I had a spa day (OK, a spa hour or two) after my coffee on the roof yesterday. I deep-conditioned my hair, tweezed my eyebrows (without sneezing), had a face mask (why does clay, which is basically wet dirt, deep clean your face? Why?), shaved my legs with one of those new Venus razors (shave with your inner Goddess!) and painted my toenails bronze. Sometimes I am JUST SO GIRLY.

It might have been a reaction to dinner on Friday night. My godmother had a new variation on her insult Suzy method. This time it was: compliment everyone but me. She told both of her friends how pretty they looked, when they were wearing jeans, turtlenecks (an item of clothing that should only be worn when camping or hiking and at no other time) lumberjack shirts, and construction boots. I was wearing cocoa linen pants with hand crocheted trim and a one of a kind silk blend sweater embroidered with leaves, and suede mules.

She followed it up with telling one of them what a wonderful eye she had for colors and textures of fabrics. Nothing for me, even though I had brought flowers and helped with dinner and tried to wear something nice. I took a cab there, and then we went and picked them up! I really need to get over myself or stop seeing her — or see her with different expectations. Maybe I should decide to find it amusing. To quote Elvis Costello “I used to be disgusted/but now I try to be amused.”

Hey, J-P, Mind your own business! Can’t believe the Pope feels he has the right to interfere in our business. Also, couldn’t he have chosen a more worthy cause than Timothy “No Regrets” McVeigh? His Holiness also appears to be unaware of the fact that Dictator Bush used to run the killingest state in the Union, where he failed to commute even one death sentence. And even if our appointed leader wanted to commute the sentence, he couldn’t, since Timmy failed to file an appeal. Maybe the pontificating Pontiff should check his facts before putting his two liras’ worth in. What’s that, Lassie? Timmy’s going to Hell?

Now I keep hearing that Velvet Underground song in my head. Had my ritual morning coffee up on the roof deck this morning. I only have one cup a day, but I am no less addicted for that!

I trace my coffee addiction to a summer I spent in Nice at the impressionable age of 17, when my hosts taught me to drink black coffee and pick dewy strawberries from their garden for breakfast. I didn’t pick the strawberries myself today, but just as I did on those long-ago summer mornings, I had black coffee and strawberries. But instead of sitting on a patio with the ancient city of Nice spread out below me, I was on our roof deck, bare feet on sun-warmed wood, watching the white sails that dot San Francisco Bay and seeing the twinkle of traffic crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.

It’s surprisingly tranquil up there on a Sunday morning, even though my apartment building is surrounded by other buildings. But there is the blue water of the Bay and the hidden gardens that can’t be seen from the street. Hummingbirds dart around the flowers and butterflies flutter past. And one of the great joys of the city: the wild parrots fly over, making their raucous noises and clattering their green and red wings. These parrots are supposed to be descendants of a pair that escaped their cages many years ago. I don’t know if that’s true, but their call is as much the sound of home to me as the deep voiced fog horns or the bright ring of the cable cars.

Daydreaming about going to cooking school somewhere really fun, like Europe. And not stuffy Cordon Bleu in Paris, either. I’d love to go La Combe en Perigord, where the cooking school is in an 18th century French chateau. (Sorry, but I don’t know how to put French accents in here!) Or spend a week with Lorenza de’Medici at her family’s ancient estate in Tuscany, dating from the 11th century, hoping that the family predilection for poison and mayhem has disappeared over the years. Maybe I’ll just call up Tante Marie’s and see what classes there are here this summer. But I’ll still daydream.

Remember those cops who shot unarmed African immigrant Amadou Diallo 41 times and became the subject of an infamous Springsteen song a couple of years ago? Well, they are just getting a slap on the wrist. Basically, the New York Police Department has decided to send them to charm school rather than charging them with anything (like, I don’t know…killing the guy?) or disciplining them another way. Let’s hope they learn to actually take suspects into custody and question them instead of killing them at their homes, no questions asked.

Even with the current economic bust, this is still an absurdly expensive place to live. But I can’t imagine living anywhere else…which is probably why it’s still so expensive, since most San Franciscans presumably feel the same way. Glad I’m not moving here now! Yikes!

Every day gets to be a long time ago, even today.

Thank God.

Want to know what yours is? Mine’s PoppySlickWitch. Just in time for dinner with my in-the-closet godmother and her two lesbian friends tomorrow night. Think I’ll mention it over dessert.

Link via Candi via Shannon

As Rufus and I were walking past the funeral home on our way to work early this morning, a guy came out dressed in a surgeon-type smock and pants, removing his rubber gloves. Taking a smoke break after an embalming, I guess…

Came across this gem in Jan Bondeson’s “Buied Alive”, a work of horror and elegance (slightly paraphrased from the original):

Francois de Civille, said to be thrice declared dead and as many times rescued from the tomb, was born by a Caesarean section to a dead mother exhumed from her coffin. He became an army captain, and was severely wounded at the siege of Rouen in 1563. He was buried alive in a common grave on the battlefield. His servant, who wanted to dig his master a more fitting grave, discovered that he was not dead. While de Civille was recovering, a troop of enemy soldiers burst into the house where he was staying and threw him into a dung heap (!), where he remained buried for three days until he was dug out and nursed back to health. According to a gravestone in Milan, Francois de Civille was finally buried in that city. He had died at the age of 105, from a chill contracted “while serenading the lady of his heart all night long.”

So I had a talk with the new Big Boss. BB is the boss my boss reports to — the boss de la boss. He’s a new guy and supposedly the point of the talk was for him to get to know me. I bet the only thing he can tell you about me is my name, because he did all the talking, and it was all about him. For some reason, he was trying to impress me with his personal wealth, as if he were trying to pick me up in a bar, not that he was flirting in the slightest. Too busy chomping Nicorette in a vain attempt to quit smoking. It’s disturbing to see your new boss furtively spitting little wads of gum into their original plastic capsules while telling you about the vacation home he’s buying in Scottsdale.

I love this cartoon !

And you thought the Prince and Princess were the worst bickering to come out of Wales. According to salon.com,Donny Osmond recently told a Welsh newspaper that his family has traced its roots to Wales. “I don’t know a lot about Wales,” he said. “But from what I hear the Welsh are pretty good singers and everybody says that’s where we get it from.” But one local griped to the U.K. Sun, “The Welsh have had enough bad publicity … without being blamed for the Osmonds too.”

Here’s my horoscope for today:

Let others make the demands and draw the attention. Just keep track of the money trail and the bottom line.

Here’s my mother’s:

Your social life may be curtailed due to financial constraints. It’ll be good for you to practice deferring gratification. You’ll grow up to be wealthier.

Somehow it seems fitting that the bad events of the weekend should be followed by an unenjoyable week. Today I am going to the dentist for a cleaning, so I will be chided for not flossing enough and end up with bloody gums and a gross taste in my mouth. And I will get to pay for this, as an added bonus! Somehow they always manage to make my face all blotchy and remove most of my protective coloring, too.

On Friday, I am going over to my godmother’s place for dinner. I have known her all my life — since before I was born — but I don’t think she likes me very much. She always manages to wrap an insult into a passing remark, or even a compliment, every time I see her. She technically lives in the city, but her neighborhood is so remote and undesirable that it might as well be the ‘burbs. I’ll have to take a cab there and back, since taking Muni would involve subway, bus, then walking (including scrambling down a rocky slope in the dark), and I just can’t face that. Rufus is not accompanying me since he fears her cooking and doesn’t understand the concept of social obligations, so it will just be me, her, and the slides of her trip to Death Valley.

Jerk Boy called ma yesterday and confirmed that he is in Canada and he isn’t coming back. It seems that our earlier hypothesis was correct: the thought of having to pay my mother half his pitiful salary for the rest of her life just blew a circuit in his pea-sized brain. He said, “I’m not paying you that blood money.” Ma pointed out the dire consequences of his actions, but it just didn’t seem to get through to him. Maybe he’ll figure it out when the military police show up on his doorstep. Or when he becomes his cellmate’s girlfriend. Or when he goes to apply for a job and has to explain what he’s been doing for the past 10 years. Or how he got that prison record.

So my mother’s jerk husband (see About Me) is AWOL, and I mean literally. He has disappeared, apparently to the wilds of Canada, which is such a small place I’m sure it will be easy to find him. He is in the Marines, and since he has failed to report for duty and has cleared out his locker, the military police are now after him. Even if they find him, they’ll throw him into the brig, and he won’t get paid. Then he’ll be dishonorably discharged, also not paid, and I think he has given up all his pension and benefits by taking off.

Where does this leave my ma? Penniless, is where. This guy is half her age and has run through all her money and has now taken off, probably to join this chic he’s been e-mailing and sending money to (my sis snooped on his computer). This is the same guy who left my mother when she was facing a mastectomy — because HE “couldn’t handle it” and then came back when he couldn’t afford to live on his own — which he admitted up front. My mother has never worked, isn’t entitled to Social Security, and is manic depressive, which is a pretty deadly financial combination. She’s going to Navy Relief on Monday and they will give her grocery and rent money and hook her up with Social Services, but dang. Where do we go from here?

Take THAT,all you PC doomsayers!

It was raining this morning, so instead of walking to work as usual, I had to take the bus. I hate public transit. The whole problem with it is…it’s public. And other people are just so loathsome. As Dorothy Parker said, “other people are hell.” Also I always end up with wet feet and a bad mood, even if it is Friday. You will never find me singin’ in the rain.