Preseason hockey has been going on for most of September. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that until today, so imagine all what I’ve missed. The regular season starts tomorrow. Dust off the Hockey News and the Molson’s.

In other news, now that the Ducks have won the Stanley Cup, the Orange County Register actually had a front-page article about the NHL last week. Imagine that! Southern California has been mostly ignoring hockey since Gretzky left the Kings in 1996.

The rain arrived Friday night as promised, and people, it was awesome. It rained all night Friday night followed by a cloudy, sprinkly Saturday, during which Ben drove the family around with me hanging my head out the window like a dog so I could feel the rain. We didn’t get any lightning or thunder; another of the peculiarities of Southern California weather is that thunderstorms are rare, but waterspouts are not. There were six waterspouts sighted off the coast during the storm! I have never seen one, which cheeses me off more than you could believe, being a weather spotter for the NWS. What good is it to be a spotter when there’s never anything to spot?

Anyway, Newport Beach received about a half-inch of rainfall, and in Anaheim up to an inch and a half fell. If this sounds like nothing to you, contrast it to the fact that from July 1, 2006 to July 1, 2007, Orange County received just over two inches of rain while I pouted. Maybe this year will be better; the rain also arrived early in the winter of 2004-2005, which turned out to be one of the rainiest on record.

Naturally, we’re back to our usual autumn pattern of goddamned sunny AGAIN every single day. But I have hope for the future.

I always had misgivings about raising children in So Cal — this was true when I came here in 1984 and saw sixth-grade girls walking to school dressed like Madonna. Right away I wanted to grab my baby and go raise her in the Midwest. But, famously, I have never escaped Southern California, and have now borne three more children in La-La Land.

Sam turned to me yesterday and, apropos of not very much, announced: Tom Cruise, Ryan Seacrest, David Hasselhoff and John Travolta are all gay. My jaw dropped.

David Hasselhoff is NOT gay, I managed. Just drunk.

Nope, Sam corrected me. He’s gay, too.

Only in L.A., people. Only in L.A.

Round about Labor Day, I was bitching mightily about the stultifying heat and the lack of any good, autumny back-to-school weather in So Cal. But this year God has given me a present.

The weather has been unseasonably cool for about a week now — the kids almost wore jackets to school over their T-shirts! We’ve been having temperatures in the high 60s, which is about 10 degrees below normal for this time of year. And now the National Weather Service is promising a September storm, the first one in 21 years. It never rains in September here! And I am SO excited, as are the kids, who love the rain as I do.

The rain is due tomorrow, and I’m as excited as a kid on Christmas Eve. Wahoo, real weather at last!

I love weekends. Or, I should say, I have a love/hate relationship with them; I’m always meant to be cleaning house or doing laundry, and I’ve become very adroit at avoiding those activities and then hating myself on Monday morning.

What I love about weekends are Saturday and Sunday mornings, when I wake up to find Julia and Ben asleep beside me although the sun is streaming into the room. And then Sam and Matt wake up and join us in our big bed, and we all cuddle and wrestle and argue and giggle and watch TV, usually until 10 a.m., at which time we roust ourselves finally and plunge into the day.

Monday morning, though, is like an amputation. The alarm rings at 7 a.m., and because we have become a model of efficiency, the whole family is dressed and walking out the door by 7:50. It hurts to separate from them, as it always does. Sam is dropped off at school, Matt and Julia go to day care, and I’m left to drive alone to the office with only my cup of Starbucks for consolation. Work is something I just have to get through before I can go pick Sam up from school.

I’ll never understand people who are always wanting to get away from their kids. That’s not to say I don’t often wish I could get away from them — or, more aptly, I wish they came with volume controls or mute buttons. But howsoever they drive me crazy, I miss them like hell every minute we’re apart.

Every week I read the Newport Beach and Costa Mesa police blotters published online, so as to see what sort of crimes have been occurring and where. This is partly for home security purposes and partly pure nosiness, as they publish the names of people who have been arrested. Occasionally I recognize one of the names, and can call Erika and say Hey, remember that idiot Mike you used to hang out with in junior high? He just got busted for possession! A bit of schadenfreude, there, which is invariably fun.

Today the blotter contained information on two different men who had been arrested for public bodily emissions: one for performing an excretory function in public, the other for urinating in public. If these are crimes, then my Matt is guilty of them on a weekly basis.

Four-year-old Matt has a very small bladder and drinks a lot of liquids, with the result that he always has to pee. Ben and I have taken to letting him pee against a tree or in the bushes if there is no restroom within striking range. For example, yesterday I had just started unloading the kids and groceries from the car when Matt announced he had to pee. Although we were in our own courtyard, I knew very well that he would wet himself by the time I removed Julia from her carseat, walked to the house, unlocked the door and hefted the 20-pound bag of dog food inside. So I told him Just pee on that tree right there, indicating a small Japanese maple in the courtyard.

Of course, while he was in the midst of public peeing, two different neighbors passed by, one in a car and one on foot, and observed him. The cops didn’t come knocking on our door that night, so I guess no one called in a report. Maybe it’s only a matter of time.

For men, the world is their urinal. This was also true of Ben, who once, when young and drunk, committed several crimes by peeing into the mail slot of a business, all over their mail. Not only was he defacing mail, a Federal offense, but he committed burglary: the tip of his, umm, thing was inside the building, which falls within the legal definition of burglary. Fortunately, he was not apprehended. This is not seemly conduct for a member of the California Bar.

There have been many surprises about having sons, not the least of which is their fascination with their weewees and with peeing on things. As usual, Julia is my hope for the future. Whatever else may come, I don’t need to worry about her peeing on trees in public.

We awoke today to a gorgeous, cool, sunny Tuesday morning. So much like the Tuesday morning six years ago today.

It was six a.m. Pacific time, and I was sitting up in bed nursing Sam, who was two months old, and watching CNN with the sound turned off. I saw the footage of smoke rising from the horizon, but didn’t understand the import of what I was seeing. Ben woke up and said What’s going on? and I said Oh, I don’t know, some plane crash or something. And then he turned the sound up, and as the story unfolded all we could say was Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh SHIT.

Right then and there, I lost the sense of American invulnerability I’d unconsciously carried all my life. We were vulnerable, after all. We had been attacked on our own soil. And I looked at my baby and thought Just what sort of world have I brought you into, then?

The shock has faded, of course. But those of us who lived through that day — both directly, and indirectly through the media — will never forget it. God bless all the patriots who gave their lives on that day.

This morning kicked off the fall commute season in earnest — last week, Labor Day week, a lot of people were still on vacation. Today the traffic has all come home to roost, and Orange County is packed with heavy, barely-moving traffic.

Back in the day, Orange County was the rural area south of Los Angeles County: mostly orange trees, towns here and there. Today there is hardly an orange tree to be found, but there is traffic — crushing traffic. It’s not just limited to the freeways; most major arteries in OC are six lanes wide, and those too are packed with slow-moving cars. It reminds me of Manhattan traffic, except that of course there are almost no pedestrians in So Cal. It’s a daily fact of life that a commute of a few miles can take a half-hour, or even more if there’s an accident.

It’s not going to get better anytime soon, either. Once the holiday shopping season is underway, the traffic increases even more as non-commuters venture forth to do their holiday shopping. Since we live near the shopping meccas of South Coast Plaza and Fashion Island, this impacts us directly.

Meanwhile, we are leaving the house at 7:45 to get to work at 8:45, with me dropping Sam off at school and Ben dropping the little ones off at day care. I don’t like summer in So Cal, but every year when the traffic comes back, I’m reminded of the good things about summer. Thank God, once again, for Starbucks. If I’m going to sit in traffic, at least I’ve got good coffee and good talk radio.

In his first week of first grade, Sam has already learned a new word. We were watching Nickelodeon and he said This show really blows. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

Where on earth did you hear that? I asked.

From Jason, he said.

It could be worse. He could have asked me what “blows” means. Last week I had to explain the word “wanker” to him, which is completely my fault, because I call his father a wanker to his face occasionally.

Hi! Did you miss me? So Cal saw a tremendous heat wave over the Labor Day weekend, so the Ohana spent the three days in the master bedroom (our only room with air conditioning) watching TV in our underwear and guzzling Diet Coke (beer for Daddy). It was too hot to cook, too hot to do laundry, too hot to work around the house. So we goofed off shamelessly. It was fun while it lasted.

Tuesday was Sam’s first day of first grade. As always happens at the beginning and end of summer vacation, the change in our daily routine has left all of us a bit off-center and cranky. All three of the kids have been acting up and having tantrums since Tuesday, even sweet Sam. I’ve been impatient and, sad to admit, snapping at everyone. Thank God for Ben. I’ll be glad when we all settle back into a routine — although with Halloween less than two months away and Thanksgiving and Christmas coming fast on its heels, the idea of “routine” may have to go out the window until after New Year’s.