Hello. It's me. I've been gone awhile, I know. At the moment I'm sipping on breakfast tea (English) with a bit of milk and SPLENDAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! watching my dog watch the cat lick her bottom.

This is my segue to reintroduce all of you to Revealing Rebecca S.... all the way from Wales. It seems boredom really is a universal endemic, as I've never set foot in Wales but recognize the details of her lament as though they were mine from my youth toiled away in one filing job too many. In her defense, her column was not so late as my lack of response to it. It is my fault her readers are only now getting their weekly dose of Becka. A thousand pardons and pass the beer.

Mr. Zippy and I spent a week in the Napa Valley, tasting local wines and examining the folds of our marriage. There's nothing like a hotel room mirror with a concave to spread your girth from one side of the room to the other to force you to look at what you've spent the rest of the year hiding beneath linens and low lighting.

"We're fat."

"But we're happy."

"We're fat."

"But we have control top panty hose."

"We're fat."

"But honey, we're on vaCAAAAAAAAAAAAAshuuuuuuuuuun."

So we had really good hotel sex on a really hard hotel mattress that scrunched beneath us, the rubber padding obviously in place longer than we'd been there. I could not sleep the first two nights for every time I rolled I scrunched. scrunch. scrunch. scrunch. scrunch. scrunch. scrunchscrunchscrunchscrunchchscrunchscrunchscrunch.

We had a road stripe yellow Mustang convertible that we insisted on using every day but the wedding day (the reason for the season). If it was 7am with fog hanging and cold still nuzzling the earth, we had the top down and our sweaters on and the heat blasting like a furnace. It reminded me of crossing Vail Summit with friends Heather and Keith on the 4th of July in the Chrysler LeBaron convertible with the top down, the heater blasting and our parkas on. WEEEEEE!brrrrrrrWEEEEEE!brrrrrrrWEEEEEEE!brrrrrrWEEEEE!

BTW - Bullfrog makes a pleasant sun block SPRAY that is not sticky, dries instantly and smells lovely. Worked better than the various Bullfrog products we've tried in the past. So, lest you want to be sun spot baby...

At the rehearsal dinner we sat at a table with three other couples, only one of which we knew. Of the other two couples, one was a forensic pathologist and his wife who were somehow related to the groom (lovely older couple). The other was an aunt of the bride and her husband, a nice couple until the conversation turned to the differences between the US and the USA sects of the Presbyterian Church. ruh roh. Suddenly those in the LIBERAL branch are being spat upon by those in the LITERAL branch who condemn any deviation from the Biblical text, particularly in regard to homosexuality.

"Marriage is for procreation, so same sex unions are against the law of God."

"That's interesting," said me, member of the individual thinkers branch of my own creation (HA!). "There's a tribe in New Guinea that has no Western influence, that come together heterosexually for one small time frame during the year specifically for procreation. Otherwise, they strictly identify themselves as homosexual."

And fire spewed down from the mountain top..... oi vey.

"Are these people CHRISTIANS???"

"Is that a trick question?"

"Well, there are TRIBES IN NEW GUINEA that eat each others brains! and there are TRIBES IN NEW GUINEA that ..."

"Well, look," hello it's me again. "I gave you a example of homosexuality being a completely natural occurence, with no Western influence whatsoever. If the best you can do is mock me then I dare say you don't know the teachings of Christ as well as you think you do."

With that, I shut up and the conversation died. Not the didactic rhetoric, but the conversation. Fortunately, the LIBERAL heathens either left the table or stopped talking as the LITERAL zealots had a field day with my tribe in New Guinea. But what can you say to such vitriolic hatred? I could have inquired how he enjoyed sex with his daughter, or how often he had his wife stoned for showing her face in public, or if prefered sliced or spiraled ham... but somehow, I felt better than that, and would have been truly horrified had this grown to ruin the bride's dinner. Silence is golden, and everything I know about life I learned in kindergarten.

That night, along the way back to the hotel through the many vineyards between St. Helena and Rutherford, mr. zippy pulled off the side of the road and shut the headlights off. With the top down and our seats reclined, we laid quietly in awe at the universe above us. It was humbling, at the very least.

The following day we breakfasted on the BEST BREAD EVER and eggs, coffee, potatoes, the works, at Gillwood's Cafe in St. Helena before heading up the road to Calistoga. Calistoga is an old, quaint, tourist town in which one has to get out of the car and walk around in order to find the local flavor. For us, that was a farmer's market that had the best produce and floral on offer, as well as a massage therapist that took me on for fifteen minutes after which I wanted to stuff her in my suitcase and bring her back home with me. She had the most pervasive calm about her, which settled my hungover energy and relieved the tension in my neck brought on by the hard mattress and one wine too many.

From there we took a walk through a working 1800s wheat/corn water mill that was a fascinating trip in time. Had we been locals, we'd been hauling off the free corn meal for our chickens (presuming, of course, that we'd *have* chickens). A lovely walk for $2. Highly recommended, especially with kids.

The top of the day, though, was the drive up Diamond Mountain Road, which lead only to a dead end about three miles from the highway. But those three miles were deeply wooded, one laned, with a steep drop off one side and a mountain on the other. In the sunny spots, there were vineyards. Of course.

That evening we attended the only wedding that has made me sorry we didn't do a big affair with our own nuptials. The ceremony itself was small and intimate, with a string quartet and an aisle of rose petals on the lawn of the bride's parents home. The bride and groom were so content, as though this was not the biggest day of their lives, but the one that made a simple segue to the rest of their days together.

The reception was held at the Auberge du Soleil in St. Helena, CA, where the bride had always said she would have her reception, long before she ever met the man she would marry. Over the dinner, the father of the bride spoke too much, but gushed with love and respect for all his guests and particularly his daughter and the man of her choice. He'd hoped we (mr. z and me) had been able to take in the local area and not just the wineries.

"That's what we've done mostly," mr. zippy said. "You've got a lot of stuff going on in this area besides the wineries."

The father of the bride beamed with pride, but one day, he hoped, we would come back to taste his own vintage. What else was he to do but heave a healthy wish for the future of his own retirement in his own vineyard?

There were people at our table who'd flown in from Ireland and the North of England. Another couple from San Francisco who'd known the bride since she was five. They were Heinrich, who sat next to me with Bruce, his companion of fourteen years, a terribly pretty young man with the freakish good looks of a model, on the other side of him. Heinrich remembered when Jennifer first entered his salon as that gangly child and how he fell in love with her entire family and they with him. Heinrich is from Denmark and he tells me the problem with America is that it is not the melting pot we think it is. "When I moved to San Francisco everyone told me I was going to love the Castro district because that's where all the gays are. Why do I want to live amongst gay people? I know what gay people are like. What are other people like? But I don't know that because other people live amongst their own, too."

The flight back was just as pleasant as the flight out, being the only two people in first class not taking advantage of free booze but thoroughly enjoying the seats wide enough to hold our big asses.

Since we've returned, we have not been able to get enough sleep. mr. zippy went right to work and I went right back to class. We both have difficulty making the trip from West to East, and we've felt the lag all week long, through this morning even, as we slept until 10am in spite of our alarm waking us at 8. We could have gone right back to sleep had we not had the better sense to force ourselves up.

There is much reading to be done - 11th c., 16th c. and 19th c. texts. Math to be studied (endless). Psychology to be studied, although I'm hoping to be able to somehow make use of the same 19th c. text for this class as I am for my World Lit class. etcetera etcetera etcetera. And poor mr. zippy has been working over the weekend at home, trying to get on top of his game again before the new week starts and he finds himself yet behind.

"Do I need to get you some cheap beer and a trailer?" he says to me just now as it's nearing 1pm and I'm writing this in a t-shirt and undies.

"You knew what you got when you married me," I remind him with a laugh.

And life goes on. Mars in the sky above us, vineyards all around, my husband holding my hand in the cold air, warming my heart with his own, a happy couple on the eve of the rest of their lives together. These are the things I brought back from the Napa Valley with me. These are the things I hold true.