Tomorrow we leave for Hemet for the weekend.

Luckily our part of the world seems to be entering a brief cooling trend. Hemet is notoriously hot. And, as if perversely, when waving goodbye to the sun across the flats, or from the front doors of that Applebees (Hemet gourmet)—pretty darn cold.

What I like about Hemet (apart from love my in-laws): the teeny tiny natural history sort of museum that is very state-of-the-art and kick-ass in its presentation of information such as: giant sloths roamed this land. Also saber toothed cats. And wolves. This sort of history makes Hemet’s heat and flatness and funky main drag straight out of a teen horror movie (more) tolerable for me.

And, as you know, Hemet is famous for the Ramona Pageant, which my in-laws acted as ushers for one year, when my sleepless son was only 8 months old, and sleepless, and cranky, and definitely not into sitting in Hemet heat and viewing the Ramona Pageant, which was huge, and used many locals, who paraded across the amphitheatre in gorgeous, colorful costumes, there were horses cantering across the stage, maybe llamas, too, I don’t know, I was an extremely sleepless mother then, I do remember the actors had microphones, all the lovely cheesiness that is the Ramona Pageant easily heard, but also heard was my baby wailing in his Bjorn and so we left, drove back to the in-laws lovely home, trudged upstairs to our guestroom, tried to nap, then tried to nap in shifts and when that failed, utilized the patio and its kiddie pool and suddenly everyone returned from the Ramona Pageant and produced food like red chips and homemade chicken salsa and this drink called chardonnay and people fussed over our baby and were eager to hold him—-family. They always make Hemet’s unnerving barren-scape and occasional attacks on police by White Supremacists bearable.

O Hemet! I can’t sing of you, but might squeak a bit if you cough up a sloth bone for my son.