How wonderful it is to have family in town! We wandered around our downtown yesterday and then had yummy dinner, which Monstro had to leave halfway through because BK was NOT in the mood to hang out at a restaurant, thank you very much. Today we're off to the butterfly museum (live ones, not The Collector-style ones with pins through their abdomens), then it's lunch at the fondly named Nana's Restaurant, and who knows for the afternoon. Shall keep y'all posted. Wish you were here, MM

Floors mopped, bathroom scrubbed, bed made: it can only mean one thing... company's coming! Welcome to MA, Auntie Lynn and Uncle Lee! See you later today!

Tried to take both boys to the mall without or bodyguard, nanny, or other assistance. Big mistake. Then BK didn't sleep in the afternoon. I threw in the towel and took a nap -- wasn't much else I could do at that point. Cheers to Monstro for taking one for the team. Let's hope today is a better day. Of course, the nanny is coming for BK, and Lex is going to his nana's for the morning and lunchtime. I'll probably be cleaning the house. Whoo!

Babykins, heretonow known as BK around these parts, turned one year old today, which makes me happy, because it means that Monstro and I have kept yet another child alive for one entire year. It was pretty touch-and-go around the seven-month mark, what with getting up five times a night since his birth until then, but now, he is a sunny, happy baby, walking everywhere and worshipping the ground upon which his brother walks.

Happy birthday, BK. Mommy loves you!

"Turn to the centerfold. Then flip back about 50 pages to the Letters to the Editor, where my letter leads the section."

(Issue date September 2009, with Heidi Montag Pratt on the cover.)

They're afraid it's going to be the end of their all-paid-for happy pills and painkillers and pain crushers and pain get the fuck out of my body whilst I trip the light fantastic pills, which are what allows people to toe the party line in the first place.

And the country's old men are afraid that the government's going to know that they need pills to get hard. (Guess what, fellas? It already does.)

And our happy little haze of aren't we wonderful is going to crash from the sky like that plane over Lockerbie in 1988 whose bomber just got sent home from jail, which has me so, pissed, off. Even if they are calling it "compassionate grounds."

Oh, and the senators are stomping their little Gucci-toed feet because they're scared that if their constituents aren't stoned then we might actually show some signs of giving a rat's "feels like a snake tail" (thanks Lex) and holding them accountable by sending them to our overcrowded-but-at-least-they're-massively-expensive prisons, and they'll pay for the privilege of their stay.

Look: if you can't get decent medical care here, you can go somewhere to an equivocally suited hospital in another country and get it done there. I wrote about it for Wallet Blog a while ago. For me, the best medical care I ever received was in Germany. I didn't pay for it. Alex's stepmother got really sick in Scotland, was in hospital there for six months, and at the end of her treatment they wished her well and sent her on her merry way, fee-free. I got sick in France and an English-speaking doctor was AT MY FRIEND'S HOUSE at 9:30 on a Saturday, gave me a cursory exam in the living room, and sent me to the lab for tests. The lab was three blocks away, and also open on Saturday morning. Urinalysis results were back in an hour and I got a bottle of pills for it, which I (sing it with me now) did not have to pay for. I didn't pay a dime for any of it. Neither did my hosts.

So there you go. I want doctors to be compensated because it costs a shitload of money to get through undergrad and med school and believe me, $150K student loans are not an aberration to people in the medical field. I want no-hassle heath care and provisions and research for any family members with either progressive or terminal diseases.

France, Germany, and to the best of my knowledge, the UK and Canada have all this. And we are, as a country, WAY better than they are. We should have effing invented universal health care. Seriously, people.

Whatever. Your Mileage May Vary.

So, by the time I was done uploading pictures to cvs.com last night, it was about 11:30. This month's Playboy had arrived while I was on vacation so I took it out of its privacy wrap to read it in bed. Really wish I hadn't turned to the Playboy Advisor section first, because by the time I saw that my letter is the lead-off on the Letters to the Editor page, it was close to midnight.

I've wanted to see my name in Playboy forever, so this is truly a dream come true.

Now, if they'd only give me a monthly column, I'd be set.

... is how long it took me to do the initial edit of 574 vacation photos. I rock.

...was a good book, but that's not what I'm talking about.

Right now, 574 photos are transferring from my Nikon D80 to my Macintosh HD.

I have almost caught up on the episodes of "18 Kids and Counting" that were missed whilst away in California.

Three weeks ago, I fulfilled a promise made 20 years earlier and returned the picture of Jon Ascher (misspelled on purpose for privacy reasons) as a 9-year-old Boy Scout to his mother, who entrusted the image to me as part of my Baccalaureate slide-show duties. She received it the day she returned from witnessing John's New York City Hall wedding. Congratulations, Jon. Glad I could kind of be a part of it.

Today, I received a thank-you 19 years in the making. Thanks, B. Glad I could help.

My 574 photos just finished downloading. Can't decide whether to look at the camping on Cape Cod, the 20-year high-school reunion, the lunch with the Darneels (sp again), or the taking-the-boys-to Russian River ones. Guess you'll find out soon enough! In any case, there's a lot going on and Babykins JUST went to bed, so I'm much too busy for actual housekeeping over here.

After nearly two blissful, awesome, remarkable weeks in California, we got back into Boston last night at 8:00 and it was 88 degrees outside. Had a total know-it-all sitting in front of me: "If you held him, he might stop crying." "Miss, it's inappropriate to do that here, you have to go to the head." Would have been a lot more inappropriate to walk to the back of the plane with bright-orange baby feces running down my arm. Anyway, except for him, the trip home was uneventful, and we were able to wrangle the kids and the baggage with little difficulty, thanks mostly to the kindness of strangers and the mental and physical endurance of Team Monstro-Motormouth. I have 540+ photos to download so I better get to it.

There's something poignant about John Hughes dying on the eve of my 20-year high-school reunion. As someone who has seen "Sixteen Candles" probably about a hundred times (and the ending itself about 150), I mourn his passing.