Posted 10:10 PM by Michelle
The last two days have been some of the best of my life. For once I'm going to shut up and let pictures do the talking...


Me making lasagna for a wine dinner...


The best group of friends a girl could have, including the one taking the picture...


a typical day in St Helena...


Easy like Saturday afternoon after a 1PM breakfast...


Yoga in the sunshine...


with friends.

I have a great life.

Posted 9:57 PM by Michelle
Sometimes I'm so wrapped up in dooce.com that anything I had to say before checking out the pictures of the month-old frog baby is suddenly long gone from consciousness. I want to do a lot of things in my life- in fact, the Peace Corps suddenly decided to knock on my door again- but one of them is have children.

Now I consider myself to be a rather evolved woman- just tonight I smacked my friend Jon when he said that one needed estrogen in her system to enjoy "Girl With a Pearl Earring". I had to point out that I was the one who declared the movie a "yawn fest" even before the rollups began. I am no clothes horse, no shoe hound, and I've only read the first "Flowers in the Attic" book and I was like 13 at the time. I am single because I (gasp!) want to be and I am cavalier where many women are precious. But I see a mom playing with her little boy at Jamba Juice, or a mom-to-be with a swollen tummy and dewy skin, or a mom in a hospital with five children constantly checking up on her and I know that one of the things I want to do in my life is have kids. I'm not saying tomorrow or anything, just eventually. I want to have babies and I want them to turn into children and then into adults. I don't really care if it's instinctual or social or anything else over which I have no control. I just want it to happen. Someday. Clearly not soon, but soon-ish. Soon on a glacial scale.

That being said, it's bedtime.

Posted 11:03 PM by Michelle
Well, geeze, I never thought I'd have to keep up with Sean as far as sheer volume is concerned. But tonight's blog is going to mercifully short, as I must be up in less than seven hours to work out, make breffast, and get to the church on time.

I left my mom two hours ago in the care of an angry, bitter nurse who decided to rip off my mom's BP monitor because he "want(ed) that machine". No matter that my mom's BP has been terrifyingly low on my watch, and no matter that the decided to give her her BP meds even though she lost a lot of blood during surgery. Hello, duh, do the math, folks. But all in all, she's had really wonderful nurses and interns and doctors so I guess I can't begrudge one angry nurse on the graveyard shift. Actually, I do begrudge him. I told mom to use the "F" word as much as she wanted if he started treating her badly. I know how she likes to swear when people are stupid.

It felt ridiculous to be driving home to Napa with my mom in the hospital three more days, but what else can I do. I have to ride out this week at work and then turn around Monday and explain to my new job that they need to give me the job they promised me rather than the one they've decided to lay on me at the last second. But that's a whole nother story.

I'm exhausted and I miss my cat and I'm broke and my mom is sleeping in a crowded, shared room in a hospital two hours away. But, y'know, spending a day in a hospital reminds me that my life is pretty sweet. It's hard to even write that, but it's clearly the truth.

Posted 10:56 PM by Michelle
I need to say, first and foremost, that the Oscar sweep by LOTR is the most deserved ever. I obviously wished that Viggo Mortensen and Orlando Bloom had been on hand, but it was great to see the hobbits and the fabulous Peter Jackson all together, and to watch every facet of those movies honored over and over again. Just incredible. My kids are going to think that the only cool thing about their mom is that she witnessed these movies when they first came out, that she watched Peter Jackson win his Oscar. I’m so proud of all those folks, seemingly the entirety of New Zealand, and so thankful that they made these movies. I know it may be sad and weird, but the Lord of the Rings trilogy improved the last three years of my life.

I started my new job on Friday, went to a particularly raucous wine dinner Friday night, worked my last day at the winery on Saturday, and then attended the Frog’s Leap Year Party (or whatever the heck it was called) Saturday night well into Sunday morning. Needless to say, I have a cold. The party on Saturday was insane. The owner of Frog’s Leap Winery throws it every leap year, and it is treated like a New Year’s Eve. Clearly my New Year’s this year was pathetic, so I was ready to be amongst revelers, and my god did this party deliver. There were some 700 people there, a billion gallons of wine, great food, and one hell of a band. Elizabeth and I saw a lot of people we knew, and met a whole host of new friends. Near the end of the night, as I was busy destroying my feet on the dance floor, a short bald guy grabbed me and started swinging me around. He was incredible- in control but wild, such a good leader, so much fun. Perhaps it was the drink, but by the end of the dance I was a little bit in love. In the middle of a second dance, he begged his leave, saying he had to help his friend (who was, oddly, the tall and bald one). Something was going terribly wrong in their night, and I saw them leaving a few minutes later. “What’s your name? Where are you from?” I asked my dance partner. He told me his name and then said, “Washington. Washington D.C.” What do you do? “I work for the White House”.

“NOOOOO!” I cried. “Oh, yes!” he said. I turned and walked away, and remember thinking to myself, “I could almost fall in love with a Republican if he dances like that.” Clearly, that, if nothing else, is a sign that I’d had too much to drink.

I’m not entirely ready to write about my new job. There are politics involved that are almost overwhelming, and at this point I’m not entirely clear on what it is I’ll be doing. I start my first full week tomorrow, and I hope to have a better sense of it by week’s end. I hope I like it.