We’ll start out with the bad surprises, including one of President Donald Trump’s tweets to his backers, so that we end on a happy note:

America’s “all-time favorite President?” Is he simply dishonest or also delusional?

One sign of the President’s worrying: in the first week after his Nov. 3 election loss, which he refuses to admit, Trump’s famously blond hair turned gray. As The New York Times reported in September, Trump paid no federal income taxes for 15 years and only $750 in 2016 and 2017. Among the “business expenses” he’s been claiming among his tax deductions are the $40,000 per year he pays for hair styling, The Times reported. Given this huge annual investment in the look of his hair, we can assume he was in favor of the color change.

With many Americans ridiculing his behavior as juvenile, perhaps he wanted to look more mature.

Now a couple of local surprises:

Olema House. Last month Condé Nast Traveler named the local hostelry the “Best hotel in the US for 2020.” The magazine credited “its spectacular dining” for the hotel’s earning the top award. “If you eat at the hotel (and you should), the local seasonal menu at Due West pulls from the bounty of nearby ranches, farms, and the bay.”

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat on Oct. 13 reported, “Formerly called The Lodge at Point Reyes, Olema House has 24 rooms, including two cottages, on four acres of land.” I myself have never stayed there, but I read in The Press Democrat that “each of the rooms is decorated in a modern Americana style.”

Another local surprise. Travel and Leisure magazine has declared the Marshall Store (pictured above) one of “the top 30 seafood restaurants in the US.” It’s, of course, a store too, but it’s even more of a dining establishment. Here my stepdaughter Anika Zappa Pinelo, her husband Carlos, and my wife Lynn enjoy barbecued oysters seated outside overlooking Tomales Bay.

Not surprising:

Rac-communal bathing. Lynn and I see it almost nightly: a mother raccoon and her four kits all trying to squeeze together into our birdbath. They bathe in the water as well as drink it. The surprises occur when they manage to get almost the entire family into the bowl at one time.

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Holding my step-granddaughter Cristina in Toby’s Coffee Bar. Last week was the first time we’d met, and we quickly hit it off.

My nuclear family (back row): Kristeli Zappa, Shaili Zappa, and Anika Pinelo with her two daughters, Lucia and Cristina; (front row): my wife Lynn and me. The young ladies all showed up last week for an end-of-summer visit.

Despite five marriages, I’ve never sired any children of my own; however, my fourth wife, a Guatemalan named Ana Carolina Monterroso, arrived with three daughters in tow. Although our marriage ended after a few months, I have remained close with those three stepdaughters. At least one of them visits me almost every year.

Kristeli, 30, Shaili, 26, and Anika, 32, all have dual US-Guatemalan citizenship since their natural father is an American. Shaili works for a finance company in Mexico City. Kristeli lives in New York, where she’s a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) providing mental-health therapy. Anika lives in Minnesota and before becoming a mother worked for a manufacturer that periodically sent her to South America to sell tanks. Those tanks, by the way, were not military but rather industrial vats.

My step-granddaughters, Cristina (four months) and Lucia (two years) turned out to be delightful young ladies.

I still have many of my childhood storybooks, and while she was here, Anika accepted them as gifts for her daughters. Although she can read only a few words, Lucia (at left) has already developed a fascination with books.

All three stepdaughters have led adventurous lives. Kristeli studied in France and then Taiwan before getting her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in New York. Shaili studied for several months in Kenya before graduating from the University of Minnesota. Anika, who also graduated from the University of Minnesota, took up skydiving before giving birth to two children.

At the kitchen door after dark.

Also getting together here last week were two other families; a mother raccoon and a mother skunk, both showed up with their kits. The skunks muscled in on the raccoons’ clumps of kibble, but they didn’t spray, and neither creature seemed afraid of the other.

Shaili leaned out a window to photograph them although she naturally worried about getting sprayed. She wasn’t, and the whole end-of-summer visit had a most pleasant air to it.