The California sector

of the family is roaring to life.

The Aunt Judy is on the mend from ovarian cancer (hopefully-she’s the most beloved in my immediate family. Next to me.)

The Aunt Mary (Great Aunt?, not pictured. Yet.) just turned 82 and wears Gucci shades (maybe more suited to Paris Hilton, but she’s never not stylin’.)

And I just found out I have a cousin who I somehow never knew about but is Gucci-sunglasses-wearing Aunt Mary’s granddaughter. Her name is Lilli and she emailed me on a lark through an environmentally-oriented social networking site we both belong to. Go figure.

And apparently, there is some ungodly number of uncles and cousins by marriage or proxy, if not blood.

There is some serious soap opera material here. This here internest thing is opening whole new doors, breaking bricks in iconoclast San Clemente mansions, Los Angeles locks, San Diego stone, Manhattan mortar blocks, Arizona adobe and Red Bank rocks.

Do people still watch soap operas? I used to watch General Hospital with my mom and sisters after school. Last I remember, Luke and Laura got married or had implied and church-sanctioned, missionary-position sexual intercourse, I went to California for a summer, and the chick who played Laura pinched my shoulder in a Marina Del Ray restaurant before I twirled around and turned out to be jailbait. Either that, or she gave him one hell of a blowjob. Wait a minute, that was one fucked up spot in that paragraph for that most recent sentence to end up.

Pictured are the aunt, the mom (lasagna maker, cookie baker, doldrum breaker...) and the newly found Lilli at a restaurant in Long Beach.