When I was here last year doing mollusk handler training for Benthic Creatures, we found a marvelous little diner called the Santa Cruz diner. Early this year, when Richard was in Santa Cruz passing out shell polishing kits to the mollusks, he discovered the joys of this diner too. So this morning when we both got up too early for the inn’s continental breakfast, we decided to relive some of the fun of our Benthic Creatures days and went to the diner for breakfast.

It was as cute and quirky as we remembered. The waitresses are all no-nonsense and serve up sarcastic humor along with the coffee. We had pancakes and drank coffee and tried very hard to find some energy for one more day. After yesterday’s marathon of walking we were both exhausted, so we eyed the tourist map dubiously in the hopes of finding some kind of entertainment that would involve a minimum of movement.

First we meandered through the streets back to the coast (but safely away from the traffic that surrounds the boardwalk) and found the Santa Cruz Natural History museum. It’s in a tiny little building overlooking the ocean and was manned by one rather quiet and bookish gentleman who greeted from behind his counter. There isn’t a lot to see in the Natural History museum, but what little there was, was laid out quite well. One room had all sorts of exhibits and pictures and information about the local indigenous people in the area while another held all manner of birds and local furry things (including a huge full-grown red tailed hawk hanging from the ceiling). In a third room we learned all about fossils and shellfish in the area and got to pet starfish in a tide pool.

Then we decided to go to the Long Marine Aquarium. We arrived before they opened (it seems to have been a trend for this weekend) so wandered around on the cliffs overlooking the ocean for a bit before we were able to go inside.

It’s another tiny little place, but like the museum, was definitely worth the trip. Unlike most aquariums, this place was set up to show how science actually happens. Each exhibit started with a question, and then gave simple steps on how the scientists came up with an answer. Obviously it’s mostly geared toward school kids, but even for adults it was pretty neat. There was some hands-on stuff, including a huge puzzle (which Richard and I put together because I really, really like jigsaw puzzles), and a tank full of jellyfish, and a few little tide pool areas where I got to poke at sea cucumbers and watch them contract, and also let an anemone try to run off with my finger by leaving it there long enough for it to wrap half a dozen of its little sucker legs onto my skin. Once we were done poking at sea critters we went on a little tour, which mainly consisted of a short walk outside along the bluff behind the center, and then an even shorter trip into the main complex to see the dolphins and sea lions and seals. It was a highly educational trip, because when one of the docents asked if we had any questions, I jumped at the opportunity to find the answer to a question of utmost importance (by the way, in case you were wondering as well, jellyfish do not, in fact, have butts. You are welcome).

We headed home after lunch. My legs are sore and I am walking funny because there is a huge blister on the bottom of the middle toe on my left foot, and we are both sporting nasty sunburns on our faces and arms, and I am completely and overwhelmingly exhausted. We forgot to bring the camera and we realized sometime today that if we’d had half a brain between the two of us we would have tossed the bikes onto the car and brought them along and maybe we wouldn’t be nearly as worn out. The cats will not leave me alone because they have been left with no one to give them attention for TWO WHOLE DAYS (no matter that my parents came in and fed them both days, and probably did a bit of head scritching and petting), and I need to do laundry and I think I could use another day just to sleep before I go back to work tomorrow and am required to at least pretend to be awake. But all those things aside, it was a lovely weekend, and I am very glad we went.

This morning we lounged lazily in bed until just after 8 (such luxury!). This was mainly because breakfast wasn’t served until then, so despite me waking up before 6 and then lying there in bed half awake for the next hour or two, it wouldn’t have done any good to actually arise any sooner. Now that it was morning we could actually see what the gardens of the inn looked like during the day. We took a quick amble through them (we’d done a more thorough stroll last night) and I once again had reason to bemoan the boring flatness of our yard. Most of the gardens were up a steep hill literally covered with some kind of bright red flowers.

We joined a handful of other equally sleepy people in the main lounge for breakfast. I discovered that I could only pretend that the pancakes didn’t really have bananas in them for one pancake’s worth of eating; after that the banana contamination was too strong to overcome and I made do with a deliciously flaky croissant. Then we headed back downtown to see how everything looked in the daytime.

As I suspected, during the day the concentration of gothed up college students standing around in clusters managing to smoke and exude extreme boredom had decreased. In fact, the downtown strip was nearly deserted, which, as we soon discovered, was due to the fact that a majority of the businesses did not even open until 10. So much for getting an early start. But we did walk all the way up to a clock tower and then took a detour over to the mission (which also did not open until 10 so we had to content ourselves with peering up the hill through the gate at nothing). Then we stared at our little tourist map of Santa Cruz and figured that since the boardwalk wasn’t all that far away, we might as well walk down there too.

The beach was still mostly empty when we made it down to the boardwalk, and most of the rides were in process of opening and doing their beginning-of-day tests. We wandered the length of the boardwalk and looked at the beach and the volleyball courts and all the sand, and then Richard saw a sign for a train trip up to an old lumber site which looked kind of fun, so we marked the time and then walked out onto the pier to find somewhere for lunch. Amusingly enough, we ended up at the same place each of us had gone for dinner when we were here (not together, but each on our own during separate trips) for Benthic Creatures. We sat by the window and tried to figure out what type of ducks were bobbing around on the water, and I got to be amazed by how big pelicans really are when you see them close up, and we ate salmon wrapped in spinach and puff pastry and then had just enough time to walk back down the pier and back to the boardwalk and pay for our tickets and board the train.

The train ride was lovely. It took us through some of the prettier parts of Santa Cruz with all the little colorful Victorian houses, and also through some of the not-so-pretty areas (industrial yards, mostly). Once we left Santa Cruz it was mostly redwood trees and occasional glimpses of rivers and hikers and mountain bikers.

Then, however, it reached Roaring Camp, which, being further away from the coast, was significantly hotter. And the first glance from the train window made us wonder just what it was that was so exciting that people (who were over the age of 10) would really want to go there. There really wasn’t much at all there except some pony rides and a few boxes of water on sticks where you could ‘pan for gold’, and a shack selling the typical tourist trap food (ice cream, burgers, hot dogs), and of course a little souvenir shop. There were signs for trails leading into the redwoods we’d just seen but we had less than an hour to kill and it simply wasn’t enough time to do much exploring. So we got flavored ices and sat on a picnic bench in the shade to eat them, and then poked around the gift shop and got back on the train.

This time we decided to ride in the open car, which turned out to be a huge mistake. The ride through the redwoods was just as lovely as before but in the open car we had no protection from the sun, and the breeze from the movement of the train just wasn’t enough to make up for the heat.

We were both pretty tired after the heat and the sun, but we decided to walk all the way back downtown again to find the Santa Cruz library so Richard could get a library card (because for whatever reason he decided that he should try to get a library card from every county in California). And then we finally walked back to the inn where I really wanted to collapse but after that extremely hot and sweaty train ride we both felt disgusting so we ended up taking showers instead.

We decided to find dinner somewhere, since the cheese appetizers in the lobby weren’t going to cut it two days in a row, so we rummaged through the inn’s big book of menus, found a promising spot, called and made reservations, and then hopped in the car. We drove off to Aptos, where we discovered that just because the woman at the inn *said* it was in Aptos didn’t mean she knew what she was talking about, called the restaurant, got correct directions, and finally found it at the top of a hill overlooking an extremely snooty golf course surrounded by even snootier mansions. We ate dinner and whispered across the table to each other about the other people in the restaurant, who all seemed to be the sort that lives in snooty golf course mansions and name their children Muffy or Hamilton the Third and worry about how their little angels’ preschool will impact their ability to get into Harvard later in life. Then we split a dessert which had an appropriately snooty name but was really just a big slab of soft fudge in a shallow bowl surrounded by espresso cream and crushed Heath bars, and then finally decided we’d had enough snootiness for one weekend so quickly paid our bill and escaped.

We decided that, with the hectic schedule of the rest of the summer, we needed a chance to get away, just the two of us. This was especially nice considering that Richard is off to a class for an entire week at the end of this month, and leaves on our anniversary – a class which requires him to be gone on our anniversary. Not, mind you, that either of us is hopelessly anal about making sure we celebrate things on their exact days, but it was as good an excuse as any for a weekend escape.

We picked Santa Cruz, only because it is within driving distance, and really, neither of us have ever really had the time or chance to explore the town. We’d both been there for work with Benthic Creatures, but the schedule for that job was always long and left little time for exploration.

Richard tracked down the Babbling Brook Inn, a little sprawling hobbit sized bed and breakfast nestled in the middle of lush gardens and surrounding – appropriately enough – a little brook complete with water wheel.

We didn’t get there until shortly after 8, since we had to wait until after we got home from work, and then still had to pack. Initially the intention was to find dinner in Santa Cruz somewhere, but the hostess offered us cookies and sparkling cider and little plates of cheese and crackers and homemade pizza as we checked in, and suddenly we weren’t so hungry any more.

We checked into our room and sat on the tiny little deck, surrounded by ferns taller than my head when I was sitting, and ate our cheese and crackers and drank our cider. And then we wandered off towards downtown, to see what we could find in the dark.

The downtown stretch is typical college/tourist town – pizza and coffee shops every time you turn around, and more ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ product stores than you might find in others. We did stumble across a large used bookstore and spent some time in there happily browsing. I found two books by Terry Pratchett and one by someone else. I am in the middle of reading it now, curled up in bed and listening to the water right outside our door. It is not the best possible book because there have already been parts where things happen that seem to have been added without much thought to how to incorporate them into the story, but it is about cats and magic and mysteries and the importance of friends, and I am pleasantly tired from all the walking, so it will do for now.

I got up far too early this morning and drove to the airport while it was still dark, to catch a plane to Los Angeles and from there, a taxi to Santa Monica.

It was muggy in Santa Monica today; in fact it was extremely muggy. But I didn’tt mind it so much if only because at least it is cooler than Sacramento is right now so at least I have that for relief. The taxi driver who took me from airport to office did not ask me any questions other than to confirm the address, for which I was grateful since by this point I was starting to suffer from the combination of waking up far too early, and a lack of caffeine. Outside the office building the weekly farmer’s market was just starting to set up as the taxi pulled up beside the curb. A few minutes later, after I’d been upstairs and given the quick tour and pointed in the right direction, I headed back outside in search of coffee. The office is right next to some kind of shopping promenade, with stores lining the street on either side (pedestrians only) and a movie theater on the corner. I found coffee in the form of a latte, and could not resist the oddly shaped, intriguingly named espresso chocolate chunk scone.

Walking back to the office – this time with a borrowed pass so I wouldn’t have to rely on the kindness of strange men washing down the sidewalk to let me in – I eyed the produce and plants set out in crates and boxes alongside vans as the market sellers set up their tables. Huge tomatoes, boxes of apricots mounded high, buckets crammed with all manner of plants that might tempt me into making a purchase save for the fact that there really is no way I could bring it home with me on the plane tonight.

There is a dentist’s office in this same building, and as I walked by I did a double-take. The lobby is like something out of Arabian nights – overstuffed plush and heavy tapestries tucked into every corner amid tall potted trees. There was a little hallway inside with video games (to entertain the older kids, I imagine), and a brightly pink room to one corner with giant crayons on the wall for the younger ones. Somehow I managed to stop my jaw from dropping onto the floor. This is nothing like any dentist office I’ve ever seen. I am used to stark, boring lobbies done in every shade of beige, with the requisite pile of magazines on a table in the corner where the most recent edition was published back when I was in college or earlier. I wonder if all those trips to the dentist and the orthodontist for the braces and the headgear and the extractions (I have thin enamel, a jaw too small for all my teeth, etc., etc.) would have been more anticipated if there had a sultan’s tent, or giant crayons, or a Ms Pacman game to keep me occupied until it was my turn.

The Santa Monica office was originally designed for a now failed dot com. This is the explanation I was given for why, scattered here and there like misplaced drains in an otherwise normally carpeted floor, there are golf ‘holes’. Apparently the now-failed dot com employees were welcome to relieve a bit of stress by grabbing a club and doing their best to hit a few holes-in-one in lieu of a coffee break. The love of office-floor golf does not, however, explain why it is that the failed dot com felt the need to decorate the entire office in some kind of bizarre hybridization between the 70’s and the type of ‘modern’ décor that usually equates to minimalism, lots of metal, and far too much emphasis on frosted glass panels. There is a little glass-walled conference room in the back of the office, in a relatively unpopulated corner, and it is there that I spent most of my day, with the architect and the intern, pouring over an ever-growing pile of information as we try to track down often-elusive equations for buildings.

We went to Wolfgang Puck’s for lunch. I had a roasted vegetable pizza (although I had to pick off the eggplant because it is just too slimy to eat). We found great amusement in the drink dispenser, where the regular lemonade contained a label indicated 0% juice. The diet version, however, proudly declared that it was made with real lemons. As the same vendor and brand made both of these, it did make us wonder just what the 0% juice regular version uses instead of lemons (and why the vendor felt the need to use a lemon substitute).

By about 2pm the architect and I were both fading fast. My excuse was the plane flight down; hers was that her youngest – from all accounts a typically exuberant toddler – came bounding into her room at about the same time I was smacking my alarm clock and getting out of bed much further north, and once that started there was no going back to sleep for her either. A previously planned conference call kept us somehow hanging on to some semblance of normal brain function for another hour or two, but by shortly before 4pm the architect had had it, the intern was starting to get nervous about the fact that she is supposed to fly to another continent tomorrow and had not yet begun to pack, and as for me, the sheer fact that I could no longer pronounce simple words like “irrigation” and “calculate” indicated that my brain was slowly going numb from overload. So we all emerged from our little glass-walled chamber of work and headed our separate ways.

The taxi driver who took me from office to airport wanted to chat but by then I was too worn out to manage more than a few simple sentences in reply. He was the type of driver that makes me incredibly nervous – speeding up to tail other cars on the freeway, slamming on his brakes at stoplights. If I paid attention to the traffic around me – and to what he was doing – it only made me tense in anticipation with every sudden swerve and screeching halt. So instead I focused my attention on the scenery, finding great amusement in the trees that lined the side of the road. In some areas they had grown so huge that the sidewalk had become a gentle roller coaster of ups and downs, shoved out of place at regular intervals by the slow and steady force of the spreading roots.

We really need to organize the garage. Things are starting to accumulate around the edges and the clutter is creeping slowly inward until soon we will be trying to figure out just why it is that we can no longer fit even one car in what is supposed to be slightly larger than a two-car garage. Okay, maybe that won’t happen quite so soon, but if we don’t do something about it, parking two cars in there is going to start becoming a challenge.

It is a daunting task, requiring first taking stock of everything *in* the garage, then figuring out the best method of storing it all, via some clever combination of shelves, hooks on the walls, cutely labeled Tupperware containers, pegboard for the tools, etc., as well as figuring out what doesn’t really need to remain in the garage but instead go live in the attic. Assuming of course that we can get it into the attic because maneuvering a ladder into the litter box closet and trying to squeeze between the door jamb and the ceiling in order to make it through the tiny little opening is even more daunting than organizing the garage. Of course, once we actually figure out exactly what size and how many of the aforementioned shelves and containers and pegboards, then we would have to go *buy* them all, and then install them, and then put all the things in their respective places, and suddenly this chore seems as if it will encompass days of hot and sweaty work in a place where various and sundry critters – including the occasional mummified frog and black widow spider – have made their homes. Not, mind you, that the mummified frogs hold the same squeal factor as black widow spiders, since frogs – mummified or otherwise, usually are not in any danger of biting anyone. But it is not exactly fun to move things in the garage and find yet another shriveled frog carcass lurking in a dark corner somewhere, just waiting for the day I will accidentally step on it in my bare feet.

I think that what we really need to do is organize some sort of major chore swapping party. Surely there are people out there – strange but lovely people – who delight in creating those nifty organizing systems of cupboards and shelves and hooks and thing, who would be perfectly happy to take on our garage as a little weekend project. And in return I would be perfectly happy to paint a room for them, and maybe Richard could install a new operating system or set up a home network in exchange too. I am sure this could work. Really it could. Just as long as you don’t decide that payment should be the building of any large stone walls, or the lugging of any large quantities of dirt because I’ve done more than enough of that in the past few weeks to last the rest of my life thank you very much.

An amusing story from the Fourth of July festivities. In order to feed the crowd we had at our house, Richard purchased 5 pounds of pork loin, then mixed a huge bowl of marinade and used pretty much every flat glass dish we own to marinate the pork all day. Every time I opened the refrigerator door I was greeted with the spicy smell of garlic and cayenne pepper, and the sight of shelves full of foil-wrapped dishes taking up every inch of available space.

As it came time for guests to arrive, Richard began to remove the meat from its various containers in order to prepare it for grilling. I was at the kitchen sink chopping up onions and peppers and apples for the fajita filling when I heard a splash that did not bode well. Turning I was greeted with the sight of Richard standing at the counter behind me, looking a little sheepish, and marinade all over everything. Apparently the piece of meat slipped back into the dish, creating an arc of liquid so impressive that not only did it cover over half the floor, it made it all the way to the stairs! He began swabbing up the marinade on the counters and the front of the cupboards while I hastily grabbed a towel and attacked the orange liquid that was dribbling down the walls and puddling on the stairs.

It was a pork loin belly flop of massive proportions. I’m not sure we could duplicate it again even if we tried. I am still giggling about it, even days after. It was not nearly as exciting as the great Worcestershire sauce catastrophe which took place in my kitchen after what appeared to have been a mad feline-induced romp through the cupboards several years back (and I was still finding black sticky goo in places I would not have expected it to reach, months after the incident), but I think it could surely take second place.

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This afternoon I finally got around to taking pictures of the latest progress in the backyard. After all the fun we had lugging rocks and hauling dirt, we decided to have someone who knows what they’re doing take care of the next part. The paths (filled with decomposed granite) were put in just in time for the 4th of July. In this shot you can see the arbor gate and the climbing roses. Also note the hedge bushes on either side of the gate, which have now grown tall enough that it’s starting to get awkward stepping over them. In a few more years they’ll actually be a real hedge. We’ll be so proud.

The rest of the yard can be seen here. The corner where I am standing to take that picture will eventually be a tiny, secluded courtyard, mostly hidden by bushes and trees, with a few chairs and perhaps a little arbor, just perfect for reading. In the far side of the yard, where the path ends abruptly on the right, the yard continues on behind the kitchen and that will be a much larger courtyard area whose sole purpose will be to provide a wind break for Richard’s grill.

We had the usual gathering of the families at our house today, in the Fourth of July tradition that started the instant (a few years ago) that we all figured out that the backyard of our house is the perfect place to watch the fireworks without having to fight with the crowds. My parents, Richard’s parents and youngest sister, and my older sister and brother-in-law and my two nephews all piled into our house for the annual barbeque, hours of chatting, and watching of the fireworks.

Richard and I decided to make those pork fajitas we made for my birthday, but this time we weren’t in nearly so much of a rush (phew). Last night we did the main grocery run, and picked up the assortment of peppers and some liquid pectin I’d need to make more jalapeno jelly, plus some beautiful white peaches for pie.

An aside here. When making jelly of any kind, it is vitally important that one read the directions carefully. It is especially important not to add the pectin at the beginning of the recipe, instead of later, when you are supposed to add it, after you have already simmered the goo in the pan for several minutes and run it through the blender. If you do this, your jelly has a much greater chance of actually becoming something resembling jelly, and is less likely to turn into a thicker version of jalapeno syrup.

At least the jelly tasted just fine (if not with a bit more of a kick than I remember), even though it was a bit on the runny side. And I’ve now got an entire quart jar of the stuff in the fridge. I figure that amount will last us through a few years worth of fajitas before I have to make any more (and try to remember the all-important pectin-adding tip I mentioned above).

Last night I put together the frozen pies, which are perhaps some of the easiest pies in the world to make. You take a small container of yogurt, any flavor, stir it into a small container of cool whip, and then pour the resulting glop into a pre-made graham cracker crust. Cover it, toss it into the freezer, and voila. Pie! I always make mine with peach yogurt because that is one of only three flavors of yogurt I like (Although now that I think about it, next time I should try the orange flavor because that would probably be incredibly good), although my mom swears by the lemon (And for those of you on Weight Watchers, if you use the fat-free, sugar-free yogurt, fat-free cool whip, and the low fat graham cracker crust, it’s only 14 points for the whole pie).

This morning I made apple cinnamon sweet potato muffins for breakfast (which are incredibly yummy and incredibly dense) while Richard went off to the store to get the pork. I figure we actually did pretty well for a holiday meal, considering that we only had to do two trips to the store on the actual day (the second was for charcoal and ice). After we ate breakfast, he put together the marinade, and a bit later I baked custard peach pie and cooked bacon and chopped up all the veggies and apples for the fajita filling.

If I look back on it now I suppose I did end up spending an awful lot of time in the kitchen cooking, but it didn’t feel like it at all. I think what made the most difference for this holiday meal was the fact that last month we sat down, looked at our finances, and realized that we could finally afford to hire a cleaning service. So now someone comes in every two weeks and vacuums and dusts and mops the floors and makes the bathrooms sparkle and even gets all the cat hair off all the upholstery, including the cat trees.

It still feels a little decadent to leave a check on the table when I leave, and then come home from work to a sparkling house. But it is so worth the money. It’s utterly amazing. This is the first time we’ve had people come over where we didn’t have to rush around for a few hours beforehand cleaning the house. It’s not that either of us is a slob, because clutter has never really been the issue. It’s the fact that we have seven cats who shed an awful lot of fur, and more importantly, that we share a deep and abiding hatred for household chores.

As holiday gatherings go, today was one of the best. The fajitas turned out as delicious as usual, and the jelly tasted just fine, even if it was a bit runnier than usual. There was plenty of time to talk and laugh and sit outside while the two little guys tore around the yard. The city fireworks display was marvelous, if only because the finale was one of the most spectacular displays I’ve ever seen. And we got to show off the newest changes to our backyard, which include the lovely stone raised flower bed (full of all that dirt!), the wide paths around the pieces of lawn that were put in just this past week, and best of all, our newest set of temporary residents. Yes, the sparrow nest in the climbing roses on the arbor gate is occupied again, and it looks like there are three little balls of gray fluff in this batch too! If they keep at it we may be forced to figure out some way of hooking up a sparrow-cam on that side of the house, if only to get a chance to see the babies grow. I have to admit that I am inordinately pleased that the nest is being reused. Surely this means the curse is fading. I hope.

My older sister met the man who would become her husband in her freshman year in college and from that point on they were an item. We all knew they were going to get married; it was always just a question of when. When he finally popped the question, the next step was the official meeting of the families, although I’m pretty sure my parents and his parents had already met a time or two before.

His parents are two of the most gracious people I have ever met. Louise is, through and through, a lady in every sense of the word. And Dallas was tall and quiet and gentle, but with a sparkling sense of humor and a brilliant mind.

Over the past twelve years we’ve spent time with my sister’s parents-in-law, sometimes sharing holiday dinners and celebrations. They came to my wedding. They came to watch my mother’s consecration as a diaconal minister a few years back. We watched Dallas perform in barbershop quartets. Richard helped my brother-in-law hang Christmas lights around my sister’s parents-in-law’s house.

A few years ago Dallas was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He’d always been such a brilliant man – a professor in mathematics at UC Davis, a voracious reader, a musician. It seemed such a shock that this could happen to, of all people, him.

The last time I saw him was at my wedding, nearly two years ago. The tall graceful man I’d known was quiet and tired, seeming sometimes a bit lost even though at that time at least he still had all his wits. Last summer they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and managed to gather every one of their friends and family around them, knowing with utmost certainty that this would most likely be their last. It reminded me of that one family reunion I attended years ago, celebrating my grandfather’s 80th birthday, with every single one of his descendants present and knowing that this was the last reunion he would ever attend.

The disease progressed mercifully quickly. Last week he succumbed to renal failure, and last Friday he passed away, his family at his side. He wasn’t really there any more; hadn’t been there for months, but they had time to say goodbye.

I’ve never been able to believe in gods and devils and heavens and hells. But if there really is a heaven out there, somewhere, I know that’s where he is, his mind as sharp as ever, singing barbershop with old friends.

Rest in peace, Dallas. I’m sorry your youngest grandsons (my nephews) never had the chance to get to know you, but don’t worry – we’ll all do our best to tell them all about you. It was an honor to know you and I think someday they’ll understand that too.

I knew I was going to have to go see the doctor at some point, but some little voice inside my head kept insisting that I needed to wait. “Wait until it’s been two months,” the voice insisted. “Wait until you get June’s measurements, because maybe, just maybe, a miracle will have happened and things will have started to go the right direction (that would be down, in the case of my weight), and then you don’t have to go because you can pretend it was all a bad dream and everything is just happy and rosy again.”

Of course, it should be obvious at this point that this is not what happened. In fact, when I did my weigh-in and measuring for June, I’d gained yet another pound, and the little gadget that calculates BMI by sending electrical pulses through your arms (or however it does it) and thus actually really does calculate the percent body fat and does not simply rely on height versus weight – that little gadget said my BMI had actually gone up, even higher than when I first started Curves two months ago.

The amusing thing about all this was that the instant I got on the scale I knew that it was not going to be good news. But I was okay with it. All throughout the measurements and the slap-in-the-face facts that physically I have slid even further backwards, I kept up a running conversation with myself, in much the same manner as those insidious cell phone commercials where that odd little man asks into his phone every few steps “Can you hear me now?” Except I was asking “so are you going to go all emotional?” “No. “Okay. How about now?” “Nope. Still no need to sob hysterically.” “Okay, how about now? Are you going to fall apart now?”

And even though occasionally I keep hearing that little ongoing query in my head the answer still is that I’m fine. I’m fine with the weight gain. Okay, actually, I’m not fine with it at all. But apparently my neurons have decided that they no longer need to go bezerk and dump me, sobbing, in a little blubbery pile somewhere dark and cold. In fact, there have been no episodes at all since the last time. Which in a way I suppose should not surprise me at all because Murphy’s Law clearly states that the moment you realize that you will have to break down and contact a professional to get something fixed, you will never be able to reproduce the error for them, and in fact things will work even better than before, just to spite you.

But I did go see the doctor anyway, last week. For one thing, since new job = new health insurance, I had to get yet another copy of my prescription to send away to yet another mail order prescription company so I can avoid having to go to the pharmacy every month just to get the little happy pills that keep the evil Cramps of Doom (and the accompanying hormonal Day of Suicidal Impulses) far, far away. But I figured that at the very least I should find out if this little issue of exercise+diet = weight gain might be something physical.

We discussed medications for the weight loss, but the doctor was pretty frank about the fact that they wouldn’t really do me any good. He mentioned the possibility of thyroid problems and so he sent me off to get some blood taken across the hall, where I had possibly the world’s best ever phlebotomist because I did not even feel the needle going in! The doctor told me that he is proud of me for doing what I am doing with the healthier eating and the Curves and the biking and the trying-to-kill-myself yard work, because I really am doing everything right. And then he told me what I already knew, which is that it is highly likely that I could keep doing this for six months or six years and that probably I will eventually lose some weight but that basically I have a crappy metabolism and there is nothing in the world that is going to change that. And at least I will be healthy, even if I don’t ever manage to drop even an ounce of flab from my bones.

I have no idea when the blood tests will come back but I am not expecting anything more than a cursory postcard indicating that everything seems normal. Because let’s face it – he is right. Life sucks and it isn’t fair, but that doesn’t mean I can’t keep at it.

Oh and by the way, I did talk to him about the whole sporadic life-sucks-let’s-cry routine, and he pointed out something that hadn’t even occurred to me but which made such perfect sense. He said that it’s very common to have a delayed reaction to stress – stress related to a job, or family, or whatever. And it made me stop and think. Because in the past year – heck, in the past nine months – I was laid off from a job where I might have been bored but at least I loved the work, and I dealt with a job where I was told things that turned out to be untrue and where I felt at times as if I was constantly so angry that it was all I could do to not scream, and now even though I’m in a job that I adore, everything that has happened to me and to Richard in the past few years has sunk in to the point where I cannot help but feel as if I am constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop; that one of these days I will walk in and they will tell me that they don’t need me anymore and then this crazy circle will start up all over again. And suddenly it all made sense that I was finally starting to react to it all; in the only way my poor confused little brain knows how.

I don’t know if this is really the reason. I only know that it makes sense to me, and I so desperately needed those episodes to have some reason behind them beyond some chemical aberration where my brain forgot I was a perfectly rational human being and instead thought I was just a bit insane.

So I’m sticking to this as the truth for now, and waiting to see if it becomes anything else. And all the while, keeping up that running query in my head.

“How about now? Are you going to break down now?”

No. Not now. And if I can help it, not ever again.

After the last few weekends of yard work and biking and all the muscle aches and sunburns that came with that sort of fun, we decided we really needed a weekend where there would be as little physical activity as possible. Also, we hadn’t managed to get a weekend at the ranch in quite a while and since Richard’s family was planning to spend their usual week-before-Fourth-of-July there, the timing seemed right to take a trip through the hills.

Naturally the moment we started pondering going away for a few days of relaxation, the weather suddenly remembered that yes, it really *is* summer, and reverted back to temperatures that can best be described as Beastly Hot. So when we drove up to the ranch on Saturday afternoon, I was not in the best of moods, pondering two days of hiding in the lodge in some nearly futile effort to escape the heat.

Saturday afternoon I did do a significant amount of lodge-lurking. Luckily it cooled down enough to venture back into the outdoors in the evening, and by the time we piled into our cars to drive back to Davis for the last show of the Davis Musical Theater Company’s season, it was finally getting a bit more bearable outside.

The play was Showboat – a play which fit in quite nicely with the rest of the season’s decidedly non-PC theme. There was Carnival, where the moral of the story is that it’s okay if he treats you like dirt as long as he says he loves you (and does it with puppets, no less!). In Carousel we learn that sometimes a punch can feel like a kiss, and that it’s okay if he beats the crap out of you as long as he tells you he loves you. In How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, one of the underlying themes is that the ultimate goal for any woman is to grab herself a husband, even if he *is* a self-centered schmuck. And finally, we have Showboat, where the moral of the story is that it’s okay for him to simply disappear into thin air for 30+ years as long as (yes, you guessed it) he says he loves you.

Showboat also has the honor of being, without a doubt, the absolute longest play I have ever seen in my life, as well as the one most deserving of the “Most Extraneous and Irrelevant Plot Points” award. The first act covers a few months; the second act covers over 30 years, and all with a lot of additional stuff thrown in just to confuse the matter.

Then after the play and our typical after-play get-together with my parents (where we eat pie and discuss/praise/poke fun at the play we just saw) we went back home to sleep as late as we could before heading back to the ranch.

Thankfully, the weather today was perfect. We packed sandwiches (which we never did eat) and returned to the ranch, where we set up our camping chairs next to his parents’ chairs and proceeded spend most of the day just sitting.

This is a novel thing for me – just sitting. At first I read for a while, since I decided I should reread the newest Harry Potter book (it took me about 5 hours to read the book this time because I was actively forcing myself to take it slower). But once the book was done I made myself continue sitting and just do nothing.

We talked. We watched a pair of boys – probably older elementary school aged – construct a surprisingly impressive dam in the little creek that runs through the river, thus turning what was a shallow space of calmer water into a tiny pool so deep an adult could sink up to their chest in the water. I closed my eyes and sat in my chair while Richard and his sister read their books and listened to the sound of the water and the birds and the wind through the leaves overhead.

I did get up a few times – once to go try out the little mini-pool the boys had so industriously created, and once to go on a short walk around the ranch with Richard, during which we saw two wide-eyed deer resting beside the trailer hitch of a camper. But for the most part, I made myself just relax and do nothing at all, and while I think if I’d had to do a few hours more of it I might have gone stark raving mad, the length today was just enough to be lovely.

The boys took down their dam eventually, amid cheers from all of us who’d been watching them put it together, and as evening started to close in the bugs came out in force, which is the reason I have mosquito bites all over the back of my knees. And then after dinner we reluctantly hugged our goodbyes and headed home.