I think I wrought some kind of weather curse on us by complaining that it wasn't hot enough. By the day we left Brooklyn and headed out to Long Island, it had been pouring rain for twenty-four hours. Apparently it still is raining.

We finally got a day or so of the nasty heat but for the most part we really enjoyed one of the milder week's of New York's summer weather, and all sarcasm aside, I preferred it that way. Still, there's nothing like the air of California, which greeted us like a crisp cucumber salad when we hit the Oakland airport. Though hot here, it's different. More like being enfolded in fleece than smothered in wet wool.

I know I wasn't a good traveler this time. I tired easily, I wanted to be home more than I wanted to be out. I don't blame myself. I left in the middle of a busy time for this freelance girl and at a time when I'd just found my way into a swimming routine. And don't worry, now that I'm back I don't hunger for NY. I mean, I really did enjoy myself, but I'm happy to be home.

I did have some memorable moments in NY. I loved embarassing my sister by going into the same health food store in Williamsburg many times a day, for breakfast, for lunch, for water while she slunk into the UPS store next door to avoid whatever level of embarrassment comes with being seen one time too many in the same physical location.

"What must they be thinking? You've been in here four times!" she proclaimed, tugging on my arm and shaking her head as if i had just told her I would now be parading down Madison Avenue naked.

"I know what they're thinking," I told her. "They're thinking, 'hey, here's that woman who keeps spending her money in our store. She rocks!"

I loved getting coffee at Verb cafesurrounded by retro-eighties hipsters wearing all the clothes I so desperately hoped would never come back into fashion, and having dinner with my cousin Tim, his wife, In, and their three year-old daughter Kai at the running park where we would eat while she ran a mile in her little pink sneakers.

I love that I got to hear my sister, who does not swear, make the most hilarious freudian slip ever, accidentally uttering the word "fucked" as a verb that ostensibly happened to a friend of hers in a "stridge" (if you think about it, you can probably figure it out). Then I took even greater pleasure at her mortification as I threatened to tell everyone about it. It's hard to get a rise out of her!

Or that over dinner in a loud restaurant she only heard two snippets of our conversation and thought my friend and I were discussing "octopus porn."

I love the fact that every night on the air mattress we shared, she would edge her body halfway over in the middle of the night so that she either elbowed or kicked me off the mattress; i used to do this to my mother. I loved that in the morning she looked like a five year old girl, not a fifteen year old, when she slept, and in her sleep I could gaze as tenderly at her as I liked without suffering her teenage embarrassment.

I love that I could get lost coming out of subways, and take her spinning in four different directions and she would just laugh, not get irritated with me.

I love that she has a good head on her shoulders and a kind heart, even if her love of shopping temporarily takes precedence.

I love that after a childhood of longing for a sister, I finally have one I can hang out with, even as different as we are.

When our dad picked us up at the airport, I couldn't help but wonder what he thought watching his two daughters, one half the age of the other, walking down that ramp together, laughing and ribbing each other.