A Happy Mothers’ Day

We are back home again after our long weekend of fire-enforced evacuation, just in time for Mother’s day.

I am pleased to be back in my own bed and very happy to see Husband, the cat and some clean clothes, but I must admit I was enjoying my jaunt to Monterey enormously and felt slightly regretful to be leaving so soon.
By strange coincidence I ran into some friends at the Monterey Aquarium and we tootled around together. Later they rang to invite us to dinner at their home in Carmel which was enormous fun with the little ones playing riotous games and keeping each other entertained  so we grownups could get down to the serious business of drinking margaritas and watching our town burn on Google Earth.

The next day I was graced by an impromptu visit by the lovely Liberty London Girl, passing through on her way down south. This was our first meeting in real life and despite Four falling passionately in love and therefore constantly pestering her with questions, comments, and non-sequiturs, and One running laps around the coffee shop/ throwing himself off stairs or showing off madly by doing his breakdancing moves we actually managed to have a reasonably coherent grownup conversation which I enjoyed enormously despite the interruptions from the peanut gallery. She was lovely to the children and didn’t bat an eyelid at One’s apparent crack habit or at the TERRIBLE FOOTWEAR they were sporting.  The day before, in a moment of weakness, I had allowed them to bully me into buying them matching light-up shoes. They looked at me pleadingly with their big, wide, evacuee eyes and One even strung three words together (“No! Shoes, Mine!”) and I caved. Then they literally jumped for joy for 10 minutes so the shoes would flash over and over like a cheap motel sign. I do need to admit that a small part of me also wants light up shoes because they look really fun but I also think they look like they go with hats that hold beer cans and t shirts with pictures of pro wrestlers on them. I am aware that I am a sartorial joke these days, but I do try, on the whole, to stop my children from looking like trailer trash.

But really, the shoes are an automatic F.

Needless to say, and I’m sure you’d have guessed this if you read her blog, LLG herself looked a picture, particularly in the shoe department with a fab pair of red wedge sandals with matching toenails. Four pointed out to me later, scathingly, that I only had one pair of yucky sneakers and they were dirty. I did say in my defense that I had run away from a fire and I did have more shoes at home.
Yes, she knew, she said, but they were all boring and anyway my feet were old and smelly.

I wonder if there is anywhere one can exchange one’s feet for new ones? Perhaps easier to exchange one’s children..

This week I must wash away the ash from the house and garden, plan Four’s birthday party and most importantly PACK FOR LONDON.

Cannot WAIT.

One thing that LLG said really struck me, and that is that she has made many friends through blogging and Twitter, and that these are through choice and shared interest, rather than circumstance or inheritance. And this made me feel SO much better about all my virtual friends who seem much more real to me than the people around me in Stepford, most of whom I just can’t relate to.  Funnily enough I never thought of meeting any of them in real life because.. well… I don’t know- the internet is weird and full of scary people (like.. me)? I’m a hermit? Wasn’t sure what the protocol was (what a dweeb I am!)?

But now I’m extra excited about my lunch in London with the blogging ladies and I have plans to meet a couple of Twitter friends in LA when I return.

I feel like Sleeping Booty (as Four calls her, how apt) awakening from my 100 year slump-ber.

And as it’s Mother’s day, I am rather hoping that someone will bring me tea in bed.

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