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I was the proud recipient of a flu shot today. Mid-September seems a little early to get one but there I was in the doctor's office and they were available so I indulged. I don't go out of my way to get a flu shot but if I happen to be at the doctor and they're there, I go for it. Anyone who has lost two weeks of their life to the flu understands. You're completely useless for Week 1 and Week 2 you're building your strength back up and trying to get back into your groove. It sucks. If you're one of those people who can keep up appearances while you're sick, I applaud you. I am not: I retreat to the bedroom and my husband keeps the proverbial balls in the air. One year he missed a work-sponsored program with Jack Welch because I had the flu. The saint didn't give me any grief for it either. I married well.

Two years ago my primary care physician left private practice and returned to his first love, research. Dr. Chuck was an amazing doctor, one of those MDs who never rushed you in and out of his office. My father found him first and by the time I'd discovered him, his practice was long since closed. I begged him to take me on and surprisingly, it worked. When I was pregnant with our our twins and in the hospital for the long haul, doped up to stop those pesky contractions, my father happened to be in his office. Dr. Chuck logged in to the hospital's computer system and explained to my father exactly what was going on with me. We all thought that rather cool.

When Dr. Chuck retired, I gave a lot of thought to who to replace him with. In the end, I chose the family practitioner I'd been seeing off and on at the local urgent care center. Dr. Hollander's hours suit me, noon - 8p Tuesday through Saturday, his bedside manner is friendly but not too friendly, and he seems to know his stuff. As a mother, taking care of my own needs comes last so I especially dig the odd office hours and the fact that there's an on-call doctor one additional day of the week. As a business person, I think this is very customer centric and I appreciate that.

Sharing the love!

Today was one of those days that I got up early and ran. I showered then hopped on a 7a conference call with people named Rebel and Tweedy. (I am not making this up.) After that I dolled up and drove an hour to the South Bay for a meeting. And then I drove home.

When I walked in the door at 1p I was starving! As I dashed from the car to the fridge, I stumbled over a box sitting next to the front door. It was from Lynn, a sorority sister, who lives in Milwaukee. I was really hungry, though. So I debated leaving it on the porch until I stuffed my face. But then my curiosity got the best of me and I hauled it inside and ripped it open. Boy was I glad I did!

Godiva Chocolates! Lunch!

Next to the signature gold box was a sweet note, written in her perfect architectural script, congratulating me on Some Assembly for Women and for letting her be a part of it. (You did me the favor by providing a quote for it, sister!)

This unexpected gesture made me think of two things.

First, during the very first days of Eldest Daughter's life, someone sent us a Cookies by Design bouquet. It was beautiful and it tasted great. Poor Dave never got to see it in its full glory because by the time he came home from mailing the baby announcements or doing a Target run or wherever he was, I'd eaten half of it. Again, it was lunch when I really needed it.

Second, this completely unexpected and wholly appreciated gesture makes me want to pay it forward.

If I inspire you to do this, too, comment here so we can all share in it!

Thanks Lynn! I love you!

We shall never forget

Seven years ago today the al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked and crashed commercial jetliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

I was pregnant with our twins at the time, and on bedrest. Like most Americans, I watched the life-changing events unfold on TV and watched and watched and watched, becoming increasingly agitated as the details came out. I will never, as long as I live, forget the footage of people jumping out windows of hundred story buildings. What must they have seen to cause them to choose death that way?

When I flipped on my laptop this morning I quickly realized what day it was. My first conference call was with a woman in Arlington, Virginia. I thought to mention it to her but did not since it was our first meeting, and I'm sure she was confronted with reminders all over Washington today. I wonder if she thought about it, too, while we were on the phone. After that call I met my brother for coffee. He mentioned it.

In a few hours I'll pick the pinks up at school. And my husband and I will give them extra big hugs.

We shall never forget.

Ten things I love about Fall

1. Seasonally appropriate accessory shopping.

2. It's still warm during the day but it cools off at night so you don't have to run the dreaded air conditioning and get a horrible night's sleep because you wake up every time it goes on and off.

3. The Thanksgiving issues of all the cooking magazines will soon appear!

4. Halloween -- everyone's favorite holiday!

5. You can sleep with the windows open and hear the crickets.

6. My mom's apple pie. I'm not sharing the recipe because I still think about trying to launch a business with this recipe-to-end-all recipes.

7. You can begin to reduce the amount of time in between pedis.

8. Boots. High ones and low ones and suede and leather and rain boots (but not in California).

9. The leaves turn colors.

10. San Francisco Nutcracker and Niles Canyon Railway Train of Lights tickets go on sale!

Red Rubies, Rainbow Unicorns and Ladybugs

You know those friends who are just amazing people? After you spend time with them you just feel better?

Kymi is one of those people. She started out as a client and then became a friend. The Pinks and I were fortunate enough to spend time with her, her husband and their French-speaking 5-year-old son this weekend. We've had playdates with them before. This little boy plays well with girls and boys and he's as fun to hang with as are his parents.

They invited us to swim at The Claremont, where they are members. It was well over 100F in our suburb so post soccer we were happy to head over the hills and enjoy their company and temps a few degrees cooler.

The Claremont has a sweet membership setup: food and beverage, including full bar, towel service, a great view of the Bay Area, valet parking, and three pools and a hot tub. This is Golden Bear territory so they even had the game on in a room with big, comfy sofas. Although I'm still hot and tired, I have a smile on my face, the smile of someone who experienced just a bit of magic.

Where do you find Rainbow Unicorns, Red Rubies, Shining Stars, Ladybugs, Pink Pansies, Flower Power? On the Girls U7 soccer circuit.

Thing 2 had her first games this weekend. She really got into it, in spite of the heat. I love watching her run around. She's in it for the camaraderie as much as her love of running. It's high fives at every opportunity.

Thing 2 wears her hair in a fairly short bob so we don't do a lot with it. However, there were some great soccer tresses being sported on the field -- pony tails with soccer ribbons, scrunchies, etc. Thing 2 wants to grow her hair out so this may be in our future.

Must teachers be warm and fuzzy?

As I mentioned in my last post, Back to School night took place this week.

I met Eldest Daughter's fifth grade teacher for the first time. She was just fine. She's the most senior fifth grade teacher at our elementary school and she seemed to know her stuff. My daughter happily goes to school each morning so I'm good with that.

However, as the parents were exiting the classroom that night I asked one, "So, what'd you think?" She responded, "She's not exactly warm."

This brings the question, do teachers need to be warm and fuzzy?

Here are the teachers I remember:

• Mr. Zunich, the 7th grade math teacher who is now married to a friend of my mother-in-law's. The only reason I remember him is because I occasionally see him at social occasions.
• Miss Tighe, the Spinster who taught 7th grade English and drilled sentence diagramming into our heads, a skill I've not used since 7th grade.
• Miss Something-or-Other, another old maid, my AP English teacher who introduced me to Russian Lit, something I still enjoy today but would never admit to the Commie whose posts are set up to autodelete on my Febmom listserv.
• Ms. Reeves, my magazine editing professor in college, not because the class was scintillating but because she was such a strong female figure and had done so many interesting things in her career.

Were any of these teachers warm? No. In fact, the first three were decidedly not warm. But they stuck with me.

Of course none of these were elementary school teachers. Each of my kids had a wonderful kindergarten teacher, but being a kindergarten teacher is a very special skill indeed. Eldest Daughter loved her second grade teacher and I did not. She ran hot and cold, and played favorites.

At what point are our children equipped to get their coddling solely from their adoring parents and grandparents, and no longer necessitate having it handed out in the classrooms?

The Alaska Years

The frontier state is in the forefront of the news this week thanks to Senator John McCain's selection of Governor Sarah Palin for his vice presidential running mate.

Alaska. Been there, done that.

When my brother was nine and I was fifteen and leading a self-absorbed teenaged existence in California, my parents dropped The Bomb. They had just returned from a trip to Maui, one of very few trips they took without me and my brother during our childhood. Apparently they had made a stop in Anchorage on the way and in one short month, we were moving there. I remember the reveal just like it was yesterday. My father, being a smart man, told me at the same time that I would get a full new cold-weather wardrobe once we arrived. (He delivered on his promise. We spent several hours with the Nordstrom Personal Shopper upon arriving in Anchorage.)

My father was the adventurous sort and had always told us that the year he turned 40, we'd sell our California house and sail around the world. We moved to Alaska instead. You see, up until that point my father was a career IBMer and Anchorage was much more interesting than Armonk. I give him credit there.

Once we got over the initial shock and got all those inane questions out of our systems (Does the snow ever melt? Will we take dogsleds to school? Are we being punished?), it was a pretty sweet existence. We moved into an English Tudor style house in a subdivision, bought a 4-wheel-drive station wagon and learned to shovel snow. My mom, always the good sport, worked as a paralegal just as she had done in California.

We had a lot of visitors during those years. Pretty much everyone who had ever wanted to see Alaska came up during the summer. When Grandma Molly came to visit, she brought an entire suitcase of Kosher meat since there was no Kosher butcher in Alaska. Eldest Daughter recently found a picture of me, my father and Popa taken on a fishing trip during this time. Love that 80s hair.

I went to a regular 'ole high school, one of six in Anchorage, and made friends. About 25% of my high school classmates when on to college; the other 75% planned to stay in Alaska and make their livings there, where a college education was not necessary to live well. This easily put me at the top of the academic ranks, whereas I was closer to the middle back in California. This gave me a huge advantage when it came to college applications. Plus I had the geographic diversity factor going for me. Downhill skiing was much more accessible than it was in Northern California and, along with a pull toward chairlifts, I developed a love for the mountains and respect for the wild. Did you see the movie Into the Wild? That's really what rural Alaska looks like.

For kicks, let's review some basic Alaska facts:

• The population of the entire state is roughly 600,000 people. That's the same as for the city of Charlotte, North Carolina.
• There are 14 men for every woman.
• Alaska has 586,000 square miles of land. That means that it's 2.5 times larger than Texas and 488 times the size of Rhode Island.

The first year was a huge adjustment and I'm not just talking about the random moose walking down the streets. On June 21, the Summer Solstice, the sun sets at 2:30a and rises at 3a. This means it never gets dark enough to turn on your headlights. Conversely, on December 21, the run rises at noon and sets at 12:30p. You don't realize how much you live by the cycle of the sun until it's altered. We learned to pay close attention to time after that first summer when it was 9p before my mom started going through the motions of making dinner.

We learned to fly fish, dip net and eat game. We dipnetted up to our chests in hip waders to scoop running salmon. Reread that sentence. It's correct as written. We learned what things to ask my dad to bring back from his frequent business trips to the Lower 48. We learned that Honolulu is an unofficial suburb of Anchorage. We learned about the Permanent Fund and that no one goes to school or work on the first day of the Nordstrom Half Yearly Sale. The summer I turned sixteen I got my first real job, answering phones in the circulation department at The Anchorage Times. The hours were miserable but the schedule afforded me lots of time to hang out with my friends.

There are no pictures of my high school graduation. They sank to the bottom of a remote river, along with a whole bunch of other things, while my dad and brother were on a fishing trip the following week. There are, however, pelts from the Black and the Brown that my father took during those years. If you have to ask what a Black and Brown are then you're better off not knowing.

My parents made amazing friends during The Alaska Years, many that they keep in touch with today. Cheryl and Fran live not far from my parents in California. Donna and Bob died tragically in 2002. Sandy and Anita are still in Anchorage, as is one of their daughters, now a practicing OBGYN. We see a lot of Sandy and Anita; they love the Bay and my parents served on volunteer boards with them for nearly 20 years after they moved back below. Gary and Roxanne-With-The-Purple-Hair are still up there somewhere. Grace lost her battle to cancer during my 20th year but not before giving me the best cheesecake recipe ever.

I lived in Anchorage full-time for 2 1/2 years until I went to college down below. Then I returned for two summers. During the second summer my father's assignment ended and we moved back to California. Most people would have flown but in typical Malcolm fashion, we took our 28' Bayliner down the Inside Passage for six weeks. This was before the Exxon Valdez disaster so I'm grateful to have been places that no longer exist. When I think of Alaska I recall best the scenery - the snowcapped mountains against a blue, blue sky with Anchorage at the very base of them, the glaciers we saw and heard from our Zodiac off Prince William Sound, the doll sheep on the mountains en route to Girdwood.

Every now and then I come across another former or current Alaskan. My friend Denise, who I met in the hospital down here while we were both antepartum patients, used to live there. One of my clients has an office in Anchorage and I was shocked to discover that I knew one of the men there from my high school years.

I look forward to taking our kids there. Thing 2 will enjoy the wide open spaces. Thing 1 will be shocked at how small the Nordstrom is. And Eldest Daughter will be amused by my friend Birdman Brian, who wears more makeup than I do, even on the days I am dressed for client face time.