i flew back down to los angeles on thursday. i'll be going back and forth until the end of this month. when i got on the plane thursday morning, i realized that i was very happy. i struggled for so long with whether or not to move, but now that most of the hard work is over, i am really glad i did it.

i'm getting ready to go to the opera at the dorothy chandler pavilion. i haven't been to the opera since i was a kid. mummy and gogo took all of us to the kennedy center when we were kids so we could see the mikado. it was beautiful.

my attention span is not ideal for such fine evenings, but one of my dearest friends had an extra ticket and an evening with her and her lovely husband never fails to entertain me, so i'm in.

i called my good friend miss lisa this morning. she was on her way to pick her son nicholas up from the airport. he's come home from ASU because he needs a proper sportscoat for his job. she invited me to meet them or breakfast at dinah's as a surprise guest for nicholas. i must say, i was more surprised than he was because i haven't seen him for about eight years and he's "almost 20" now. while i was driving over there, i felt mummy with me. she loved lisa and nicholas so much. when i flew home to meet her at the hospital when we first discovered she had cancer, after we dealt with the immediate crisis, she wanted to know all about how everyone was doing. she wanted to know about lisa and nicholas and pen and his girls and gab and carisa, she had such great affection for my friends.

so it was inevitable that i would feel the incredible pull to call her this morning and tell her i was going to see lisa and nick. and i was ready for the incredible pull towards calling her after i left them. this time, i did not cry, i just tried to picture her smiling and happy that we all managed to spend some time together. and happy that lisa is as beautiful as ever, inside and out and her sweet nicholas is a really delightful young man.