I spent  last week in Wonderland, my nickname for my friend Lisa’s amazing indoor-outdoor house that she and her husband Adam built in the Hollywood Hills. Lisa is the Auntie Mame of design, she is always inventing fun things; a desk like a wheelbarrow that you can trundle anywhere (even outside), a wearable computer  (in the 80s long before Google Glass) and a skate board stool that zooms around with you. Being around very young children, especially Lisa’s 5-year-old twins Eero and Olive is a joy because their spirits are undimmed by life’s woes. They would peek through my bedroom door at 7am to ask if I could walk with them to school (which is called Wonderland). Every night we’d play freeze dance (you  freeze when the music stops) until everyone was too exhausted to stand. And I found a soulmate among Lisa’s three cats. Pierre, a black rescue cat, climbed into my arms at breakfast, hooked my neck with his tail and then rubbed his face all over mine.  ‘He is obviously channeling Laura,’ Lisa said.

I was out West to attend a WordPress conference and to interview Alison Berger, an artist I’ve wanted to interview for years. Her magical lighting designs are inspired in part by catching fireflies in glass jars as a child in Texas. You can imagine how well that went down with me. I love fireflies and I’ve been surrounded by them ever since Laura’s passing.  As Alison says, ‘There are no coincidences’.  Or as Alice in Wonderland said, ‘Curioser and curioser’.