I tend to be a good driver, and I think it’s dangerous to dial a cellular phone by hand while I’m driving. (Many states have outlawed this already; California has not, although I’m informed it’s only a matter of time.) So I’ve got a hands-free bluetooth device with voice recognition, and I dial my calls by voice when on the road.

The problem is that the voice recognition isn’t so good when there’s road noise, and I end up locked into endless arguments with the damned thing when it fails (refuses?) to understand me. Like so:

Phone: PLEASE SAY A COMMAND.

Me: Call Ben.

Phone: COMMAND NOT RECOGNIZED. PLEASE SAY A COMMAND.

Me: Call . . . BEN. [enunciating carefully]

Phone: DID YOU SAY HOME?

Me: NO.

Phone: PLEASE SAY A COMMAND.

Me: CALL BEN!

Arguing with machines makes me CRAZY. It reminds me of some of the endless exchanges I used to have with old-school computers back when I was an undergrad; this was in the days before DOS, and the fucking things were probably running Fortran, for God’s sake. By this time the kids are laughing their asses off in the back seat, and I don’t blame them; I feel like I’m in that scene from Dude, Where’s My Car? where Jesse argues with the relentless woman at the “Chinese Foood” drive-through.

Phone: COMMAND NOT RECOGNIZED. PLEASE SAY A COMMAND.

Me: Bite my ass.

Phone: DID YOU SAY SANDY?

Me: No! Go fuck yourself!

Phone: COMMAND NOT RECOGNIZED.

At this point it’s only the price tag on the bluetooth device that keeps me from chucking it out the window. I shut it off, turn it back on and try again.

Phone: PLEASE SAY A COMMAND.

Me: Call Ben.

Phone: Ben. [dials]

Ben: Hello?

Me: JESUS! It’s about time!

Ben: You’ve been arguing with your phone again.

He knows me so well.

Seven years ago today, Ben and I were married in a tiny Lutheran church in Huntington Beach, California. My grownup daughter Erika was our maid of honor, and photographs of the event show everyone involved grinning with delight. (I couldn’t stop giggling surreptitiously throughout the ceremony.) In the shot of us cutting the cake, we are wearing Ray-Bans like the Blues Brothers and laughing like hell. Most of our marriage has gone along in the same vein.

They talk about the seven-year itch, and Year 7 of our marriage has been bumpier than most. Not because either one of has an itch; we are too tired for that. But it’s not been an easy year. My postpartum depression, coupled with the financial woes that accompanied my departure from regular full-time employment, together with the general household chaos and commotion that stem from having three kids aged five and under, have tested us to our very limits. This is the point at which most couples either fall apart or fight through it together.

We, of course, have taken the latter path.

It’s been nearly nine years since our first date, and by this time, we tend to complete each other’s sentences, or communicate mostly by telepathy, like this:

Ben: You know, we have to take care of the –

Me: I know we do. Don’t worry, I’ve got it covered. 

I hope Ben and I live a long, long time; we had to wait so long for each other. At the time we met, I had just turned 37 and he was about to turn 42. At our age, it was a bit of a miracle that we managed to have three kids the old-fashioned way. Julia was even an accident, for God’s sake. All this seems to point to a union that was meant to be, so right that the Universe smiled on us. It’s still smiling on us today, come what may.

Happy anniversary, sweetheart. I love you more than ever. Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be. 

I don’t know a thing about cars. I think I could still check the oil myself — but it’s been about fifteen, twenty years since I’ve done it. These days, I go to EZ Lube and get my oil changed every 3000 miles. I was shown how to change a tire once as a Girl Scout — that, of course, was even longer ago. I have never actually changed a tire; that’s why God created the Auto Club. I’ve always wished I was one of those girls who knows how to work on cars; my first undergrad roommate, Noreen, had mad car skillz and was able to keep her ancient Impala running by sheer ingenuity. Me, I’m fucking helpless.

The front tires on my minivan had been bald for some time, and we had been procrastinating about getting new tires — this despite a very slow leak in one which necessitated putting air in it every week or so. Two days ago, leaving the office to go pick up Sam, I started through the parking lot and heard the unmistakable whunk, whunk, whunk of a flat tire.

I reacted the way I always react to car trouble: I called Ben. He, however, was up in the San Fernando Valley on his way back from another fucking trip to Ventura. There wasn’t any time to call the Auto Club to change my tire. I had to be at Sam’s school in half an hour. So I limped the car across the street to the gas station and actually added air to the tires myself. This must have been a very amusing spectacle for anyone watching, especially when I first tried to use the water hose to fill the tire and ended up wet from head to toe. Eventually I got the damned thing pumped up, though, and due to the very slow nature of the leak, I picked up Sam and got home without another flat.

So, when Ben returned from the Valley, we did the right thing and bought four new tires. I love them so much. Suddenly my tires don’t squeal every time I go around a corner, and I don’t slide to a stop at traffic signals. But I’ve made up my mind to learn, really learn, how to change a tire. Because autonomy is important, even if it leaves you black and smudgy and requires squatting at an awkward angle.

Reason #783 why I’m a bad mother: Sam didn’t learn the word vagina until the other night, while we were watching Kindergarten Cop on cable. Before that? He had always called it a woo woo.

Do we use such a dreadful, colloquial, medically inaccurate term with Julia, who actually possesses a woo woo? We don’t. Of course we don’t. When changing Julia’s diaper, we sing songs to her about her cutie booty patootie.

This is so politically incorrect, it makes most parents want to cry. But vagina just sounds so, I don’t know, clinical. Woo woo and patootie, on the other hand, sound friendly and fun.

Over the past month, Ben has had to go up to Ventura to take depositions in a particularly contentious case. In order to do this, he has to drive some three hours there and three hours back. (It’s not that far, but the famous California freeway traffic jams make the trip much longer; without traffic, it’s two hours.) Therefore he has had to spend several nights in Ventura County, leaving the kids and me home.

Ben has never had to travel much for business, and his absence makes for lonely times for both of us. The kids and I sleep huddled up in our big California King bed, leaving space for a daddy who isn’t home. In the mornings, getting the kids and myself ready for the day, I miss the sound of him singing or practicing deposition questions out loud in the shower.

Today he’s headed back up to Ventura, with depositions set for today and tomorrow, and this time he’s promised to drive all the way home and all the way up the next morning. This is one of the few curses of a happy marriage: When he’s gone, I miss him terribly. Suddenly the house fills up with creaks and odd sounds because he’s not there to protect me. But missing him also makes me appreciate him all the more, and there’s no sight on earth as welcome and wondrous as him walking into the house; there’s no sound as sweet as the kids running to him yelling Daddy! Daddy!

Good gravy, I love that man. Hurry home, sweetheart. Until you return, we’ll be flying in missing man formation.

This morning I laughed my ass off when I heard Sam, behind the bathroom door, singing Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye. He’d been reminded of that song the night before, apparently, when Ben and I sang it after the Colts scored their final touchdown and ended the Patriots’ season.

Speaking of goodbyes, 17-month-old Julia spoke her first sentence this morning: Bye-bye, Daddy. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until she’s telling off her brothers in no uncertain terms.

This morning, I ventured out to take my kids to school and day care and discovered that overnight, the neighborhood was coated with depositional frost, also known as hoar frost (hee! That sounds dirty!).

This almost never happens in these parts; I can remember it happening maybe two or three times before, but that’s over a span of 22 years. Had I brought my camera, it would have made for some interesting photo ops: palm trees or fully-fruited orange trees with frosty lawns beneath them. Unfortunately, my camera was at home, and I decided against trading up my daily Starbucks fix to stop back and get it.

Today, I am wearing a grey DKNY Jeans turtleneck sweater and embroidered navy-blue boiled wool clogs, and drinking coconut chai tea. Cozy! All this must be God’s way of trying to ease my homesickness for the East Coast. Nice one, God.

Persistent readers know that I hatched a plan, about nine months ago, to sell our house and move to North Carolina. According to our plan, and given the amount of appreciation in the value of our house (the $100K equity with which we started had ballooned to about $400-500K), we could sell the place, pocket the equity, move to North Carolina and find jobs when we got there, meanwhile using our take from the California house to (1) buy a home in the Research Triangle area outright and (2) live on until we had a reliable flow of income.

Upon this plan I have been hanging my hat since last spring. We were aware that the Orange County real estate boom seemed to have been slowing down, but it was not until this morning’s Orange County Register acquainted me with some hard statistics that I understood this to be not a slowdown, but a bust — a collapse. The bubble has burst.

The Register reported the following on the front page: Western Newport Bay suffered the worst price drops in the county, with their median price down nearly 20 percent. I’ll give you a hundred guesses where I live . . . yep, that’s right. Actually, in my particular zip code, the decrease is 21.9 percent. Meaning that the house we expected to sell for $600K-$700K would now probably yield us $500K — probably even less. This is especially true given that the place was built in 1976, there’s plenty of newer construction in this area, and the only upgrade to this house has been the Pergo floors we put in the downstairs several years ago. If we sold it now, we’d have to sell it as a fixer-upper.

Therefore, we’ve agreed to put the North Carolina plan on the back burner for the foreseeable future. This is especially true given that Ben has informed me that under the terms of his father’s trust, he will one day inherit the family home in Thousand Oaks. Thousand Oaks is located in southern Ventura County, has awesome, award-winning schools, and the house in question is situated in a very quiet neighborhood at the top of a hill, with commanding views from the spacious patio. I’ve always had a lust for that house, and someday it will be ours. (Although I am frequently known to swear that Ben’s mother, who has a life estate in the house, will outlive ME.)

So we’re taking our eyes off the door and concentrating on the here and now — on maintaining and improving our present home, rather than looking at it as a temporary way station. Too funny that just a couple of weeks ago I decided to make my peace with Southern California “for as long as I’m here” — because that looks to be a long time.

Criminey! All this talk of tea and of England left me craving many things, few of which are available in American supermarkets, so Ben and I paid a visit to Cost Plus World Market at lunchtime and returned bearing the following items:

• Lifeboat Tea
• McVitie’s Hob Nobs and Ginger Nuts Biscuits
• Heinz Spotted Dick Pudding

Except that damn, damn, damn, I forgot the mushy peas. However, if you are in the USA and crave British food (Ben: Why on earth would anyone do that?), Cost Plus is heaven on earth.

This weekend, we spawned a new sashimi fan in the person of 17-month-old Julia. Like Sam and Matt, her favorite is octopus, and she prefers it dipped in soy sauce. My four kids are living proof that, if exposed to a variety of foods KIDS AREN’T MEANT TO LIKE from an early age, it is possible to get them to eat something besides chicken nuggets, hot dogs and mac and cheese. Among sashimi, octopus has an irresistible lure for kids, which is this: The tentacle slices have suction cups on them, which you can stick to the end of your tongue and then gross everyone out by wagging it at them.

I started the tradition with Erika when she was about seven, and people’s eyes used to bug out of their heads when I would take her to a sushi bar and she would calmly order sashimi, then devour it neatly with chopsticks. Sam and Matt I started even younger, and Sam at five is a pro with his chopsticks and has been for some time. Matt and Julia still use forks; the down side to this is that Matt will use his fork as a defensive weapon when Julia tries to swipe the last of his octopus.

Although I studiously avoid all raw forms of sushi during pregnancy, and don’t offer it to infants, Julia has proven herself to have a scarily efficient immune system through having never been sick despite a life spent, from the age of eight weeks, in full-time day care. A girl who can clobber the crap out of every ear infection and virus that comes her way isn’t going to be daunted by a little raw fish. In fact, so little daunted is she that she rubbed her hair with seared ahi during dinner, and now bears an aroma usually associated with the human female only in dirty jokes. And off to the bath goes my little fish, where I will replace the aroma of low tide with one more appropriate for a baby girl.