When Annie was a little girl, everytime we'd pull the car up in front of the house, Bill would announce, "Home again, home again, jiggity-jig." He doesn't say that any more -- that "little girl" is turning 16 next month -- but the phrase still runs through my mind whenever we get home from a trip.

Techno-nude in the wilderness. Spring-fed lakes, hot springs, blue jays, cedar pines, granite boulders and peaks. This was the year things broke (lantern, camping chair, storage container, shoes) and bears made off with our well-marbled culotte steaks. This was the year the young dog swam and swam, and the old dog almost didn't make it up the trail. This was the year when the three of us compulsively played poker using sticks and stones as chips and talked into the night.

I didn't blog, I didn't call, I didn't write... and it was wonderful.

~

Arriving home -- I have a new column up at Literary Mama. It's about winning the Red Room Housewarming Party contest (remember that?)

"I know people who seem to morph: one year she's a radical lesbian scorning the system and five years later she's an upper-middle class doctor's wife driving carpool; one year he's the CFO of a pharmaceutical startup and five years later he's grown a shaggy beard and lives in an old-growth Redwood tree in Humboldt County. I don't usually think of myself as so mutable, but I've recently morphed into a Popular Girl; I just beat a thousand other authors for the Grand Prize in an Internet popularity contest."

Read the rest here: The Popular Girl.

~

My body is tired, my lips sunburnt, my heart happy. Summer is over and school starts this week. I'm back. Home again, home again, jiggity-jig.

Did you miss me?