Last month, my parents flew up to the state of Washington to stay in their time share condo. Then they rented a car and drove it down through Oregon to northern California and then back home to Los Angeles. Along the way, they stopped in San Francisco to see me, their beloved middle child.

The first thing they did after hugging me hello was hand me a Ziploc bag filled with two paper plates. Between the plates was a stack of pancakes. "I made them at the condo!" announced my mother. "I saved them for you!"

That's right. My mother transported a stack of pancakes made from a boxed pancake mix across two state lines, just so I could eat week-old pancakes. They even supplied butter and syrup!

As much love as went into these pancakes, I did not want to die from pancake poisoning, and I did not eat them. I feel guilty about this, but--I mean, they came with the instructions, "If you don't freeze them, you'll probably have to eat them within four or five days." At that point, how old are these pancakes, and how likely are they to kill me? I think we all know the answer.

I took a day off work so I could hang out with my parents. They had things to "talk and show and do" and so we sat in my house and they talked and showed. They had postcards and stories from their trip, and family photographs that they had put into albums and into collage form. They told me I could take any of the album pages that I wanted to, and I snagged a bunch of pictures, including one from six years ago where I look unbelievably fat. I will be destroying it quietly.

The collage that they made is pretty cool. The things that jump out at you are my mother wearing obnoxious sunglasses (yes, we are related) and a giant picture of my grandmother. Lots of cool old photos once you look more closely, and my sister's girlfriend and Ian are both in there.

They also gave me a late birthday present. (You will recall that they sent me a box of mixed nuts for my birthday.) My dad had picked out a couple of bottles of wine at the various wineries they went to in Oregon and Washington. My mother's contribution was a wine cozy, which she called an "outfit." The "outfit" for the wine is a pink silk bustier--my wine is apparently a French can-can dancer and/or whore.

My mother was so proud, she kept saying "when I saw it, I said 'that's Monique's outfit!'" My sister's girlfriend also got an outfit for her wine. It involves feathers, I think. (Are you jealous yet? You totally should be.) Update: here is a picture of the wine outfit.)

My dad has begun writing for the square dance club's newsletter, and he showed me the write-up he did of their trip to the convention in Bakersfield. If I only had a copy! You can imagine, I'm sure. He wrote about running into fellow square dancers at a Jack-in-the-Box along the way. It was brilliant.

Ian had dinner with us, because he's a brave man. We went to Joe's Crab Shack, thanks to a coupon my mother had. (Had it not been for the coupon, we would have ended up at Hooters. HOOTERS, people.) Then we had ice cream sundaes at Ghirardelli Square, where I've never been. Good ice cream!

My parents are in love with Ian and despite the fact that we have not said anything about engagements or weddings, they have already married us off in their heads and offered to send us on a lovely honeymoon, anywhere that they can get a time share. A time share honeymoon! They will probably also provide us with plenty of coupons to use while we're there.

Other than their visit, I've been busy with the usual stuff. Wasting time on my message boards, creating complicated American Idol spreadsheets, planning my next Mas, signing up for Journalcon which will surely be a blast, so on and so forth.

Today is a half day at work, which effectively means leaving at 3:00. I'm hoping I have time to get in a bike ride, since I got my bike fixed last weekend. (Me: "I think something's wrong with my tire." Bike guy: "Might have something to do with this giant tack stuck in it." Me: "Oh!" Him: "Yeah, we can fix that." Me: "Great! So, I have another question for you, this is kind of embarrassing..." Him: "Well, the tack thing was pretty embarrassing.")

So there you have it. Me: still embarrassing myself. Parents: still crazy. Life: still fabulous.