Suddenly there is talk afoot of me returning to law school and finishing my J.D. This is because

• I have already taken all the core courses: Torts, Contracts, Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Evidence, Property, Civil Procedure, Professional Responsibility. I just need to ice the cake, as it were.
• It would be such a shame for me to be a paralegal the rest of my life.
• Why not?

Of course, I cannot do it in the near future, but I have ordered my transcripts and inquired about present tuition rates. (Answer = Ouch!) Therefore, I am looking into ways to be a brown-nosed prat and get scholarships. It seems to me that a middle-aged born-again bipolar brood mare should be a SCHOLARSHIP CASE JUST WAITING TO HAPPEN.

We shall see.

I am probably the only person on earth who subscribes to both Vogue and The Hockey News.

Have you ever noticed that the minute you finally make up your mind to end a problematic relationship, you start finding all kinds of reasons to stay? And I don’t just mean boyfriends. I tend to find that just when I’ve got completely fed up with my hair and have made an appointment for RADICAL HAIR CHANGES, it starts behaving and curling just right and looking as fetching as hell. You know? Orange County is doing that sort of thing to me right now. As soon as I finally threw up my hands and called bullshit on California and made up my mind to GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE FINALLY PLEASE JESUS, California started to romance me. Sneaky!

This week the heat wave finally petered out, but even before it did, we instituted a new daily ritual, which is that every evening around 6 p.m. the entire Ohana suits up and moseys down to the pool and spa. Our townhome community does not heat its pool, but in weather like this, that’s hardly an issue. What we do is sit in the pool and eat fruit: bananas and apples. On weeknights, we head for the pool the minute Ben gets home and watch the sun get ready to set. What you see is the palm tree alongside the pool, and let me tell you: it is SWEET. All of it: the golden light, the cool water, the fruit, the family, the calm. See what I mean? There is California serving up handfuls of all the things I love about it.

It can’t fool me, though. There is still freeway traffic and preposterous housing costs and Santa Ana winds and wildfires and assholes and Barbie doll women. And EARTHQUAKES! We watched a History Channel dealie on the 1906 San Francisco quake the other night, and it just boggles your mind. The California coast very neatly traces a long section of the seam between the Pacific geological plate and the North American plate. Is this a place rational people would want to live? Please. I picture myself sitting in my North Carolina living room and seeing the next big earthquake on CNN. That is a much better place to see it. I don’t want it in my backyard.

In other news, today Ben let me buy a jewelry armoire. I have been panting for one of these for many moons, and we’ve been scoping them out, and today we found a really nice one at an absolute steal of a price at Tuesday Morning. It’s substantial, cherry finish, colonial style (all my favorites; my mom favored cherry colonial, so it’s got the look of home and hearth), and holds all my treasures. (Matt calls it my Treasure Chest.) Now, I’m not an acquisitive woman when it comes to jewelry, which is possibly a stupid move on my part, but over the years I’ve accumulated a few pretty good pieces: not staggeringly expensive, but nice, and in some cases part of family history. To wit, in my armoire are snuggled:

• My grandmother’s Rosary
• My daddy’s gold cufflinks with his initials R.S.
• A string of lapis lazuli beads with gold spacers Ben brought back from Italy in the 1970s
• My wedding ring, which was the ring that wedded Ben’s late father to his mom
• Three strands of antique beads from the African trade
• 10mm Tahitian black pearl earrings

and a bunch of other stuff, which I will not list because you will go to sleep, and I’m not sure you want to do that just now. We put the jewelry armoire in the spot vacated by Julia’s changing table, which she has outgrown and which I will sell to pay for the armoire. Time marches on!

Tomorrow is the last day of the Orange County Fair, and we ALWAYS go at least twice, so I will be picking up Sam’s girlfriend Katrina in the morning (that’s right, SAM HAS A DATE, or so he says) and taking her along with the whole Ohana. Four car seats! That, plus Ben and I, will fill the Grateful Deadmobile near to bursting. And we’ll walk through the golden California light until it gets too hot, and Orange County will be endearing in its perverse golden way, and DON’T THINK YOU ARE FOOLING ME FOR A MINUTE, CALIFORNIA. YOU STILL SUCK. But life doesn’t.

So it all started with a shower stall mat I bought at Bed, Bath & Beyonce (yes, we call it that just to be perverse). We’ve had it for a few months now, and I thought it was a good idea because our shower stall has been a bit slippery. Except that the mat didn’t really work out. It had a hole that was meant to go over the drain hole, which was cool except that the damned thing kept shifting all the time. And then the water didn’t run out, and you’d have to keep adjusting it so the hole was in the proper spot. (We will now have a brief intermission for dirty jokes.)

The other day I got fed up, rolled up that mat and took it away, and I said to Ben: I CALL BULLSHIT ON THIS SHOWER MAT.

He immediately agreed. And out it went. Where did it come from, this principle of calling bullshit? I seem to remember doing it some years back, or perhaps (probably) it’s something I unconsciously stole from some author. And if that turns out to be the case, then to that author I say this: Sorry about that. It’s a fantastic fucking idea, and I hope your titles sell like hot cross buns, and never end up in the remaindered section at Borders.

And I am very well aware that I have just called bullshit on Andrea Yates, and that some of you are thinking YOU OF ALL PEOPLE? And I am very well aware of the conflict of interest. I’m in the legal business! Conflict of interest is my middle name.

It’s odd the way that each of my four kids has been born around tragic babies. Remember Baby Fae, the Baby With The Baboon Heart back in 1984? That was Erika. Sam didn’t have a specific baby, but he was born smack in the middle of the four-month stretch of time between the sudden death of Douglas Adams and 9/11. And no one can deny that in those unhappy times, we had hot and cold running tragic babies. For Matt, it was Laci Peterson; her son Conner would have been almost exactly Matt’s age. And for Julia, there is Mary Yates.

Mary was the baby. She was the one that broke my heart. And although I am in a very good position to have a whole ton of empathy, still I call bullshit. Andrea had a history of mental illness, knew she was mentally ill, stopped taking her meds. This is not a good idea. Postpartum psychosis is not exactly the common cold. And the way she planned it, and how could she do it? One child is a tragedy. But FIVE? I know about the voices in her head and the invisible man. But I keep looking at Julia, my water baby who loves to swim, and thinking of Mary. Andrea is a victim too. But Mary, Mary, Mary. How she haunts me.

Anyway. ANYWAYYYYYY! This was meant to be a happy post, and it is! Because my work is going well; the partner I’ve been working for let me work up a new case for a new client today (meaning that he has no idea what the case is about, and trusted me to review and analyze everything to spot issues and bring him up to speed), and I had the most interesting and productive afternoon I’ve ever had in my professional life. More of that, please! And furthermore, my headshrinker put me on some different meds. It is called ABILIFY, which sounds like Ebonics to me, but let me tell you: I’m all kinds of better. I feel like a pool of clear, warm water. So this is what being normal feels like! I’ve probably been mostly mental for most of my life (which is a lot like being mostly dead all day!) but I think I’m finally getting closer to fine. As they say.

And my family is clamoring for me to get away from the fucking computer already. And I can’t call bullshit on them! They need me. Good night.

Today Rudy and I went for the first time to the Costa Mesa Bark Park, which is incredibly cool. Rudy took to it like Julia took to bath and pool (she’s a waterbaby, that one!), and I had an idea of him bounding across the plains of Africa. I hope he did too, although of course he was in reality bounding across a wide cool lawn, snuggled into a fence between the Orange County Fairgrounds and California Route 55.

There we met Ed and Bonnie, with whom we struck up an acquaintance right away. Ed is a bit older than I am — he might even be older than Susan Sarandon! (I’m SUCH a bitch.) And Bonnie is a one-year-old Rottweiler with the silkiest coat and the sweetest most shy personality I have seen in a long time. She reminded me of a black-eyed Susan. (For you Southern California types, that is a type of flower which occurs in these things they have called fields and woods, and y’all shouldn’t worry your little bubble heads about it.) Ed and I hit it right off, and I told him I was thinking of moving to North Carolina because the population’s a bit too high here.

Everything is a bit too high here, Ed replied. He mentioned that he was going to check out Casper, Wyoming. I said I once knew a really nice guy from Casper. (Hi, Mike the drummer from Glabman’s! I can’t for the life of me remember your last name.) He said after that he was going to check out Texas, but I told him that today I am pretty damned pissed off at Texas. You know, that bitch who drowned her five babies, I told him. She got off.

Ed shook his head and made a face. I know what to do with her, I told him. Take her and drown her. She gets to run away five times, once for each baby, but every time you take her back and drown her again. She started with the easy ones first, so the older ones wouldn’t wise up to what was going on until it was almost their turn. You’re telling me she didn’t know right from wrong? Then explain why she waited until her husband was gone, and why she had to chase down the oldest, who was the last to go.

Have you heard the Polish joke? I can tell it because I am a Polack, true blue. The Polish guy walks in and finds his wife in bed with another man. He reaches into his pocket and brandishes a gun, which he then places against his temple and threatens to fire. This cracks up the pair of cuckolders, but the Polack cries triumphantly, What the hell are you laughing about? YOU TWO ARE NEXT! I really wish Andrea had done it the Polish way. Religious crazy people, listen! The next time God tells you to kill, do it the Polish way. Start with yourself.

The Ohana does not like killers of babies. There they go with the invisible man again. Why do so many people think they hear him telling them to kill? I know for an absolute fact he never said that to them at all. I could go on, but I will probably get myself in trouble, and furthermore there is a very audible and visible man right now telling me to get my fat Polish ass in gear and sort these clothes and pick up the kids. I’m taking my own advice. I’m starting with myself, and myself has oceans of laundry and miles of driving to do.

Because of some stuff I’ve been reading lately, and also because of things going on about the Earth (DUH!) I’ve been thinking a lot about religious intolerance lately.

If you’re not up to speed yet, religious intolerance amounts to this: Most of the people on Earth believe there is an invisible man in the sky. Lots of them have really clearly defined concepts of how this invisible man would like us to behave, and what he would like us to believe. Some of them get really shook up unless everyone else believes exactly all of the same stuff about the invisible man, and what he wants, as they do. Some of them get so shook up that they are willing, even EAGER, to hurt people and kill people who don’t share their ideas about the invisible man. And that means any kind of people! Including mothers and fathers and babies and sons and daughters.

And that is just plain stupid. It doesn’t matter what I think about the invisible man. I can think what I want. And so can you. And this is so obviously the case that you just want to throw your head back and yell PEOPLE. JUST DO YOUR THING, OKAY? WHY WOULD YOU BE SO GUNG-HO ABOUT AN INVISIBLE MAN WHO WOULD BE ENOUGH OF AN ASSHOLE TO MICROMANAGE THINGS LIKE THAT?

I mean. Some people are just so THICK.

So we went on out to North Carolina, just Julia and me, to visit my friend Kristy. To anyone who has never attempted a four-hour flight (changing planes at O’Hare is, apparently, both maddening and completely necessary) with a very inquisitive and active 11-month-old: Please do yourself a favor and stay at home instead. The younger of my daughters, while ordinarily quite winsome, chafes significantly upon finding herself confined to the 0.375 square feet of space an unticketed baby is allowed on a coach class domestic flight.

Furthermore, the next time those security people poke about in her diaper? SHE IS GOING TO PISS ON YOU. Told ya.

But Kristy, and her family, and North Carolina. These people and things were unflinchingly delightful. Kristy was immediately and irresistibly everyone’s best girlfriend, the one you’d want to laugh with and shake your head with and lend, or borrow, a shoulder to cry on. (HA. I SAW HER FIRST. AND I COMMAND YOU TO AVOID GRAMMATIC ASSAULTS UPON THAT LAST SENTENCE.) Her husband Tim is an easygoing guy, quick with a smile, a damned comfortable presence. And her kids Zoe and Evan were really enchanting looking — you know I’d be the first to hiss OMG, what blots on the landscape are these? if that weren’t true — and are just angelic enough and demonic enough to remind me of my own kids.

(Completely gratuitous sidenote: There is a kid at Sam and Matt’s day care, here in So Cal, who has apparently been coached by his well-meaning parents to be polite when speaking to adults. But if that little, ah, sweetheart tugs at my hem and says “Excuse me? Excuse me?” followed by something utterly incomprehensible, while I’ve got a crying baby in my arms and two urgent sons vying for my attention, just one more time, I AM GOING TO PLOP DOWN ON MY ASS AND BURST INTO TEARS.) Whew. Thanks. Sorry.

The difference between Southern California and North Carolina is so immense as to boggle puny minds such as ours (well, YOURS) (hee!) that I’m not even going to get started on it, but suffice it to say that they have these things called TREES, and additional things called ACREAGE and A NEARLY COMPLETE LACK OF STONE GODDAMNED FUCKING WALLS AROUND EVERYTHING, which are quite alien to those of us marooned in this neon plastic desert. And when Tim drove me to the airport at 8:15 a.m. on a weekday, there was no knuckle-whitening battle on the freeway; there were only PEOPLE, driving cars in a rather polite and relaxed, although energetic enough, manner. O BRAVE NEW WORLD THAT HAS SUCH PEOPLE IN’T.

And now that I’ve even managed to get all Shakespearean on your ass: the bit about Susan Sarandon. Well, of COURSE it wasn’t the REAL Susan Sarandon; but it was a goddamned good facsimile thereof; she was just some lady at the pedicure place, and if the indeterminate shade of her hair had been just a few notches more on the blonde side, people would have been queueing up for autographs (unless, of course, they were Tim Robbins, in which case EWWWWW). She was nearby when Kristy and I were getting pedicures and chatting, and had evidently gleaned from our conversation that I was in Raleigh for a visit, and that there was a certain baby we both believed to be pretty fucking sensationally wonderful. And she opened her mouth and these words came out:

Oh, you must be here visiting your grandbaby.

People. Have you EVER? The true import of her words didn’t sink in until later, but THAT FUCKING SUSAN SARANDON CHICK BELIEVED THAT I WAS KRISTY’S MOTHER AND THAT THE BABY IN QUESTION WAS HER DAUGHTER, NOT MINE.

Hey, you there. Susan? Next time, why don’t you just tell me Gee, you are unnaturally wizened and wrinkled compared with your friend right there, WHO IS ONLY TEN YEARS YOUNGER THAN YOU, THANK YOU VERY MUCH, and don’t think you are fooling anyone with that shade of dark brown which TOTALLY COMES OUT OF A BOTTLE and is available for $5.99 at Sav-On Drug. Just when you think you’re all hip and shit, someone comes along and lays that grandma shit on your ass. HI! WELCOME TO MIDLIFE! FUCK-YOUs HANDED OUT FREE AT THE DOOR TO ALL WHO ENTER!

But, of course, I didn’t give a shit. Kristy and I had a hoot of a time, and Susan Sarandon can just bend her wrinkly-ass mind around THAT.

A million thanks to the brilliant and super-hot Sean Slinsky, who did the site design as well as getting the blog up and running (because I am PERMANENTLY BAFFLED). Sean’s heart belongs to the gorgeous and brilliant Holly Burns, so y’all can’t have him, but I am here to tell you that he is eye candy of the highest order. Too bad I’m probably technically old enough to be his mum.

I’m just back from North Carolina yesterday afternoon, and in fact the last time I TOOK A SHOWER was in North Carolina, so obviously there is more pressing business at hand. But I promise more blogging, WITH COMMENTS JUST FOR A CHANGE. Love y’all. I’ll be back when I am less greasy-haired and funky.