This is how I looked after seeing the total charge to my credit card after buying two tickets to see Squeeze at the Grove of Anaheim on August 12. When the fuck did a pair of concert tickets start costing $150?

So then there was the bit where I cut off all my hair.

It was way overdue. I had a fugue of hair insanity last summer, wherein I first got an insanely bad perm and then dyed my hair black, so that I looked like someone’s crazed Goth mother. I’ve been waiting patiently all this time for growth to happen, and finally I’ve taken the plunge.

Patricia, my stylist, did a pretty good job, although I’m unsettlingly reminded of my Dorothy Hamill wedge from the ’70s, and also there is some sticky-out business on the back I’m not at all sure what to do with. Ben, being a man and therefore preferring long hair unequivocally, has been a bit of a hard sell.

“It’s SHORT.” “But it’s healthy now. It’s not damaged anymore.” “It’s SHORT.” “It’s pert! It’s Beatle-y.” “But couldn’t she have made it a bit less SHORT?”

So that’s about how that went. Still, I like it. It dries in two seconds flat, and if I wear enough eye makeup, I don’t look like a man hardly at all.

Have you ever been to Hawaii? If so, you know how the night air is saturated with the fragrance of plumeria and other tropical blooms. Hawaiian air, after dark, feels thick and heavy; thick with humidity, and heavy from bearing the pervasive smell of flowers. For me, that and the sudden rainshowers were among Hawaii’s principal charms. Surely, if there is a Heaven, it smells like that.

Southern California, the U.S. state nearest to Hawaii, is a serious Hawaii wannabe. We would LOVE to be part of Hawaii; this is why so many of us dress in Aloha shirts, go surfing, and drink beer from the Kona brewery. The host of the local morning talk radio show, Adam Carolla, ends his show with a Mahalo every day, and some Californians are such hopeless wannabes that they name their family the Ohana and wear not one but two gold Hawaiian wedding bands. (Shut up.)

Late spring and early summer is when So Cal gets its shot at being Hawaii, at least for a little while. There is star jasmine and honeysuckle all over my neighborhood, and in the early evenings the air is redolent with flowers.

This morning, I came out of my house and realized that the air smells like peaches today at the coast. There aren’t any peach trees about, to my knowledge, but something delicious is in bloom. The air is warm, and days like today make me want to half-close my eyes, lie in the sun and purr. Days like today make me love California.

And then there was the bit where it rained like hell.

On Friday, Orange County saw the first, and almost certainly last, proper winter storm of the season. It rained like hell for a good bit of the day, dropping about a quarter-inch. A smaller system Sunday night brought only about eight hundredths of an inch, but the net effect was enough to push the yearly rainfall total above two inches. (It wasn’t, however, enough to stop this from being the driest year on record.)

The hills and bluffs, of course, remain a study in shades of brown. As far as the thirsty ground is concerned, the recent rainfall brought all the benefit of pouring a tablespoon of water on a man who’s on fire.

I should move to the Pacific Northwest. Tons of rain, green and green and green as far as the eyes can see. Too bad they eat Orange County Republicans for breakfast up there.

MOM! DAD! There is a certain pitch to Sam’s voice when he is about to rat on his little brother, and I could tell as he came running in, yelling, that Matt had done something wrong and Sam was just dying to tell on him.

Sam ran in and announced breathlessly, Matt peed on the carpet! 

Believe it or not, this event is not entirely without precedent; our boys are only somewhat better housebroken than our basenjis, and like the dogs, they have been known to pee on the floor just as a way of saying fuck you. After Matt was reprimanded and the mess was cleaned up, Ben started questioning Sam about exactly how Matt came to pee on the carpet.

He told ME to pee on the carpet, Sam told us. But I wouldn’t do it. So he did it himself.

Wait a minute, Ben said. That sounds fishy. Upon cross-examination, Sam crumbled; it transpired that he had told Matt to pee on the carpet, and when Matt did it, Sam took the immense pleasure of telling on him.

People. Have you EVER? Living with two little boys (three, if you count Ben) is like living in a monkey house. There is much shrieking and flinging of poo. The only thing more telling than Sam ordering Matt to pee on the carpet is Matt’s immediate willingness to do it. Sometimes I wish we’d had three daughters.

Unless there is a spate of seriously freaky-ass weather in Southern California between now and the first of July, Orange County has just recorded the driest winter on record, with less than two inches of rain having fallen this year. The annual average is about 11-13 inches, the vast majority of which falls between December and March. At this point, we’re not likely to see any appreciable rain between now and Halloween.

This bodes a nasty fire season. There have already been wildfires this spring, which is rare; come September, the hills are going to start bursting into flame after baking in the sun for months. Arson is always a factor, too. There is always some passive-aggressive fuck who figures it’s his chance to shine.

Meanwhile, even though it’s only April, early summer has come to Orange County in the form of June gloom. This is the name commonly applied to the low clouds and fog that form along the coast during the nights and linger through the morning; near the beach, where we live, sometimes the sun doesn’t break through until 3 or 4 p.m., and sometimes not at all. If you came to visit me this week, your visions of sunny Southern California would be blown right out of the water. At least in the mornings.

One of my common gripes about this geographical area is that it has no weather.  I’m exaggerating, of course; I lie like a bastard. There are distinct weather patterns and times of the year. I’ve learned that generally fall arrives at Halloween, the rain starts after Christmas, spring comes at the end of January, and the hottest days are usually in September. Not the classic seasons I knew growing up on the East Coast, but a climate I’ve come to know. And for a dedicated weather geek, there is a comfort in being able to look at the sky and know what’s coming next.

If something good can be said to have come from the death of my hero, at least for me personally, it’s that I’ve been given a shove in a different literary direction. I’ve put aside my true crime books, which had started to irritate me anyway, and started rereading Vonnegut. Although over the years I have read everything he’s written, I haven’t visited with him in a while. I’ve started with Hocus Pocus, a 1990 novel, and will then move on to Fates Worse Than Death, a collection of essays. I’ve also got my favorite Vonnegut novel, Galapagos, somewhere in the house for later.

There is a photo of the great man, taken by his wife, on the back cover of Hocus Pocus. Julia pointed at and said “Dada!”

For all she knew, she could have had a point. I didn’t mention this to Julia, but I totally would have slept with him. Same thing for Elvis Costello. That’s a strange thing about my heart (and other bits of me): If a man is well spoken and well written, looks don’t matter a whit. He can come right in. The door, in all senses, is open. A breathtakingly beautiful man will, and usually does, leave me cold. Most of them are neither well-spoken nor well-written. I have no use for them. Never have.

It would be easier to be a man. Sex is so much less complicated for them.

I need to write about Kurt Vonnegut, who died Wednesday at the age of 84. The news first reached me late at night on the CNN news crawl, after bedtime when the volume was turned down, and I’ve been brooding ever since. It’s not like it was unexpected; I’ve known for several years that he couldn’t have too much time left. But I feel like my father has died all over again. I can’t tell you how much he meant to me.

When I was a student and practitioner of fiction writing in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Vonnegut was my hero; he was the Muse to whom I prayed for inspiration when faced with a writing deadline — all the while having to guard against adopting, in my own writing, his distinctive voice. No one before or since will ever have a voice like Vonnegut’s: colloquial, confidential, whimsical, humorous yet deadly serious. It was from Vonnegut that I culled my worldview of happy fatalism, which I carry to this day.

God rest your brilliant mind and your restless soul, Kurt Vonnegut. I never knew you, but I loved you so.

Whose bright idea was it to have two boys 18 months apart? We figured Sam and Matt would end up being best friends — when they weren’t beating the crap out of each other. Recently, they’ve been proving us exactly right.

Every night comes the wrestling match, which both of them clearly enjoy even when they’re howling with pain. They don’t fight fair, either; there is much pulling of wieners and many knees in groins. Ben and I yell Break it up! which they do — for about six seconds. Finally there is nothing for it but to physically place them in separate rooms until they’ve calmed down.

One of our comforts in having kids so late in life is that no matter what, they’ll always have each other. Sam and Matt show every sign of being best friends for life — that is, if they don’t kill each other first.

Sam and Matt have a sleepover scheduled for Friday night, so Ben and I will be alone together but for baby Julia. We are long past the days when we really had the energy to stay up later than our kids, but I think we can outlast Julie, who is usually sound asleep by 9:30 p.m.

A night alone — oh boy! But we gave up on Friday nights even before we were married. In the early days of our dating, Friday night was Long Beach Pub Crawl night; we would start out wine tasting at Morry’s, move on to dinner and black-and-tans at Limerick’s Irish Pub, stop into Kelly’s for chocolate martinis, and finish up at Ben’s place drinking Surfers On Acid. Eventually, though, we realized that we were too damned tired, after a long week of working, to expend that much effort having a good time. Since then, Friday nights have been quiet, take-it-easy nights.

So, alone at last. What we should do? Something romantic, after Julia is asleep. What we probably WILL do? Fall asleep early watching Ren & Stimpy. Such, eventually, are the joys of being married with children.