And wow, it was hot. Duh, you say, but really you’re thinking, It’s summer, you freak! Yes, I am a freak because I live in a town wherein if the thermometer hits 80 everyone says, Oooh, I’m melting, and swoons into their sidewalk cafe chair, spilling their iced blended mocha all over their three-inch platform flip-flops. And now Fiesta is starting, a week-long celebration of colonial oppression. Santa Barbara was once home to lots and lots of Chumash Indians who were then enslaved by the Catholic padres to build a big, horrible symbol of oppression — I mean, a Mission. A big church. With murals. And a spooky graveyard. And gravely tolling bells. At Christmas they cart in a bunch of sheep and goats and pen them in around a life-size baby Jesus. It’s a big Holy Petting Zoo. You’d think that with attractions like that I’d be running to get Jackson baptized into such a fun-loving church as the church of Rome is. No, I’m afraid his immortal soul is in his own hands. As is everyone’s. Did anyone read that part in Edie where the author describes how all the Sedgwick ancestors were all buried in a circle, so that on Judgment Day they’d all rise up and they’d only have to look at each other without having to acknowledge all the tattered riff raff in their cheap suits buried around them? What kind of religion is that, I ask you. Is there a champagne room in the afterlife? A frequent flyer VIP lounge?

Anyway, Fiesta is either an excuse to put on a frilly shirt and go watch a bunch of adorable ten-year-old flamenco dancers, or an excuse to go get stinking, dick-in-the-dirt drunk while still wearing the tattered remains of your frilly shirt, which, if you’re not careful, you will be buried in — so shop wisely. I’m now at the point where I do my best to sidestep the political incorrectness of the occasion, simply so that everyone can enjoy their margaritas in peace. I may be a whiner, but I’m not a spoilsport.

But Hollywood week continues here on Fussy: Jack’s dad was on AMC this morning in a movie called Tension at Table Rock. It’s a not-too-bad grade-B cowboy flick, made in the fifties. Jack’s dad isn’t on the screen for five minutes before he gets shot and killed, of course, which made Jack’s mom laugh and laugh. (They were divorced when Jack was small.) She actually hooted, and said to Jackson, “Grandpa’s laying down!” Jackson seemed confused, since Grandpa’s been laying down under a big tree in Connecticut for about six years now, but things cleared up for him after I took him to the port-a-crib and forced him to take a nap. Then I sped away to the public library’s computer room, because God knows I can’t be separated from the Internet for more than forty-eight hours without breaking out in hives.

We’re going to visit Jack’s mom for a couple of days and we’re bringing a duffel bag full of laundry. Yes, two adults with a child and car payments are still bringing laundry to mom’s on the weekend. Oh, we almost had a washer/dryer, but then our landlord must have woken up one morning and said to herself, Why have I told my tenants they can buy a washer/dryer when the only place they can install it is above my bedroom?

I used to love doing laundry, it gave me time to sit on a hot dryer and read Russian novels. Don’t ask me why, maybe all that marching through the snow made by butt cold. But once Jackson came along I started dropping off the laundry. Ninety cents a pound, just close your eyes and hand over the cash and try not to think about how many washer/dryers you could have paid for by now instead of letting Concha and Teresa do the laundry for you.

But really, Concha and Teresa do my laundry far better than I ever did. Would you like your white t-shirt to stay white, or would you rather have it slowly turn an unpleasant shade of pink? Because if you want your laundry pink (or gray, or garbage-green), then let me do it while I’m rereading War and Peace. But if you want your clothes to look better than when you bought them, and if your baby needs a little extra kissing, too, just hand them all over to Concha and Teresa.

Concha is in Mexico* right now visiting her family for the first time in seven years. She took her two kids (a daughter, four, and a son named Brian who is two months older than Jackson) so they could meet their family. It’s a wonderful summer break for all of them, but the trouble is, Concha may not be able to make it back. She may have to pass her kids over to Teresa at the border (Concha’s husband is still up here to take care of them) and then figure out how to get back here without paying someone $3,000 to smuggle her into the country. If your kids are born here, they’re citizens, but if you weren’t, good fucking luck, my friend. She must have known she was taking an enormous risk when she left. I hope it was worth it.

*Time to complain about Mexico! I broke my toe there and then got my period and was afraid to go into the water because I thought hammerhead sharks would attack me. And it’s all Mexico’s fault.

And so we leave wearing the yellow jersey of victory! Ole!

Well, we went out to breakfast this morning, as directed by The New York Times, to a little restaurant called Tupelo Junction. This place has been avoided by us for a year and a half because of its trying-too-hard-to-be-a-Southern-roadside-shack concept. In actuality it was really, really good, if you don’t mind paying $40 for breakfast, which I do. I do mind paying $9 for a half-order of French toast that mostly ends up on the floor under my child’s high chair (oh, but the real whipped cream was a nice touch, thanks).

See? I can complain unceasingly about Santa Barbara until the day I die! How fun for everyone around me. Jack, of course, loves it here. This is a picture he painted of the appallingly beautiful view from our bed. Pretty good for a guy from New York.

I’ve been complaining about Santa Barbara for as long as I’ve lived here. Eleven years! (You say, Fine, so why stay? Why don’t you move? Oh, sure, I say, You and your simple, obvious questions.) This morning, however, a check of the e-mail brought two — two! — pats on the back for this beautiful, boring, smug, cultureless, pulseless town with its friendly parks and mild climate and plentiful parking. One was from George alerting me to a New York Times article that deems this placid little burg a fine place to spend thirty-six hours. Yes, I’d say thirty-six hours is safe (at forty-eight you lapse into a coma, though).

The second e-mail was from Jack’s stepmom, Susan, telling me that the Santa Barbara Museum of Art is having an exhibit of photos by someone with three first names: Ruth Harriet Louise. According to Susan, there’s a photo of her actress mother, Carmel Myers, in the exhibit. I’ve heard a few stories about Carmel. I know that she was in the original (silent) Ben Hur, and that she annoyed John Huston in a rowboat by playing the ukelele and singing the same song over and over again until he wanted to throw her overboard. If Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were Hollywood royalty, Carmel Myers was the hottie lying on the carpet behind the throne recovering from a hangover. And now a photo of her is coming to our town! Can you stand the excitement? CAN YOU GET THROUGH THE MUSEUM BEFORE YOU LAPSE INTO A COMA?

I knew that if I bought the t-shirt and upgraded to Pro, one of the many-headed Blogger Gods would notice me. The checks cleared and my prayers were answered. Now if St. Rocco would just clear up this weeping sore on my leg, I could quit groveling for awhile.

UPDATE: It’s ringworm! Yaaaaaaahhh!
SECOND UPDATE: Ringworm has nothing to do with worms, it’s a fungus.

I just discovered that I can make Jackson take a nap whenever I feel like it because he doesn’t know what time it is.

This morning he woke up at 7:00 (God bless him) and at 9:15 I said, “Gee, it’s about your naptime,” which was a total lie, he doesn’t normally go down until 10:30 or 11:00. But all he did was grumble a little bit until I put his llama in the crib with him (LOVE THE LLAMA, whom we have cleverly named “Dolly”), and ten minutes later he was was sawing toothpicks.

Tch. Babies. Can’t tell time.

We recently joined a play group and I have discovered that playing nicely with other children is Jackson’s specialty. There’s a two-and-a-half-year-old boy in the group named Zach who was playing with two empty yogurt cups at the edge of the baby pool today. (It is a brilliant mother who brings empty yogurt cups to the baby pool.) Jackson went right over and reached for one of the cups, but Zach shouted, “No!” (Now, if you were sitting in a bar with two drinks in front of you and some guy came over and reached for one, you’d shout NO, too, wouldn’t you? So you can’t really fault a two-year-old.) Well, Zach’s mom waded over to see what was going on, and then we started chatting, and then the next thing I know Jackson is giving a yogurt cup back to a taken-aback Zach, who holds it for a few seconds and then gives it back to Jackson. They went back and forth in such a civilized manner that I was reminded of one night in a bar long ago with my then-boyfriend and his brother. I didn’t know his brother very well. It was too loud to talk so to break the ice in a mime sort of way I finally just started giving him (the brother) stuff out of my pockets. He caught on and started giving me stuff out of his pockets until we had traded everything in our pockets. I think I ended up with some rubber bands, less than a dollar in spare change, and some weird little tools that you use to change a tire on a bicycle.

Well, I mean, how do you get to know people?