Sonoma Spa

This weekend was as close as I come to a spa. I just can't bring myself to pay for steamy stuff, bloopy facials and things with stones. The only times I've had massages, I spent most of the time trying to calculate the tip. Or wondering how long my face can hang through this hole before my eyeballs pop out.

But the last three days in Sonoma was better than a spa... with sweet reverie and relaxation by the pool at a small vineyard in Healdsburg. Fancy clothes were out: the kids had insisted on packing for me and I arrived with little more than a pair of Spanx, UGG boots and ski vest...so spent a lot of time with swimsuit and towel.

Jackson doing air guitar

We had "won" this weekend in the school fundraising auction: three nights in a old family home in wine country. The property was a paradise whatever your age, complete with a pool, a large pond squirming with fish and every kid toy you could think of including an electric buggy that Cy rode frontways sideways and backways around the pond for hours.

Cy rides the buggy

Friday night, Jesse, master pizza maker from Diavola fired up six pizzas for us while we ate roasted cauliflower and marinated eggplant by the pool. His triumph; the Rustica with house-smoked calabrese sausage, garlic, anchovies, ricotta and rapine. Not a first-date pizza for sure.

Even the coffee place at the corner, JimTown Store, was perfectly vintagely cream and Waltons green... without John-Boy's whiny voice.

In fact there was no whining all weekend. Okay, bit of an exaggeration but dang close - see you even start talking like John-Boy when you eat watermelon candy and play jumping beans near a hot tin roof.

I had another "spa" experience a couple of weekends ago when our bookclub met at Jean's house in Sonoma.  Her new home amongst the olive groves was a mix of soothing and stimulating with concrete floors and counter-tops, handmade wooden tables and bold oil paintings.

And it turns out that, yes, literary critical skills are absolutely sharpened with your toes in the pool and a chilled one in your hand.

What was your spa moment this weekend?