It’s not official yet, but after his disastrous showing in the Florida primary yesterday, my beloved Rudy is about to drop out of the Presidential race. This leaves me sort of casting about for options.

As I told a friend in an e-mail, I can’t handle any of the other Repubs. McCain is pro-censorship, Romney is professing to be anti-abortion, and Huckabee is just plain wacky. On the Democratic side, Edwards has now dropped out (I thought he was as dumb as a sack of diapers anyway) and I just don’t like Hillary and never will. I guess this makes me an Obama girl, although I wish he would firm up his positions on some of the issues.

Ben and I don’t know what to do. He’s a registered Republican and intends to sit out Super Tuesday; I’m still a registered Democrat, so I may show up to vote against Hillary in the primary. As for the Presidential election: rock here, hard place there. Frying pan here, fire there. We may have to vote for Dave Barry.

I tried to compose the obligatory January 29 anniversary post extolling your virtues, but I can’t do it; after all these years, words are neither adequate nor necessary. Happy eighth anniversary, honey. You know all the whys and wherefores, and thanks again for believing in us through the good times and the bad times. You’re an awesome father and husband.

And don’t forget to take out the garbage.

I have three sick kids at home today. Sam felt sick to his stomach last night and this morning, and despite being an underachiever, he is not a malingerer. Even if he stayed up too late yacking with Matt, he will rouse his ass and get dressed for school when I wake him up. So, I kept him home. Two hours later, I got a call from the day care lady to come get Julia, who was throwing up. Matt, she added, had refused to eat his breakfast and was acting sluggish. I bundled Sam into the car, made a stop for chicken soup, Saltines, Pediolyte and trashy magazines: absolute necessities for a sick day at home with three kids.

The punch line is that none of them has thrown up since we arrived home, and in fact they seem downright perky. Right now they are eating chicken noodle soup at their picnic table in front of the TV, and Julia just asked for seconds! But: trashy magazines. Britney, Heath Ledger, Eddie Murphy’s latest romantic fiasco, Paris Hilton’s antics. Yes, I KNOW there are wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the economy is shaky, and there’s a Presidential election looming (and my darling Rudy, for whom I had so much hope, seems to be looking at the beginning of the end). But: Trash mags, I love you so.

Ben and I will be celebrating our 8th wedding anniversary on Tuesday, and we are actually getting a babysitter and going out for a nice dinner. I am beside myself with excitement — we NEVER DO THIS. Usually the only time we leave our kids with anyone, except to work, is to go into the hospital and have another baby. Well, that ain’t gonna happen, Tonto.

We have reservations at a restaurant near South Coast Plaza that has some history for us; Ben took me there on one of our early dates (after I’d already put out and thus earned an expensive dinner), and it was there, on his 43rd birthday, that I offered to have his babies. (Except, me being me, it was phrased more like Well, why don’t you knock me up?)

The restaurant in question is Scott’s Seafood, and I can’t wait to eat there. But so help me, if we see Dr. Phil there, I am going to walk up and punch his lights out. Yeah, because I’m a bitch that way.

Note: This is NOT my photo. I found it here.

For meteorological reasons of which I’m not fully sure, the nature of precipitation in Orange County tends to be particularly showery and unstable, with frequent waterspouts, microbursts, squalls and sun showers. We don’t get low clouds and day-long slow, steady rain; we get showy, spectacular storm cloud formations at one side of the sky with bright sunshine on the other. The weather, when it’s present, moves quickly and changes fast.

Lots of sun showers mean lots of rainbows, and this week the place is positively crawling with them. Yesterday Sam and I came out of the house to see a spectacular double rainbow curving over the tops of the trees bordering our courtyard, and this morning there were more sun showers and more rainbows. For me, they are a positive driving hazard; I don’t know how many times I’ve nearly wrecked the car because I was staring at a rainbow.

I’m a total child when it comes to rainbows, and I’ve chosen to believe they really are omens of happy endings (no, not in the Asian massage sense) and good things to come. I completely believe in omens, but only good ones (life has enough REAL signs of bad things as it is). So, you know, rainbows. And there is another thing I love about Southern California.

Shocking, I know. But for all I’m the queen of snark and vitriol, especially as it comes to Southern California, there are many things to love about what’s become, against my will and better judgment, my home. So, with apologies to Heath Ledger, I bring you my L.A. Love List:

1. The Miracle Mile.
2. The postcard-perfect vistas to the north and east when the mountains are covered with snow.
3. The Cabazon Dinosaurs, even though the site is now owned by a pack of religious fanatics who don’t believe in evolution, which is, well, ironic.
4. Caspers Regional Wildnerness Park, where I have hiked many a time, encountering horny toads, rattlesnakes, coyotes and even a mountain lion.
5. Rainy days — need I say it again?
6. Sunset in the Palm Springs area — because of the mountains surrounding the Coachella Valley, there are two sunsets: one when the sun drops behind the mountain, the second when true night finally falls. The window of time between the two is gorgeous and magical.
7. The Hollywood sign.
8. The Venetian style canals in Naples, a section of Long Beach in southern Los Angeles County.
9. Date milkshakes at the Crystal Cove Shake Shack.
10. The Channel Islands.

(1) Rain yesterday and more rain in the forecast for the rest of the week. At this rate, I may not have to get my car washed until March.

(2) Prices at my neighborhood gas station are down to $2.99 per gallon. (I can’t believe this is good news, but after weeks of $3.19 and up, it is, it is!)

(3) At least it’s not going to be Green Bay getting their asses whupped by the Pats in two weeks. (Small comfort, I know, but comfort nonetheless.)

Yesterday morning I visited my mother, who is 78 years old, terminally ill and in an assisted living facility. She lamented the preponderance of twenty- and thirty-somethings on the staff, pointing out that it took someone at least middle-aged to understand the needs and concerns of the elderly.

Internally, I had to laugh like hell. Twenty-seven years ago, I was 20 years old and my mom was turning fifty and feeling quite angsty about the prospect. In my journal, I breezily dismissed this: What’s the big deal about turning 50, Ma? It happens to everyone, and those to whom it doesn’t have a much bigger bummer to face. Well, I was twenty, and like everyone at that age, I knew everything. Right?

Wrongo bongo. The Universe is right now laughing up its sleeve at me, and I fully deserve it. Because middle age has hit me like a ton of bricks, and suddenly my hubris has come back to haunt me.

Sometime in your forties, your vision goes wonky. I’ve been myopic for 40 years, and for years, that was easy to correct. But now I’m farsighted as well as nearsighted, meaning that without my glasses or contacts, I can’t see anything far away, and with glasses or contacts I can’t see anything close to. Bifocals give me headaches, so I am forever putting on and taking off reading glasses, regular glasses, prescription sunglasses, and nonprescription sunglasses. I carry four fucking pairs of glasses in my purse every day, for every visual contingency. We used to laugh at my dad when he had to hold things at arm’s length to read them, but I’m not laughing now.

There’s the other stuff, too — your hair thins, your back aches constantly, your body composition changes, your hips widen, your skin turns dry and crepey. My “babe” stage is long behind me, and “Driving Miss Daisy” can’t be far behind. My five-year-old stroked the skin on my upper arms and said Mommy, your arms are made out of paper. And my heart cried No, honey, that’s my GRANDMA you’re talking about! But it’s not. It’s me.

I won’t say much about the approach of menopause, because that lands squarely in the Department of Too Much Information, but I will say that I never expected it to be much of an event — more of a non-event, an absence rather than a presence. Well, I was wrong about that, too. I suppose I should have known that a reproductive career as illustrious as mine would go out not with a whimper but with a bang.

Am I bitter? No, I am not — I’m merely repeating the pattern of the human condition. But as much as you accept it intellectually, it does rather clobber you right between the eyes. For most of my readers, this is a cautionary tale, as you’re quite a bit younger than I — Mark, I know, understands completely.

So, you know, appreciate your youth while you’ve got it, however much of it you’ve got. Because I know my mom would be happy to be only 47 instead of 78. And finally, I completely understand.

Most California residents rail fiercely against the California Department of Transportation, which is one of the most determinedly perverse agencies it’s ever been my displeasure to encounter. The So Cal freeway system appears to have been designed by a pack of raving lunatics, with the result that the freeways are always being revised and augmented, resulting in traffic jams even worse than those the construction was meant to remedy.

I have to admit, we do have one advantage over the East Coast, in that road construction can proceed through the winter months. Back East, it seemed that they always used to commence road construction in September, ripping the road to shreds and then standing around drinking coffee until the bad weather arrived, whereupon they would cease construction for the winter. Which never made any sense to me — but Cal Trans is just plain mental.

I’ve been working at a client’s office in downtown Santa Ana, which means that I have to travel north and west from our neighborhood. I refuse to take the freeways, because the route I’d need to use is one of the most dangerous and insane stretches of freeway (like any of them aren’t?) in the area. So I take surface streets. But what has Cal Trans done? They have commenced seriously major construction, simultaneously, on every fucking east/west artery in and out of Santa Ana.

So here’s how that goes: I get on First Street, the most direct route. And here is a sign: MAJOR CONSTRUCTION ON FIRST STREET. USE ALTERNATE ROUTE. Next street south: MAJOR CONSTRUCTION ON McFADDEN AVENUE. USE ALTERNATE ROUTE. Next street south: same thing. Next street south: same thing. So there is no help for it but to wind through tiny residential streets in a convoluted manner, which makes the commute approximately as long as it would be if I’d sat in the traffic of the construction zones.

What sort of madman thought this shit up? Is Cal Trans trying to keep people out of Santa Ana altogether? (Which isn’t a bad idea, if you ask me, since generally I avoid the place like the plague. But I have to make a living.)

The construction on all these roads is promised to last through March 2008, which means approximately October 2009 when translated from Cal Trans into English. So, you know, nice work, Cal Trans. We have hated you for years, but this year you’ve truly outdone yourselves.

Effective July 1, 2008, California will join the ranks of the states which don’t allow manual use of a cellular phone while driving. It’s probably a good idea; I don’t know many times I’ve been behind people swerving or going 30 miles below the speed limit because they can’t talk and drive at the same time. Still, since I’ve mastered the art, I’m a little resentful.

I do have a bluetooth device, which I used regularly for a short time after I got it and then got bored with it. Starting this week, I’m using it again routinely. Might as well get into the habit. It sort of sucks, because it’s voice activated and clearly English is its second language. Plus the reception invariably sucks. But use it I do.

I talked to a close family friend, who is a Verizon dealer, yesterday. He’s tickled to death; this means lots of lots of bluetooth sales between now and July. So, good for him!

So, does your state have this law? Or is it about to take effect? I’m sure it’s all for the common good, but it’s another example of government dictating what I must and must not do, so I prickle a bit at the idea. But there’s no help for it.