Suzy Says

My brother finally called me at 4:00 pm yesterday, after he got back home. It’s amazing how I can never be mad at him when I’m actually talking to him. But he is a number one groover on life, and it’s hard to be grumpy around him.

In yesterday’s mail (which was, amazingly, already there when we got home yesterday) were a couple of clippings from my father. One of them was about how some wine producers in the Rhone valley have gotten together to produce powdered wine, which will be sold in capsules. Studies have shown that two glasses of red wine a day may prevent or reduce the occurrence of heart attacks and even Alzheimer’s disease.

The thing that amazes me is this. We all know that most of the things that are good for you and supposed to stave off heart attacks and other horrible diseases range from the mildly unpleasant to the deeply dreary. I count diet and exercise among the deeply dreary myself, particularly since you can never finish with them — you just have to keep doing it, day after day. I would think that people would welcome the fact that something as delightful as a glass or two of good red wine is actually good for you. And, as Thomas Jefferson put it, wine has the ability to banish care. TJ himself had an enviable wine cellar and lived well into his 80′s, a particularly impressive accomplishment in the early 1800′s. Maybe he already knew that wine was good for you. He knew everything else that was worth knowing.

It amazes me that people would forego the pleasure of drinking wine, from choosing the bottle, admiring the label, enjoying the color and bouquet and drinking it out of a nice glass PLUS the ability to banish care, in favor of a pill. The only thing I can think of is that these gym-obsessed folks are too worried about the sugar content of actual wine to risk drinking it, but would prefer to get the health benefits in pill form. They are missing out on one of the pleasures of life — but they are probably not only used to that, but consider themselves superior because of it. I will laugh at them over a glass of ’82 Bordeaux.

My brother still hasn’t called me. I called him around 11 am yesterday morning, before I went out to run some errands, and he said he’d call me right back. Still waiting.

So my brother Jonathan called me first thing this morning (and when I say “first thing”, I mean well before 8:00) to tell me that he’s:

- Coming down to the city sometime today but doesn’t know when (it’s nearly a 4 hour drive one way to San Francisco from Albion, where he lives);

- He’s going to see Spinal Tap at the Warfield tonight with a bunch of friends who also live in Albion;

- He’s not sure if he’s going to stay with us or someone else or go home after the show, even though it will be midnight or later by then.

So now I’m waiting for him to call me back if/when he knows what he’s doing and take it from there. I don’t deal well with this kind of spontaneity, especially on a Sunday night (Rufus and I both have to be at work by 6:00 am on Monday). So stay tuned…

Our cat Cleo just hates pigeons.

She is sitting on top of the refrigerator, which affords her a fine view out of the kitchen windows to the back stairs. Pigeons like to perch here and have even laid eggs in our planter boxes of catnip (I’m sorry to say we disposed of the eggs). The people who bought the house next door last year at the height of real estate madness have spent a lot of time and money attempting to pigeon-proof their investment. They have been only partially successful, but their anti-pigeon campaign has led the offending pigeons to spend more time chez nous, to Cleo’s unending fury. I really think she might like to move next door to the pigeon-free zone. That, or just one chance to go outside and show them who’s boss. She’d probably like that even better.

So there she sits, elegant in her shiny black fur, her golden eyes narrowed as she gazes at the enemy pigeons with unrelenting concentration. If looks could kill, neither we nor the Next Doors would have to worry about the pigeons anymore.

However, Cleo is not content to merely stare at them. She tells them off in Cleo-ese, which has a guttural quality (somewhat Teutonic in nature) but blended with a certain Asianness. She is, after all, a very nearly or even possibly pure-bred Bombay, so she looks like a very small and sleek panther. Her speech is closer to actual words than any cat I have ever heard, almost as if she has been studying our own strange language and is right on the verge of being able to speak to us in it. And I think, if I just listen closely enough, I will begin to undestand what she’s saying. But although I haven’t broken the code yet, I’m glad I’m not one of those pigeons.

Here’s an item from a recent issue of FHM magazine (the UK edition, not to be confused with the sanitized US version):

“Mary Read was one of only two female pirates in the 18th century, and they both worked the Caribbean. Like Anne Bonny [the other female pirate and one of the most feared pirates around of either sex] she’d been made to impersonate a boy and had reacted badly to cross-dressing. She’d lied her way into the Dutch infantry and won medals for bravery — until peace broke out. So she went to sea to find adventure. She made her name when her lover was challenged to a duel by a pirate. To save her man, Read picked a quarrel with the buccaneer, demanding settlement on the spot. She ducked the shot from his pistol and before he could hack her with his cutlass, tore open her blouse to reveal a well-endowed chest. The pirate paused in mid-lunge; Read sliced his head off.”

Read later died in prison in Jamaica, along with her unborn child, and Anne Bonny vanished before she could be hanged (and was never found). Both women were just 20.

I’m telling you, it must be the truffles and champagne! I’m seriously considering moving.

Find out the awful truth! Are you a bad co-worker? I, of course, am a cool co-worker. Ask anyone — except the new guy, who spent half an hour yesterday telling me how the way they did things at his old job was just SO MUCH BETTER. If so, why are you here, pal? OK, better start acting cool again!

This pretty much sums up my math abilities!

Best birthday gift by far: Rufus had a star in the Cassiopeia constellation named for our beloved Buddy, who left us in April, 2000.

Now he is really watching over us forever.

It’s my birthday! It’s sunny and beautiful out, as it often is on my birthday, and I have taken the day off. I never work on my birthday.

It’s only 8:30 am and my whole family has already called me to wish me happy birthday. HBO was especially good to me this year, with 2 new episodes of “Sex & the City”, the second season now on DVD, and a new show, “6 Feet Under”. Sue Grafton has published the latest in her “alphabet” series today, too. So far, so good!

Wouldn’t you think that if your upstairs neighbor staggered in drunk, falling over and knocking furniture onto the floor at 3:00 am, that at least she would sleep in the next morning and you would get a *little* peace and quiet then? Nope, not if your upstairs neighbor is hyper chick. She sleeps about the same amount as Hitler, up again before 7:00 am and stomping around. It’s amazing to me that someone as skinny as she is can make so damn much noise just walking around.

I wish we had our own house so we wouldn’t have to hear anyone but ourselves. Too bad that adorable house for sale on Laguna Street is $1.3 million. If you want a house, get out of the city.

I live in an apartment, so all the gardening I do is read “Garden Design”, water the house plants, and make sure the cats are supplied with wheat grass and catnip. But I love to read about and visit gardens.

I recently came across the Historic Trees website, where you can buy trees and seedlings grown from trees of historical or literary importance. For example, you can grow a tulip polar grown from a tree planted by George Washington (a life-long, avid gardener) himself. Or a red maple grown by Thoreau near his cabin on Walden Pond. Or even an ancestor of a tree planted by Johnny Appleseed.

Years ago, I visited Mark Twain’s house in Hartford. While there, I picked up an acorn from one of his oak trees. It has had a place of honor my desk ever since, and how I wish I could plant it. If I had my own house I could grow a Mark Twain oak tree. But given the insane prices of real estate in San Francisco (example: a 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment around the corner from us is now for sale for $878,000), I don’t think I’m ever going to own a house here, unless I win the lottery. But if my brother and sister manage to buy land, I think I know what my housewarming (or gardenwarming) gift to those two dedicated gardeners will be.

Today would have been Marilyn Monroe’s 75th birthday.

It’s hard to imagine her as an old woman — she always said herself that she would never make old bones. Her untimely death made sure that she remains forever young and beautiful in our minds.

A couple of months ago, Rufus and I visited her grave in Westwood Memorial Park in Hollywood.

Her grave, set into a wall with many others, is undistinguished except for the stains from fans’ hands and lips, paying homage to the star nearly 4 decades after her death. The flower holder on her grave is full of flowers, many with handwritten notes, and other floral offerings are laid on the ground in front of the wall containing her grave. She is still loved and not forgotten, and I think that would please her.

I have felt a certain connection to Marilyn ever since I was a kid and first saw her movies on our tiny black and white TV. Even back then I knew there was only one Marilyn and there would only ever be one. Our birthdays are just three days apart, and I was born the year she died. We have the same middle name, too, and we both have crazy mamas. I have been more fortunate than she was in my life. Perhaps when you are given a gift as great as hers, you get cheated in other areas. I’m sure I am only one of many who think that having a real friend or two might have saved this beautiful woman’s life.

Happy birthday, Marilyn! Your memory lives on.