(the robin williams tunnel in marin)
i have three therapists (well technically, one is my colorist - but she is as wise as yoda and i do almost everything she says far beyond her recommendations on whether my hair needs a toner or more highlights and one is my acupuncturist and she is always figuring out where i am holding stress and what to do to unblock it and i feel amazing both on the inside and the outside when i leave her sessions - and then i go directly to sachi sushi, the ramen shop in the niwot market, which makes those sundays - they only make ramen on sundays so i make all of my acupuncture appointments on sundays - the very BEST - so they are really two-fors and then there is my actual therapist who is beyond awesome) so i have A LOT of support (which i DO realize is incredibly lucky) and yet i am concerned about ever really recovering from the last eighteen months of the pandemic, the toilet paper hoarding, home schooling, half and half schooling, fractions with lucy, BLM, the wildfires, the awful election, breaking off my engagement with governor cuomo (you think you KNOW someone…) the king soopers shooting, the shootings ALL OVER the U.S., the bomb scares in boulder, the insurrection, the closing of my bar studio (which is the only exercise i’ve ever been able to do with any consistency), my mounting coronas (i think these started with my plum cake obsession last summer - i literally baked AND ATE plum cake EVERY day until plum season was over and then i just dove right into the halloween candy - this summer i am only making plum sauce - which is just as delicious! and steering clear of the butter cake with plums on top) and my personal cherry on top - there was a possibility that i had a brain aneurysm and would need BRAIN SURGERY (spoiler: i DON’T… PRAISE JESUS!) but that was very scary for a few weeks.
(my incredible colorist right before she dispenses some brilliant advice)
(the sunday ramen menu… we always get the “zha jiang”… DELICIOUS!)
(DANGEROUS but outrageously yummy plum cake)
(completely safe, super tasty, tart plum sauce)
so now that so many of us are getting vaccinated and i’ve been able to hug my parents (i CAN’T WAIT until miss lucy is allowed to get one too) and the world is opening up a bit and and we have a totally normal, yet SUPERSTAR president whose V.P. attended MY elementary school (which makes me enormously proud) and i know there is no aneurysm in my brain (which i especially appreciate because i cannot spell that word to save my life - i hate words that have multiple vowels stacked up - i also get completely stressed out by the name “michael” and have to look it up each time even though my high school boyfriend was a michael - he thankfully mostly went by “mike” - the thought of having to write “aneurysm” on every doctor’s medical history questionnaire (i don’t like words like “questionnaire” either because i can never remember where the double letters go and i already have to contend with the word “hemorrhage” because that’s what happened when my daughter was born and she nearly took me out getting out of there and i try to write it really messy and ambiguous on the forms because that word is impossible to spell) for the rest of my life was daunting - i thought i would be feeling MUCH better. generally, i DO feel better but i am not tracking things properly despite all of my lists and calendars and spreadsheets and the best efforts of the google maps lady and i’m pretty sure i had a break down on our road trip out to berkeley a few weeks ago. three days in, after a fairly snarky comment from one of my car mates, who i will not identify, but is a teenager i grew inside me, i just started crying and i couldn’t stop. i cried for SIX HOURS as we drove from st. george, utah to malibu. my first husband, who accompanied us again this year as i think he remains concerned that i will get distracted and end up in toledo, kept offering to drive, but i don’t like when he drives because he wants to stop every ten minutes for a coffee or a potty break or something which makes the trip take entirely too long. so i just drove and cried and drove and cried and checked into my own hotel that evening because i was not at all fit for company. my face was so covered in salt that i could have given myself an unbelievable scrub, but i wasn’t thinking clearly and missed that opportunity.
(here i am driving to malibu… most of the time i DID have my eyes open!)
i am sure i am not the only one who has full intentions to take my son to his orthodontist appointment and ends up at the target instead (i tell him to pay attention or we will ALWAYS end up at target - i think i have been imprinted like a baby duckling to just drive toward that big, red bull’s-eye whenever i get in the car) or sends my daughter to camp without a bathing suit on beach day but tucks one in when they are going to a museum or invites other kids for playdates when lucy is meant to be away on a camping trip or shops for a birthday present that i leave at my front door when i go to the party or schedules a work call and mixes up the time difference so i get on the zoom two hours late or messes up their daughter’s hebrew tutoring TWO sessions in a row (one was the time difference and one was the time difference AND the wrong week) and then tries to call the tutor to apologize after seeing her text wondering why lucy hadn’t logged on… i was just out of the shower and somehow face timed her husband IN MY TOWEL or has to run out of the house in my green flannel christmas jammies (flannel in july? berkeley is quite cold and foggy in the summer) to chase down the garbage men at the crack of dawn because i forgot to put the bins out the night before or tells my daughter to walk home from the camp bus when there is no camp bus this year and she needs to be picked up on site…RIGHT? you all do that too, right? mind you - all of that was just the last few weeks…
(here i am in the parking lot of target… i am third in line…)
hank, on the other hand, has emerged from the pandemic EMPOWERED. he used to be so afraid of water that he would walk into the street to avoid a sprinkler, even if it was 105 degrees outside. now he is venturing right into coot lake and sticking his face in. one time he stepped onto that kind of grass that looks like it has ground under it, but really is just water and his whole self fell in. he was definitely surprised, but still waded in the next day, albeit on the rocks where he could see the bottom. (i had that happen to me once when i was at girl scout camp in some sort of lakey nature area and i sank so deep my whole knee high got drenched - i know i was at camp because my mother likes to stay on paved paths and my father’s idea of a nature hike is golfing.)
(fearless hank with his feet in the water!)
hank has also started lifting his leg to potty. i must say, i find this quite crass and prefer the more elegant, subtle way he pottied pre-pandemic. with all of his feet on the ground, his back is so straight and proper you would never guess what he is doing. now he awkwardly exposes his privates for all the world to see, which embarrasses me and lucy. by contrast, theo and his dad and another of hank’s male fans are THRILLED about this “manly development” and want to throw him a doggy bar(k) mitzvah to mark his coming of age.
(hank making a discreet potty with a perfectly straight back)
(hank’s new low brow potty style)
further, hank has determined that he should ride shotgun at ALL times, no matter how many people are in the car. on day two of our road trip i ended up squished in the back seat with the kids (first was driving) while hank sat up front like a king, rolling the windows up and down (as he is apt to do) when he wanted to feel the breeze. if he is forced to start out in the back seat he bides his time and then comes leaping up front when no one is expecting it and claims his rightful place. he deftly launched himself onto my mother’s lap the other day and nearly gave her a heart attack.
(hank sunning himself in the front seat with lucy)
while hank and i had divergent pandemic journeys (i have been feeling more and more powerLESS), i HAVE made some wonderful discoveries in the last few months:
these grapefruit slices (available at the safeway) that are already out of the grapefruit are just DELICIOUS and if you eat them straight from the fridge they are nice and cold and super refreshing. we have just been plowing through them. we even drink the juice left in the tub. i have been meaning to try it with vodka but i usually eat the grapefruits in the morning so i haven’t explored that yet…
for mother’s day i received these PRO vans that look like regular vans but have some sort of soles that i am pretty sure are made of clouds. they are SO COMFORTABLE and i thought my regular vans were good. i have never worn sport shoes before so i was completely unaware of the technical advances in shoes. now i want all of my vans to be PRO.
i LOVE a good martini (dirty with extra olives) and i especially love a good martini at a pretty hotel. like most of the world, we were so bunkered down during the pandemic we were not out in restaurants or hotels and so i was forced to make my own drinks. because i am a bit lazy AND because it IS pretty good, i started drinking this infused kettle one on ice. but over spring break we went to stay at the broadmoor for a few days (which ended up to be quite timely since we left the day after the shooting and so were tucked away in colorado springs away from the chaos right after it happened - of course, a few months later CS had their own horrible shooting… WTF world?) anyway, while we were there i had my first martini made by an actual bartender and i forgot how TERRIFIC they are.
(a really good stand in when there is no bartender available)
we had a tip top stay at the broadmoor… it is like going back in time. there are game rooms and sitting rooms and a big lake to walk around and a whole hallway filled with photos of all of the famous people who have stayed there in the past, including the couple who started the cotillion classes that theo attended for four years, but lucy has escaped because she was meant to start during the pandemic (now one of my children burps like a frat boy regardless of where we are and one is much more discriminating - i’ll let you figure out who is who) and a new patisserie with chocolate croissants and beautiful little cakes that reminded us of our beloved pompadour in amsterdam - they even prepared a “puppaccino” for hank each morning - the broadmoor is totally dog friendly - and gorgeous chandeliers everywhere… definitely one of my favorite hotels.
(even on a cloudy day the broadmoor is beautiful)
(the cotillion people are in the lower right corner… aren't they lovely?)
(cakes from the new patisserie… we especially liked the lemon one!)
(chandeliers in one of the big sitting rooms)
(chandeliers down a long hallway)
(chandelier hung from a painted wood ceiling)
(chandelier hung from a stained glass ceiling)
(the chandelier in our room)
(hank loves hotel life too - i’ve noticed that since our stay, even at home, he waits for “turn down service” before getting into bed)
normally when we go there we don’t even leave the grounds because there is so much to do but this time we ventured out to the zoo where we fed the giraffes, who are just GORGEOUS, even if they don’t smell too great and the manitou cliff dwellings which were mind blowing in how they were built by the anasazis (or “ancient ones”) right into the side of this gigantic rock around 1100 A.D. there is also an anasazi museum that showcases their pottery and tools and weapons. there was one ceramic piece that had two faces that reminded me of my jonathan adler “man/woman” vase. and in the gift shop they were selling authentic, hand made “kalini” dolls that brought to mind alexander girard’s wooden dolls that i’ve always coveted but haven’t yet invested in…so we picked out our favorite kalinis. we learned so much that afternoon and it made me realize how important it is to explore and be exposed to new ideas and information… also how art and inspiration are recycled and presented anew.
(look at this BEAUTY!)
(lu barely able to reach bottom of her neck)
(theo about to offer a lettuce leaf)
(we also met this lady who bears a striking resemblance to…)
(…baby lucy!)
(the manitou cliff dwellings)
(peeking out one of the windows)
(the two-faced ceremonial vessel at the museum)
(my JA man/woman vase…)
(the kalini dolls L and girard dolls R)
we have now arrived safely back in boulder after a much calmer road trip… hank DID continue to call shotgun, but i didn’t cry once (well maybe just a few, quick tears). we are so grateful for the time we got to spend HUGGING my parents and all of our california friends and are keeping our fingers crossed for a fall that is just “precedented.”
(hank even met a NEW friend in malibu… this is norm!)
* about my brain… i was getting these sudden, piercing headaches at really inopportune times and had to visit a neurologist. she said the headaches were either unlucky occurrences that come and go for some people and can be treated with medicine OR i had an aneurysm and would need to have it surgically removed…basically, just an inconvenience or a pretty BIG problem. i would have leaned far more into the inconvenience possibility except my maternal grandmother died quite young of a brain aneurysm and her story has always haunted me (there IS a genetic component.) i had to get a CT scan which was like a big donut around my head and then wait a few days for the results. the wait was scary and super frustrating because on gray’s anatomy the doctors always head straight for the screen room and analyze the scans right after so i know that that is possible. i also know that as far as brain surgeries go a little aneurysm is kind of run of the mill at seattle grace. it’s the tumors with tendrils winding around the brain that are challenging for tip top surgeons like mcdreamy. of course, i couldn’t get an appointment with him because he was killed in a terrible car crash four or five seasons ago. i could have tried to get in with his sister, who is also a world renown brain surgeon and is still working in seattle, but she is a recovered addict who seems to be teetering of late and just refused a proposal from her baby daddy so i am not sure she is in the right head space to be operating on my brain. i think i would have tried to go stanford (even though i am a life long cal fan - ROLL ON YOU BEARS!) because they do lots of brain stuff there, but luckily i don’t have to worry about that because my brain is just fine. the only downside to this is that i thought an aneurysm would be a good explanation/excuse for all my recent dinginess and now i might just have to take responsibility for it.
(dr. derrick shepherd… gone too soon…)
(dr. amelia shepherd analyzing scans directly after a test)
