Here is where I am living now. Forward my mail, please.

Utah is innard-dessicatingly dry, and Scott could never find work here, and my family would weep forever if we were to move here, and also all our stuff is in New Jersey. Nonetheless, I cannot leave Utah, ever. Because Utah has this.

This is my two-year-old niece, whom I want to eat whole. Perhaps on a baguette, with some horseradish sauce to offset the sweetness. I haven't seen her in a year. Now she's talking and toddling and asking me how I'm doing and whether I like apple juice and I AM NEVER LEAVING.

Scott and Henry are not yet aware of my plans for us to remain here forever, but I suspect they won't put up too much of a fight.

I mean, come ON. Tell me you could walk away from THAT.

Here I am!

I went to California for the weekend to honor a boy named Hank Mason, an incandescent being composed of spun sugar and baby Jesus, who completed his first year of sharing our earthly realm. In honor of his birthday, he learned to hover inches above the ground while granting beatific smiles to his adoring followers.

He's a good kid, is what I'm saying. I also saw some other people. They were much larger, and more resistant to me holding them and kissing their necks. Nonetheless, I had fun.

So much fun that I couldn't sit up straight or talk for the first couple of days home. Also I couldn't do anything but curse the day I chose to live on the East Coast. Why don't we all live in California? It's stupid here. Yesterday it was snowing, then sleeting, then raining. Then the temperature dropped and elves emerged from the bushes to buff the ice until all the sidewalks of the Northeast were smooth and deadly. The elves are out to kill us all, so they can live in our houses, and then sell our houses and move to California. The elves know what they're doing. Yes, I'm writing about imaginary elves. You see what New Jersey does to a person?

I'm finally alive today and my son is home from school. He left for school in a cheerful enough mood (once we wrestled with the application of the BOOTS OF DEATH and the MITTENS OF AGONY) but about an hour after he left, the school called. Is there anything more nerve-wracking than seeing your child's school on one's caller ID? No. Nothing more nerve-wracking. I am not exaggerating at all. His legs felt "wobbly," according to his teacher, and because several kids in his class have come down with the flu and they've all exhibited this mysterious symptom of leg-wobbliness, they were "concerned." Basically they wanted him out of there. I couldn't blame them. I wanted to, but I couldn't.

And now he's home. Home, and bouncing around. His wobbliness has disappeared as mysteriously as it arrived! It's a Valentine's Day miracle!

Sigh.

Oh yes, you should be jealous.

I was away. I was working, but I was not here. I was in another place. A wondrous place. A place that had a pillow menu. Aromatherapeutic scents were pumped into the air. I was there with two writers I love more than I loved the many many pillows. I laughed so hard I pulled heretofore unfelt abdominal muscles. I never wanted to leave.

Now I am back in this place, and there is no pillow menu here. I am expected to place my head on whatever damn pillow I can find! The aromatherapy in this place tends toward the meat-tinged and/or uriney. I've asked to change my room, but the concierge isn't answering. This is not acceptable.

But then, there are these two boys who live in this place. I love one of them enough that I plucked him from the typing pool at work and I married him, before he knew what had happened. Now he scratches my back whenever I scooch toward him on the couch and lean forward ever so slightly. He finds it more tedious than Simonizing, but he obeys the long-standing ritual of the scooch-lean-scratch. The other one, the smaller one, threw himself into my arms last night and pressed his nose against my cheek while his wet lips smashed into me and he said, "I gave you a smell-kiss. I gave you a smiss."

I am sorry, paradisical-pillow-menu-place, but these are services you cannot provide. This place totally wins.

(p.s.: call me.)

And when I say “practically,” I mean “forcefully.”

Oh, that’s right—I have a blog. I knew there was something I was forgetting.

We’re back from scenic Salt Lake City, where my brother- and sister-in-law live with my brand spanking new niece. Conveniently, Heather and Jon also live there, so when we weren’t gorging on sweet, sweet New Baby, we were hanging out with them, begging them to move to Jersey. (Their responses: “No, thanks. Really, no. No. No. Please let go of me.” I think they’re coming around!)

Of course they won’t come here, because there’s no reason anyone should ever leave Salt Lake. Damn it, we should all have such low humidity. Maybe some people find zero percent humidity to be a bad thing, but I am squarely in the Hooray For Desert Climate camp. Not to mention, it’s sunny all the damn time, and there’s all this, like, space, and everyone is friendly. Crazily friendly. I was suspicious, but they seemed like they meant it. I had to find a doctor for this sore throat that I was sure was strep and that I would kill the baby (it wasn’t, and I didn’t), and I was calling all kinds of doctors and urgent care places, trying to figure out where to go, and everyone I talked to was so lovely and genuinely concerned and not trying to hang up on me, I just wanted to cry. At the urgent care clinic, the nurse put me in an examining room, and then returned five minutes later to apologize because the doctor was late. Five minutes. I practically humped her. And then the doctor arrived, and he was hot. They think of everything there!

When we weren’t ogling the baby, we were leering at my brother- and sister-in-law’s nice house, with its plants that are alive and its stuff that isn’t broken. Scott and I would ask questions like, “So how do you, uh, keep plants from being all dead and you know?” and “How much did you pay for, like, this thing that works and also is pretty?” We got some answers, but all we wanted is for them to come live here with us and do everything we’re too lazy to do.

So once my sore throat was better, I decided to throw myself down some stairs. That’s what I did at 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday (we were leaving at 5:30 a.m., and I figured I’d ruin any chances of sleep with an injury or two). And I’m bruised in so, so many ways. My arm has this fascinating lump on it that if you touch it I scream. It hurt so much that I didn’t even notice the broken pinky toe until 12 hours later, when I was all why does my toe hurt? And what’s that purple stuff on my foot? And then I took my shoe off (NEVER TAKE THE SHOE OFF) and saw the horror therein. I honestly saw stars. If I had had a tiny tiny saw in my purse, I might have just sheared the thing off. Just to never look at it again.

I'd do it all over again, bruises and all, to see Henry holding his new cousin and kissing her soft little head. If my baby niece and her lovely parents were to come move here they could beat me up every day. And if that doesn’t get them here, nothing will.