Three years ago, I moved my family back to the east coast.  No, that’s not totally accurate.  Truth is, three years ago my family moved me back to the east coast.  

When a play I’d co-written was scheduled to open on Broadway, Robin and the kids seized upon that as an excuse to return to the side of the country they longed to live on since we’d relocated to Los Angeles more than a decade earlier.  I was dubious.  The majority of my work and my friends were located out there and I’m now at an age where even the slightest deviation in routine is regarded as an upheaval.  But my family’s happiness has always come first (plus they mounted a campaign that included not talking to me until I caved) so, the minute I caved, Robin got on a plane that landed in New Jersey, found a house she thought we’d be happy living in and, not unlike the European immigrants of my grandparents’ generation, sent for the rest of us when the time was right.

The town she chose was the bucolic enclave of Short Hills.  Ancient trees, spacious homes set far back from roads with no sidewalks, a local movie house, quaint mom and pop stores on both sides of a sleepy Main Street  – a Rockwellian wet dream just forty minutes from Manhattan.

In the cult classic movie "Swingers," the crew of guys throws the line "This place is dead anyways" around when at a party and itching to leave. It doesn't matter whether the party is actually dead or not. At the DNC convention, where party-hopping is a sport, everyone seems to always be looking for the next spot and I've never seen a situation where the "This place is dead anyways" line  (and various facsimiles of it) is used more.

By one account, there are more than 1200 convention-related events in Denver this week. This includes panels, lunches, breakfasts, and screenings, but the events which seem to pique the most interest (at least amongst my peers) are the parties that take place each night after the convention program is finished.

Last night, I started at the Chairman's reception, hosted by Howard Dean. It was close to the Pepsi Center, so it was a natural place to start. The median age was about 45 and the featured act was the Goo Goo Dolls. Despite Dean's rousing introduction, the band and the crowd didn't mesh. Place was dead anyway. 

Yesterday I opened a “letter” from my mother; a perfect example of her eccentric idea of correspondence.  Bereft of card, signature, or, God forbid, “Dear Daughter”, the envelope contained 3 newspaper clippings – each annotated with her inimitable, looping script.  To the first clipping, a review cautioning that a new kid’s hardback called “The Graveyard Book” may be too dark for sensitive children, my mother had added “This sounds good!”  A study exploring the effects of the color red on both attention span and anxiety prompted this commentary: “You know I made all red things for your cradle and crib!  How to create an obsessive compulsive?”  And of course my personal favorite, an interview in which Nadya Suleman, the recent mother of octuplets, asserts that she wanted a family to help combat depression.  In this article the words “children” “cure” and “depression” have all been manically underlined.  Radiating a giant arrow, the newspaper’s indent points to my mother’s own thickly inked phrase: “What an idiot!”  She may not write much, but it sure reads loud and clear.

My mother’s attitude towards children and their rearing being what it is, she often chose the Wolf Creek Inn as the ultimate destination on the many and extensive road trips we took together.  Touted as “the oldest continuously operated hotel in the Pacific Northwest” by the State of Oregon’s recreation department, the Inn boasts perfectly articulated period décor, both a ball and dining room, and a magical, perfumed orchard.  It is also remote, haunted, and almost entirely unfit for children (read: no television).

Last weekend I did one of those things that’s really not fair to do to your boyfriend. I told him I wanted to do something extra fun and that I wanted him to plan it. I do this to him a lot and we often end up happily watching a movie and eating take-out instead, so I didn’t think anything of it when I canceled on him last-minute. He waited until I got home from dinner to tell me that he had actually come up with a plan, “What is it??” “It’s no big deal.” “What is it??” “We can do it another night.” “What is it?!” So he told me that he was going to ask me if I didn’t mind not sleeping at either of our houses.  Where would we have slept?…A fancy hotel in Santa Barbara? …His parents’ beach house in Ventura? …Paris??,

“Morongo Casino.” Morongo Casino???? Was he serious? That wasn’t romantic! But he told me that he was going to take me to the fancy restaurant on the top floor and that he’d show me the rooms online and even I’d think they were pretty nice. And when he brought it up again at breakfast the next day, I could see that he really wanted to go and maybe I should just suck it up and go. And anyway, we could stop at Hadley’s for date shakes on the way back.  And he thought maybe I could wear that green dress I wore the night we met because it was lucky. And where else would he fit in with that ridiculous moustache he’d recently grown?