This has been a most unpleasant Friday the 13th. I wrote a story when I was nine about a kid who had the worst day of his life (bad test grade, grounded by parents, little sibling gets awesome present), only to figure out it was due to the date. Here I am, twenty years later, living out my nightmare. Today's disappointments have ranged in severity to where I am now sitting at my computer sweating. I'm typing and sweating because I'm overwhelmingly frustrated. Every new piece of bad news has been followed with someone saying, "It's not your fault; these things happen."

"It makes it hard to celebrate," I told our realtor. "No matter how good the news, you know there's disappointment coming. There's always something else."

"You celebrate the two of you," she said to me. "You'll always have each other, and that's what you celebrate. You celebrate who you are."

Good, because that's all we'll have when we can't afford to live in this damn house we just bought.

Today's lesson: "Bait and Switch."

Because the jobs aren't final until the money's in the bank and the house isn't done until we're holding the keys and everything that can break will break... it has seriously been a frustrating day. An expensive, frustrating day.

Stee flipped through the mail when we got home. "Baby, look. Look who's here to cheer you up."

He held up the Entertainment Weekly, in front of his face. Johnny Depp on the cover. stee said, "Hey, Pam. It's okay. I'm here now."

I have learned that I cannot be online when I'm working on the book.

Here's proof. In the past hour I discovered that an anime series I wrote the dub scripts for years ago was released this year. I tracked down my old boss and called her. She promises they used a completely new script for the dub, but now I have to pay money to find out if that's true, dragging out an old computer to compare scripts. Also: why do I want to do that? I'm not going to get a free DVD out of it, and they aren't going to go back and put my name on it and who cares about anime but this is some half-assed excuse to take a break so i'm going to ignore it and move on.

Then: these people are awesome.

And also: this is addictive.

You could also factor in the fact that today we go to the escrow company and i sign something that makes me a homeowner and half of my things are in boxes and i'm waiting to hear word on just about everything that's going to happen in the next six months.

You could factor in the fact that our rings arrived this week and they're in a pretty box very close to where i'm working and the temptation to put on my ring while i type is almost too much.

Okay. I'm going offline. I can't resist the temptation to surf.

You need to understand that at the moment, the book is leaching all the clever out of me. Every day I sit down and open a Word document and then I put my hand flat against the screen and shut my eyes and I can feel bright lights flash and there's this high-frequency sort of ringing noise and it goes on and on and then hours later I stagger away from the computer and six double-spaced pages print out. And then I'm useless.

What she said.

Why haven't you checked the Tubeys?

Hamish wants you to tell him a joke.

I'd like to think I'll try anything once. (Here's the point where stee shouts "Woo-hoo!" jumps up from his computer and starts making a list of all my female friends, ranked in order of hotness.)

So when Hilary called a couple of weeks ago to ask if I'd be interested in getting a fake tan with her, I waited until she said she'd pay for it before I agreed.

I'm a pale girl. Writers don't usually get to spend that many hours outside, and you know, the sun is bad for you. I wear sunscreen. And jeans. But eventually I'll have to get these pictures taken that will be seen for the rest of my life, so that makes you start thinking crazy thoughts about yourself. Like: "I wish my hair would be longer by the wedding. Maybe I should wear extensions." Answer from my stylist-adjacent friend: "Are you nuts? Those would cost eight hundred dollars, and you're just going to pile them up on top of your head anyway."

But Hilary gets me thinking about the fake tan, to which Liz responds, "Brides are crazy. My other friend who's getting married is about to try the same fake tan. Nobody wants an orange wife, Pamie dot com."

At lunch before our appointment, Hilary and I share any tips we've heard from other people who have already braved the fake tan.

"They'll put stuff on your palms and nails so they don't tan," she tells me.

"Sian said you have to raise your arms so it tans under your boobs. I might have to do a backbend."

"Yeah. How are you going to get under there without touching them?"

"I have no idea. Is this stuff going to get on my bra?"

"They said it all washes out of clothes."

"What if I forget to close my eyes?"

"What if I forget to close my mouth?"

"This has the potential to go horribly wrong."

"I can't believe we're both about to go out of town."

"We're idiots."

Hil and I show up at the spa and get bummed out when we realize we could have ordered a massage that uses self-tanner. "That's what I want," she says. "Me too." Instead we have somehow ordered up an airbrush tan.

We sign forms that say we understand we can't sue the spa no matter what. There's a warning not to inhale when the tanner is in your face. We're dealing with all kinds of smarts here in Los Angeles, you guys.

Hil goes first, entering a nearby booth. I sit in my robe and flip through a Maxim. I can hear Hil chatting with the woman hosing her down with paint.

I decide to ask the woman at the front desk a few questions. "Will this fade evenly?"

"You have to moisturize every single day, and in about four days it'll start to fade. But if you moisturize and exfoliate, it'll come off just fine. Or you could buy these products, which will make the tan last longer."

"I'm going out of town. Are you sure I won't be all blotchy?"

"If you're going out of town, I'd buy this tan extender. Then you don't have to worry about it. It's forty dollars."

"No thanks. Hey, will this hurt my clothes?"

"No, it all washes right out."

Minutes later Hilary emerges, looking much browner than when she went in. "I splurged for the gold shimmer," she tells me, twisting her arm in the sunlight. "See?"

"Yep." She looked like she'd just come back from a two-week vacation in Cancun.

"It's going to get darker over the next four hours," she tells me. I try to imagine just how dark she'll be. I get scared.

It's my turn. I walk into the booth and say as quietly as possible, "I don't want to be that tan."

"Okay," she says, putting a shower cap on my head. "Do you want the shimmer?"

"No."

"We can spray you with something that's clear and the tan comes in later, or you can get the tan now, which will get darker over the next six to eight hours."

"What's the difference?"

"One's more fun because you can see the tan now."

"But the clear one is better for my clothes?"

"No, it washes right out of your clothes."

I'm sure you've figured out by now that this shit did not wash right out of my clothes and has ruined one of my pretty, pristine white Victoria's Secret bras. Those things are not cheap, and it was dumb of me not to wear the black one to the tanning place.

"I just want it to be very light. And not as tan on my face as the rest of my body. Barely a tan on my face."

"Now, your friend is much paler than you are, and she braved the real tan."

"Yes, well."

"You don't want to look like you just got back from vacation?"

"I want to look like I once in a while get outside."

She puts cotton in my ears and moisturizer on my hands. Then I stand, naked, on a box. There's a mirror across the booth from me, but it wisely only shows me from the chest up. If I had to stand naked, staring at myself full-length with my arms extended while someone airbrushed me with paint, I'm pretty sure I would have left. It was already making me ashamed of myself.

The paint is cold and the room is colder and all I could think of was how close this woman was to my totally naked body. Wait. I was wearing a shower cap. Sexy!

Speaking of sexy, she got to my chest. "I'm going to lift now," she says, and holds my breast up as she paints underneath. She must have seen the slightly mortified look on my face because she goes, "Every girl with real boobs has to get the lift. That's your curse for being blessed with them."

"Oh."

"It's weird when women come in here with these huge breasts that don't need to be lifted at all. Sixty-year old women with these large balls on their bodies. Or the girls who don't need bras because they're so stiff and fake. It's scary."

"Yeah, that's weird."

"Turn around and bend over slightly."

And that's when I thought of all of you, sweet readers. As that woman airbrushed my ass, all I could think was, "How did we come up with this? Why are we all doing it? Why is someone willing to paint naked women for a living? Am I bending over too far?" And finally, "At least I have a story for my fucking website."

Arms out, bent at the waist, paint in my ass crack, I again had that moment. "Damn you, Los Angeles," I thought. "You are a weird place to live."

I get no warning before she sprays my face, so of course I'm inhaling at the same time because that's how my life goes.

For those of you wondering... Uh, she totally paints everywhere.

I walked out of the booth. "Your face looks great!" Hil says. "You look really glowy."

We walked to our cars. Hil got a look at herself in the mirror. "Oh, my God! My face is so dark!"

"I think if you shower right now you'll stop the tanning," I tell her, concerned about the dark shade her face has taken. She drives off and I don't see her again for a couple of weeks, so I never found out how dark her tan got.

Four hours later I was happy with my arms and legs. My clothes screwed up the tan in parts, where my bra hit my body, the waistband of my jeans. I wish they'd told me to wear loose-fitting clothing. Not that anybody was going to see the parts of the tan that had wiped off on my clothes, but it did leave me with a sock tan that prevented me from wanting to wear sandals. My white bra was totally brown the next morning, and I threw out a pair of white panties that looked like they'd been through hell. I've washed the bra five times now, and it's faded to a light tan.

My tan faded in about six days. Only one day seemed a bit blotchy. I covered myself in moisturizer until it faded away. I don't know that I'd ever do that again. Nobody seemed to notice, and that might very well be because I did the lightest possible setting, but I'm not sure it's worth sixty bucks. I'm thinking a bottle of self-tanner, a pair of gloves and an energetic fiance can get the job done cheaper and with much more fun.

It's a very strange sensation, walking into my mom's new house, seeing everything I associate with home (the dog, the bookshelves, the large dining room table, Mom) in a place I've never seen before in my life. It's exactly like when you dream that you're in your house but it's not your house but it is your house. Dan's standing there, in my house, next to my mom, which is very dream-like indeed, since I think they hadn't seen each other in four years. Dan's petting the dog, who is in a backyard I've never seen before, and Mom's wearing an ankle bracelet I've never seen before. She lives in Connecticut now and I had nothing to do with this move. Her house is still in boxes. She shows me the bracelet -- it's from high school, when she went on a date with a boy. The boy is now a man and he is back in her life. She smiles as she holds it, her eyes getting a little dreamy.

This house is in a neighborhood that's very different from anywhere we've ever lived before. Duplexes and triplexes line the block. Big, angry dogs bark from where they're tied to trees in backyards. Clotheslines appear to tie all of the homes together in a complicated web of t-shirts and sheets. Mom has the fancy front yard, the one with a partial driveway. She's the only house on the block that has just one front door. I'm immediately defensive, worried that in losing the privacy of a Texas suburb, she's lost her safety. I know our big dog is a big softy. I know how friendly Mom is.

My mom is in the shower when the doorbell rings. The only time the doorbell rings when I'm home visiting is when a package has arrived. I open the door. A man about my age stands on the stoop. We look at each other. He takes a step back. So do I. Then we lean forward, staring, rearranging each other's faces in our heads until we realize: "That's my cousin." We hadn't seen each other in about ten years.

At night I'm on the phone outside because it doesn't work too well in the house. I'm watching the little girls across the street as they practice the elaborate dance number they've choreographed for themselves. There's no music, but the girls know exactly how to move in silence. It's a bouncy, Britney-inspired number that the girl in front clearly has created, but the other two girls are holding their own. Someone walks by the house and says hello to me as he passes.

In the morning I decide to go for a run, even though Mom was worried at first because she's never seen anybody run through her neighborhood. It's immediately clear as I run through the drizzle that I'm the first person to ever jog this block. People on their stoops stare, looking behind me momentarily before they give me an amused wave. I'm happy to run through the drizzle, because I never get to run in the rain. Running in the rain makes me feel like an athlete.

One block up and the houses are quieter. Mom's busy street curves to the left, and I've taken the right. I'm passing large, quiet homes nestled in the woods as the rain comes down harder. I run until I find another busy street, turn around and run home. I must have felt nervous; it's the best time I've ever logged running those miles.

We visit homes I've never seen and homes I haven't seen since I was little. People are friendly. They offer beer. I make friends with a boy who I'm pretty sure is my fourth cousin. People make us lunch.

We drive to Gramma's old house. It's gone. Mom had to sell the land and they knocked down her house. Two new houses sit in its place, up to the street. It looks completely different. I wouldn't even know I was standing where the house was. It's sad. It's a casualty of timing. If Dad died before Gramma instead of the other way around, the difference of less than two years, that house would still be standing, or at least that would be the land where Mom would be building her home.

I run two days later, no rain this time. I pass a little girl and her mom as they work on a garden in their front yard. "Hi," she waves as I pass. I give a breathless, "Hey." On my way back, she's waving as I near. I take off my headphones. "You're running to exercise!" she shouts, passing on her newest knowledge. "Hi!" she shouts again.

Mom has met most of her neighbors. They're very glad she's moved into the house. She's made the street better than it was, they tell her. We walk to the corner store down the street to buy butter. "I know you," the guy behind the counter says to me. "Your mom just moved here, up the street. I met you before."

"That's my sister," I say. She had helped Mom move up the week before. That happened three times while I was there. "We met last week." "No, that's my sister."

We get Carvel ice cream. Mom points out all of the places she used to go as a little girl. I know she's still unpacking and trying to see herself in this new house. I know she wishes she could have afforded to live in the same neighborhood she grew up in, and not one nearby. But I see how Mom has come home, and how that has given her a peace she hasn't had in a while.

We walk the dog that night. The street is quiet. The stars are out. We fall asleep in the living room watching a movie, just like we would have in Houston.

This time when it's time to leave, I don't drive away in my car. I don't need a ride to the airport. I only have to go back to New York. The train station is a mile from mom's house. Mom's vision of New York is from thirty years ago. She's terrified of subways, Harlem, and cabbies. When she finds out I've ridden a subway by myself, her impulse is to ground me. I show her how easily she can get into Manhattan, and that she shouldn't waste that opportunity. I make her promise to go into the city with me next time.

My train comes, and I hop on. I wave from my window as it pulls away. Mom waves back, and bursts into tears. I wave harder, my own tears falling now. We've never said goodbye on a train before. It is much more heartbreaking.

I get to Brooklyn on my own, by train and subway. I get lost one street from Dan's apartment. We work in a coffee shop and I wish that's what happened all the time, sitting side by side on a couch with a cup of hot chocolate and espresso between us. Couch Baron comes out to meet us, having recently crossed the Atlantic. When I complain about having to haul my suitcase from LA to Manhattan to Brooklyn, he is understandably unsympathetic. We meet friends and more friends and even more friends and I really don't want to go back to Los Angeles the next morning.

There's an endless walk in search of pizza. It ends with bagel bites and my second episode of The Amazing Race. Once again it causes me to fall deep asleep, the words "Non-elimination round" again the explanation for watching groups of people buy airplane tickets.

For the next week, after I get home, I have this feeling I can't get rid of. It's like I've forgotten something. At first I assume it's due to all the packing, stirring up old feelings associated with the smell of cardboard boxes. But I soon realize what has happened. Even though I had never been there before, that trip was the first time it ever felt like I was really going home. It wasn't just me visiting my mom and the two of us renting movies. This time Mom had friends and family and stories to share. I had friends and family and things to do. There was food and pets and fun. I was homesick for a place I had never been before. Instead of being worried about Mom, hoping she was okay, I was sad I wasn't with her because I knew she was having a great time. It's a wonderful, bittersweet feeling.

Yesterday we booked our next flight back. Someone's getting married. Mom's planning a picnic. She's going to try to get my sister to come up and visit at the same time so we can all be together. I will have lunches and meetings with my editor and agent. stee is going to meet my family.

Home may have shifted, but it only got better.