breaking for the all kids who committed suicide this month, and I just sobbed my way through several relevant bits (ETA Milo’s is the best), but the reason the It Gets Better project slays me dead, every time, is precisely because I was bullied and it did get better, so much better, better than I could possibly have dreamed. Not only do I live in a city that, if it were human, I would have a helpless girlcrush on and want to make out with all the time, just look at this place, I mean, damn, I’ve had at least two occasions in the last twelve months – Jeremy’s last birthday party and the Labor Day picnic – where about five hours flowed past in real bliss. Didn’t even know that was possible. I’ve been worried my blog is getting too sappy, because I am just nauseatingly cheerful and fulfilled right now.

Anyway! Just felt I should clear that up. Today was really great. Claire, Julia and I Internationally Walked to School for cute keyrings and stickers. The webinar I gave in the morning went exceptionally well. I had a vat of Blue Bottle coffee and a very delicious bit of salmon at the reliably nommy Boulette’s Larder, right on the Bay, with several of my favourite people. In the afternoon I fooled around a little with amusing work, and then I came home to run the first math circle session for Fall. All the math parents just lovely, and even better, half of them already knew each other and were overjoyed to catch up. The new space is pretty much ideal, and it’s about sixty feet from my front door. I was able to sneak away during the third session, have a sit-down dinner with Jeremy and the kids at home, and be back in time to lock up. Now I am blogging with the MacBook on my left hip and the Beeblebooble curled up on my right. Oh look, and there’s a new MythBusters, and Jeremy just brought me tea and chocolate.

Riding lesson tomorrow! Oz Farm this weekend! Tickets to Zoe Keating next week!

Woke up hungover. Had a date night with the Mister last night. We went to Mission Beach and split a bottle of sangiovese. Mission Beach is really just an epically good place. I had a perfect arugula and peach salad, a fantastic bit of filet mignon on a bed of corn, English peas, black-eyed peas, mushrooms and garlic cloves with port jus (I wasn’t sure about the black-eyed peas but they gave the whole dish an incredibly rich earthiness and texture) (“Jus.” “Jus.” Jus.”) and a key lime pie. I ate too much, actually: I’ve been subsisting on salad and lean meats for a while, and can’t pack away three courses with my former aplomb. Then we went to see Exit Through the Gift Shop at the Roxie. It was funny.

This morning we had nothing in particular planned, so when Jeremy suggested that everyone come down and watch me ride I pointed out that we could swing by and see Robert and Gayu and Hari; so we did that, and had a yummy lunch (in Sunnyvale! I KNOW) and then I rode and Failed To Suck, and then there was a bouncy castle at Webb Ranch so of course we had to stop so the girls would bounce. I left my phone in the car where Jeremy was napping so I didn’t get a picture, but I looked at the bouncy castle which was unusually clean and bright rainbow colours, and the girls – Jules in her blue gingham dress, Claire in her leopardskin skirt and NYPL tee – and thought, I should remember this. A perfect moment in a perfect day. Let me keep it.

Now the chicken is roasting with yams and carrots and kale, and the girls are colouring, and it’s another pretty awesome moment actually.

Whatever nice things happen, a week with a bullying suicide is always a crap week. I am nearly forty and I am a proper grownup now, with a green card and a 401k and a personal style (yes I do, it’s cowgirl-librarian, shut up) and Optimal Husband and the Sproglets and the sorts of achingly, awesomely sympatico friends I only dreamed about and read about in books when I was growing up. I can drive stick shift and cook a delicious meal for an impromptu dinner party of 12 and write a publishable short story or eight, and I jump Thoroughbred horses over fences for fun.

Back in the day, though, I was the weird nerd, with stupid glasses and horrible pimples and bad hair. I was hilarious. I stank of fear the way roadkill stinks of carrion, and like roadkill, I was irresistible to the grosser sorts of vulture. It was side-splittingly funny to point out that my skirt length was incorrect, that my shoes were not approved, that I had said something that I had apparently read in a book. The fact that I read books was just beyond funny. I was frigid, and a slut. I was uglier than shit. How about a little kiss?

This was at high school; at university, I realize now, it actually got worse, because it was subtler and more barbed. It was howlingly funny that I said “mankind”; Glenn, obviously a far better feminist than I would ever be, corrected me to “humanity” with an indulgent chuckle. I was, hilariously, “the most pretentious person” Julian had “ever met.” “I knew there had to be something I liked about you,” said Alistair, and the entire cast of the play fell about laughing. Twenty years on, the memory of these exchanges, preserved in far more vivid detail than anything nice anyone ever said, can still make me angry and ashamed.

If the bully culture I grew up in was meant to make me want to conform, it failed: all I wanted to do was get away, or failing that, set fire to the entire city, and I’m still awkward and uncomfortable whenever I go back to Sydney. I am on the defensive there, and constantly surprised when people treat me with ordinary courtesy. But I don’t think it was meant to change me. I think it was just meant to hurt. I think hurting me made the bullies and their hangers-on feel safe and included. A nice little bonding ritual for them. Bless.

I think it’s how privilege works, and that’s why it was worse at Sydney Uni. They were Grammar boys and college boys. They knew exactly how to shut people out, and why.

And even that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was how desperately I craved their attention and approval: how badly I wanted Glenn and Julian and Alistair and others like them, many others like them, to be my friends. That’s why I didn’t walk away. They couldn’t hate me any more than I hated myself. It’s still hard to forgive myself for that.

Anyway, my point is, Tyler Clementi was actually way too cool to have been friends with then-me; he could play violin fantastically well, and he got into Rutgers. And the thought of him closing his computer and his cellphone and stepping off the George Washington Bridge, the thought that there will be no more violin solos, the thought that he won’t move out to San Francisco after he graduates, and get his heart broken by some asshole he met at Center Camp, and cry into his mimosas at Mission Beach, and then meet a nicer guy on OKCupid and settle down and adopt a couple of kids and join the PTA… Well, fuck you, bullies. Fuck you. You have no idea.

And to the people I bullied myself: I am beyond sorry.

On mornings when the timing works out – not all mornings, but definitely the best mornings – the whole family walks down Eugenia together, the girls in school uniforms and non-uniform tights and boots, their bright backpacks on their backs, and Jeremy and I in our serious grownup Linux hacker and industry analyst standard city equipment.

J and the girls take the bus south, I go north. The buses are frequent so there’s usually not enough time to wave, but one morning last week, Mission Street was empty for a while. I waved, the girls waved. I waved. They waved. I blew kisses, they blew kisses, I made heart shapes with my hands, they made strange squashy shapes with theirs.

Then we all paused. Still no bus. Awkward.

I made jazz hands. They made jazz hands.

All three of us started to dance.

We danced and danced. We boogied. We step-ball-changed. We twirled. Julia, especially, twirled.

For ten minutes, on two sides of Mission Street, we got our white girl funk on.

When my bus finally arrived I saw a woman on the other side of the street solemnly high-fiving Jeremy and the kids.

Driving to the barn first thing in the morning, red brake lights and the cars slowing up ahead, flares in the fast lane. We all eased down to a stately second gear and looked left to see what had happened:

A police car.

A woman with her hands over her mouth, staring in distress at:

A deer, sphinx-like in front of the woman’s little hatchback and looking around, its ears erect, its lovely legs folded badly.

The deer was not going to be okay.

The morning light slanted through the haze, and we all sped up and drove away.

Last night I dreamed Tony Abbott sat next to me on a train, maybe a Tangara. We were heading West. I don’t know why that was important. I do blame this hilariously homoerotic oped for disturbing my beauty sleep:

I could not fail to notice the walk – which with an obviously athletic body could only be described as unmistakably masculine. Indeed Tony must be the most masculine and athletic of Australia’s politicians, and not boringly so. I have often thought that had he been on the left he would be the media’s pin up boy.

My stars! Is it warm in here? Get a room, boys! The piece, disappointingly, does not continue with “…my heart palpated as he caught my eye. His eyes, twin flames under that stormy brow, burned as he huskily whispered my name…”

My dream also ended unsexily. I told Abbott off for his platforms and policies, although I did it a bit self-consciously, since most of what I object to in his position (he’s bad on gay marriage, immigration and the environment) is exactly the same as what I object to in that of his opponent. He’s a Catholic monarchist! She’s a centrist cipher! They fight (property) crime.

I have only theories about the right. Despite my decade-long flirtation with Christianity I always thought of myself as socialist, just a Fabian socialist. It was a shock to discover that my church was actually hard-right, anti-abortion, anti-feminist and come to that, anti-women and children, at least in practice.

More recently my theories have revolved around the Big Five personality traits – the idea that our personalities can be mapped along five independent vectors: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. This research made immediate sense to me when I first encountered it. It’s trivial to note, for example, that I score sky-high on Openness and Neuroticism, and that I am introverted as hell. In fact Julia’s the only Extravert in our little family – the only one who draws energy from company, as opposed to from solitude – and framing it in this way has helped me to accept her manic glee.

My theory is that conservative people do not score very high on Openness. Is that tautological? And it’s not even that, as a progressive, I think things are going to turn out well; it’s just that I know from bitter experience that whatever else happens, time will pass. Sometimes that’s a good thing – +1 to team White Blood Cells! go the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Movement! science yay science! – and sometimes it’s an awful thing – bring back the bookstores; boo to old age. But either way, there’s no point fussing about it.

I also, relatedly, subscribe to the notion that conservative religion is pretty much all about sublimating the fear of death. I know it was for me. And it would explain a lot about how conservative religious people behave; their nasty secret sins, and their otherwise weird and alien assumption that as long as their imaginary superhero in the sky “forgives” them, then despite all evidence to the contrary, no actual harm was done. They store up for themselves so many riches in heaven that they leave the earth a smoking crater. This life doesn’t matter! It’s just a starter life! Do-over! I’m not a fan. Can you tell?

Separately, I finally got a glimmer of understanding the libertarian point of view when I realized how historically late an invention the income tax is, and how little tax people used to pay:

Another income tax was implemented in Britain by William Pitt the Younger in his budget of December 1798 to pay for weapons and equipment in preparation for the Napoleonic wars. Pitt’s new graduated income tax began at a levy of 2d in the pound (0.8333%) on incomes over £60 and increased up to a maximum of 2s in the pound (10%) on incomes of over £200 (£170,542 in 2007).

Put like that, it’s obviously a shocking imposition, and I myself would far prefer not to be hurling a goodly fraction of my income at the US military establishment. But I don’t mind a bit paying for public schools; I would pay more; and I would prefer to pay for Medicare for All and a respectable public transportation infrastructure than to pay for my private health insurance or my car. My parents, you see, taught me that it is good and right to share. Because they’re pinkos.

So those are my theories: that conservatives want things to stay the same, and they don’t want to be made to share. When I think of it that way, you know, I can honestly sympathize. I don’t want to grow old and die, and I don’t like being made to do things either. But I am going to grow old and die, and I do have an awful lot of privilege while other people have far less, and it behooves me not to bogart the cash and the happiness and the, you know, access to clean water and antibiotics and so on. My ethical stance boils down to an ultra-streamlined Postel’s law: be kind and tolerant. Or even more simply, don’t be a dick (Cheney.)

Then there’s that whole weird thing about taking the Bible seriously. Or more precisely, taking extremely tiny morsels of the Bible, daisychained together with logical contortions and dubious interpretations, as an infallible guide to modern life that totally lets you off the hook for being a homophobic douchebag. I dunno. I find far more beauty and wonder and testament to the human spirit and the awesomeness of life in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. But you knew that already.

All of which is to say: dear my Australian friends, screw both candidates and vote Independent or Green. But you were going to do that already.

(At least you guys have preferential voting and won’t accidently Nader yourselves into a Bush administration, touch wood. But that is another ranty, for another time.)

Claire and I had a sleepover at the Cal Academy on Friday night, which was completely brilliant. “Can I eat whatever I want?” “Knock yourself out, kid.” We staked out the absolute primo position – under the tree in the African Hall – and woke up to birdsong, and the shadow of a leopard. We had watched “Night at the Museum” to get into the spirit of things. “It’s going to be SO AWESOME,” I kept saying: “the penguins and the butterflies and the alligators are going to COME TO LIFE.” To which she replied only: “MA-ma.” No one does disdain like your seven-year-old daughter.

Saturday was nuts: we were out of the museum by 8; Claire made it to wushu, and Salome and I made it to the Farmer’s Market, but only after being distracted by two of more than sixty simultaneous garage sales on the hill. Next year we will plan accordingly. She got a lamp and a very nice grey sweater vest. I got a pink bag I am not sure about, and Mary Janes and a cardigan and a brocade cushion cover that I am perfectly sure about, all for $8.

After the market we went to Julia’s! Kinder! Barbeque! Then Claire and I battled traffic to the Container Store, where I got baskets for the shopping bags and shoes that otherwise litter our entry hall. The baskets are a perfect fit! I am enamoured of my new, clutter-free entry hall. Jan, who arrived while the girls were at swim class, only asked “Why do you have so many shoes anyway?” I came late to the stereotypical shoe love, but I am making up for lost time. The girls were beside themselves with delight at seeing Jan.

Yesterday I rode Bella over fences, and we did a big course, and rode it better than we’ve ever done before, so that was insanely great. Then Danny and Liz and Ada came over and we had roast chicken with two kinds of yams and potatoes and carrots and a salad with spinach and yellow cherry tomatoes and squash blossoms. And it was very delicious.

Danny is thinking of buying Albion Castle in the Bayview and making it his supervillain lair. I pointed out that it would be almost unworkably far away from Mission burritos, and he said that tapping the Alameda-Weehawken burrito tunnel could be his first crime.

This morning Julia started kindergarten. She was radiantly brave, and gave me a huge grin and a thumbs-up as she marched into her classroom. I got something in my eye. I have two schoolgirls now, and no more little kids.

Item the first: When I fell off Bella I landed on the point of my hip. I was kinda stiff for a few days but mostly okay, and even had a riding lesson in the midst of it; but then I had an evening lesson with Dez and Dez was eeeeville; no-stirrups, trot over a crossbar and canter out from it evil. I could not do it. I can half-ass most things on a horse, but this felt like there was a pointy bit of metal jammed into my hip joint, so I had to opt out. Mehness, and likewise mehitude! I was actively limping all weekend, which suhuhuhucked, because that weekend we went to China Camp with the camping gang, who are all great fun and who love to hike. My hip was so hurty Saturday night that it took me forever to get to sleep, even in our lovely tent under the lovely trees.

Lucky J and I had dug some old Burning Man camping armchairs outta the attic, because I jammed myself into one of those Sunday morning and read books for a couple of hours while the able-bodied – including, humiliatingly, my four-year-old – circumnavigated Turtle Back Hill. This was follow-the-sun sloth, because I had to keep dragging my chair into new sunbeams in the woods at our campsite. Eventually the chair had little tracks behind it, as do rocks on Racetrack Playa. Anyway, enough rest and being lazy and I started to get the circulation back in my toes, and on Tuesday night I had a decentish ride on Omni, the big handsome black off-the-track Thoroughbred I have been riding lately.

Omni is item the second. He’s way dumber than lovely Bella but he’s brave and strong and gentle and wouldn’t harm a fly. He reminds me a little bit of Scottie in that you talk to him through his cadence, lengthening and shortening the rhythm of his stride. But Scottie was a big chicken, and Omni’s not afraid of anything. I am, you’ll be relieved to hear, not getting attached to him at all; when I secretly think of him as Black Beauty I am merely being ironic. The other day, when the message I was passing along the reins to him was “I love you, I love you, I love you,” was an inexplicable error for which the management apologizes; the relevant brain centres have been summarily fired.

Item the third is maps. One reason I adore China Camp is because it is surrounded by wetlands, so that the map of it always reminds me of the awesome map in Arthur Ransome’s Secret Water:

What made it even awesomer this time was reading Secret Water to Claire. We’ve been having a revival of Swallows & Amazons fever ever since Liz moved into a houseboat and Danny bought Daisy. I see that Liz has been doing some cartography of her own.

Item the Fourth: glory but I have been having a brilliant run of books lately. I can especially recommend The Little Stranger and The Haunting of Hill House, two basically perfect Gothic horror stories; The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters, which succeeded in making me even more upset about the DPRK, which is quite a feat; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the first book of popular science to reduce me to incoherent sobs three times – it encompasses the whole spectrum of what I think of as My America, from Wired to The Wire; everything by Peter Hessler, whose books are an excellent complement to that awesome Yellow Gorges documentary we saw, Up the Yangtze; The Marketplace of Ideas, which I think lingered in the back of my mind all through this Cambridge jaunt until I had the first glimmering, a couple of weeks ago, of insight into the way the Oxbridge experience was intentionally watered-down and exported throughout the English-speaking world, so that what I was given was not a classical education in that sense but a colonial simulacrum of one, the University of Sydney as a branch of the Scouts or Pony Club – not a new insight at the intellectual level (sidere mens eadem mutato, after all) but actually *felt* this time around, and now having to be processed; and on an entirely different note, a novel that has stayed with me ever since I read it much earlier this year, Michelle Huneven’s remarkable Blame.

Blame got me interested in AA, which turns out to have been heavily influenced by William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience, a copy of which is also on my nightstand waiting to be read, which is not altogether surprising as both the Huneven and the James were recommendations from Jessa Crispin, whose taste is sometimes enigmatic but never dull. Oh! I am so very fond of books, and of the San Francisco Public Library, and I am so lucky to have them.

Item the Fifth: I want to tell you about two awesome things that Claire said; forgive me. On the second-last morning in London we took McKenze out for a large and stodgy English breakfast. McKenze was amused at having overheard Julia describe her as “bossy”; we laughed, and asked the children whether McKenze was bossy or nice. Julia stubbornly stuck to “bossy”, but Claire said with what was to me quite surprising judiciousness: “bossy and nice.”

Later she came up with an idea for an art project for this year’s Balsa Man. I said that this year we could stay back from the fire, so she wouldn’t have to be scared about getting burned, and she said something that absolutely floored me:

“I wasn’t scared I would get burned. I was scared for some of the other people, who were being silly.”

She’s only seven. She was six when this happened, and she got in such a right state about it that I had assumed for a year without even thinking about it that she was terrified on her own behalf. I’d no idea she had such complex modelling of and empathy for complete strangers in place already. Some days I think maybe I am doing a few things right. But really I can’t take much credit for her remarkable and complicated self; it is, after all, her self.

I guess I did have a lot to say, and didn’t need the artificial constraint of Five Things Make A Post after all! Let me go back and rewrite the segues! Nah, bugrit. You know I love you, right?

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!

It would be misleading if I were to give the impression that life with the girls is unpleasant. Yesterday I took Miss Four to the Farmer’s Market with me. She was glowing, in a shiny ivory dress and orange cardigan. She was very helpful and cooperative, and then we danced together at Jackie Jones. We picked up Claire and Jeremy and walked over to the Fairmount Fiestaval, where I gave Claire money and told her to buy tickets and take her sister and play while I sat in the sun and recovered from my cold. Later she came up to me quietly and said “I loved it that you gave me money and let me do what I want.”

“I loved it that you were responsible and took great care of Julia,” I said.

We came home and Claire and Jeremy investigated a set of grasshopper robots for the Community Arts and Science day at Claire’s school on Friday. Jeremy will be running the solar-powered robot work table. Julia and I curled up in my bed. She fell asleep first and I held her and listened to Claire and her Dad talking about solar power. There was nowhere else I wanted to be, nothing else that could have made me so happy.

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.

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.

Yesterday I sort of oozed out of bed, made Claire’s lunch, kissed everyone and drove down to the barn for a fairly amazing lesson with Erika on Scottie. We did have a couple of moments in the flatwork where I was riding him off my leg and he chewed the bit thoughtfully and then collected himself into a lovely frame. As soon as we jumped, though, I couldn’t stop hanging on the reins, so he kept running through the line, which was frustrating; what’s awesome, though, is how Erika corrects faults in riders that I can’t even see, until the horse suddenly relaxes and moves forward freely. As we were riding back to the barn Toni came out to intercept me and asked if I would ride Scottie a little longer to show him off for a potential buyer! I said “Don’t you want to ride him?” and she said “You’ll be fine.”

Toni McIntosh is not horribly ashamed of my riding! I was so thrilled I rode Scottie through the line on a loose rein and he jumped it perfectly.

Zoomed back up to the city, went to work, brought the research calendar up to date, met with colleagues to go over the numbers, started a piece of research. Got crossish mail from someone who is offering us field trips, so zoomed over early to Monroe and walked from classroom to classroom getting said field trips scheduled. Made it to Claire’s class just in time for the Valentine’s Day exchange. Zoomed to the Community Music Center for her piano lesson. Had tacos and avocado and chocolat at Los Jarritos. Picked Claire up, came home, made dinner, went to taiji, came home and kissed Jeremy on the stairs as he went to wushu. I don’t know why I don’t taijiblog as much as I horseblog; stay tuned. Got the kids to bed, had a bath. Jeremy came home and we hung out.

I would like to say that it was an anomalous day, but today suggests otherwise. We slept in and had to teleport Claire to her wushu class. Salome and I dumped the kids on Jeremy and went to the farmer’s market and the garden store and talked nineteen to the dozen, as is our wont. Now that Ritual and Great Harvest are both at Alemany, it’s sort of a food black hole, with me well inside its Schwarzschild radius, never to escape. Back to Salome’s apartment to mind the kids and work on the novel and bake eggs for lunch while the kids drew characters from Lord of the Rings and Salome and Jack went to see Avatar. Off to swim class, where both girls are coming along in dives and sprints. Home to roast the butternut squash and soup it up with the homemade chicken stock. While I ate, I linked accounts to my new financial advisor’s web site, sent mail about the field trips and more mail about an upcoming dinner. And now I blog.

And I’m leaving out the bits where I was plotting the novels, or reading, or just staring into space and thinking about you and how great you are and how lucky I am to have you in my life.

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 :)