Dancing Brave

More Maryland Down Time

Oy. Now my updating time comes courtesy of a flat tire, which is keeping Alison stuck at Leah's school with two squalling toddlers in the car. I offered to go pick up the twins while she waits for AAA, but apparently AAA will be there by the time we get there, and the girls are going to go inside and play at the school while they wait.

I've had some vivid dreams lately. Two nights ago, I dreamed that I read Harry Potter 6 and it kind of sucked -- there was no mention of Voldemort at all, for one thing, and for another there was some nonsense about giving Harry some sort of supernatural aspect... I closed it, in the dream, and wondered if JK Rowling had lost her mind, but then I decided that she was just setting up a bunch of really cool stuff for book seven and I got worried about her because of the public lashing she would take for boox six.

When I woke up, I had to remind myself that the tome hasn't even come out yet. I had that sense of real disappointment.

Then the night before that, I dreamed that Kevin and I were getting married, and I was laughing and laughing to myself about how funny it would be if I just forgot to buy a dress. Then I realized it was my wedding day, and I had indeed forgotten, and my mother and I ran around trying to find something that wouldn't need altering. We ended up at Bob's Wedding Mart and Shampoo Yard (?) and of course I couldn't find anything. Right before I woke up, I remember thinking, "Who the hell allowed me to forget to shop for a wedding dress? Where are my friends?"

Damn. We're watching the video for Queen's "I Want To Break Free" right now -- our only time free of Dora or Blue on TV today, I'm sure -- and man, I don't remember all the weird spandex bodysuit acrobatics. I remember the stuff of the band all dressed up as frustrated housewives, but the other bit felt foreign to me. And I know I've seen the video before. You'd think I'd remember Freddie and a bunch of people dressed in flesh-colored unitards, doing strange routines that include everyone lying down and rolling so that they moved Freddie's prone form across them all.

Last night I watched Animal House for the first time. It came on AMC, so it was somewhat edited for TV -- the only universe in which "bastard" can become "buzzard" -- but I got the gist of it anyway, and I think that counts as a viewing even though I missed out on some stuff. My sister filled me in on anything that was problematically excised. I'm going to chalk that one up as "done," not that it's on any particular list of mine.

This is nice and rambling, isn't it? Leah had a bad night last night. When she can't communicate the problem, she gets frustrated, and that turns into a lot of crying and screaming. I wonder if she had a nightmare or something; all I know is she kept screaming and crying and the only thing that would calm her down was Alison. Then she'd reach a point where she'd go, "Bye Mommy," and Alison would leave, and Leah would start wailing again moments later. The poor kid. I remember episodes like this from when she was two, and we didn't know yet that she was autistic. She suddenly, during one of my visits, started screaming and crying almost all the time and wouldn't be apart from Alison. If Alison went to the bathroom, Leah would sit outside the closed bathroom door and cry until Alison emerged. That's how dependent she felt, probably because Alison was her best shot at somebody who could maybe understand her. We took her to the doctor because her screaming sounded so much like she was in pain, but she was fine; in the end, this was probably the first sure sign that her communication difficulties were stemming from something bigger.

I love that little girl so much.We all do. We wish we could make it better, but it's such a hard condition to understand. (I won't call it a disease.) Nobody knows for sure how the mind of an autistic child works, because each one has its own nuances and quirks, and trial and error is the only way. When Leah resisted letting anyone brush her hair, Alison did some research and found word of an autistic adult who wrote a book and mentioned that when he was little, he wept when his hair was brushed because he could feel every strand so acutely and brushing it felt like ripping through his own skin. That cleared up a lot, so she found different ways to handle Leah's hair, including keeping it a bit shorter. It's little things like that -- who would ever have thought that a condition like this could connect a kid to his or her hair like that?

We're lucky she's diagnosed as mildly autistic, and we know that. It gives her the best chance of someday matriculating into a school that isn't special-ed-based. But unfortunately, autism is enough of a mystery that we don't actually know how her mild autism will take shape, or how she'll grow into it -- or even out of it. I think the hardest part for Alison is the waiting -- she has to wait and wait and wait to find out what that really means.

She Is So Smart ! S-M-R-T!... Uh, I mean, S-M-A-R-T.

Because I haven't said it in a while, and because it always bears repeating, I am so incredibly proud of my sister Julie.

First, she went to Oxford, tackling the research and writing of a 100,000-word thesis on command and control issues in joint military operations, using the Korean War as the lens through which to view these issues, break them down, and identify which ones will plague lead-nation coalitions now and forever. It's apt in terms of the current political and global climate, it's forward-looking while being brilliantly analytical, and best of all, it's wonderfully written.

She battled through a long process of self-doubt and discouragement to get to this place -- there is nothing lonelier than a project like this, where you and only you are the expert, and no one can complete it but you; all those words have to come from your mind and your fingertips, and all motivation has to originate within because there's no teacher to nudge you or beat your wrist with a ruler until your homework is done.

But she completed it, a feat she thought impossible but which we knew to be inevitable. And in January of this year, she became a doctor. She defended her thesis in front of people who were such experts that one of them penned a book Julie used for source material, and she passed with the most flying colors. She's Dr. Jules.

JULIE: Wait, so if we're in a restaurant and someone starts to choke and their date yells, "Is there a doctor in the house?!?" then I guess... technically I can stand up...

HEATHER: Let's hope that if that happens, it's for something that's more suited to your actual skills.

JULIE: "EXCUSE ME! This man is having a diplomatic emergency! Is there a doctor of international relations in the house?!?!"

Getting the Ph.D. wasn't all of it, though; she had to wait for the dream job. It had been offered, but there was a lengthy security-clearance process that had to happen first. She had to be investigated. We all had to be investigated. And until recently, more than two years later, she was still waiting for the job to begin. She'd been given four government-mandated raises in that time, without receiving any paychecks or working a single day. She was, simply, in limbo.

Until today.

She got the call. She's starting work. Her über-high-level clearance has come through, and she can now start a job about which she can reveal no day-to-day specifics. She's been waiting for years -- longer than the two in which she owned the position -- to call me and say, "How was my day? Well, I can't tell you," or perhaps, "My day was great... OR WAS IT?!?"

And now she can. Now she can get her life going exactly in the direction for which she's always longed. And I couldn't be prouder of her; couldn't be more delighted that there's two people inside a quiet but important agency who are smart, brilliant, and on the side of all Americans. Julie's one of the good ones, and she's exactly where we all need her to be.

I am so proud of her, and so in awe of her, that no words truly do it justice.

Surprise!

The trip there was long, the trip back even longer, but it was all worth it to see the expression on my mother's face when I walked in the door and she realized it was me.

Before the surprise, though, there was sweat.

Sunday morning, I ran my second -- and last, for a while, because it's getting hot out here and I'm a wimp -- 10K run, the Nike Run Hit Wonder, which featured 1980s bands along the route playing music for the racers. Tommy Tutone struck up "Jenny" right as I passed the stage, and Flock of Seagulls was aptly singing "I Ran" the second time my path crossed its corner. Tone Loc was there, too, and the whole thing finished in the L.A. Coliseum with a Devo concert. About 20,000 runners showed up to compete, and it was a pretty amazing experience to run through the tunnel and come up on the field, sun shining, fellow racers cheering; somehow it all came together and pushed my legs harder and harder toward a personal record. I shaved about five minutes off my time, finishing the race in 58:52, an average of a 9:28 mile. The whole thing had me so proud, I was glowing, although that might have been the shimmer from the sheer quantity of sweat oozing down my face.

Others might shrug off that distance as a pittance, and in some senses it is, but I am as proud as if I ran a marathon. It's amazing what you can push your body to do. Granted, this is a tiny thing in the scheme of athletic and physical feats, but it's not inconsequential for me. I've always struggled to run a mile, much less two, so the day I ran three -- with stops for traffic lights, of course -- was one of my proudest. Now, suddenly, and I don't quite know how I made it happen, I can run 6.2 miles and I have a hankering to see, slowly, how far I can push myself.

After the race, I rushed home, stretched, showered, and started to pack. I had a couple hours to get to the airport; Kevin took me, which was pretty cool of him, and it was kind of a touching moment in our brief history when we said goodbye. He's so great. He was bummed I'd be gone and I was bummed to leave him, but excited that I'd get a chance to see my sisters and my mother together in one trip. And let's face it -- it was only five days.

I flew JetBlue, which is great because of the DirecTV, although I spent most of the time writing my ER recap. At midnight, we touched down on the Dulles tarmac, and Julie was there to greet me with a big hug and a bottle of Diet Coke in the car. Bless that woman. She knows me so well. We headed out to Maryland the next afternoon; when we arrived, Alison wasn't home, and my mother was sitting on the living room floor playing with the twins. Julie walked in and chatted with her, and I strolled in casually behind her. "Hey, Mom, how's it going?" I asked lightly. She turned to look at me, stared silently at me for a second, then made a sort of choking noise of recognition. Her mouth dropped open. "Oh my GOD," she finally sputtered, too startled to even get up from her spot on the carpet. I ran over and threw my arms around her, and when I pulled back, tears were trickling from her eyes.

I didn't want to stop hugging her. After all the stuff that happened with Lauren, I had just wanted nothing more than a Mom hug, and I got it then and in the days following. Mom had all her girls together, and she was crying with joy; I finally had my mother with me, giving me the kind of squeeze that makes you believe again that everything really will turn out all right -- and even if it doesn't, your family can and will love you back into well-being.

Alison's surprise was as good. She waltzed in from her hair appointment with Leah clinging delightedly to her leg, and went straight past me. Then she turned and saw Maddie peeking up at her with a wide grin on her face, and she cooed at the baby. At this point, it seeped into her consciousness that Mom and Julie had enormous smiles on their faces, and that Mike looked kind of expectant, so she shifted her gaze slightly in my direction and her entire face contorted into a shocked "O." I'd gotten her, too.

It meant a lot to see her, and see her three children. Leah's adorable, and the two babies are just rays of sunshine. They're gorgeous -- all giant, inquisitive eyes and toothy smiles. Lauren's quite solemn at the moment, as she's just figured out how to crawl and is doing so like a little commando -- she doesn't really use her knees. She just trucks along on her stomach, using her elbows to scoot her little body across the floor (or in one case, under the couch). Maddie still thinks she's insane, because in her eyes, if they wait around long enough someone with warm arms will come along and pick them up and carry them across the room to the food or the bed or the couch or the toys, and it just makes more sense to her to save the energy for things she really wants to do, like play with the yellow Blue's Clues ball. It's lovely seeing their distinct personalities come out.

As for Julie... what can I say? I just don't see that girl enough. She's so wonderful -- my best friend, my sister, the most reliable smile I have in the world. I'd missed her loads. We gabbed Sunday night, cranked up music in her car as we drove out to Maryland to my other sister's house, and went out for dinner in drinks with my friend Amy and two of Julie's best friends in the world; we shopped all day Wednesday and did dinner and drinks with another of her friends that night.

We laughed so hard and so much on Tuesday and Wednesday, particularly when in the company of her pals, that I was struck with how much it sucks that Los Angeles can't pick up and move itself across the country. The rub of working in this industry is that it's hard to choose your own geography unless you're really tops in your field, or in a niche so rare that people will let you call the shots and put down your roots wherever you please. I'd forgotten just how easy it is to slip into Julie's social circle -- my memories of her friends are tops, but to get there and have them be even cooler than I'd remembered was both fun and a little depressing. I've got to find a way to get out there more often so that I can share in it; after all, I'm used to relating to Julie as my friend and my sister, but it's fun and refreshing and frankly really damn cool to see her being someone else's friend. Someone else's smile. Someone else's belly laugh. She's all those things to me so often, but usually it's just the two of us, so I forget what it's like to watch her delight other people. She does it so well, and it's effortless because she doesn't realize that's what she's doing. She's just being herself, and people are just loving her because they can't help but do so.

It was amazing to see her apartment and her car and get a mental picture of her world. I hate that I'm not a more consistent part of it, but I guess that's the trouble with getting older -- it gets tougher to bridge the distance, and you have to work that much harder to keep yourself from becoming a ghost in the lives of the people you love.

• • • • •

Someone got here by searching for: cure for morning beer breath Reading: Slut!, by Leora Tanenbaum Watching: American Idol, dammit. Those fools always get me sucked in eventually.

Four Score

Today was a special day. After roughly twenty-six wonderful years of life and with nary a wrinkle nor grayed hair to show for it, this evening at approximately 6 p.m. eastern time I turned eighty.

It happened quickly, but paradoxically in slow-motion. A giggling baby in her play center suddenly turned grouchy. She wanted to be picked up, and as the only nearby adult without a toddler, a feeding baby, a spot of fresh spit-up on her shirt, or a wok in-hand, it fell to me to lift her out and cuddle her. Which is bliss, because shs a glowing, grinning cutie. So I bent down, grabbed her under the arms, cooed at her delighted smile, and straightened with her in my hands.

Thas when I felt it a stretching, what felt like it should be an audible groan from the muscles in the small of my back. They strained and pulled and complained, and the breath it took me to stand up felt like an aching eternity.

"FUCK," I thought.

Had I thrown out my back? Had I, an otherwise healthy person in her mid-twenties, just gotten a sexagenarian injury? Was I doomed to a life of creaking through the hallways with one hand pressed to my spine and a permanent wince on my face, croaking things like, "I cat my back," and "I just need to lie down" and a gutteral "Uuuuuuuunnnnnnhhhhhh" every time something required a special coordinated contortion of bone and muscle?

"OWWWWW," I whimpered.

To be fair, it wast the infant that did it. When I woke up here on Friday morning, I toddled into the study and checked my e-mail, and it was then that I noticed a nagging pain in my lower back. Nothing agonizing; more of an irritation. Standing up took a little more effort and care than usual. Sitting down, doubly so. Putting on my shoes? Tying them, if need be? Difficult. I felt old then, with this strange back ailment, but I didt feel it happen or know how I did it probably reaching for my carry-on luggage, stuffed carelessly under the seat in front of me, just out of comfortable reach.

As the days passed, it got better. By this morning and afternoon I felt downright spry. Cocky, even. I was lugging The Lump the heavier twin, Maddie as if she weighed no more than a wet cotton ball. I was lifting her over my head and bringing her down and handing her off with arrogant ease. I was the greatest Auntie Heather in history. So much so that, when little baby Lauren started fussing, and Julie worriedly suggested that she cross the room and pick up Lauren instead just in case my back was still on the blink, I confidently waved her off and insisted it would be a snap.

And it was a snap, I suppose. My back went, "Oh, NO you DI-INT." And I was all, "Oh yeah, bitch, I DI-ID," and my back was all, "ma cut you for that, ho," and I go, "Dot you be froi, mofo," and my bacs all, "I ait servici you checkmate," and it creaked and tweaked again, and I had to go lie down on the floor in a ball and try to stretch out the sass.

The net effect is that I now negotiate chairs like a pregnant woman: sliding to the edge of a seat and then tilting my hips up, slowly straightening my knees, and propping my weight up with my arm until m almost upright, then finishing the job with a moan and a hand to my back. God forbid I drop anything; retrieval is a delicate process indeed, involving the careful positioning of the feet for optimal balance, the resting of one hand on a braced thigh, and the slow lowering of the body to the floor without actually bending at the waist. Is like a retarded lunge, or a geriatric offensive lineman -- all knees and flailing limbs and angles and furrowed brow.

If you saw the episode of Scrubs where Dr. Cox threw out his back after dunking a basketball and then tried to pick up a pencil as if nothing were wrong doing the aforementioned delicate dance to the strains of "Hero" by Enrique Iglesias then you know exactly what I look like. And you will wish you could follow me around with a boombox from which the maudlin strains of Enrique could leak.

I shuffle around like an old crone. When I sneeze, my back screams, "I THOUGHT WE ALREADY DISCUSSED THIS!" I use heating pads, and if things dot improve, I might have to graduate to Ben-Gay. If this continues unchecked, I fully expect to lose my hearing tomorrow, followed up with the Christmas morning surprise of waking up and finding my teeth floating in a cup of water on the night stand.

But I refuse to eat my Christmas dinner through a straw in some kind of hell milkshake. So I guess m going to have to go to bed and hope I wake up with a miracle cure instead.

Sniffle. Whers that Ben-Gay?

• • • • •

Someone got here by searching for: how to become a chocolatier Reading: Still White Teeth, and wow does Zadie Smith have a gift for description. Watching: Love, Actually, on our designated Chick-Flick Day, during which we rescued Alison from motherhood, rescued my mother from Grandmotherhood, and sat them in front of a movie screen with two overflowing bags of popcorn. A success.

Temporarily Calm

It's silent in our house right now. The only sounds are the whirring of the iMac, the click of my fingers on the keyboard -- punctuated by the occasional grunt when the left shift key sticks -- and the faint strains of CNBC on the television behind me. In fact, I turned on the television just to add a little din to the nothing.

That'll be the last time I crave noise. We're in the calm before the storm, or as Gandalf says in Lord of the Rings, "The deep breath before the..." except I don?t remember how he finished that, because although I saw it yesterday, my memory's not that good; I like to imagine he would have been fine with me finishing it for him: The deep breath before before the puking. The clean before the babies.

My sister, her husband, Leah, and the six-month old twins arrive tomorrow, and that's when Chaos kicks my mom out of the throne and starts ruling the roost. We?ll have a little girl whose moods and reactions we are only just learning to understand, much less anticipate; we have one twin who pukes a lot more than the other; and we have two adults kicking the stomach flu. Two days after that, we'll have a 91-year old with poor hearing and an uncanny knack for saying the wrong thing to the wrong set of ears. In all, a hectic Christmas week at my parents' house.

This is the first time I'll have met my twin nieces, one of whom is my goddaughter. Lauren and Doug both saw them already during separate trips to the D.C. area, but I haven't, so that'll be exciting. And Leah's grown and developed since I saw her last.

I can't wait. It's excellent to be home.

I thought I'd wrapped up work on the show on Wednesday, the day before I flew home, but as it turns out I'm going back for another week. They want me to wrap out my episode, which makes sense; it was a little asinine to schedule our out dates for a time before the thing was locked, but hey, I'm not the money honey, so I don't know what budget tomfoolery led to that. At any rate, I'll be heading back for one last week...

... back into a familiar abyss. Yes, we moved offices. And yes, they won't have Internet access at the new one. I wish I could've warned them about my previous experience with this, but they didn't ask, I didn't tell, and so we're back in information-free hell. Nice little bitter poem I just wrote there. We don't have internal modems in our Macs, so we can't dial-up, which is just as well given that the phone jacks aren't working either. Not in our offices, anyway. All the top-level producers are up and running just fine. Which is to be expected -- most of us were lame ducks last week, anyway, and didn't really care. But that explains some of why I haven't updated.

As for the rest, it's just been nonstop Christmas shopping. I just found out that, although I'd believed I'd ordered Carrie's Christmas present, apparently I did not. Amazon beat me, the bastards. So I need to take care of that. Then Julie and I need to run some more shopping errands, buying stocking tidbits and baby-proofing locks for the cabinets and mulling spices.

Not in that order. Clearly, the one that mixes with alcohol is the one we're buying first.

Yesterday was lost because my Dad couldn't wait any longer to see Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and frankly, neither could we. It was a huge concession on his part, or so he'd have me believe, to resist going on opening day and wait the extra two days for me to get home and get a good night's sleep. I won't spoil the movie but to say that it was excellent, and that Orlando Bloom remains hot as a blonde, and if he were to move into my pants at any point in 2004, he would not get evicted, even if he failed to pay rent. I'll probably see it again in the theaters with Lauren, and hopefully Jessica, unless they go see it over the holiday as I believe Carrie will. On the one hand, I hope they wait so I can go again, and on the other, I want to dish it with them. Looks like Carrie's going to be fielding those phone calls solo. Poor girl.

Finally, I'd like to talk about a bit of a sparring match that went on in my Guestbook. Someone saw my complaint about the Sports Illustrated blow-job of Pete Carroll, and figured I was just a sour Notre Dame fan. Yes, I hate that we had a bad season and lost to a perennial enemy, but I'm a sports fan at heart, so I can always appreciate a team that's coached well and playing well even if it's a team I dislike. So I'll admit that USC got screwed out of the national championship game. But I can also say with honesty that I am sick of reading and watching puff piece after puff piece about Pete Carroll and his rah-rah attitude that was "too spirited for the NFL," or somesuch. It'd be nice to see a well-rounded piece about him. About his unsportsmanlike play-calling at times, about how he enflamed parents and much of the LA community by bringing O.J. Simpson for a pep talk to his team. He's made questionable choices as he's brought the team up atop the ranks, and so I think the things he's done to make his players cocky should be explored as much as the things he's done to make them great. I read stuff like that all the time about NFL coaches, about ND coach Tyrone Willingham, about everyone -- and what's more, I look for pieces like that, particularly about my own team. I don't just want to read puff pieces about Notre Dame when they're (admittedly infrequently) playing well. I want to know what's really going on, and what the coaches are really doing in South Bend. I'm not sure why Pete Carroll's the exception to that kind of reporting, but he has been lately. That was the root of my frustration. Sure, I'd love it if we'd beaten them, but we didn't -- we were the inferior team, for sure. Why be bitter about that loss and only that loss, when it was one of seven we didn't have to give up?

I don't know why I wanted to explain that, but I did. I'm a Notre Dame fan, but I'm also a sports fan and a sports journalism fan, and that's why I disliked the article.

Enough. Safe travels to everyone who's heading somewhere this season, and hopefully I'll update sometime amid the screaming babies and the diaper changing and the cooking and the presents.

Someone got here by searching for: "burgers to cure a sore throat," which... hey, sounds sensible to me. Reading: White Teeth, by Zadie Smith Watching: The extended version of The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers, which actually has some pretty informative deleted scenes, including one that gives backstory on the brothers from Gondor, both of whom are hot (well, one hotter than the other, but all the dirt and long hair goes a long way in that movie toward making an average man smoke).

It's A Girl! And Another Girl!

My mother, of course, was crying the second Mike came out of the delivery room.

My twin nieces were born -- extracted? -- shortly after noon on the East Coast, one minute apart. Other than having a little extra fluid in their lungs, which the NICU claims is nothing it can't fix in an hour, they're healthy and presumably happy little babies, at least until they get to know us and are old enough to realize they drew the short straw. But that's miles away.

The eldest, Lauren -- to Lauren's delight -- weighed in at a respectable seven and a half pounds. Her twin sister Madeleine is a full pound lighter, so clearly, Lauren bullied her way into more nutrients and womb space. I think she's already taking after her West Coast doppelganger, who has been known to throw elbows in front of the pantry and is not afraid to use her fists to intimidate me.

Ever the zealous father, Mike snapped pictures of his new daughters, but he seems to have jumped the gun a little -- I swear, I detect errant goo on both of them, and fervently wish he'd waited until the babies were cleaned up completely before he chose to capture the moment. I'm so going to be the mother who gets shown her child fresh from the birth canal, scrunches her nose, and says, "Eh, that's okay, why don't you go ahead and wipe that down before I deal with it? Thanks." I had begun referring to the pictures as the Goo Gallery, until I realized that is the name of a porn franchise, and I'm not quite ready for those two spheres to intersect.

Madeleine came out of the NICU first, and my mother took her and promptly wept. Of course.

I love the names. Madeleine and Lauren, very graceful. Lilting even. And it worked out perfectly because while I adore the names and think they're perfect, they're not names I would have chosen for my own children, so there are no clenched fists and gritted teeth and under-the-breath vengeance oaths. This was my goal all along, gently disparaging any name I thought had potential for my children while cunningly suggesting other acceptable alternatives. Because the names of my nieces? Yes: All about me.

Actually, I would have considered naming my child Lauren, had I not then been so unfortunate as to connect myself with a Lauren in my adult life. Damn that bit of bad luck. I can't now give the infamous, nefarious Lauren a namesake without potentially making my other close friends feel a little awkward, or agreeing to pop out a Jessica, Carrie, Julie, Michael, or Dan, or even -- terrifyingly -- a Dr. No. But my various orifaces object staunchly to that particular plan, so it looks like my own family will be free of Laurens.

Unless Lauren saves my life, or actually delivers the child, especially if it's in the back of a cab or in a cabin in the woods where we went to have a huge fight and hash out all the history that turned friends into bitter foes, yet she overcame her hatred and resentment for the sake of saving a wee life. In that case, I can safely say all bets are off.

My sister and her husband are delighted, tired, relieved, and overwhelmed. As Mike pointed out, their family is now a full 66.67-percent bigger. Everything they learned on one infant last time now gets applied to two at once. All Leah's hand-me-downs are great, but only half as helpful. There's a lot of challenges ahead for them, and as much of a miracle as parenting and childbirth can be, it's also going to be just as fraught with nerves for them as it was the first time.

Wow, it feels great to have them out in the world. I can only imagine how Alison feels, besides pleasantly doped up on painkillers. I'm so eager to meet them. I can't wait for the first time they wrap their tiny fists around my finger, or play with my curly hair, the way Leah so curiously did at her christening, when she was two months old and making my acquaintance for the first time. When my hair was long, it was a bonding tool for me and babies -- Leah loved to play with it, and Hunky Cameraman's niece used to stare at it and smile. To get her to look at the camera for photos on her first birthday, they had to position me underneath it because she wouldn't stop staring and grinning at my head.

Not being able to hold the twins and see them with my own eyes certainly smarts, as does knowing that Lauren's shot at holding Baby Lauren before I do is almost a lock -- she'll be in Washington visiting Julie and could probably fairly easily finagle a quick trip to babytown out of it if she felt like holding something that screams. Other than me and Jessica, that is.

Enough self-pity. Joy! I'm an aunt again!

It's a shame for Leah that she'll have to be sold, now that she's being replaced with two brand-spanking new, younger models, but she's had a good run and she can't really expect anything more from us at this point, can she? We all have to move on at some point in our lives.

I'm off to smoke a cigar. Except, more like a Snickers bar.

Someone got here by searching for: Doritos free card game answers Reading: Drunky But Funky -- we added an update and three more pictures late last night. Writing: My last script for this show, which is due Wednesday. Ha ha. Right.

Already? But It's Only Been Nine Months!

It hit me last night, quite unexpectedly. I jolted upright from my chair, upsetting the meticulously woven quilt of crumpled up Kleenexes under which I had buried myself, and let my mouth swing open in outright shock.

"Oh by God, Laureg," I drooled. "Do you dow what's habbenick dis weeg?"

Lauren blinked and stared at me, and began the long, dreary process of translating Head Cold. I saved her the trouble by gracefully blowing my nose in a ladylike manner and repeating the question, then answering it.

"Alison's having the babies," I said, "On THURSDAY."

Lauren gaped.

This shouldn't have been quite such a surprise to us, given that my eldest sister's C-section has been scheduled for quite some time -- certainly a month or two. But the twins have been figments of my imagination for most of this time.

It's hard being so far away from something so monumental to our family. We used to be spread out all over the place -- Julie in Oxford, me in Texas, and my parents and Alison in different parts of Florida. But now, Julie's delightedly tucked into her new apartment in Washington, D.C., a quick car trip from Maryland, where her godchild and niece is grasping the power of speech. Mom and Dad are staying out there to help Alison relax pre-birth and cope after it's over. And I'm all the way over here. They're as close to London as they are to me.

I saw Alison in January, when she was showing but still not even far enough along to know the genders; other than that this pregnancy has progressed and passed me by via the telephone and e-mails and reports from my mother, concluded by occasional digital photographs taken on the other side of the country as proof of her near-planetary girth. When she was pregnant with Leah, it was much the same way.

The time just flew. Late June felt so far away, and then all of a sudden, we're about to round the corner into July and our family will swell by two as my sister's belly begins to shrink. Because I?m a wonderful aunt-to-be, I'm handling the arrival of two little bundles of joy by leaving the country for a month. Alison, being a great sister, never complained, partly because she may be secretly hoping for snooty Parisian baby clothes from the Champs Elysees.

There was a time when I prided our family on its geographic sprawl, mostly because it proved that our bonds are tighter than proximity. Distance wasn't something we sought, but something we defeated -- all the usual smug trappings of long-distance relationships, but without the worry of cheating and imminent breakup. It just felt freeing to know we could go anywhere and do anything, no matter how far away it was, and we'd all still be close. But it gets wearing at times like these, especially now that the rest of my family is in the same area and I'm the far-flung one. Once nieces come into the picture, once the family spreads beyond the traditional boundaries of parents and siblings, it's harder and harder to be the one who misses out.

One effect of my separation from the process, though, is that the arrival of the twins feels to me like it's been blazing fast, whereas for someone like my mother, it's going to be a relief because she's seen Alison struggle with swollen ankles and a demanding three-year old and a highly specialized diet for one with gestational diabetes. She's been there only for the last month of it and it's felt like a comparative eternity when you consider that I'm sitting here thinking that the last time I blinked, it was mid-May.

It's so exciting, though. Thrilling to think that two little lives are two days away from enriching ours.

Someone got here by searching for: schnitzel baby Reading: Two from the buffet of magazines on our living room floor Thanking: Dan, for sending us a mini-care package that included the issue of Anonymous Magazine That Pays His Salary to which we contributed an item. He also sent us a carefully crafted mix CD for Drunky But Funky that may be thoroughly reviewed on that site once Lauren's relinquished it from her selfish grasp. Just because it was a joint present, she thinks she can use it. She's so selfish. I heard her say a bad word yesterday.

The Little Word That Couldn't

There are some mysteries in the world that should stay unsolved -- like where Michael Bolton went, or the death of legwarmers.

Or, what my father sounds like when he says the word "sex."

I've never heard the man say it. "Sex." Three little letters knotted together into a tight monosyllabic taboo. It represents the relationship my father and I will never have: the one where we talk about boys.

Let me be clear: My father adores his daughters. He's supportive, he's funny, he gets worried, he lives for Christmas shopping, he played paper dolls with me when I was little, he gets excited when we come home, and he hates it when we leave. In short, there's nothing in the world he wouldn't do for us -- with the possible exception of listening to us wail about guys and relationships and crushes and, yes, sex. He's a whiz at investing and will dish the Dow all day long, but sitting down and discussing the mechanics, logistics, and economics of the flesh import/export business just isn't Dad's idea of a tea party.

It's not that Dad's a prude, although honestly, I have no interest in what he's like when it's just him, Mom, and the nasty little frogs that keep trying to sneak in through the double-glazing. No, it's just that he prefers the image of his three little angels as just that -- nice young women who don't do anything involving genitals. He accepts the men in our lives as facts, but doesn't want to know how they got there or what they're doing with us. He trusts Mom will tell him anything he needs to know, and all the rest of it is filed away under "Please Let's Talk About Horse-Racing Instead."

Lauren, as you can see, clearly has a more open relationship with her father about such things, although I'm not sure even she thought they could -- or should -- speak that freely about it. That conversation is brilliant. I love Lauren's father and I love the relationship they have. It's just so curious to me because it's so vastly different from what I'm used to; likewise, she listens to me describe the way I relate to my father, and she's equally astounded and interested. Dad and I can watch raunchy British comedies together all day -- Rowan Atkinson as Blackadder comes up with many a racy gag or double entendre -- but if I broached actual one-on-one conversation about such matters, well, here's approximately how that would go.

HEATHER:
So, I've been wondering about s...

DAD:
What channel is the football on today?

ME:
Um, it's on CBS. Go Bucs!

DAD:
What were you saying?

ME:
Right. I was talking about se... (erupts in coughing fit)

DAD:
Are you getting sick? Want a beer?

ME:
Yes.

DAD:
Excellent.

ME:
Hooray for drinking.

DAD:
You wanted to talk about stocks?

ME:
S... yes, stocks. Stocks.

DAD:
Have you gotten a raise yet?

ME:
Of course not.

DAD:
We should meet you in Vegas one weekend, then.

See? It couldn't happen. The words Lauren's father used are a foreign language that Dad simply doesn't speak, probably because he hopes we've never learned it. "Oral sex," "whores," "fucking," "herpes" ... Had I crafted a top ten list of words and phrases that would drive my father out of the room, those would all be near the top, right behind "I love the French."

I'm not even sure I could describe the expression that would wash over my father's face if I sat down and said, "Sex." Or "Whore-fucking herpetic sex! Whee!" (Although if I said that, and sounded so damned excited about it, my father would be right to get up and run far, far away.) Or, "Dad, were you a virgin when you married Mom?" Or even something as benign as, "Dad, I have a problem with this guy I like." He'd just turn and look at me and blink. Possibly, he'd narrow his eyes in utter befuddlement. "What? Your mother's at the store," he'd say.

Sure, if for some reason I was gripped with a truly heinous crisis of love and sex -- and my sisters had fled to Siberia and my friends were all passed out from the night before and all our family pals were at the store with my mother -- my father would gladly listen to me. He might even give me some advice.

And it goes both ways, this aversion to the "s" word and all the naked glories it implies, yet my mother seems almost eager to pick up any perceived slack from my father. She once intimated that she and my father had been... bobbing for apples... and I convulsed briefly before simply interrupting her with a, "No." I'm possessed of a plenty filthy mind and I swear more than the saltiest of sailors, yet I'd burn bright red if my mother began discussing the specifics of my parents' "s" life. I have a nagging suspicion that once I'm married and it becomes kosher to acknowledge that, yes, I'm not a virgin any more, my mother might one night whisper, "So, how's the... SEX?" And then I'd have to drop through the floor.

Maybe this means I'm repressed. But the amount that Lauren and Michael know about my sex life more than compensates for the fact that my father wouldn't choke out the word "naked" in front of me even if those two titillating syllables could jointly resurrect Freddie Mercury and make a vineyard appear in our backyard.

The thing is, I don't think I'm missing out, with the possible exception of not being able to share the triumphant nerdy joy I felt when I anagrammed "herpes simplex" into "her sex pimples." Yes, it might be fun to have the "Daddy" that little girls always have in the movies, but I don't need one. There's other people in my life who cover those bases -- my sister, my girlfriends, my mom, and a couple special guy friends, too. I've never once felt slighted that I can't walk up to my father and cry on his shoulder when my heart's broken, or say the words "birth control" in his presence. I relish the fact that he's got no idea what a foul mouth I have. Dad's there simply to be Dad. He's a rock of a different kind.

But, just watch. I've jinxed myself. I'll call home tomorrow, and my father will answer the phone and say, "Whore sex penis fuck rubber," and the ensuing mental disturbance will cause me to stop shaving and move to France.

Mon dieu.

Someone got here by searching for: "how can I meet someone who is classic and rich." Watching: A really bad episode of Buffy. Since when are they telepathic? Since when can Xander read anything, much less a mind? Listening to: The new David Gray CD, which isn't yet a classic for me like "White Ladder" is -- that's one of my all-time favorites, and every song either chokes me up or makes me think of someone -- but it's a great disc nonetheless.

How I Spent My Summer Holiday

Vacation time is over. Fun? Done. I'm back in the land of Los Angeles, working for a living and having zero life.

Not that I had a life when I was on vacation, either. But that was my excuse -- vacation equals a respite from any kind of life pressure, therefore it's expected, nay encouraged, that I do nothing of social value except goof off with my sister and bask in the healing glow of two appreciative waiters at dinner.

It was a great vacation. Here's the rundown:

Number of home-cooked dinners eaten, not including leftovers: Five in twelve days

Number of home-cooked dinners usually eaten in a twelve-day span: Zero

Days spent in pool: Ten

Water Badminton rally record: 48 hits

Land Water Badminton rally record: 69 hits

What the hell is 'Land Water Badminton' anyway? Wouldn't that be just ... badminton?: Pshaw. I pooh-pooh you. Land Water Badminton, like its aquatic cousin, lacks a net and eschews any 'out' zones. Its uniform is The Bathing Suit. It also requires that all players try desperately not to whack the shuttlecock anywhere on the patio that might also house lizards or garden snakes.

Movies watched: Eight

Lamest lie told: To offset the embarrassment of being 24 and 30 and yet renting Spy Kids, despite its critical acclaim, Julie and I began talking loudly about how our young sister Emma had been aching to see it and wouldn't stop begging us to rent it. Casually, I mentioned that she'd probably be thrilled, if we could tear her away from her damn PlayStation. Julie lamented Emma's recent descent into brattiness.

Biggest waste of a lie, because nobody at Blockbuster cared or even noticed us: See above

Games of Trivial Pursuit: Two

Games of Trivial Pursuit won: One

Games of Yahtzee: One

Number of Yahtzees rolled: One

Number of Yahtzees I rolled that counted as Yahtzees: None, dammit, and let's not talk about that any more

Fluffy books read: Three

Number of bodices ripped in said books: Zero

Number of bodice-rippers I usually like to read on holiday: Ten

Percentage of those bodice-rippers that are acquired from my 91-year old grandmother: 100

Most fortuitous discovery: The existence of Godiva's Chocolate Cheesecake ice cream. It's sex in a carton.

Least fortuitous discovery: When I don't have it, I desperately miss peanut butter.

Second-least fortuitous discovery: I cannot stop watching American Idol and, in fact, I root for people to make monstrous asses of themselves.

Length of vacation: Not long enough.

All in all, it was the perfect amount of nothingness. I turned to Julie one day and thanked her for being my best friend, because she and I can turn nothing into something not only amusing, but actively fun. We laughed a lot with our mother, and laughed even harder with -- and at -- ourselves. We had a limitless interest in our Water Badminton rallies, staying in the pool through rain and painful toe blisters for two-hour spans that never seemed to get old or tiresome; we would probably still be in the pool from our Sunday marathon session if my damn flight hadn't gotten in the way.

It's so amazing when your family is your haven, when they're all you need to regain a little bit of your sanity and your confidence, and your self. And it's even better when they actively try to help you work in a smutty novel or three during your trip, and understand and reflect your remorse when that's just not in the cards.

Hooray! I'm back, and I'm rested, and in short order, I'll be complaining all over again. Can't wait.

All That And We Still Were Short on Time

It went really, really quickly.

A handful of celebrities, double-digits of martinis, far too many dollars, several stints in the 90210 zio code and one illicitly obtained Gilmore Girls script later, our holiday is over. At 6:27 a.m., I dropped off Julie at the airport after roughly twelve days spent together tooling around Los Angeles, having a fantastic time and being utterly fabulous and laughing until our stomach muscles sued us for harassment. We had a fantastic time together, and my friends universally loved her, as predicted; still, despite the length of her visit, it's never truly enough time.

We saw the Getty Center, a sprawling museum funded by a millionaire art fanatic set atop the hills of Los Angeles. The views, on a clear day, are of downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, UCLA, trendy Santa Monica and the Pacific Ocean, all in one packed vista capped with azure skies and wispy clouds.

We spent one Friday on the Warner Bros. lot, a mini-city of gigantic beige, windowless buildings -- sound-stages -- labeled with placards boasting of the movies, new and old, and television shows that were and are filmed there. We roamed the surprisingly expansive and detailed streets of fictitious Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls, watching as leads Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel filmed two takes of a scene from the show's season finale. We snagged a copy of the day's call sheet -- a miniaturized script of the scenes slated to shoot that afternoon ? and chatted up an extra who went to Notre Dame. We strolled the outdoor generic sets for the Old West, New York City and Chicago, peered into The Drew Carey Show set and strolled past the star's Porsche, and peeked at one unrecognizable The West Wing setpiece. We befriended a grip building the set for a new pilot, Two Families, and he snuck us onto the Friends set. We roamed bits and pieces of ER's set and the Gilmore Girls interiors, notably Chilton and the entire Independence Inn. We snapped illicit photos in front of the ER ambulance bay and Luke's diner in Stars Hollow and Lorelei and Rory's mailbox. Scott Patterson, who plays Luke, walked past me and looked directly into my eyes with a faint polite smile on his lips.

We drank martinis in a trendy Hollywood hotspot. A week later, Michael, Julie and I drank various highballs at a slightly divey local bar with red vinyl booths, crammed with a young, so-hip-they-don?t-look-hip crowd and a piano player that takes requests. We were the last group to leave both bars. We gulped martinis at trendy clubs like The Standard, a gorgeous hotel patio bar with a stunning view of Los Angeles.

We drove the Pacific Coast Highway, inhaling the cool air tinged with salt and sand, through Malibu and up past Zuma Beach, past Cher's surprisingly un-eccentric house perched on the ocean, and past the high-up campus of Pepperdine University. We zipped by Aaron Spelling's gigantic house in Holmby Hills, the largest single-family dwelling in the state, and I pulled a three-point turn in his driveway so we could pop around the corner to ogle Hugh Hefner's well-protected Playboy manse.

We drank a thousand chai lattes from The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. We ate In-N-Out Burger and Fatburger and the Houston's signature spinach and artichoke dip. We made turkey burgers and sandwiches. We ate New York-style slices at Mulberry Street Pizzaria in Beverly Hills. We made lip gloss in the microwave and watched my show and ate cheesecake at 1:30 a.m. in the most wee hours of April 12, Julie's birthday. We bought balloons and decorated the apartment as a surprise for when she finally woke up at 9:30 a.m. later that morning, and we dined that night at a garlic restaurant called The Stinking Rose after dropping past The Beauty Bar for its $10 martini-and-manicure special. Julie got purple glittery polish, I got midnight-teal, and Lauren got hooker red.

We saw B-list actor Josh Charles -- of Sports Night and Dead Poets' Society but most recently in the papers for dumping A Beautiful Mind's Jennifer Connelly the week prior to the Oscars, thus causing her sullen demeanor and joyless smiles at the event -- jog across the street in front of our car. We pointed at him. Good thing he was already running.

We cruised the mall Westside Pavilion, seen in the movie "Clueless." We passed the Jim Henson headquarters housed in a sweet tudor-style building on La Brea -- that once was home Charlie Chaplin Studios -- topped with a statue of a dancing, delighted Kermit the Frog. We (okay, I) left a stupid message on Michael's voice mail because we (okay, me) were so focused on saluting Kermit that we (okay, I) forgot we (okay, I) were on an answering machine. We visited the famed Beverly Center shopping structure and the brand-new Hollywood & Highland mall that's adjacent to the Kodak Theater that now is home to the Oscars. Next door is Grauman?s Chinese Theater, which we snapped photos of amid pressing our feet into cement imprints of celebrity shoes. We saw the Hollywood sign and Barbra Streisand, Ronald Reagan, Robin Williams and Julie Andrews' stars on the Walk of Fame, among countless others. We spent time in the hopelessly hip Fred Segal department store ogling the cosmetics and bath products. And we strolled Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, weaving in and out of costly boutiques the likes of which wouldn't serve a short-skirted spandex-clad strumpet even if she looked like Julia Roberts and knotted a men's shirt over her tight dress. We'd never seen that strip before, prompting Julie to crack, "This is the only time I've ever been to Rodeo Drive and not bought anything."

It?s a damn good thing Fox can't fine people for quoting The Simpsons, because my sister and I would be sued pants-less, broke and left to roam the planet in whatever fraying, once-saucy underwear we'd have left from the glory days of our Victoria's Secret sprees. At dinner last night, and several times previously, my sister and I ended up swapping Homerisms and favorite Simpsons moments, while Michael (my old roommate) and Lauren sat there laughing politely, wondering why in God?s name these two seemingly reasonable people can't remember the day of the week, yet can recite entire segments of an animated television series.

My sister met my friends -- Lauren, Michael, Jessica, Grant and Kim -- and got to see Doug again, which she loved. She hopefully saw what I did, which is that nobody could seem to get enough of her and everyone adored her and her bright, sharp sense of humor. Hopefully, somewhere deep down inside herself, she understands that she fits into this world seamlessly and that people want her in theirs.