So we’re back home from Sequoia. In lots of ways, the trip was everything such trips are meant to be. If you haven’t been up in the redwoods, you can’t imagine what it’s like — it’s like church. My eyes crave lots of green, lots of wildlife and lots of tiny flowers — result of having grown up spending every free moment wandering in the woods. You don’t so much get that in Orange County. There is a particular charm about looking out the lodge window and seeing deer grazing 10 feet away. About seeing a black bear lumbering through the meadow. About a hundred varieties of tiny wildflowers. And of course, those incredible trees. Now here come the highlights:

Wholesome Family Activity: The most major undertaking was a tour of Crystal Cave, which was really breathtaking although in retrospect, I sort of wish we’d just bought some postcards instead. The inside of the cave is eerily beautiful, with rushing streams inside, and the park ranger was very nice although very, very verbose. The main problem I had with the Cave was the steep 3/4-mile hike on a dirt trail to get down there — and, of course, back. The altitude differential is over 300 feet and most of it is unfenced, with a drop of a few hundred feet as your reward if you lose your footing. I just don’t take well to spending every step terrified one of my kids will fall off a fucking mountain.

Is This A Felony? Probably: Both Matt and Boolie ended up having to take a whiz along the trail back from the Cave (no restrooms for hours). It’s probably a felony to take out your dick in a National Park, although if you’re a government official such as a Senator, probably not. Perhaps it’s even required.

Study In Personality Contrasts: Sam completed the requirements for a Junior Park Ranger badge, which involved a bunch of nature observation and completion of a little workbook. After he was sworn in and received his badge, I turned to Matt and asked if he would like to be a Park Ranger too. Matt’s response? Nah, I don’t want to work so much. Rock on, my hippie slacker dude. This, in a nutshell, is the difference between Sam and Matt.

Inappropriate Comedy Moment: Just after climbing back into the van outside the Visitor Center, I turned to Ben and howled God, that woman’s ass was gigantic. Not realizing that Ben had just wound down the window so that everyone in the parking lot could hear every word I said. I spent the remainder of the trip hiding behind things in case I had to face her again. But dudes: That was one big ass. I mean preposterously disproportionate.

Barf-O-Matic: The drive home was extremely vomit-intensive. Take a bow, Matt and Boolie. I now get to spend most of tomorrow devising ways to rid my cloth upholstery (WHY the hell didn’t I spring for leather?) of extremely noxious stains and odors. Bool, in fact, was sweet enough to give us an encore performance after our late lunch in Bakersfield. While I was trying to clean things up as best I could, some stupid bitch tried to panhandle me in the Arco parking lot and received my full wrath for her troubles. (In retrospect, I should have offered her five bucks if she’d clean up the yarp.)

What We’ve Learned: Probably nothing. But next trip = nice flat, shortish drive to Palm Springs.

Next Monday the family leaves on an abbreviated vacation to Sequoia National Park. This an extremely beautiful place, and I’m looking forward to going back there, because I haven’t been in, Lord, 14 years? But travel with three small kids can be extremely daunting, and I’m anticipating the trip with a mixture of pleasure and trepidation.

I did the smart thing and made reservations at the Wuksachi Lodge, even springing for the deluxe room. We were going to go with the rustic cabins, which are much more economical, but which can best be defined as mostly like a tent, but with walls and electricity. I worried, with the kids, though. We had an adventure in camping nearly three years ago which still gives me nightmares. So I’m playing it smart.

But Sequoia is, well, a national park located in the middle of scenic nowhere. It’s nearly a five-hour drive, and the kids just aren’t used to that stuff. They complained plenty about the length of the trip the last time we went to San Diego. In general, here are my fears:

• The kids will start complaining on the way up there, which will drive Ben crazy while he’s trying to drive because they complain in three-part harmony, and boy are they good at it. And where is there to stop on the way? Ha. Mostly nowhere, or places which are even worse than nowhere.
• Boolie will have to pee every five miles, and little girls just aren’t good at peeing by the side of the road.
• The kids will get to Sequoia and say, in essence, Right. Big trees. Cave. We’re bored. Can we go home and play Wii now?
• We will all be eaten by a bear, and I’m a huge fan of not being eaten by a bear.
• Although at least if we are eaten by a bear, the kids won’t be able to complain they’re bored.
• The food will be both abysmal and expensive, and there are extremely limited dining options in the park.
• I will forget to pack something extremely key, for which a replacement won’t be available in the park.
• The van will malfunction somewhere along the way.

That about covers it. It’ll probably be a good trip, but at this point, imaging how many things could go wrong, I’m pretty much shittin’ kittens. If was just Ben and me, we’d get by. But when you start traveling with kids, it’s a whole new ball game.

Wait. Do I still have a blog here? Well, my God, of course I do. Except when I don’t. But Woodland Elementary School has gone into its usual end-of-school-year posture of standing on my neck and standing on it hard.

California has a legally mandated free school guarantee. Theoretically, my children are meant to attend school for free; due to the fact that Ben is disabled and I’m presently unemployed, they even get a free lunch. (And they say there is no such thing!) But even public schools always have their hand out. At the end of the year, for some reason, they hit us up especially hard.

Today was the Woodland Elementary Jog-A-Thon, where kids run laps for money with nothing to show for it but the free T-shirt. I pledged $25 per child — a pretty typical amount. Just this past Saturday, the Kaiser-Woodland carnival was held, whereby all the kids at both schools were exhorted to eat and drink and play, proceeds to benefit both schools. Last week I shelled out $10 each for two Woodland T-shirts for the boys. Every Friday they have Spirit Day, at which time (surprise!) everyone is expected to wear their Woodland shirts.

Next week is Open House. That will involve the Book Fair, which benefits both Scholastic and the schools, and a burgers ‘n’ chips dinner supplied for free by a local merchant and paid for generously by the parents, proceeds to the schools. Not to mention the end-of-year teacher gifts and the snacks for Jog-A-Thon and so on and on and on.

I’m not really complaining. (Or am I? I believe I’ve just kvetched at length.) We are fortunate to have a world-class school district with extraordinary teachers and maximum 20-child classes. Compare that to LAUSD which has teachers who border on illiteracy and class sizes of 30 or so. Newport-Mesa USD relies largely on local property taxes, which are hefty, meaning that we haven’t been touched by the waves of teacher layoffs that have touched other districts in the county. The fallout is a bit daunting — I had to attend a brief meeting and provide three forms of proof of residency and property ownership last month just to keep our boys in NMUSD schools — but the benefits are considerable.

Still, I’ll be glad when a month has gone by and they stop squeezing us for this year. The last day of school is June 19. For my boys and for my checkbook, it can’t come early enough.

Over the weekend we again went to San Diego for a mini-vacation — to please Sam, we chose a less Mexican part of town. We stayed at the Embassy Suites San Diego Bay, near to Seaport Village, sort of near to the Gaslamp Quarter. It was the best compromise I could find between a potential flophouse and the fucking Ivy.

I have to admit, I was gratified at how kid-friendly the place turned out to be. The desk clerk wisely put us on the 12th floor, at the very top of the hotel, and all three of them adored zooming up and down the atrium wall in the glass elevators. There is an indoor pool, which impressed them, and the hot tub was relaxingly full of parents and kids rather than yuppies sipping cognac. The evening manager’s reception (happy hour) and the morning full breakfast, both of which are complimentary, were enough of a free-for-all that no one paid much attention to my little darlings.

The biggest challenge of the weekend was helping Boolie to navigate. The hotel and Horton Plaza were full of sights that boggled her little mind, and she walked around with her head in a swivet the entire time. What she forgot was to face forward while walking, with the result that she walked smack into a number of people and things. The worst of these was a solid palm tree trunk in Horton Plaza; I narrowly steered her away from a nasty-looking metal signpost just before she made painful contact.

The main purpose of the weekend, really, was to meet up with an old undergrad friend of mine I hadn’t seen in upward of 30 years. And not just any undergrad friend, either; he was one of my classmates in the Freshman Honors Program at the University of Delaware, an experiment in what would happen if you took a bunch of propellerheads out of high school a year early, plopped them together in a rarefied university setting away from home, and fed them a diet of all-honors courses and colloquia. (The answer to this was Lots of partying, allnighters and sex, but it’s also true that many lifelong interests and friendships were formed in the process.)

(Editor’s knote: For those of you who may be wondering, the classmate in question was one Philip Stanley. Take a bow, darlin’.)

Anyway, it was a fun reunion. I don’t go to school reunions, and when you’re seeing a classmate you haven’t seen in 30 years, you’re understandably nervous, hoping they don’t think you’re too decrepit or too much of a fuck-up or that your kids are fucking obnoxious. Philip was — is — a dear friend, and therefore not prone to the sort of snark that infests most reunion situations. Either way, he seemed to like my kids and hit it off with Ben, and there was none of that long-pause awkwardness that can happen when two reuniting old friends discover they don’t really have much of anything to say. True to FHP tradition, we stayed up way too late drinking white wine, and duly felt like walking dogshit the next morning.

But the true highlight of the weekend — sorry, Embassy Suites and sorry, Philip — was the she-crab soup. I have already had on about this on Facebook, but like anyone with a new love, I’m over the moon and must speak and speak of it. There are very few foods you want to eat in a dark room with your eyes closed; much of the time, I really don’t like food all that much. It is messy and time-consuming and often not worth the trouble. This stuff, though, rocked my world. I had it at the Harbor House restaurant at Seaport Village, and I’m eternally grateful to my Southern friends for tipping me off that such a thing exists, and that it is probably the food they serve in Heaven.

I’ve spent a few hours in the ensuing days Googling and Googling until my fingers are sore to find a place in Orange County which serves the stuff. The best I’ve been able to do is a fish market on the Redondo Beach pier which sells not the soup, but actual she-crabs, according to rumor. You probably don’t want to imagine the spectacle of me struggling with any crab more complex than a king crab leg; substantial swearing and cut fingers are involved in the process, with very little actual meat as the reward. Still, it may come to that. Honest to God, if you haven’t had the stuff, go out and correct this mistake immediately. You’ll thank me.

So today it’s back to reality, the boys back to school and me to my loads of laundry and neglected housework. Our next getaway isn’t until Sequoia National Park right after summer vacation starts, and now that we’re getting the family travel thing down to a science (and have time on our hands due to our unemployed and/or disabled states), it’s hard to stay home. Plus I’m such a lazy bitch that the prospect of having people make the beds and pick up the towels is really, really appealing. Either way, it was a good weekend, and I imagine we’ll be back. If only for the she-crab soup.

Around the middle of last week, I had a sudden inspiration for the family to take a weekend getaway. It all started with a conversation wherein I mentioned to Matt that he was made in San Diego. More specifically, he was made at the Hacienda Inn in Old Town San Diego, where Ben and I stayed for two nights with 9-month-old Sam while Ben was in town to take depositions. Old Town is quite picturesque and historical, with state-sanctioned California Historical Landmarks every 50 yards or so, and the highest concentration of Mexican restaurants I have ever seen in my life. Shopping is plentiful, with the same blankets, ceramics and Baja hoodies available across the border in Tijuana.

There was nothing for it but to hit several of the Mexican restaurants in search of the ultimate margarita. I’m not sure we found it, but we certainly had a hell of a good time trying. The kids were fairly burned out on flan and tortilla chips with salsa by Saturday afternoon, so I suggested we drive up to La Jolla and hit the mall. Sam narrowed his eyes at me. Is it a MEXICAN mall? he asked, warily. I assured him it was not, and he seemed relieved. Good, he said. Because this place is a little too Mexican for me. He had a point.

The mall wasn’t a big hit, mostly because there were no toy stores. (Whatever happened to toy stores? They used to be everywhere, and now they’re all out of business.) We wound up driving into downtown San Diego, ending up in the Gaslamp Quarter, home to more restaurants per square mile than anywhere I’ve ever seen in my life. Still, the kids enjoyed some dessert at the Rock Bottom Brewery, Ben and I tasted a couple more margaritas, and we probably completely ruined the evening of a couple of hapless tourists to whom we gave completely erroneous directions to Horton Plaza.

This morning we drove back home through a blinding downpour of rain, and are now ensconced in that strange Sunday malaise that comes from having been away from home the whole weekend and knowing the alarm will ring at six-thirty the next morning. I’ve got laundry to catch up, kids to bathe, and the dogs, who are annoyed with me for leaving them, to placate. Still, it was nice to do margarita research and hang out with the kids, and with every margarita we toasted Matt, who finally got to see the place where he was made. He was impressed; Sam wasn’t. Big deal. You and Dad came here and had sex, he said darkly. Childhood isn’t what it used to be.

Dear Atlantic Ocean,

My California state parks and beaches annual pass arrived today by Fed Ex, so we went to the beach at 5 p.m. after picking up Boolie from day care. I stood with Sam in the breakers as the sun went down and explained to him all about the undertow and “reading” the waves. He got stung by a jellyfish. I got that amazing serene feeling that comes from just watching the ocean. The water didn’t feel so cold anymore.

When I was a kid, my life’s ambition was to someday live at the beach. Every year I yearned for our annual week at Long Beach Island and the days spent in the surf and sand. When did I lose track of that? I’ve lived by the beach for 25 years, but it wasn’t until the past week that I remembered why I love it so. My kids are much better served by playing in the sand and water than they are by playing video games or watching SpongeBob, and you never saw a better homework motivator. We can’t go to the beach tonight unless Sam does his homework right now, because it’s due tomorrow. I never saw a guy attack his homework with such gusto.

So, Atlantic Ocean, I don’t know when I will see you again. The Pacific will always seem like making do to me, but I’m relishing the peculiar joy of having my hair, car and clothes forever dusted with sand and my nose always rosy from slight sunburn. Finally I’m having a good time in the Pacific. But I swear I am closing my eyes and thinking of you.

In general, I’ve spent the past 25 years resenting the Pacific Ocean for not being the Atlantic Ocean. Oh, they’ve got the ocean sunset thing, but the Pacific Ocean at Huntington Beach, in summer, is at least a full five degrees colder than the Atlantic at Long Beach Island. And I rather liked those Atlantic sunrises. Have you ever gone swimming in the Atlantic in August at low tide, just after sunrise? I can’t recommend it highly enough. The only time the Pacific is bearable without a wetsuit is during an El Niño, when suddenly it’s like bath water.

So I haven’t been to the California beaches very much over the years. I kayak, and that’s best done away from the open ocean; I’m not an extreme sports kind of girl. But I got to feeling guilty that Boolie, at age three, had never been to the beach. Not once. So yesterday we packed up the family and went to the Huntington State Beach.

The parking is criminally expensive; a day pass is $10. But we paid it, unloaded the kids, and took the long trek down the unusually wide swath of sand that finally leads to the water’s edge.

The kids went apeshit with joy. Sam and Matt waded in the waves. Sam, fishily, wouldn’t come out unless threatened. Matt was knocked down by a wave, took a face-plant in the sand, and lost his nerve. Instead, he chased seagulls and played in a sand fort above the tide line with Boolie. Ben doled out the sunscreen. Boolie frolicked in just her diaper and tracked sand all over the beach blanket. It was a family day in the sun straight out of a Coppertone ad.

At sunset, we returned with hoodies and a mini-cooler with Cokes and a surreptitious beer in an unmarked container. (No alcohol in California state parks, but what they don’t know won’t hurt them.) We watched the sun sink into the Pacific while Sam, his pants rolled above his knees, waded through the gentle waves of low tide while Matt and Boolie again terrorized the seagulls. We all had an awesome Sunday. I still think the Pacific sucks, but next time Ben’s bringing his boogie board and I’m bringing my short wetsuit.

So cool was our family beach excursion that I put in an Internet order for an annual pass to all the California state parks and beaches. We’ll be able to drop in for an hour at sunset or after school whenever we feel like it, from next weekend till next September. The kids will sleep like angels from that particular exhaustion only a day at the beach can produce, and I will bite my tongue and try not to make unflattering comparisons of the Pacific to the Atlantic. Because whether I like it or not, home is where your ass is. And I can’t deny the sunsets are spectacular.

This week I went to have some more x-rays to further investigate my bad back at the local hospital in Newport Beach, Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian. And dudes? This place is plush.

First: Location, location, location. Hoag is perched atop a bluff on Pacific Coast Highway, meaning that half the rooms overlook the Pacific Ocean. Julia was born there, and I grunted out that baby with a sea view. My dad died of cancer there, but at least one of the last things he saw was the ocean instead of some urban rooftop.

Second: Complimentary valet parking, baby. Both the E.R. entrance and the main entrance are manned by a staff of extremely professional parking attendants. I don’t mean the sort of parking attendants who grunt at you, scratch their asses and pee on your tires while you’re not looking. No, I mean the sort of valets who greet you “Welcome to Hoag!” and ask your name, then as they take away your car, “Thank you, Mrs. Crumpacker! Enjoy your stay!” What is this, a hospital or the Four Seasons Hotel?

Third: Greeter/guides at various posts throughout the hospital. There is a greeter just inside the front doors who will sunnily guide you to the reception desks (which are smack in front of your face anyway), then actually flush out an intake clerk for you, so you won’t have to stand in line. Once you’ve checked in and begin making your way to Radiology, there are other greeter/guides along the way. If you look the least bit like you don’t know where you’re going, they will solicitously inquire whether they can help you find your destination.

Fourth: Starbucks, baby. There are at least four Starbucks kiosks located inside and outside the hospital. Probably there are more I haven’t discovered yet. Care for a latte with your lumbar spine study? Hoag can give you that.

Fifth: Friendly techs. When your name is called, your radiology tech cheerfully approaches you with a “Hi, Mrs. Crumpacker, I’m Lauren. I’ll be your radiology technician today.”

Hoag is freakin’ awesome. It’s a first-class hospital with the air of a good hotel. Every time I go there, I’m impressed anew by the accommodations. Medical treatment and diagnostics are no fun, really, but if I’ve gotta do them, I’m glad I get to do them at Hoag.

In Southern California, generally the hottest part of the year begins around Labor Day. June and July tend to be fairly temperate, especially June, when most mornings are cloudy and foggy, giving way to sun only in the afternoon. In particular, Labor Day weekend tends to be brutally hot. Most of my California Labor Day memories involve sitting in the swimming pool half the day eating chilled fruit, or sitting in my underwear in front of a box fan.

But here is what Orange County Register science blogger Gary Robbins says about Labor Day weekend 2008:

Labor Day will be 10 degrees cooler than normal — especially at the coast — due to a large low pressure system that’s building over Nevada, says the National Weather Service. Temperatures aren’t expected to rise above the upper 60s or low 70s at the beach, and they’ll only reach the low 80s across much of inland Orange County.

“There’s going to be an onshore flow starting sometime Sunday and lasting into Monday,” says Stan Wasowski, a weather service forecaster. “It’ll send cool, moisture air ashore. It’ll be like one big air conditioner. And the marine layer will be thicker than usual.

“It’ll be quite a change from Labor Day last year, when we had a heat wave. The temperature in Fullerton got up to 108, and it hit 99 at John Wayne Airport.”

We had big heat waves in April this year. Perhaps we’re to be spared this fall? Generally the hot dry weather lasts into October when the fires start and it doesn’t cool off until Halloween. I can’t hope for football weather, but I’m definitely up for a Labor Day that doesn’t swelter everyone’s ass off.

Just now I was looking at the calendar and noting that school starts on September 2, the day after Labor Day, exactly 13 days from today. This year, Matt will be starting kindergarten, and he’s thrilled that he will be at school with Sam and the big kids instead of at day care with Boolie and the babies. Me? I notoriously hate summer, because in Southern California, you don’t get a chance to appreciate it. If you have stuff like rain and snow and slush, then summer means something; you look forward to it. But when summer is rammed up your nose 360 days a year (the other five days it rains), it doesn’t count for much.

So you’d think I’d be glad to see summer end and to see the pumpkin spice lattes come back to Starbucks. But it’s bumming me out, because it means my career as a carefree summertime bum is over, at least for the next nine months.

Since I work flexible hours and can telecommute as much as I please, we called off the usual “time to go to bed” and “time to get up” rules at our house for the summer. The boys stay up until we unplug their video game, douse the lights, and confiscate the remote control, maybe around 10:30. Ben leaves for work around 8 a.m., but the kids and I sleep in for as long as we wish. Some days, that’s till 10 a.m.! Bliss. But starting in 13 days, I’ll have to be up by 6:45 a.m. at the latest and out the door an hour later. My current plan is to ease the boys into an earlier bedtime and earlier wake-up, but it’s not so much working, for the main reason that I don’t want to go to bed early and wake up early. Damn, it’s hard sometimes being the grownup.

Anyway. Thirteen days, then it is back to the school drop-offs and pickups, the homework and take-home projects (which of course are homework for me just as much as for the boys, at their age), the freakin’ responsibility. I think the boys will welcome a little more structure in their lives, and probably it’ll be good for me too, but meanwhile we are milking the waning summer for all it’s worth.