I wasn’t letting myself think about San Francisco. I wasn’t allowing myself to really believe that I was going there again. Sure, the trip, in my head, I knew that I was flying into SFO, the airport I could navigate through with my eyes closed, just by nature of the sights and smells. But in my head, I just kept thinking about it as “BlogHer”, not letting myself think about the swoopy hills and the delicious anonymous fog and the way the mist makes your skin tingle when it hits your face. I wasn’t letting myself think about that first amazing whiff of eucalyptus or the way that the waves rolling in from the Pacific in the shadow of a giant windmill makes my stomach do crazy twisty turning flipflops with excitement. I knew that those things existed, but I was there for business, strictly business and I would be as a eunuch, immune to San Francisco’s lure.
I woke up at 4:15 am, threw on the clothing I had layed out the night before, threw my sleep snorkel into my suitcase and was on the beltline by 4:30, which was just stupid because I automatically accounted for traffic and of course, there is no traffic before 5 am. I settled into my seat, threw on Esteban’s borrowed Bose headphones and got ready for a Dead Like Me cross-country marathon. In Detroit, a very charming girl from Borders convinced me to buy the Twilight book when I pouted that she didn’t have book five in the Gossip Girls series, but I never picked it up. When I landed, it was almost lunch time in San Francisco, but I had been up for 8 hours at that point, and had a mad craving for some char siu bao, so I texted Ian and told him to meet me at Cityview on Commercial, home of the best dim sum ever. I chose wisely, as Ian is always game for the sum of dim. I checked into the Blogher hotel, then grabbed a cab and waited for Ian. I had forgotten, though, that he no longer worked just up the block, but he go there and we basically ordered one of everything that came by, except for the deep-fried chicken feet, which are just… no.
After a delicious lunch, we parted ways and I walked up to Mnkythmp to do some official business for Product Fiend where my agenda was to receive a facial and a Redken deep-conditioning treatment plus a hair glossing. I know it’s a hard job, but someone’s got to do it. Mopie was also receiving treatments, and we also saw Stephanie Klein there as well, and heard that Stephanie Quallo had been in earlier. On the street, Mo and I were talking about how much we were looking forward to seeing Evany and blammo, Evany bumped into us literally 90 seconds later, leaving me to announce that I was also looking forward to seeing Neil Patrick Harris. But nothing happened. Figures.
After our prettiness, we went back to the hotel and I changed out of my grubby flying clothes into something decent to meet Shannonk for dinner at a wine bar, which was delightful, although the jet lag and my early morning was catching up with me and I wimped out around 9 pm PST. The next day was full of Blogher-ness, lots of hugging and also, I got my princess time, along with apparently everyone at Blogher. But with all that estrogen floating around, I’m not surprised. In fact, I suspect even the guys were starting to maybe feel cranky and bloated and craving something salty sweet, like chocolate covered bacon perhaps. I’m not going to recap any Blogher stuff here, though, so you’ll have to get the dirt over at Elastic Waist.
We didn’t have an official dinner thing for Blogher, and Luminatrix had hooked up to see if I’d have time for coffee or something, so I invited her to dinner with myself, Fu and Pie. I couldn’t think of any decent edibles in the Union Square area (and outright refused to go to the Cheesecake Factory) but then it occurred to me that we could just cab over to my favorite restaurant in town, Home on Market. Everyone cosigned that, so we were quickly indulging in sloppy joe dip, cornbread with honey butter, and many delicious dinners and sides. And we were so early that it was still happy hour. Bonus!
After we were finished with our Blogher commitments, we went to Mas at Shannonk’s for an amazing vegetarian, gluten-free dinner, with strawberry shortcake for dessert, including cream whipped by hand! I’m so impressed by that, because if it were me, I would have been like “Let’s be like the English and have just plain sweetened cream on the berries, hmmm?”
San Francisco is delicious in an inexplicable way, the way that sometimes I am standing in the middle of a bunch of strangers and someone will get excited about the same things that make me excited or a drag queen will sing an amazing rendition of Radiohead’s “Creep”, bringing the mofo house down and I just think to myself “These are my people. Right here. This is it.”
And that’s where I left off last night while sitting outside of gate 8 at DTW before finding out that my plane’s gate was changed to 31 and then getting home ridiculously late. There is much more to say, things about an unexpected brunch with a bff that I didn’t know was going to be there for his own commitments, and zooming up the Great Highway in a teeny little BMW with the top down, seat heaters firing. There is much more to say, about flashing a room full of bloggers, about wearing rhinestoney gold strappy sandals for much too long, about reacquainting with a certain pirate, and about the way you can feel lost and at home all at the very same time.
But now, I have crossed back into the real world, back home in my own bed by midnight, up at dawn to go to my very same and boring day job, spent managing the actions of people in a country where it’s tomorrow already, and what really matters is that at 9 am, my sister came up behind me, panicked, her voice small and afraid, like she sounded when she was little and had a skinned knee, except this time, it was because she had just found out that her ex-husband’s sister (Abby’s other godmother) woke up this morning, chatted for a few minutes with her husband about getting their two young boys up, maybe talked about which cereals they could eat, how they needed to be ready for their day, and then when her husband went back into the bedroom, she was on the floor unconscious and then she was in the ambulance, and then it was too late. Then this vibrant, 35-or-so-year-old supermom of a woman was gone. In the space of an instance. And that’s how everything comes crashing to a halt and you just have to sit in stunned silence and be amazed at how there is never enough.
Nothing is ever enough.
