I should preface this post with a clarifying point, since so many of you were kind enough to wish me a happy birthday because of the title of my last post. The Birthday Month is a family construct wherein one's birthday is celebrated the entire month. My birthday is not until the 20th, actually, but when July hits, I immediately feel possessive of it and just a tad giddy. Add the Pacific Ocean and old friends and you get weepy joy. So you can all continue to wish me happy birthday all. month. long. If you want.
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After a couple of days in San Francisco and Tiburon, including a lovely Haight-Ashbury walk/highschool visit with Asia and Jeremy and a lovely dinner at our favorite vegan restaurant, Millennium, with Melissa and Derek, the whole crew met up at my family's house in Tiburon to begin our caravan to Dillon Beach, a tiny town 90 minutes north of San Francisco.
First of all, when planning a beach house weekend, I highly recommend planning the food as a group IN ADVANCE. Do NOT take all eight of you to Whole Foods and Trader Joes and just start buying. We ended up with soooooo much food. Ridiculous amounts of food. Obscene amounts. of food.
This is the first time I have been to the beach house since it was finished - I saw it in construction last March with no walls, etc. Here is the view when you walk in the front door.
It feels like you are floating ON the water. It feels, in fact, much like a cruise ship. Heh.
In any case, we put away as much as would fit in the fridge and then some of us were moved to head down the ravine to the beach.
Wes and I are both fond of rocky, not-too-hot beaches. Dillon gets a few sunny hours, but is often foggy and cold. Just right for sun-haters like us. Wes on the rocks:
Some of us were then moved to throw a football around on the beach. This did not include Wes (busy climbing rocks) or Lissa and I, who sat in the tidepool area and felt superior - how is throwing a ball around FUN? Now I have the ball, now you have the ball, now I have the ball, now you have the ball. Please. THEN - some of us were moved to play SHIRTLESS even though it was shivery cold. Could someone please explain to me why 15 year old boys act like such dolts? This was a luck shot of our shirtless, macho, Gargantuan Man Boy mid-air:
We cooked a great dinner the first night, as mentioned. Everything was quite lovely and happy. There were card games and visits to the hot tub. Those of us on the first floor eventually conked and left GMB with the rowdy downstairs crowd, which would become something of a theme. He doesn't like to miss a minute and naturally prefers the company of our friends to... well, us. I was the same way when I was his age and hanging out with my mom's friends.
Sunday morning we roused the gang as early as possible to kayak in Tomales Bay. It was cold. Foggy and cold. We were all shivering while waiting around to get going, which meant that even the most reticent of us donned wet suits to keep warm. It definitely worked. Once we got moving, I was toasty the whole time. And of course we looked damn hot in them.
A few things happened on our kayak trip. One, the pregnant one and her hubby tired out early on and headed to the nearest beach to lay around until we returned to find them later and assure them that they could make it back across the water with us. Two, Asia and her hubby fought all the way up until lunch because of a faulty rear seat in their kayak - apparently this is the second time that double kayaks have led to fights in this happy household so all future kayak trips will be done singly. Three, halfway across the bay, I tired out entirely. My arms were absolutely DONE. I started freaking out. Not only was I tired and stuck in the middle of a largish body of water, but here was another thing that I used to enjoy doing that fibromyalgia has taken away from me. I had a pretty major tantrum there in the middle of the water, totally frustrated because I couldn't make my arms work the way I wanted them to and even when I REALLY tried, when I groaned and shouted and paddled harder, we just couldn't seem to get going in the right direction. We kept turning downstream and it seemed like the current was just getting the better of us over and over. Until... I remembered that these kayaks had rudders.Which were controlled by the rear passengers FEET. And where were Wes' feet? on the rudder controls. Mindlessly. With no knowledge of what they were or how to work them. We weren't listening very closely when we got going. We've done this before, after all. But not with rudders. So Wes had been ruddering us in small circles in the middle of the water as I cried and cried. Never before have we both been so truly culpable in one of my tantrums. After we figured out the rudder, we were able to get into our excellent double paddling groove and catch up with Asia and her husband, Zach and GMB who were far, far ahead of us.
By the way, Zach and GMB, both in single kayaks, had a lovely easy time of it. Hmph.
We had a a nice picnic on a rocky, mussel-ish, totally secluded beach.
Wes loves kayaking, especially when I am not crying:
While picnicking we realized that none of us had a watch and we didn't know how long we had been out. I, always the scientist, built a sundial. Many (Wes) doubted my expertise on this matter and refused to believe that it was somewhere between one and two. 
But I was totally correct, as we discovered when we found Lissa and Derek and paddled back a full hour earlier than we had to. Kayaking made us tired. 
When we got back to the house, I was strangely energized by having survived kayaking and wanted to build a sand castle with the molds I had found in the Tomales general store. My girls came with me to help. Well, Asia helped and Lissa watched.
Asia, ever the perfectionist, worked on perfecting the forms of the structures and ended up creating an entire village. I, never one to care too much about details, made sort of sad, easily dissolvable forms in the shape of a castle with a wall. We decided my part was the ruined castle left after the uprising of the proletariat ex-serfs living in Asia's village:
Then, things got a little crazy.
At first, everything was fine. I was working on the extensive chopping necessary for my dinner preparations, Wes was squeezing a bajillion limes for margaritas. Then, as is typical, he finished squeezing and asked how to make margaritas. So then I was researching margarita recipes online and he was taking pictures on the deck.
I discovered a recipe that called for 1.5 oz tequila to every 1 oz of lime juice and we went with that. Which was a mistake. Wes downed two of them in quick succession. And Wes can barely handle two drinks made in a restaurant, let alone two STRONG drinks.
As Wes was getting toasted, I was using the leftover lime juice and entirely silly amounts of sugar and ice to create a slushy virgin margarita for Lissa the Pregnant. Then we decided to take a picture so we can show it to the future child and tell it how mommy drank all the way through the second trimester. Heh heh.
Soon after this, I started to hurt A LOT. Kayaking and sandcastles caught up with me and mowed. me. down. My arms were in so much pain I could barely think. To finish my dinner preparations, it was necessary to wear a really attractive icy-hot patch on my arm - Wes kept moving it back and forth between my arms to try to alleviate the searing, wormy pain. It was truly the worst I have felt in years. Why did I think I could kayak exactly? Here is a view of the stylish patch. Notice the state of my hair, as it illustrates how I feel quite well:
A large part of our gang were playing poker using Good N Plenty's as the chips. I think that the Notorious C.U.Z. was down by a lot, because he kept telling them that they were homophobes when they took his money. Later, long after Wes was passed out and I was moaning myself to sleep, this motley gang created new, gayer forms of poker involving king jack pairs and something called the glory hole. And yes, GMB was up with them when they created this game. Excellent.
We made it to dinner, Wes and I, in large part thanks to the previously unknown fact that GMB can cook! He asked if he could mince the parsley and I wasn't sure if I should let him or if it would be quicker to do it myself. I really wasn't in good shape, though, so I turned the job over to him. Soon he was everyone's prep chef, mincing everything in sight. Z said he wished he had a kitchen assistant at all times.
This is the final picture of Wes for the evening. He couldn't stop laughing. Taken moments before the part where he couldn't stop the room from spinning. I truly haven't seen him like this since 1997 (the night that he and Melissa spent an hour in the bathroom babytalking about how to hang up the towels). The shirt, one of my favorites of his, says, "Everything you like I liked five years ago."
Even though I had sobbing meltdowns both during and after kayaking, and even though Wes got totally blasted and passed out before he got to play the only game he actually enjoys (Celebrity), we were both REALLY sad to leave the beach house. It is my new favorite place and I am so glad that we have this wonderful escape.
We all headed back to the city and had dinner with our familes, except for Lissa and Derek who had the world's WORST luck ever trying to get some food on Clement Street before meeting up at the Danube. In the end, Lissa had a Danube sandwich while we spent a few last minutes together at the cafe where I spent the bulk of the second half of high school. This is the place where I first met Z, actually.
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Our flights home went smoothly.
But one hour before I landed at JFK, I realized something.
I forgot to order the sperm.
I was on CD 8 yesterday. I was one day away from finishing my Clomid dose. And we had nothing with which to inseminate me. Which would probably be taking place Monday, if not earlier.
I freaked out silently for the rest of the flight. I picked my nails down to bloody nubs. How could I do something so STUPID?? I got all lost in my vacation. I RELAXED!!!!!
I didn't know if they would be able to get it to NYC by Friday. Mondy might work, but it might be too late. Not to mention that I was terrified they would be out of our donor. I started to envision another round of donor-searching but this time at a breakneck, frenzied pace so we could get it ordered immediately. I worried myself into a dazed stupor. But there was nothing I could do until this morning.
I can't tell you how THRILLED I am to report that they were not out. I ordered enough for two more tries so we won't have to do this again next month.
It should be illegal to tell anyone using Alternative Insemination to RELAX. What a crock.
