Hard to blog when there is so much going on. We went back up to London on Thursday night to watch the amazing Miss Jo as Tallulah Mockingbird as the Log Lady in the first annual Miss Twin Peaks 2010. She was brilliant and hilarious, but by the time we got standing room on the 10.52pm stopping train to Cambridge, my brain was melting and leaking out my eyes. I took the last Mersyndol and slept groggily till 9am. Friday I worked. Saturday we took the girls to the Scott Polar Research Institute Museum, which is rather fun; there were Inuit kayaks and models of the ships that went to each Pole and tins of pemmican and wrappers from chocolate bars. And they were careful to disambiguate Ant- from Arctic, which is good because I am fussy about it. Julia scored a seal, whose name, we are told, is Sealie.

Next we went to the Museum of Zoology, where Julia saw the whale skeleton and said rather gobsmackingly: “I remember this. You brought me here when I was two.” Gobsmackingly, because I did. The museum is fantastic, full of skeletons and stuffed animals and things set in resin, all side by side in an old-fashioned large white room. We loved it. After that we had scones and jam and cream, and then home where I could not keep my eyes opened and napped while Jeremy made spag bol, and then awake (barely) for another splendid episode of Doctor Who. Today we caught the train to London – I earned some cross looks from nice ladies in the seats across the aisle for explaining to the girls that the British had actually stolen the Parthenon frieze from Greece. In Shoreditch we met Grant and Kirsty and all walked over to Hackney City Farm, which is remarkable for its excellent donkey and humble, radiant pig. And then I had my perfect moment after all, sitting in the sun in the garden there while the children played. Now the boys are making bangers and mash and the little girls are watching In The Night Garden and Kirsty and I are communing with the great world in the Net.

To clarify: I am blogging. Kirst is trawling OKCupid, looking for lerve!

Look, I know how foolhardy it is to even try to recreate one perfect day; so sue me. We were up as I mentioned at hideous a.m. and out of the house by 8, having coffee and a sausage roll and a meringue at my favourite Cambridge delicafe, Origin8. Then we caught a double-decker bus to the station and Grant just materialized at our side, handsomer and funnier than ever. And we took a taxi out to the Orchard Tea Rooms.

Where it was frickin freezing and we huddled, chilly, in deck chairs grimly eating scones. Oh, whatever; it wasn’t until we were walking back through the meadows and I stood in a fresh cowpat that I realized that none of this actually matters, that I was just so very happy to be with my best boys and girls. There were cows, well, steers, grazing by the river. I had been reading Temple Grandin’s Animals In Translation, in which she describes the charming curiosity of cattle, so I got down at eye level and one of the beasts did come up to us, all liquid eye and prehensile tongue. Then Claire made a sudden move and he trotted away.

I had a funny exchange with Grant, then or later; about how hilarious I find it that I have such a great job, since I had assumed from an early age I was too delicate a flower, by which I mean too utterly useless, ever to survive in a market economy. That I needed a tenured job because otherwise I would not be able to hold down a job at all. How weirdly things turn out.

“Have you considered,” he said, “that maybe you were wrong in the first place?”

The kids made it all the way back to Cambridge, more or less, and we met Kirsty and Chris at Fitzbillie’s and had rather great brunch, and then walked to an art store and bought sketchbooks and paints and markers for the girls, and then to the pub in Midsummer Common, the Fort St George, for cider. Lovely wandering conversation, gossip and politics and ideology, dialectic and praxis, books; mad fun for wonks.

I failed fast that evening, shivering like someone woken at 3am, and indeed the girls were already out like lights. But Jeremy had the perfect cure for what ailed me: Doctor Who! In real time! Sleep fell from me, and it was a splendid episode and all. Chris cooked for us, a fabulous eggplanty pasta sauce. And then I was gone.

Hangover! It was brutally hard to get started on Sunday morning but at length we were all in a punt on the Cam and I was bonding with Rory, our guide, a townie, over politics, to Jeremy’s considerable amusement. Then to Dry Drayton where I was introduced to Thokki and reacquainted with Freydis, two very respectable Icelandic horses (they are not ponies, no matter how small; they are dignified.) Keir dropped us at home where Grant was waiting to roast a chicken with us, and Chris came by as well. We blanched broccoli and made spinach salad with pumpkin seeds and roasted an eggplant and put away two bottles of only-passable sauvignon blanc, made delectable by the company.

On Monday I was hungover and jetlagged and exiled from my happy home, bound for London with a rolling suitcase that broke en route. The bus took a ludicrous 45 minutes to get to the station. All was dire! Until I got to the hotel and saw all my colleagues and realized, possibly for the first time, how smart they all are and how much I like them. Then I met Grant and Kirsty and Jo for dinner and had the same revelation about them.

I think this is the first time I have been in England medicated and healthy and sane. I kept having strange third-party high realist visions of myself as a competent and likeable person. Odd. And with this it is suddenly possible to not feel threatened by new things or people; to respond to things as they are, instead of continually dancing around all the abysses only I can see. At one point during the conference our CFO was making incredibly stupid jokes, and we were all half-laughing half-groaning, which was his point, and I put my arm around him and said “I love you,” which is a thing I never do; but it was true.

The conference went okay. The other best moment, for me, was when a newish colleague called me “Amanda” by mistake, and later explained that it was because she thinks I look exactly like Amanda Seyfried. Since I’d been feeling oldish and frumpy around the new women hires, many of whom are seven feet tall with glossy hair to their waists, no lie, and since I have loved Amanda Seyfried since the first season of Veronica Mars and not only despite but secretly even because of Mamma Mia, this made me gloriously happy. I walked on air all the way back to the Underground.

What with the good mood and the sanity and all, I spent the whole journey to Kings Cross looking at the other people on the train. Good Lord! Women of London, you are so beautiful and stylish! Your colour choices are fashion-forward, and your statement necklaces fill me with awe! Straight men and lesbians of London, how do you not fall madly in love every time you turn your heads?

Our flat this time is a different address but the same management company, and they use the same rather pungent bathroom cleaner. So every time I walk into the bathroom I am vividly reminded – of being in the bathroom in Cambridge, which is where I am.

Oh hi there! How are you? Since we last spoke I have been to New Orleans, returned to San Francisco to collect my family and brought them all to Cambridge, England, except, as Julia keeps pointing out, for Bebe the cat, who is not here. Yesterday was pretty epic, in fact, starting with the old white dude who got all huffy when a guy from India politely asked him not to cut into the queue at the airport – “It’s called having MANNERS!” spat the old white dude, why is it always old white dudes? I mean, some of my best friends are old white dudes, but dudes! ANYWAY – and a decentish flight punctuated only by Claire’s early-morning projectile nosebleed which, what?

Where was I? Other than covered in not-even-my-own-blood I mean. Um, Heathrow, Heathrow Express, Paddington, change at Edgware Road for District and Circle Line, Kings Cross which is where I finally lost my mind – England is so fricken crowded that your personal space is much smaller than it is in San Francisco and after a while this encroachment and the sleep dep and the crowds and noise combined to make me HOMICIDALLY PSYCHOTIC – and had to be consoled with an egg salad sandwich. And so to Cambridge, which is pretty, and our flat, which is smaller than last time but closer to the river and the Co-op. We shall see.

We staggered out for dinner by the river last night and fed the ducks on the way home and the children were out like lights by 7.30pm and you know what that means, don’t you? Yes, it means that they woke promptly at 2am ready for play and it is 6.25am as we speak and I have spent the last four hours and 25 minutes trying to keep them from making more noise than a pair of annoyed parrots with kettledrums attached to their feet, which is unbelievably STILL a less horrible jetlag experience than last time. Next up: Grantchester with Kirsty and the Godfathers. Birds are tweeting. It’s good to be here.

…concerning the multiverse, in which other Rachels elsewhere are engaged in feats of world-saving derring-do, while I have been given the job of quietly raising my children and reading good books and learning to ride well.

It follows from this theory that all the other Rachels are as consumed with envy of me as I am of them.

I was going to get up early and run today. When I talked to Claire about it she squinched up her face and said, “I’d rather sleep.” Fair enough, but after I lolled in bed and slopped around not getting into my running clothes until about nine, she had finished breakfast and got dressed to come with me.

How is it possible that I could have had an athletic kid? I talked her through the DoctorMama running program – basically when in doubt, slow down – and then she paced me all the steep way up Bernal Hill and all the windy way back down it. She didn’t have loud complaints until halfway up Precita. I measured the distance on Gmap Pedometer and that 7yo ran 1.3 miles. Dude!

After that we all packed ourselves into the car and drove to Canyon Market and bought baguettes and foccaccia and two kinds of cheese and prosciutto and salami and caprese salad and blueberries and raspberries and cherries and peaches and vanilla yogurt. We ran into Kathy and Andrew in Glen Park and abducted their little daughter, and then Salome and Najah and Milo and Salome’s friends Julian and Heather and their daughter Lilly came too, and eventually Jack and Kathy and Andrew finished their errands elsewhere, and we all sprawled on the daisy-strewn grass in Glen Park Canyon and ate ourselves foolish while the children went Lord of the Flies in the woods.

There was a basset hound of exceeding beauty, whose name was Desdemona. When we all descended on her to pat her she rolled over for tummy rubs and writhed her whole body to wag her tail and howled with joy. Aroo!

Meaning, I think, comes from doing a full accounting of your limitations and assets, your passions and your weaknesses, your belief system and your fears, and then rubbing up against the things that cause you to panic, like an allergy skin scratch test, and find out what your reactions are. Once you figure out how you can contribute to the greater good, once you’re able even to define that, you take that information and pour yourself into one direction. Regardless of discomfort or regrets or what-ifs. (And then doing that over and over again, until death.) That does not fit on a T-shirt. That to me is more important than bliss, which would really just lead me back into bed, maybe with a bowl of corn flakes, or maybe I would become like an elderly widower, and just Wait for Death. Or become Alice James.

I was not eavesdropping. They were braying. They are both in their fifties.

She: How about this rain? Cold enough for ya?

He: Obama weather.

They snigger.

He: I scored. I took a short position worth 1.5 million, and the whole market went down four points this morning. They’re mad at me at work but I don’t care! I just sent my boss the commission slip. The client said ‘Do you know what you made on that trade?’ and I said ‘Bra…’

(He is a white man.)

He: ‘Bra,’ I said, ‘I always know my commission. That is the first thing I know.’

She (admiringly): You just don’t give a fuck, do you.

He: I don’t give a fuck. They could fire me, I wouldn’t care.

She: Really?

He: Really. I would walk. I got plans. All I want is for someone to give me fifty million dollars.

I dreamed I was trying to tidy up my room at Bluegum Crescent. Stuff was stacked six feet high and sliding; a maze had been built between the stacks. “Got somewhere for this little one to live?” asked Sarah, who had caught a shiny brown mouse in her hands. There was also a rat, which turned out on closer inspection to be a calico guinea pig with a baby.

I jumped Bella, and then Claire and Milo played really well at her second piano recital and his first, and then Heather and Gilbert and their kids came over for dinner. So it was pretty much a perfect day.

SAN FRANCISCO, 9:59PM PST: Aaand I’m home.

T. remained a rock star for the rest of the flight. I think maybe two other passengers figured out I had a cat in there. Rose met us at the arrivals area with a hot chocolate from Emporio Rulli for me. Handover accomplished.

ARE WE THERE YET? 5:30PM PST: America is really big. America exceeds the battery life of this laptop.

SKY, 5:11PM PST: America is big.

MIDWEST, I GUESS? 4:50PM PST: In which the futuriffic Internetz in the sky are harnessed to mundane ends:

Francis: sounds like smooth sailing up there
me: THIS IS A FAKE CAT
Francis: cats are supposed to claw and hate you!
me: so it is written!

LET’S PUT THE LAKE BEHIND US, 4:37PM PST: Upheaval! Tenzing changes chirality. Now she is sleeping counter-clockwise.

THERE IS A LAKE DOWN THERE, 4:11PM PST: I like flying Virgin. We’re on the Chic Mobile. I ate a wrap. Tenzing is mellow. I went into this liveblogging gig expecting more fireworks, frankly.

35,000 FT, 6:08PM EST / 3:08PM PST: Dayumn, this is awesome. I’m going to make kittens a permanent addition to my flight kit.

We’re above the clouds. Tenzing is nestled on my foot, inside her carrier. Every now and then I reach in and give her a scritch. I cannot believe how calm and brave she is. Beebs would have ripped one of my arms off by now. Is this what normal cats are like?

JFK, 3:35PM: I met Francis in the hotel lobby. Tenzing’s carrier is tiny and black and discreet; she can turn around, but only barely. She is being incredibly brave. So is Francis, who strode away after saying goodbye with only the most manly of tears in the eye. Real men love their kittens.

Note for future cat-accompanied travel: the cat does not go through the x-ray. She has to come out of the carrier and face security like any other person. The first time I held Tenzing it was to walk her through the metal detector. She curled in my arms like an apostrophe and watched as I collected all our bags.

This will not be possible with a cat like, say for example, Bebe.

MANHATTAN, 1:04PM: The kitten is on the subway.

MANHATTAN, 9.37AM: Celebrity cat Twyla wishes Tenzing bon voyage.

MANHATTAN, 9.02AM: Later this afternoon I will be escorting celebrity kitten Tenzing on her move from New York to California. Watch this space!

It would be misleading if I were to give the impression that life with the girls is unpleasant. Yesterday I took Miss Four to the Farmer’s Market with me. She was glowing, in a shiny ivory dress and orange cardigan. She was very helpful and cooperative, and then we danced together at Jackie Jones. We picked up Claire and Jeremy and walked over to the Fairmount Fiestaval, where I gave Claire money and told her to buy tickets and take her sister and play while I sat in the sun and recovered from my cold. Later she came up to me quietly and said “I loved it that you gave me money and let me do what I want.”

“I loved it that you were responsible and took great care of Julia,” I said.

We came home and Claire and Jeremy investigated a set of grasshopper robots for the Community Arts and Science day at Claire’s school on Friday. Jeremy will be running the solar-powered robot work table. Julia and I curled up in my bed. She fell asleep first and I held her and listened to Claire and her Dad talking about solar power. There was nowhere else I wanted to be, nothing else that could have made me so happy.

At a week shy of her four-and-a-halfth birthday, right on schedule, Julia became a sudden and zealous Haver Of Opinions. Her sister also experienced this phase, during which we coined the phrase Four Is Hell.

For example: I’ve been experimenting with wearing things other than jeans and tshirts very occasionally. This morning I walked out of the bedroom in the new Frye Melissa boots Jeremy bought me, a thrifted brown wool skirt, a pink tshirt and a black cardigan. Julia looked me over shrewdly.

“You want to change that jacket,” she said. “You want the sparkly jacket.”

Chagrined, I changed the black cardigan for a chocolate-and-gold one I picked up at Thrift Town last week. I have to admit, it looked a lot better.

As if that weren’t scary enough: We’ve started an ongoing series of stories about Blair and Dahlia, the girls’ interdimensional evil twins. They live in a town called Frank Sarcastor and they always misbehave and are cranky. They don’t eat nice food, just things that taste of snot. At swim class they fill the pool with jello so all the children get stuck.

“Maybe you should go and live with them,” said Julia today. “Since you are always cranky.”

I have no idea how we will get through the next six months. Keep us in your thoughts.

I thought I was going to have some unstructured down time for the first time in a week; and lo, Julia peed her pants. Nobody told me parenting would require endless, inhuman efforts of will. Well, okay, everyone did but even so! I didn’t know they were serious!

And what is more: I would never have fixed the stupid car if I’d known I would spend most of a week stuck in traffic.

It is not all grief for the old horse around here, I should make clear. It may be that Bella is so spectacularly nice that she is making me miss Alfie by being so like him. I’m of the school of thought that believes Bella is an appendix QH – lots of Thoroughbred in her, but a big ole Quarter Horse butt, downhill with no neck, and a brave, sane, kind, cuddly QH attitude. Mare is golden. I am reminded of the tales of Alfie at cross-country clinics in St Ives. The younger Thoroughbreds would fuss and wig out, and Alfie would cheerfully and calmly demonstrate exactly how to tackle each question. They called him Alfie the Wonder Horse.

This morning I was riding with Erika, who is maybe the thinkiest of the trainers I work with. Friday morning lessons with her often end up being hilariously technical, in a way that would completely baffle the objective eye: we do an exercise five or seven times, then come into the middle of the ring and talk intently for a while, then go back out to the track and do exactly the same exercise – albeit, hopefully, better.

This morning’s exercise could not have been simpler. There was a pole on the ground along one long side, and two poles on the ground on the other long side. The two poles were five strides apart. Poles on the ground are practice jumps, with no risk. The idea is to meet them as perfectly as you would need to meet a 3-foot Swedish oxer.

It’s all about pace. You need a medium canter – neither long nor short – and you need it coming out of the corner, ten strides before the fence. Then you need to sit still, except that if any problems come up you need to correct them. I started out fucking up this exercise in two distinct ways. First, I thought Bella’s medium canter was too long, so I kept trying to shorten her pace. Second, in my efforts to be quiet over the fences themselves, I would seize up five strides out and be a passenger. Erika called it my “blank stare.”

Remember Bunk telling Kima that a good detective has soft eyes? Yeah, that. My fixes were, first, to stop trying to collect a poor mare who was already in a lovely pace, albeit long and low as dictated by her QH ancestors. My second was to ride actively into the fences – while sitting still. In other words, do less at the corner, and do more in the five strides in. But hardly any more. Do almost nothing. But do enough. Got it?

Oh my God, it felt so lovely when I got it right. I let her go forward and she flowed. I felt her wanting to drop her left shoulder and I put my left heel down a millimeter and corrected the angle of my left wrist a degree, and she straightened and hit the perfect distance. It wasn’t by accident, as it had been all the other times we got it right. I rode it, and it was good.

She has four white stockings and a wide white blaze that roans out on one side of her face. Her orange coat is mirror-bright and almost dappled with good health. She has soft eyes herself, except when you tighten her girth and she pins her ears and does sea-monster fierce faces. I am not at all attached to her, you will be relieved to hear.

Some time before dawn I walked down to his stable. My boots crunched in the sand. The dark pressed my eyes. I ducked between the bars of his fence, careful not to skin my back on the top bar. He came out of his shed merry and glad to see me. I put my arms around his neck and breathed his mane. We fit together, a young woman and her horse; we leaned into each other like parts of a whole. I knew I’d been away for a long time and tried to calculate how long it had been, but the number I came up with – twenty-odd years? – was preposterous. I knew I could always come back. I knew he would always be glad to see me.

When the sun leaked through I saw his ribs, and the dull hide taut over his knife-sharp hips.

I used to think that his death had been some kind of instructive episode, as in My Friend Flicka or The Red Pony; that it had made me a better or at least more compassionate and empathic person. Now I am not so sure. I am not, after all, a particularly compassionate or empathic person. I don’t know that grief teaches you anything much except that grief never ends. I love my dead as fiercely and needily as I ever loved them when they were alive, but without hope.

“Bad dreams,” I told Jeremy when I woke up.

“What about?”

“Alfie.”

“Was he a demon horse, risen from the grave?”

“No. He had cancer and he was going to die.”

It would be really nice if anyone who ever supported the unjust occupation of Iraq would kindly STFU about the deficit. Unless it is to say: “We are very sorry. We were wrong.”

Jeremy’s office and the underneath of our bed are purged of e-waste. The kids’ toys and the underneath of their bed are purged of goo. Good baby toys and clothes have been carefully stored for friends’ future babies. Dust and pollen have been carefully stored IN MY NOSE.

Julia sings:

“I love the world.
I love everybody in the whole world
and I love to do anything!
This is my weekend.
Oh the weekend is so-o-o beautiful.
Everything is so beautiful,
so beautiful,
SO-O-O BEAUTIFUL!”

Between the decluttering, the new garden and the fact that I basically had my car rebuilt this week… I guess it’s spring :/