Still in Cali

We're still in Oakland, our flight back to New York this afternoon having been cancelled due to weather conditions. There's much to report, but I have no energy right now to get into any of it. It's been a good week with the man, with so many different tones of adventure I can't hold them all in a single thought. Easiest to call up is yesterday's wine country tour with my cousin. When I was here in December with my daughter, we did Napa. This time, we did Sonoma, which is much more laid back and free form. My husband enjoyed the tastings tremendously, as he does know his wines. Those chairs are where we sat with my lovely cousin at the end of the day looking out over the lake at the last winery, talking about everything, winding down.

We're just hitting our stride here in Oaktown. There's the hole in the wall Cajun breakfast place we found, the tapas bar with the great deviled eggs and ox tail, the seafood place on the marina, and tonight I took a wonderful 96-year-old to see Selma at Grand Lake theater, which my cousin tells us is a landmark of faded baroque radicalism near Lake Merritt.

Looking back on the week, we did a lot, even though my husband was sick on Wednesday, maybe with a touch of food poisoning, which caused a bit of distress between us, with me texting my son the EMT to talk to his father; his father not listening to either of us; and our son finally saying,"Look, you two are going to be a mess when you get old but you're not there yet, so cut it out. By that I mean, Mom, stop being so anxious, Daddy isn't dying although you make it sound like he is. And Daddy you need to stop being so stubborn and listen to what I'm telling you. I know what I'm taking about." Yes, our son can be bossy; don't have a clue where he learned that (well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it). The good news is my man was back to himself the next morning and the week was all uphill from there. The first couple of days I thought we had forgotten how to travel together but now we're just trundling along exploring, not putting too much pressure on ourselves, having experiences.