Sunny San Jose Salutations!

California is AWESOME! Shame it’s all gonna fall into the ocean – which makes Vegas more appealing since it has potential to be oceanfront property if Nostradamus and the San Andreas fault play out.

We are pre-boarding and have that refugee look assumed by everyone on the last day of even the most successful vacations. Talk about a missed revenue opportunity. Sure, folks with crutches and infants should board early, but there’s a whole sect of us coming off of a week of Americana in close hotel and rental car quarters that would gladly pay extra to board early and enjoy a cocktail. Growing up, my kid sis Kelly and I got “airplane juice” before each flight. In case you’ve never had “airplane juice” it’s also known as “grape flavored Benadryl”. An absolute fact my mother denies vehemently. Funny we could get away with it as a kid but now, rules rules rules. And I take my airplane juice more in the form of Maker’s Mark and coke or Hendricks and tonic since I’d just look ridiculous chugging a bottle of Benadryl on the jetway. We don’t have high standards. But we don’t have “no” standards either. Some downtime facing four hours of flight time and a return to reality would be nice – just sayin’.

How you feeling now that you’ve got the chemo hell and damnation raining on your parade? Full steam recovery ahead! So, back to this coma induced stuff – did you have crazy dreams? I know some people that would take that just to get more than 4 hours solid sleep. During residency, Kelly and her friends would go to work early, hook up an IV and fast track that hangover cure medicinally. Which seemed extreme and ingenious. So hopefully the upside to the coma was that you caught up on all the sleep lost having four children over the past decade.

The latest (as I head back to) upscale Mayberry:

So, this card was originally chosen in the spirit of our upcoming tbd girls trip UNTIL I realized that of the two dogs, I was clearly the yeti blonde Oscar oaffy dog to your little perfectly coifed petite brunette Felix dog. Hence, I know see the big manly significant other dog of our better halves Colin/Pete to their well-heeled you/me.

Pete says you get “full say” over the girls trip. I said:

1. I was certain you wanted my travel savvy cosmopolitan input;
2. We both like to drink the same stuff, so agreeing on local will be a non-issue; and,
3. Comments like THAT are why he doesn’t get to go (okay, I didn’t really say this 3d part, but I thought it VERY LOUDLY).

He tried to chastise my comments with “the serious look”. My m om was “the look champene: woman could turn you, your foreseeable future, hopes and dreams to stone while relaying that all privileges north of food and shelter would be revoked. I wish I had that power over my kids. Thing is, Pete’s look is more John Belushi Animal House than Glenn Close Fatal Attraction. So the effect feels a little ambushed.

Having spent a lot of “close enough to see my phone screen because is not blind nor being snoopy” time by me this past week, Pete noticed I spend more time surfing male parenting blogs than mom blog subscriptions. As a single parent, it’s incumbent to balance both sides of the gender influence fence – especially since I’ve got a son that I am raising to be an empathetic strong man and a daughter that I want to be in healthy versus toxic relationships (unlike her mother’s supposedly “play it safe choice” – look how that turned out). So I subscribe to maternal and paternal sites.

Best internet move ever!

Dad blogs are so much better than mom blogs. The one I like best is Fatherly.com. It’s like a mental internet oasis of blog parenting porn.

Momsadvice.com and workingmom blogs sample headlines:

• Best party cake flavors to overcome working mom guilt;
• Most mom approved swimsuits for your tween;
• Get your kids to celebrate you with gifts that give back;
• How to make him (hubby) appreciate you like you deserve;
• Best way to spruce up an old suit

VERSUS

Fatherly.com sample headlines:

• Six fun sex positions for flexible couples;
• What men see when they look at boobs, according to science (so it MUST be true, especially since I’m reading it on the internet);
• Best last minute amazon prime day deals;
• Raise your son to be a backbone, not a bully;
• 5 best bourbon cocktails and the secret to great sex after the kids go to bed;
• Yes, sometimes your wife needs more sleep than you. Here’s why

If given a choice between mom versus dad blog, anyone that says they prefer reading mom blogs IS A LIAR! You know how Playboy used to truly publish really intuitively thought-provoking articles, but most people thought it was a farce? Dad blogs are the next gen inverse publication version of that: they start out seeming super legit but then shock ya’ with a little spicy. They highlight just enough articles about beer to divert the judgmental (and, let’s fact it, largely female) naysayers off their scent. Literary camouflage.

Speaking of genius, we toured Stanford while in NorCal. 4% admission, $68K A YEAR (as in each and every year you go there you have to pay that), and Syd loved it. I say dream big. She says that her getting into Stanford would mean I’d be too poor to visit often. Pete next beat countered saying that I can live for free with him in Vegas which is DRIVING distance any California campus. 97% of Stanford students live on campus. The guide said this is to instill school pride. Melarchy! We all know it is really because a craphole she-shed in Palo Alto without reliable plumbing costs north of $1M there. Fiscally on campus is not “an option”; it’s “the only” option.

The school was incredible. I totally get it. They’ve got groups for every interest. The student union post for a cultural book club caught my eye. This month’s focus was Indian literature. They are reading books on Sacagawea and the Trail of Tears, whereas I am currently reading “Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows.”

Thank god my kids are smarter than me.

Back at the hotel pool, other largely very intense Asian and Indian families were discussing college tours to Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and the like. Behind them sat Julian in the hot tub making a hair mohawk and bubbled ‘stache and beard out of the jet foam. Reassurance that at least my crew of round eyes is well-humored.

Miss ya tons.

Hang in there – xoxox love ya, Stormy