Not in Kansas anymore, Toto

I'll start right off and tell you that I can't possibly encompass this whole California trip into one little blog.. You just wouldn't make it.. there's too much. You'd need a snack about 1/2 way thru and then on your way to the kitchen, you'd see Tom Cruise on tv AGAIN saying how HAPPY he is.. cuz you didn't get it the other 73,000 times before.. and isn't that LOVELY??!

So let's just save you ALL of that, shall we, and I'll ease you in and work my way thru the rest of it this week..

If you'd like to distract yourself now and give yourself a little preview, so to speak, oh, alright.. go ahead.. twist my arm.

This was my first real vacation in ages and you know how you get all excited for your trip cuz you think it'll be the best thing ever and then some lame drama happens or you lose your favorite sun glasses or ruin your best butt jeans..? Well, nothing crappy happened.. this actually was an amazing trip - practically perfect.. well, we were all completely plastered and woozy from the excessive tasting, drinking, and guzzling of wine for 3 days straight.. and the sun was everywhere... just out for the world to see.. not a cloud in the sky anywhere at all ev-er.. This part of the world definitely has an 'in' with God..or at least some good black mail. You just knew it. Ugh.. it was beautiful, people..

The first night the faux bro took all of us to meet up with a bunch of friends and significant others for dinner at this great place in the SoMa district called Tamal. In my little life experience with large parties I've never been able to order 1 of everything. I mean, you say it as a joke.. but you can imagine my sheer child-like joy when we not only ordered 1 of everything, but 1 plus 1 more!! Wow.. yum is the only right word. The food rocked except for a few things, and dessert more than made up for any bits of dinner that were so-so.. and what with the many pitchers of sangria, who really cared.. until the bill came. I about fell over when I saw that it was somewhere in the mid-$600's. Apparently, when in San Fran, I turn into some penny-pinching little old Jewish lady.. seriously, you'd hardly recognize me. I had to shut her up a few times when I felt the oy's coming on.. but in San Fran things are a little pricier - the standard of living is higher tho too - but still, I'm guessing even entry to Trader Joe's requires a platinum card minimum..

So at the end of the night, we're poured into the faux bro, SD's, jeep. This is the first of what are to be many of the coldest and most miserable passenger experiences of our lives. SD has taken off the top and the doors - he says flatly, ‟It's summer." I say just as flatly with a tinge of matter-of-fact, ‟If by ‛summer' you mean cold as all hell cuz this IS San Francisco, then yeah, I can see your point."

*SD then does something surprising to all of us and puts the doors back on and some tarp-y looking thing on the top to assist in some sort of wind protection and warmth.. and really, it doesn't achieve either* Ok ok, it helped me a little and I was happy I had some sort of visiting-sister-ly-pull, AND I was lucky enough to be the girl, which honestly, is really really great sometimes cuz I never had to sit in the back, which I heard sucked exponentially.

Let me also say, San Francisco isn't like the rest of California. It's like um.. Seattle.. in California. With fog. And bay windows. That's really all that's different. I think God put it in the wrong state, if you want my opinion.. And driving in that sort of climate in an open jeep from the city to the east bay is just a little on the suicidal.. You may think you're sane when you get in and put on the roller-coaster-like safety harness (really not kidding about that) that this is just a quick ride and you'll be fine.. (but you're forgetting that anywhere you drive in California is 30 minutes at least.. which is anything but quick), but by the time you get out, you're calling the people with the fashionable fasten-in-the-back white jackets to come take you away yourself! I would've paid to leap into a canyon of FIRE that's how cold I was.. I wanted to sell my soul to the devil TWICE in case we had to take another drive. And we DID.. ooooooooh yes we did! So by the time I have a man in my life who might want children with me, I imagine, maybe by then, the ovaries might be defrosted enough. But barely.

And then I had a conversation with my hair. Or rather, it had a conversation with me.. It's very high maintenance.. and um, no fan of wind. While literally lashing out at me, it was saying, ‛Hellooo..bi-otch.. *slap* uh yeah.. you there..*slap slap* Can you stop this incessant wind crap? There's to be no subjection to astronomical wind speeds.. *sllllllllap* Only the slow-motion beauty of a Vidal Sasoon commercial! Do you hear me?! I mean, sister.. this will cause TANGLES.. and RATS.. and you know what those lead to.. SPLIT ENDS! So fucking stop the INSANITY!'.. and at this point, I stopped listening. It was losing it.. the hair.. had gone mad.. there was no saving it really (AM, the ex, was apparently having the same conversation with the collar of his thin leather jacket he brought.. tough break. It kept slapping him around like a surly French waiter. I think I had it easy comparitively.). But by the next day, I'd finally gotten wise and dug out the scarf I'd luckily brought with me. I couldn't really achieve the hot, 1950's Hollywood starlet look.. it was more like the young-white-Aunt-Jemima-wanna-be-rap-star sort of look, which doesn't really work much for me. Happily, there are no pictures of this.

After arriving at SD's home, what he affectionately refers to as ‛the hood pad', which is in the neighborhood I affectionately, and more to the point, accurately refer to as 'the ghetto' in Oakland, we're all ready for sleep. Mostly. AM has discovered SD's Lego Star Wars video game and can't stop playing it.. and you haven't seen anything til you've seen an animated Lego version of Chewbacca.. so friggin cute! Where do they come up with this shit?!

But the air mattress was filled, SD's dad settled on the futon, SD was in the mini loft where sugar ants were trying to discover uncharted territories that boggled all of us.. and we all fell asleep...til the middle of the night.. like an hour later.. when my ass was on the floor. Hmm.. that's.. interesting. The mattress had a silent and tiny leak. Twice SD dutifully filled it back up after we discovered the thin carpet over the cement floor is amazingly uncomfortable.. yeah, surprised us too. The third time, I think he said ‟screw them" or snored it maybe and I was so damn tired I didn't really notice - ok, that's a lie.. there was some serious stabby pain in my back, but I tried to drown it out with fantasies of floaty clouds made of cushy cotton........ yeah, didn't work for me. Pfffffft.. I got up anyway since I needed a good 60-90 minutes more than the guys did.. ok 90 minutes... at minimum.. It's the hair people! God..

Tune in next chapter when Miss Devylish and her trusty sidekicks attack Sonoma and its many wineries by storm.. or rather, drink to oblivion and then drive home.