Imagine if you mashed up Hurry Down Sunshine with Mountains beyond Mountains and, oh, a liberal (haha) dash of Atul Gawande or Siddhartha Mukherjee. You’d get this book: a gorgeous wrenching memoir of someone who had three psychotic breaks, went to Harvard Medical School and became a pediatrician, and then had another psychotic break. It’s incandescent.

If you take good care of any disease by eating well, sleeping well, being aware of your health, consciously wanting to be well, not smoking, et cetera, you are doing all the same things you should be doing anyway, but somehow having a disease makes them easier to do. A human without a disease is like a ship without a rudder.

It’s a good enough book that you should read it for its own sake. I feel bad even bringing this up. But yes, his father is who you think he is.

When Kurt tried to sell Saabs, he usually did the test drive with the prospective customer in the passenger seat. I tried to tell him to not go around corners so fast, especially if the customers were middle-aged or older, but he thought it was the best way to explain front-wheel drive. Some of them were shaken and green. He didn’t sell a lot of cars.

“Maybe you should just let them drive,” I suggested.

The mister is off building a robot thunderdome with the downstairs neighbor, so I called the wife and invited her and our boys over for dinner. While she was here her phone rang and the ringtone was Weezer’s “My Best Friend.”

Me: sharp intake of breath. “That’s MY ringtone. You have ANOTHER best friend???”

Salome: “I am totally busted. It’s my default ringtone.”

“YOU TOLD ME IT WAS SPECIAL FOR ME. I GOT ALL TEARY.”

We had BBQ chicken from a place on 24th Street with arugula and avocado salad and broccolini and brown rice. I made a compote out of leftover strawberries and we had that with cream for dessert. Salome and I got a little tipsy on limoncello from Lucca’s deli.

This is what my life is like now. Yesterday I was weeding our little front flowerbed and Colin the carpenter stopped by and we chatted about the shelf he is making for Claire’s yarn, because Claire took up crochet after Rose taught her how. Then Kathy came by on her way to pick up Julia and Martha from the math circle Vali runs in the place on the corner. It’s been difficult to blog these past few months because happiness writes white and I have never been so happy before in my life.

I showed the wife pictures of the house I grew up in.

“But it’s beautiful,” she said.

“I see that now. It’s a jewel of mid-century modern, and it was full of teak and Hans Wegner originals. My mother had flawless taste.”

“I pictured you growing up in a place with no light! Like, a dungeon!”

“But that’s what it felt like. I look at it now and all I can think about is how miserable I was back then. When I was a teenager I could not put together a simple declarative sentence about my internal state to save my life.”

“You were a bit like that when I met you.”

One of my catchphrases nowadays is that closure is bullshit. Scar tissue is what it is. I still feel the cold where the broken bones in my ankle fused back together. But the other California cliche, validation, is not so much bullshit. Having a third party acknowledge the you that has spent the last umpty years tunneling out from underneath all your own garbage: well, that’s not nothing, as we say. It’s a thing, as we say.

It’s even possible I will forgive her for her lies about the ringtone.

“Call Peter the Rocket Scientist! We’re going to brunch like it’s 1999!”

Felt as if I’d died and gone to the Mission District.

And then I went to Seattle and then I went to London and now I am back.

Took Rose and the girls to CuriOdyssey. River otters high-fived my dottirs.

I guess it’s nine years since the Iraq War began. FP has an only slightly half-assed postmortem. I’m not claiming any superpowers of prescience when I say that the disaster played out exactly as I expected it to. I was, after all, only one of at least ten million people who were against it from the start, and that’s only counting those who felt strongly enough to march against it. Everyone I knew was at that march, if not in San Francisco, then in London or Sydney. I had six-week-old Claire with me, in the tie-dyed rainbow footy pyjamas my mother had brought with her from Barraba.

People – like, for example, my Dad – are vaguely surprised, even now, when I say that I consider the Iraq War the most serious failure of my adult life. It’s easy enough to blame the war criminals, Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice and Wolfowitz and Feith, and to be sure, it was their fault. They overreached and they betrayed the trust that was placed in them, to put it mildly. They should all be in gaol.

But I knew. I knew there were no weapons of mass destruction. I knew Judith Miller was talking out of her ass and that the Grey Lady was publishing lies. I knew the casualties would be in the tens of thousands, at least. I knew the war would drag on for at least a decade, and that its cost would spiral into the stratosphere. I don’t mean that I had a strong hunch. I mean that I never doubted any of that for a second. Knowing what I knew, why the hell didn’t I protest harder? Why didn’t I fight more? I feel those deaths on my conscience. I always will.

I knew the banks were going to crash, as well, for all the good that did. With those two awesome feats of clairvoyance on my record, you might be wondering what I know now. Well, I’ve known for a while that Romney’s going to get the GOP nomination and that Obama’s going to win reelection. So I haven’t sweated over the outcome of this campaign like I did over the last one. (Pretty cold comfort, though, I have to tell you. The whole women-as-the-punching-bags-of-the-GOP-primaries thing is surprisingly painful anyway.) I’ve also felt the center of geopolitical power shift from Washington DC to Beijing. And I’ve seen the future of work, and unfortunately, it sucks.

I keep writing and trashing posts because it is so hard to put into words what I am thinking about. I am thinking about Trayvon Martin and my heart is aching. I haven’t blogged much about Najah because his story is not mine to tell, but he is my best friend’s little kid and I love him as much as I love my best friend’s big kid, which is to say: like my own. And he looks like Trayvon.

I sure as hell used to think I was radical. I sure as hell got treated like a radical, for taking mad radical positions like single-payer health care and progressive taxation. It turns out, though, that nothing ever radicalized me like loving a Black child. I am deathly afraid. Now multiply that fear by everyone who loves every young Black man in America.

I had no idea. I had no idea. I am so sorry.

ETA: icouldbetrayvon (ETA: not that *I* could be; I’m white.)

DSC_9762, a photo by Goop on the lens on Flickr.

Also epically cool.

When the boat sailed out you can see we were on a silver bay under a pewter sky. As Jeremy noted, you could have rendered all the waves using Fourier transforms. It was exactly like sailing into a mathematical function. I thought that for the first time I understood why people love the sea.

Five minutes later, as I was hurling into it, I had forgotten again why anyone loves the sea.

ETA: Tonstant weader fwowed up.

Elephant seals: hella, hella charming.

My calves are absurdly hypertrophied from trying to keep my damn heels down, such that the field boots I bought with an already-widest-possible calf are currently at Anthony’s being stretched.

Tuesday night lessons are usually really hard; it is dark, it is cold, and we are tired after work.

But lessons on Bella are always good, and lately they have been near-magical. We did an exercise where we trotted ten strides and then came back to the walk for three and then trotted for ten and back for three and so on. My contact remained the same and Bella softened and softened and softened until she was trotting off the barest pressure from my leg. Then we did it again in the canter and trot, ten strides of canter, three strides of trot. We fell into the rhythm. Back engaged, neck arched, she cantered at a breath.

A waking dream.

A Neapolitan mastiff slobbers on his jeans. The dog’s owner is apologetic.

“No, it’s fine, it’s lovely!” says Jeremy. “It comes in vanilla, chocolate and strawberry.”

*

We are lolling by Stow Lake, when the Segway tour passes. I do the “Squirrel!” thing from Up!, exclaiming:

“Segway!”

Jeremy says: “Stop changing the subject.”

*

I quote a show we like, saying: “I will answer your question in the language of crows.”

Jeremy says: “This is murder.”

Someone who clearly wishes us harm gave Julia a kazoo, and so we woke at 7 this morning even though it is Saturday. We feigned death until it was time to go to wushu, then we visited Briar Rose the hamster who lives with Salome, Jack, Milo and Najah. To Metate for fish tacos and then down to San Bruno Mountain to hike the Saddle Loop Trail with Jamey and Rowan.

I was expecting the mountain to be as it looks from a distance – bare and raw – but in fact it is paths winding among masses of wildflowers, and beautiful forests, and an unfortunately named Bog Trail that winds through a little canyon so beautiful it reminded both me and Jamey separately of Glendalough.

From there to the opposite corner of the city for swimming lessons (the short people) and coffee (me and Jeremy.) Claire won a ribbon for her backstroke – she has very nearly topped out of the swim school – and we made it into Lucca’s delicatessen five minutes before it closed, so we’re having fresh ravioli and Doctor Who for dinner.

“I’m so tired. I had a long day,” I said to Jeremy.

“I know,” he said. “I was there! And it all started with a kazoo.”

It’s our twelfth wedding anniversary. I was campaigning to have this recognized as the horse anniversary, but the universe wants to make it all about kazoos.

After we got home from Claire’s fencing lesson, I translated Julia’s homework while Jeremy and Claire wrote a script in Python to generate 90 times-table problems.

Jeremy explained each part of the script to Claire, and Julia and I had a bath together. We played the game where I pretend to call her while she is away at college.

Me: “Whatcha doin’?”

Jules: “Studying biology.”

Me: “What’s your college like? Is it like Hogwarts?”

Jules: “Yeah but we don’t do magic. We do science. It’s Hogscience.”

We agreed that when she and I are both dead, we will have a little cottage in heaven with a pasture for Alfie and Bellboy to share. We will spend our afterlife gardening and teaching ourselves the rest of mathematics.

This is just to say that I love my little family, and I love our life together, here, now. I am so happy.

Dez took off her own spurs and buckled them on under my chaps: “Your leg’s quiet enough now.” Alex had already put the rope gag bit on Bella: “Your hands are quiet enough.” Responsible horsepeople won’t give you the grown-up kit until you’ve proved you won’t misuse it.

Bella, moving off my leg. Bella giving me more forward than I was asking for: the best and most welcome of mistakes. Bella stepping up from behind and flowing forward. My hands quiet and still, my elbows floppy.

Bella reaching down into the contact.

I kind of hate myself for loving my Kindle so much, except that it was a Christmas present from Jeremy so that makes it okay. I spent the best bits of my childhood in second hand bookstores and am gutted to see them close. I love public libraries and the smell of binding-glue, but the fact remains that I have read two library books in the eight weeks since I got the Kindle. And thirty e-books.

Those numbers are probably skewed by the fact that I slept in Sydney, Scone, Barraba, Nana Glen, Phoenix, New York, Orlando and Los Angeles as well as my own bed over the same period. The Kindle wins hands-down when I am traveling – whether it’s having a library to dig into on a transcontinental flight, or streaming audiobooks onto the car stereo on road trips. I used to get a bad back on business trips from the combination of MacBook and library books. Now I have the Air and the Kindle and I feel light as a feather.

All other things being equal, I’d still pick the book over the e-book. Good as it is, the e-ink hurts my eyes, especially at night, and it’s just not as pleasurable to curl up with the Kindle. That said, all other things aren’t equal. When I can order a book from SFPL and get it some weeks or months in the future, albeit free, or buy it off Amazon and read it straight away, it’s quite difficult to resist the lure of instant gratification. The two library books I did wait for – Hilary McKay’s Wishing for Tomorrow and Penelope Mortimer’s About Time – I waited for because they’re not available on Kindle yet.

The selection for Kindle is actually a bit shit. I don’t think my tastes are especially nichey but there isn’t enough Australian fiction or really good history. There are surprising gaps: David Marr’s Panic is on Kindle but his Dark Victory isn’t, for example. I got the whole Casson family series _except_ the fourth of five. Huh?

The selection for Kindle isn’t as shit as the selection for audiobooks, but at least it’s possible to see the point of that: the audiobook for Sabriel, for example, features Tim Curry reading aloud for twelve hours, which has an ungainsayable scarcity value to it. (The audiobook of Sabriel is perfect, by the way, except that Curry’s voice for Sabriel herself is a little too girly. Eventually I decided that Sabriel is a transwoman, which vastly improved the whole book for me. I’ve raved elsewhere about the greatness of history on audiobook, but fiction’s pretty awesome too.) But Kindle books are digital textfiles, and I am Web-native enough to shake a fist at the sky! when told that such things cannot be provided.

Upshot anyway is that I read virtually everything on the Kindle now, love its portability and capacity, am satisfied with its readability in brightly lit playgrounds and have taught myself to borrow Kindle books from the library. Still borrow books from the library but at a much slower pace. Have filled my request queue with graphic novels, which I love anyway, so, win. Love the highlighting feature and wanna figure out how to output it to a Tumblr. Would, honestly, recommend the Kindle to any other voracious reader still hesitating. But please go spend too much money in your local independent bookstore also!

For my birthday, my subconscious gave me a Constellation Games dream. My sister and I were science bloggers a la Xeni Jardin, and we’d spent months living with and getting to know the Farang. Now they were taking us diving in their ice lake. I held onto my host’s thick, muscular tail as we went down, down, down into the black cold. Then we surfaced in a brightly lit cave and I flailed around in surprise and delight while my Farang friend(s) laughed and laughed.

Well done, my id! Boy, do you know the kind of thing I like!

1. We have given the girls an allowance, so Claire set up a Kiva account and made a loan.

2. Me to Julia, unjustly: Claire is so grumpy. She gets that from Bebe.

Julia, without hesitation: She gets it from you.

Sunday I was an hour and a half early to my lesson, to Jeremy’s infinite amusement. I hung out in the cafe in Ladera watching Men With European Cars. It was one of those meetings where they stand around looking at engines and discussing detailing. O the infinity of my scorn, but standing around discussing flexion and distances is the same exact thing. I am lucky, they are lucky, to be so fond of something so complicated.

I rode Austin, as I have not done in ages. I first rode him when I was still in my twenties and he was barely more than a colt. He’s my friend Beth’s horse and he’s one of the best horses in the world. I’d put my kids on him without hesitation, and yet I can ask him for flying changes and lateral work and he’ll give them willingly. That’s rarer and more precious than anything you can imagine.

I told Nicole I wanted to work on having a more consistent leg and a more following hand, which turned out to be a mistake, because she cranked up my stirrups to jockey length to stretch the tendons and everything still hurts. It worked, of course, and I went on to ride Austin really well, which is lucky because Beth came to watch. The last course we rode was good, and the last line especially good; I relaxed and sank into the saddle and Austin liked that.

I was sugar crashing when I got home and had to collect the Fitzhardinges. I desperately wanted the linguini and clams from Park Chow, as you do, but I knew I couldn’t make it that far. I was finding a place to park near Church and Market when Jeremy reminded me that there is another Chow right there. When my linguini appeared in front of me I was teary with the pleasure of a wish come true.

We met Gilbert and Heather and Heath and Ada in GG Park and rented paddleboats and had pirate and accordion battles all around Strawberry Hill. Then we climbed the hill, passing a drag queen photo shoot at the waterfall. In the ruins on the peak the four children fell into a complex and brilliant medieval castle game that I was sad to have to end, so we planned a picnic there next week for a rematch.

When the sibling rivalry was at its boringest late last year I tried a two-pronged approach. First, we instituted and enforced some non-negotiables: you will speak to one another with respect; you will respect one another’s personal space.

Second, shameless bribery. A child could report an act of kindness undertaken towards it by another child. On receipt of such reports, both children earned a point. No points were earned for self-reported acts of kindness. At some arbitrary threshold, points can be redeemed for valuable prizes (tea at Lovejoy’s.)

They earned eight and a half points non-ironically before Claire figured out how to game the system, conspired with Julia to perform a short role-play and presented us with the hilariously unconvincing spectacle of: “the children being nice to one another.” I kept a straight face and gave them each a point.

Tonight Claire and I were talking about some school exercises that bore her. I told her that the trick was figuring out how to hack them. We’re middle-class people. We have to jump through hoops to earn our bread. But we can at least jump through hoops in ways we find amusing. I used the sibling rivalry exercise, and the way she hacked it, as my example.

We’d had a perfect day. The weather was divine and we spent most of our time at Adventure Playground in Berkeley, which has got to be one of the nicest places in the world. But the no-contest awesomest moment of the day was Claire’s expression when she realized that I had tricked her and her sister into joining forces for a prank.

J: “I had a thought. As I was watching the blood and cream pool at the bottom of the dishwasher. I thought, this is what a Mongol nomad’s dishwasher must look like.”

Reader, I married him.