Father wears his Sunday best

The wife and I are at the Extended Stay in Newport Beach. We have been staying here extendedly, just over two weeks. There are two electric burners, a king-size bed and a refrigerator. The wife bought a coffee maker. Some nights we make pasta and grilled fish, and we sprinkle it with salt and pepper. We fall asleep beside one another, me on the left, she on the right.

Last week was Thanksgiving and we wanted to have it with our good friends Alex and Stacey. So we packed one suitcase each, leaving the majority of our stuff in Newport Beach. My wife flew into SFO, and I drove the Prius up the 5. The night before Thanksgiving we stayed at the Club Quarters in San Francisco. We unpacked our suitcases there, repacked into a shoulder bag and drove to Alex and Stacey’s place at South San Francisco. Thanksgiving was entirely vegetarian this year, and brilliantly executed by Alex & Co.: lemon green beans, pumpkin and blueberry pies, garlic mashies, celery sticks with cinnamon, red pepper pesto, yummy green stuff that was spinach cheese mushrooms and brandy we think, olives, lots and lots and lots of wine, two kinds of stuffing, real not-from-a-can cranberries, creamed onions, icy creamy, and a vegan un-turkey. The vegan un-turkey was made of seitan, which you pronounce “satan.” You can make many jokes about eating seitan, many of which can involve humor. After dinner the wife, the lesbians and I all sacked out in front of the tube. We watched How The Grinch Stole Christmas, all of us glorped into a delicious atavistic glorp of decadent stuffed bodies.

Yes, I got my wife to dogpile with lesbians. The trick, for those of you heterosexual married men wishing to emulate my success: find lesbians with whom your wife might feel comfortable dogpiling. It is a subtle trick. Do not say, “Wife, I have a yen to see you go snuggle with lesbians,” or, “Lesbians, I have a yen to see you go snuggle my wife.” That strategy will fail; they will catch on, and gently rebuke you. You will have to be nonchalant about the whole thing.

Anyway, we slept over (no, on the hide-a-bed, silly) at Alex and Stacey’s. We had sushi the next day with Klahr and Sean. They had light colds and dangerously distended large intestines. They had purchased the value pack Whole Foods Thanksgiving Meal for 2, which would be like a meal for 17 plus 4 dogs in any European nation. They politely inquired as to where we currently lived. I answered, entirely honestly, that I have no idea where I lived. At that moment I had space in a house, two hotel rooms and a guest room, all of which might have been called home. My supply lines are stretched all over California. Home is where the wife is, at any given moment.

Here’s my current plan. Tomorrow, escrow on 357 Hazel in San Bruno closes. The San Bruno house ceases to be ours. On Wednesday, an intricate and dangerous network of computers will cause hundreds of thousands of dollars to teleport from northern California to southern California. On that same day, we inspect current repairs we have demanded on our new house at 1072 Tulare (new back porch, new door, new drainage, new attitude). On Thursday, the Newport Beach escrow company counts the zeros, approves our new home loan and insurance. Our real estate agent picks up a key to 1072 Tulare in Costa Mesa. On Saturday, the alcoholic Irish movers arrive, and unload whichever of our personal items they failed to sell on Ebay. On Sunday, Sears arrives with a washer, dryer, refrigerator, box springs, and two new beds (we can push them together if lesbians arrive). Sunday also, Internet service is installed, along with satellite TV. Later on Sunday, I celebrate with beer, football and my wife’s tits.

That’s the plan, anyway. Shit could happen.

Other than that, not much.