It Never Rains in Southern California

This is my favorite card I've made this year. So far.

I love rain. I never thought too much about it until I moved to California, where it is a rare commodity, a Big Deal. A healer and a destroyer. It is raining and raining and raining and won't let up.  I love cranking up the heater and watching movies under the down blanket my dad gave me in college, propped up legs or neck on Steve's lap, little Cinco dog squished up beside us, sweeting snoring Lucy on her bed nearby.

I love tromping up the hill with Debbie and her dog Elsa, all of us soaked after getting a top-of-the-mountain view of Glendale in its foggy splendor, and then coming back to cut out last year's cards to make this year's Christmas cards.

I love my in-laws. They are good and sweet and kind and true. I took my mother-in-law (MiL) and, not sure exactly what you'd call the relationship but I guess also my sister-in-law, to a completely inappropriate movie today, Black Swan, which I clearly didn't research very well. As Natalie Portman descended into madness we watched scenes of sex, lesbian sex, oral sex, self-sex, imagined sex, cutting, drugs and minor violence. I sat on edge with MiL on one side, a 6-year-old boy on the other whose mother kept putting her hand over his eyes during the dirty parts. Which was about half the film. I was so worried about everyone else being uncomfortable that I probably missed about half the film. But after, the MiL was gracious and hilarious and told me a hilarious true story about a man, a locker room and a hand-dryer.

 And then we went out into the pouring rain to go home.