The Po Show

Hot Time, Summer in the City

Or at least, in the 'burbs. We're back and it's HOT and HUMID! It cracked me up how, while we were in CA, people kept complaining that it was humid. Oh my, you don't know from humid. Humid is when a big ass thunderstorm is plowing through your neighborhood at 9:00 at night and it's still like 80 degrees. Humid is when you look at weather.com and it's 94 degrees (but feels like 104!).

But anyway, we're back. We had a great month in CA. It was one of those time warp periods, where it feels really long while it's happening, but then seems really short once it's over. The first two weeks seemed to drag forever. We spent the first week just acclimating and relaxing at Grandma's house, as she doted on the children and ran back and forth getting them ten million snacks a day. Matthew gained his annual belly, though not as badly as last year. Tessa actually got skinnier, because she grew like two inches during the month.

We went to a water park with my nieces and their kids (including my ultra-adorable grandniece Maddy, 7 months old!) a few times, went to the beach once (it was really cold and grey along the coast most of the time we were there!), went miniature golfing, went to the Santa Barbara zoo, picked strawberries at my family's farm. Very low key stuff. They watched a lot of Cartoon Network (ugh). I got to eat amazing taco stand tacos and In-N-Out (the world's greatest cheeseburger!). And we drank many, many Ice Blendeds from Coffee Bean, which is the one consumable item we miss the most from CA. We drove for 2 hours and 20 minutes, in traffic from hell, down to Long Beach to see Ross' mother (there briefly from Mexico) and grandmother. I bought $2,800 worth of clothing at Gymboree, which I got for $1,377 thanks to my Gymbucks discount.

We missed Daddy (Ross) very much.

We went to my cousin's little girl's birthday party at CEC. We had a memorial service at Forest Lawn for my dad, who died 12 years ago (but by the wack way Japanese people count these things, it's been 13 years and that's a major anniversary). We saw our lovely L.A. mommy friends and their lovely children and wonderful hubbies, who were kind enough to keep my children from drowning so I could sit in the house in the airconditioning and yack with my much loved and much missed friends. We went to my grandniece and grandnephew's birthday party at the farm, a yearly huge event with like 100 people. We went to Universal Studios with my sister, who I love so much and miss so much it hurts.

Then Ross arrived (yay!!) and it got really busy. We went to Long Beach again to see his grandma, spent the night in Buena Park, and then spent 13 hours at Disneyland. We swam at the farm, after my sister set up her pool. Ross and I went out to dinner for our 17th anniversary, which was two days before he arrived (the one and only time we've been apart on our anniversary). Matthew and Tessa had their annual CEC party and got lots and lots of toys. Ross and I went to the wedding party for our dear friend Eric and his new wife (we had already been to their wedding party in NYC, and just coincidentally were in CA for their L.A. party), a 10 course Chinese banquet. We packed up all the stuff we had acquired in the four and a half weeks we were in CA.

And then we flew back to NY. The kids spent the entire next day alternating between saying "I miss CA. I miss Grandma!" (just rip my heart out RIGHT NOW), and saying "Ah, it's great to be home!" literally about 100 times.

Ah, ambivalence. Love it there, but this is home. I hear ya.