Over the weekend, I went to NYC and Brooklyn to celebrate the birthday of a friend of my husband, RJ's, and mine. I hadn't been there in a while, though for almost five years I lived in New York and assumed it would be my home for longer. What I found was Brooklyn neighborhoods that looked the same but fancier, or in some places just the same. I found myself at the large, beautiful birthday party -- for Peter Herdrich -- talking occasionally about Los Angeles. My semi-canned response to open questions about how I like Los Angeles is to say (the truth) that I love my weird hilly neighborhood in the heart of the city, but that as far as the city at large goes traffic is out of control; that I am happier these days making my life tiny, geographically speaking; that I am so jealous of my friends in New York who walk their children to school and then keep walking to get to work. I can't remember if I told anyone what it is like to be stuck on the 10 freeway going east at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, not moving, my daughter, crying, strapped into what looks like a tiny dentist's chair in the back -- "Hang on sweetheart, don't cry, it'll just be another forty-five minutes." On those days I think this is not a good place to live. (Obviously, it's the other days that keep me here.)

In New York, it was actually refreshing to be with so many different types of people sharing the trains, so much less isolated than driving in a personal bubble alone, barely moving. And one of the greatest pleasures of the weekend was walking -- for transportation. It was cold outdoors, but it felt good.

It may have been inevitable, but twice I was offered the line about Los Angeles, "There is no there there." To which I snapped at one person, "If there was no there there I wouldn't live there." So, there. So much for polish. To be fair, the offending comment was delivered by an intelligent man who really didn't care if there was any there here; he was being sociable, and commited the crime of not knowing enough about one of my dearest subjects of conversation.

To another "there is no there there" commentator, I might have said (but didn't) "Actually there is a there there. There are many theres there." And so on. Perhaps I should have handed him a Blackberry, called up the LA blogs and sent him to the corner to read. Then we could talk. Except that he and his wife had come to the party to celebrate Peter, not to get metaphysical about Los Angeles. So the topic changed to music in Nashville. I would have been happy to have had a pithy Nashville quote roll off my tongue, but didn't. Probably for the best.

So I flew back to Burbank on a crowded Airbus, watching back-to-back episodes of CSI; the woman in the center seat moaned in her sleep. Arrived at my car in the long-term lot and -- surprise -- getting into my car felt like stepping back into my skin. Evil, gas-consuming isolator that it is. I was ready to be alone. It took quite a while to get out of the parking lot as the attendant was having a nervous breakdown -- shouting at her assistant, weeping, kicking the cabinets in front of her. Halfway through the transaction for my parking privileges, she stopped to weep. Finally she handed me my receipt to sign, and apologized. Then I was free to drive back to the dark rolling hills in Echo Park, where most of the neighborhood was settling down for the night, my window down, my thoughts my own, my car my own.