I realize this pic looks like one of those poorly developed Polaroids from back in the day, and the washed out color really doesn’t do this gorgeous day justice. But I had a dark shadow over my face and Dean looked like he was pregnant with an alien. Hence the filtering and cropping.

Yes, it’s November in the Bay Area, and we’ve made our annual pilgrimage to Half Moon Bay to buy live crab right off the boat.

Milo kept yelling “HI” through the guardrail at this fisherman below sitting on the bow of his boat, but I think the poor guy felt mocked. No one came down to his side of the pier. We found that buying crab is kind of like choosing which nightclub to go in to. You tend to want to be at the place other people line up for.

This year the crab is $6 per pound, which can only mean one thing… inflation! Two years back it was $4 per pound, They said for a dinner party of eight, we’d better get two crabs per person. As you can see in the pic below, these Dungeness crabs were pretty big boys. We got forty pounds of them.

Dupree has caught a cat claw or two in the past from getting too close. I’ve gotta think a crab claw is much more lethal. Luckily Dupe was a little gun-shy.

After we left the pier and started on the drive home, we came across a rare gem of a beach–one of the only ones that allows dogs on leashes on this area of the coast. It was a bit of a hike to get down there, and I was wearing 3-inch suede heel boots. Yeah, go me. But I took my time scaling down the rocky cliff, and it was well worth it.

 I snapped the above pic right before we all ran to the edge of the cliff. You know your kid is a fast little shit when your 6-foot-five husband has to break out in a sprint to catch him.

Just like running on the beaches of Cabo San Lucas, same plush velvety bronzed sands sans the Don Julio hangover. Plus, these waves weren’t at a vertical trying to pound us down and suck us in to a wicked undertow.

Perhaps a real live Maverick here. We’ll never know. Although, something tells me the Mavericks aren’t in full hooded body gear, even in November. They’re more of the reckless, saltwater in-every-orafice kind.

HBC: “HomeBoyCrew for life” – Dean likes to say

Quite possibly one of my favorite pics of my fellas. Although Dupree is showing us his ass. I suppose if he was facing me, tongue hanging out and ears cocked, it would all look staged.

“Hold still,” was what I kept telling Milo as I wrapped my arms around his frenetic limbs. I wanted to teach him to pace himself. Not to outrun the excitement.

After leaving the beach, the floor of our Traverse now covered in a fresh blanket of sand, we drove through a small town behind five Italian sports cars in different colors. It started with an older Ferrari and ended with a brilliant aerodynamic red one with glinting rims. Dean dubbed the spectacle the “small wiener convention”. I laughed, and thought back to when I’d dated a guy with a yellow Ferrari and how cool I felt riding in it, except for that it was yellow. Bright yellow. I mean if you are going drop boatloads of cash on a car, why in the color of Tweety Bird? After a few dates, I couldn’t handle his baby talk anymore, specifically when he used the word “nummy” at Ruth’s Chris. (Which also may have something to do with a cartoon-colored sports car), and so that was the end of that.

But I realized riding in that very moment, in our sand-speckled SUV (that now reeked of MacDonald’s fast food)–that I’d take a three-row family vehicle with car seat, wet dog on my feet and belching husband any day over riding shotgun in a Ferrari without a ring on my finger, and a promise for tomorrow.

I have everything I want in this moment, the love I’d always craved when I was single. I’ve realized it doesn’t always come in the prettiest package, or with exactly the right words, but it’s something you feel deep inside despite your issues, and you know it’s the real thing. It took so long to get here, but I’m so glad I waited.

OH! And Milo has a new word this week. “Happy.” He said it again while studying my face for a long time there in his car seat. I think he picked up the word from the last page of The Little Blue Truck. He said it again, “Happy,” then nodded slightly, agreeing with himself before he closed his eyes and drifted off into highway slumber.

“Yeah, buddy,” I said brushing a lock of hair away from his eyes, “We are. Happy.”

M