2003-08-16 - 3:11 p.m.

We had an amazing time in Sonoma, sad reason notwithstanding. We flew in to 0akland, and I had to laugh because I automatically think of the diarists that live near wherever I happen to be. We spent two nights in San Francisco, spent some time with P and Co., and headed to S0n0ma on Saturday morning. We drove up, and made a wrong turn that led us past San Quentin. Views of a prison always give me pause, and I had just read an article about the founder of the Crips, on Death Row in San Quentin, now reformed and a Peace Prize winner for his work at reforming gang members and at risk boys. He also wrote a book that I am on my way out to get, but celebrity inmates nonwithstanding, the sight of a prison, those tall narrow slits of windows and all that metal, the fences and the razor wire. Disturbs me, regardless of my views of the people inside.

Anyway, the wine country was beautiful, and it smells of hay and dry dirt. We stayed at a beautiful resort, and had somber but lovely dinners with the people we had gone to see, and the boyfriend and I got up for 8am yoga, and we toured some wineries and drove to C@list0ga for a mineral mud bath.

Now, when the boyfriend proposed this idea, I was all for it. Mineral Spring Mud Bath!!! Mmmm. I had visions of white tiled rooms, with tubs filled with chocolate-mousse looking mud, and cucumber slices on my eyes. I don't think I need to tell you that that's not exactly what I found.

We pulled into the lot of the hotel, following a sign for the spa. When we pulled up in front of it, I clutched the boyfriends arm. "I think this is one of those discreet brothels! EEEEW! I can't go in there!" I did go in, of course, because I wasn't about to miss the experience of seeing the reception area of a discreet brothel, but it turned out to be the right place. It was just so... seedy. A low, concrete bunker looking building, like a sort of cheap motel, and a flimsy pressboard door with the spa sign on it. The reception are looked like the ones in the small town insurance agents I remember from my childhood, cheap chrome armed chairs and a battered metal desk. A bedraggled fern or two.

Anyway, they took us into this ...garage looking place, with a cement floor like at the pool, and two tubs (icky, gross tubs) filled with what looked like GARDEN DIRT. And up through the dark, loamy garden dirt bubbled a stream of the actual mineral spring water. That thing was DISGUSTING. And steaming. The boyfriend got in his, sighing blissfully and issuing helpful instructions, while I stood at the side of mine clutching my towel for dear life. "I don't think I can do it. I expected it to be different!" "Different how?" "I don't know... smoother... and CLEANER! I am NOT executing the little butt wiggle move suggested by the attendant to "work myself into the mud" . Dude,I was NAKED. And it looked exactly like a rained-in flowerbed.

But, in the end I did it. And although I grudgingly admit to a very cool feeling of suspension, I could NOT relax. I was like a stiff board in that tub. Then we got out and took a mineral whirlpool bath (still could not relax, looking around cement chamber in horror) and then they wrap you up in these cotton cloths and give you lavender eye pillows, and leave you there on a massage bed for twenty minutes, which was actually very interesting. I felt cool and dried off in there, but I could feel myself sweating, without my body heating up. Which is the point of the mud bath, I guess. And afterward, I felt amazing. But I wouldn't recommend it to y'all.

So it was a nice weekend, although there's been some tension present between me and the boyfriend for the past two weeks. More accurately, I am feeling tension about, or towards, him. And a lot of the problem is mine,I realize. You know, in my friendships,I'm usually the listener. I've always been that way, since I was young,and when I've had big things in my life, I've always run to those same friends, and get unconditional support and love. But in the day to day, I never seem to get the chance to talk about my issues. My friends are dealing with infertility, with cheating, lying boyfriends and infidelity and illness. It seems frivolous to talk about my fears, about how I no longer trust in my decision making abilities, how I waver between certitude and doubt in my relationship, how I lash out in fear. How I am holding conflicting views in my head, a deeply ingrained belief and sense of duty toward the happily after ever, toward the fairytale ending where everyone's happy, and an equally deep rooted disbelief in it's existence. It's a quandry, I tell you, but not quite as immediate as an ill husband and two children, you know? The result of this, however, is that I turn it inward and sometimes take it out on my relationship, while at the same time protecting the fear, hiding it from him. And we do talk about things, the boyfriend and I. But there is a part of me, of all of us I suppose, that I keep to myself, guarded against the things I know can shatter me. It's hard to give up the ghost.

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