Suzy Says

Since it’s May and everything, I figured I’d be safe in leaving the heat off at night and the orchid outside. As usual, I was wrong.

I woke up yesterday to find that it was 35 degrees outside and 46 inside. I put on another sweater and turned on the heat. I figure one of these days I’ll wake up and it will be 80 degrees, and that will be that until it starts being winter again. If it rains again before November, that muffled thud you hear will be my head exploding and then falling off.

By noon, the temperature was about 30 degrees higher, and there was a flatbed truck making its way down the driveway. I went out to investigate and discovered that it was delivering a new (to me) washing machine! The driver unloaded it and Mark and I checked it out. The highlight for me is that the agitator is actually attached to the inside of the washer, so it won’t agitate me by flying off mid-wash and sounding like the whole thing is going to take off. Also I imagine its clothes-eating abilities will be limited by this.

Mark will take away the old one and install the new one sometime this weekend. I can’t wait to use it, though I expect the thrill of doing laundry will wear off pretty quickly.

As the driver got ready to leave, I said it must have been tough driving that heavy truck down the narrow, pothole-ridden driveway, and he smiled and said he’d seen worse, which boggled my tiny mind.

In other exciting news, the boys have a line on a 75 year old tractor which quite possibly might work. After all, it worked less than a decade ago, so it might just need some parts and persuasion. The price is right, since it’s free, and it’s just down the road. Hopefully the boys can get it up and running so we can start on a vegetable garden at the family property.

Maybe it’s my magnetic personality, but my only debit/credit card has become demagnetized.

I learned this a few days ago in the Safeway, where the clerk tried swiping it through the magical grocery-buying machine repeatedly, at increasing speeds (apparently the machine is almost as impatient as I am), to no avail. She even tried covering it in a thin sheet of plastic, a trick which she claimed almost always works, but didn’t in my case. Lucky me.

She was reduced to entering the number in by hand (the horror!) as the line backed up behind me. I was like the truck from hell on the drive to Colusa, but at least I didn’t do it on purpose.

Fortunately for me, the only branch of my bank within 50 miles of my house is also located in the Safeway. I explained the problem, they tried the card themselves, the doubting Thomases, and eventually agreed with me that it does not in fact work. It will be a mere 4-6 weeks until I have a card that does. In the meantime, it’s inconvenient, since I can’t get cash unless I go to the bank/Safeway, a 40 minute drive each way, and slightly embarrassing, since I have to explain why it won’t work every time I buy something.

At the Feed & Pet, I told the story to the cashier, who was very nice about it. She told me that they have a customer whose card is cracked, and he always warns them not to break it when they run it through the machine. She said she always hopes it will break, because then he’d have to get a new one. Isn’t there an expiry date on those things?

Schatzi in a field of clover

You know how when you go to the dentist, your tooth stops hurting? Well, Schatzi has her own variation on that. Within an hour of coming home from the vet last week, she was limping around the garden.

An investigation of her paw and leg showed former EMT Megan nothing, but when a couple of days had passed and the limpiness had not abated, it was time to go and see Dr. Karen yet again.

The verdict is that the Schatz has torn her ligament. She’ll be re-checked on Friday, and if it’s not better…it’ll cost $2,000 to fix it. So think good thoughts.

While Megan and Rob were getting the bad news, I was Star sitting. My idea of doing this was to sit in the sunny garden, painting my toenails, reading Vogue, and drinking the remains of a bottle of wine from my sister’s refrigerator. I’m not just the hostess with the leastest, I’m the sitter with the leastest. You have been warned if you ever ask me to baby-sit.

Star meandered around, sitting in sunny patches and occasionally asking for pets. She can’t be left alone because she freaks out, and has an unfortunate tendency to chase cats (also butterflies, birds, rabbits, lizards, and pretty much anything else ya got). Rob had to go in his truck to take Schatzi home after the vet, since Meg had to go on to a meeting about fundraising for Star and then, you know, her first twelve hour night shift of the week.

Earlier that day, my brother came across a dog wandering in the middle of the road, dazed, clearly having been hit by a car. He stopped, and was in the middle of examining the dog when another car stopped behind him. The driver offered to take the dog to Dr. Karen, and added that if the owner can’t be found, she’d be glad to keep her. Rob told me that he had seen the dog at the vet and she’s fine, thankfully.

The fundraising for Star and a rescued pit bull puppy, little Shiloh, is set for May 15. Since Monica is hosting and organizing it, there will be fabulous designer clothes and delicious cupcakes for sale. We’re hoping to set up a PayPal account soon, so that those of you who don’t live near us can still help out. Wish us luck!

It’s only a month until my birthday. Unfortunately, Santa is a slacker, working one day a year and taking the rest off, so there’s no point in sending him my wish list. Especially since I’m rarely, if ever, nice. But there’s nothing to stop me from sharing it with you.

1. Mad Men Barbies

As so often happens, just one is the thin edge of the wedge. You live your entire life Barbie-less, and wham! You see “The Birds” Barbie and must have it. I bought it as a housewarming present to myself (almost the same housewarming capabilities as the propane heater, though much cuter) and love it. And it was half-price, making it almost guilt-free!

Now that I know the joys of Barbie love, I want more. And who can blame me? Check out the visual aids:

Unfortunately, they cost about $75 each, putting them neatly outside the realm of possibility. Unlike my $19.99 Tippi Hedren. And of course I want the whole set.

2. Feather Ring

This is by Georgina Chapman (of Marchesa) for Garrard, jewelers to the Royal Family (including some of the Crown Jewels). Much more modest than a Crown of State, but would still give a girl’s outfit a certain je ne sais quoi.

3. Feather Shoes

In keeping with the purple feather theme, how about these beauties:

They’d look great next to my only other pair of Manolo Blahniks, also slingbacks, but in lavender suede. Too bad a girl can’t wear more than one pair of shoes at a time.

4. Chanel Jade Nail Polish

Introduced last Fall, it’s already sold out, making it doubly unavailable to Self, since I couldn’t afford the original $49.95 price tag, and it’s selling for more than twice that on eBay. Even I think paying three figures for nail polish verges on madness.

I’ll have to settle for No Miss nail polish in the delightfully-named Cape Haze Crypto, a mere $6 at a health food store which bills itself as (insert groan here) a worker’s collective. Almost sucked all the frivolity out of buying it.

5. Eye Spackle

That’s what I call Dermalogica’s Multi-Vitamin Power Firm. It magically fills in those little laugh (and cry) lines around the eyes, hence my nickname for it. Just because you’re almost thirty-eighteen doesn’t mean you have to look it. But magic doesn’t come cheap – it’s about $50 in this case. Which is why I’m still squeezing every possible molecule out of the tube I have.

If you really love me, I’d love this little place in North Beach. You’d have a guest room waiting for you any time!

I went to check out a house for rent a couple of miles from here.

As I turned onto Gene Clark’s former road, the radio started playing “Feel a Whole Lot Better”.

The directions were typical of directions up here. Pass the llama farm, look for a certain mile marker, a strange stump. The road was also typical, narrow and rutted, full of puddles. A sign said, “Road narrows”, and I thought, “How is that possible?” It was, though, and the road got even rougher. Eventually, it became one tiny lane, semi-paved, curling and weaving through the redwoods. If another car was coming or going, one of you had to be polite and cower by the side of the road, fearing for your car’s paint job.

I laughed when I finally found the driveway, because it was actually in worse shape than ours – again, something I had previously considered to be outside the realm of possibility.

The house had its positive points. A kitchen with actual counter space (ugly, fake wood counters, but still) and a cute little window seat. A bathroom with an actual bathtub and cupboards. A big living room with French doors out to a wooden deck overlooking a fenced in yard. Closets! Even though they didn’t have doors. Much more usable space – the curved walls of my house ensure lots of wasted living space. But it was heated by one wood stove, far from the bathroom and the upstairs rooms. It would cost a fortune to heat a place that size, and I could tell it wouldn’t really be up to the job, either.

The house was also way too much of a handyman’s special for someone especially un-handy. Lots of rot around windows that leaked and should be replaced, etc. So it wasn’t for me, though I’m glad I took a look at it. Rob really dodged a bullet on that one.

As I jolted my way down the lane, it occurred to me that I seem to have a certain restlessness when it comes to housing. I spent half the time I lived in Oakland looking for other places to live, and I’ve only been here about six months and I’m already looking around. For someone who hates moving, I seem to move a lot.

Driving down the Ridge, I passed Rob in his truck and we waved. Pulling into the driveway, I passed Meg on her way out. We paused and talked through our open windows about our plans for the rest of the day, and went on our separate ways.

When I got home, I put the laundry out to dry in the sun. I’m hoping that the rain is finally over. We received nearly 50 inches this year, and got 300% of normal rainfall for April. The Sierra snowpack is at 143%, so I think we’re good. Oh, and I feel vindicated in all my complaining about the weather lately, since it was the coldest April since 1975.

As I carried the laundry outside, I ran into the PG&E meter reader. It was slightly awkward making conversation with him, knowing that he had already seen me naked.

Schatzi had an appointment at the vet, so Star and I went along for the ride.

It became immediately obvious how used I was to Schatzi’s inveterate good manners. She jumps into the back seat and stays there. She may stick her head out of the window for a power sniff, or whimper a little with excitement if she sees we’re going somewhere really good, but that’s about the worst you can say about her in the car. She never even barks when left alone. Bonus: you can leave your groceries with her and she won’t touch them.

Star, on the other hand, is wiggly and bouncy and keeps trying to get into the front seat, where she clearly thinks she belongs. I ended up putting my arm across the space between the two front seats, and she’d push against me and sometimes give me a kiss.

We weighed her at Dr. Karen’s, and if there had been a prize, I would have won it for guessing her weight correctly at 50 pounds. Her lack of fur on her belly and armpits is caused by distress licking, but Karen also said that the fur was growing back, so Star has stopped doing that since the fostering started.

Schatzi is completely perfect, other than her usual need for thyroid tablets. She’s in better shape than most dogs half her age, I’m happy to report.

During the time it took to get the two dogs checked out, a woman came in with a two month old blue-nose pit bull puppy who had fallen and needed an x-ray; a man dropped off a basket of strawberries for Dr. Karen; a woman picked up her dog who had an ear infection, scratched it, tore the cartilage, and had just had surgery; and I helped an elderly lady carry her aged cat to the car. The woman with the ear surgery patient had come all the way from Willits to see Dr. Karen. Never a dull moment in that office, even past closing time on a Friday afternoon.

Spring green

As faithful readers know, Thursday is my night to make dinner. I like to try new things that day, even though, when you think about it, making something unfamiliar for a tired and hungry audience may not be the best possible idea. Yet I seem to forget this from week to week.

I’ve been thinking that I’ll post the recipes for my more successful Thursday dinners, so here’s the first one.

I got the recipe from the San Francisco Chronicle. There was a lovely story about having this soup in Paris which overcame my doubts about combining Mexican ingredients (chorizo and pinto beans) with Thai ingredients (lemongrass, coconut milk), so I gave it a try. Of course, I assigned myself this soup after a day of running errands in town, and regretted it when dinnertime came, since it seemed like a lot of hassle. Also, this was my first experience with preparing lemongrass, and I wish I’d taken off one more layer before mincing it up.

Other than that, though, it was a party in your mouth. I got the chorizo made on the premises at Harvest that very day, and it was great. Even Rob, who likes food on the less-fancy side (unfortunately for him), loved it and had seconds. He later observed that he would have had thirds if there had been any.

Notes: I was running out of red curry paste, so used about half of what’s called for in the recipe. I also failed to swirl it into the soup right before serving, but the balance of flavors was excellent. I will probably use more next time. I also just put the beans into the soup along with the coconut milk, instead of putting them into individual bowls and ladling the broth over. It worked just fine, as does regular basil instead of Thai basil.

The recipe (and story) are here. Enjoy!