Suzy Says

Well, it’s official. My life is completely Josephine-less. We lost our darling cat Jo in 1999 – as befitted a unique and beautiful person, she died young and tragically – and I have now sold my car Josephine, pictured above. Unlike Jo the cat, Jo the car is old (vintage 1966), but as you can see, both Jo’s are beautiful. In fact, I named the car for the cat, because it is the color of her eyes.

When I lost my parking space in the building next door, I looked for another one anywhere within a 12 block radius which was less than $300 a month, and failed. I couldn’t park Josephine on the street, because she has a soft top, the doors don’t really lock, and you could start her with a hairpin. It would be just asking for it (someone keyed the hood when I parked her in the Pier 39 garage. Human nature – you just gotta hate it). I only drove her on the weekends, anyway, so I brought her up to my brother’s in the country for a vacation.

That was three years ago, and in spite of keeping her under wraps over the rainy winters, the car cover wasn’t really enough to prevent the weather from damaging her. I couldn’t find a parking place in the city that wasn’t outrageously expensive or so far away that I’d have to either take public transit {*gasp* – to be avoided at all costs – it’s either walk or taxi for me, thank you} or a cab to get to it. The decision was clear, but facing up to it was hard.

As luck would have it, John has been friends since high school with a guy who is a total Mustang fan, and he agreed to buy Josephine and ship her to her new home. He will have the pleasure of restoring her to her original glory as well as driving her (in fair weather only, of course), and she won’t really be gone – I can still visit her. And in the meantime, I know she’s being loved and cherished.

But I’ll still miss her.

Today you get to walk home with me, only without all that annoying physical effort. There will even be visual aids.

I walk home up Columbus, through North Beach, the Italian neighborhood. Past Beat era icons City Lights bookstore (celebrating its 50th year) and Vesuvio’s, and then past the strip clubs (for some reason, there are a lot of them in North Beach, though they are not noticeably Italian), including what’s left of the Condor.

The Condor has the distinction of being America’s first topless bar, when Carol Doda danced on the bar in mod designer Rudy Gernreich’s topless bathing suit in 1964. The Condor used to have a wonderful neon sign of a nude woman with flashing red nipples, which sadly disappeared after the club was sold and it became the boring restaurant it is now (the new owners thought it was rude!). The sign looked particularly charming in the fog. I miss it.

Turn left on Vallejo* and you’ll see why I say I walk home up it. The hill is so steep that the sidewalk gives up in despair and becomes a stairway. You can’t tell, but this is only the first block of four or so that are stairs (the rest are hidden in the trees). But it’s worth the hike. Halfway up, it looks like this, and then like this, and at the top, this.

If I’m not taking pictures for you (it is, however, fun to play tourist in your own town), I can do all the stairs without stopping, which is very gratifying. Past the multi-million dollar houses and it’s all downhill to Chez Suzy from there.

*Named for General Vallejo, one of the early settlers of Northern California. The guy who answers the phone at my pizza place always corrects my pronunciation of “Vallejo” (Va-lay-o) by giving it the full Spanish treatment: “Ba-yay-ho”. It just wouldn’t feel right if he didn’t.

So my trainer told me that she made the mistake of asking her boyfriend – they recently moved in together – how many women he had slept with. She was horrified by the total, which included 13 girls before he graduated from high school. I don’t think I know anybody who got that much action in high school, and I found that the most remarkable part of the revelation, though clearly she didn’t.

I said that it was a long time ago, before he knew her, and that all the people he had met and things he had done made him the person he is today, the person she loves, which made her feel a little better. But inside I was thinking, “Thirteen?!”

It made me realize that there is no good answer to that question. If the number is low, the guy is a loser, and if it’s too high, he’s a dog and possibly a walking lab experiment.

It also made me realize yet another fundamental difference between men and women. We always want to know about their romantic and sexual pasts, and not just for our health. We have a Pandora style curiosity that we just can’t help, sometimes with similar consequences, though on a lesser scale, witness my trainer. She would have been much better off not knowing, but had to ask. I have done the same thing with comparable results, but I’m sorry to say would probably ask that question again, even though you’d think I’d know better by now.

If you do ask, rest assured that the guy will not ask you the same question. As much as we want to know, they don’t want to know. They don’t want to think about you with any other guy, even if it was years ago and way before you met them. In the back of their minds, I think they all want really experienced virgins. And if they did ask you, you couldn’t tell them anyway. I personally have no idea what the number is, though I’m pretty sure I didn’t sleep with 13 guys in high school. An informal survey of my friends reveals that men do know what the number is, and women don’t. Some of the guys said that they had actually made a list at one time or another, which I immediately found icky, though I’m not sure exactly why.

I guess the lesson here (if there is one) is: don’t ask, don’t tell. If you can help it.

Since my beloved Giants were so horrifyingly and ignominiously defeated in the very first round of the World Series playoffs*, I no longer need to sit around the house watching baseball all day (when I’m not shopping, that is).

So what the hell. Might as well start working again tomorrow.

In order to be fit for public viewing, though, I’ve spent most of the day getting pretty again. Watching the playoffs doesn’t require much in the way of grooming, and after I realized that the cats didn’t pay any more attention to me if I wore make-up or accessorized, I just stopped bothering. Really, if there’s any creature alive who is more self-absorbed than I am, it’s any given cat.

So as I write this, I am dyeing my hair (multi-tasking: new employer, take note), and have already:

1. Had a massage to deal with pre-job stress;

2. Had my eyebrows waxed so when I raise them in disdain, as so often happens, they will look perfect;

3. Had my nails done. My toenails are now metallic violet (though this will be a secret from new employer, like my pretty lingerie, and will make me feel good in the same secret luxurious way), but my fingernails are sheer and natural and elegant in (I hope) a professional manner. I’m a Gemini – what can I tell you?

So now all I gotta do is figure out how to deal with the 8 to 5 grind again, and how to fit the gym into it. Stay tuned.

*Can I just say how much I hate Juan Encarnacion? And Josh Beckett is right behind him in Suzy world.

The following are things I wish I never had to hear again. I realize that if the wish were actually fulfilled, it would be in a horrible Monkey’s Paw/Twilight Zone manner, so that the protagonists involved would be dead or I would never have met them or something. However, it doesn’t stop me from daydreaming of the absence of the following, in the same way a girl daydreams of winning the lottery (knowing it will never happen, but what if it did?!):

1. Snoring: Really, is there anything more annoying than being yanked out of the depths of hard-won sleep by snoring? Especially if you’re having a really good dream for a change; say, one featuring Johnny Depp or living in Italy or unaccountable and defiantly un-worked for wealth. To add insult to injury, the cause of your sudden sleeplessness is sleeping! And probably having a completely excEt dream. The final garnish on this cocktail of inconvenience is the utter inability to persuade the snorer to turn over, either by physical or verbal means. Note to self: Must work harder on upper body strength.
   
2. The Troll Downstairs: Has earned this unloving soubriquet by means of unrelenting obnoxiousness and habit of leaping out of his front door whenever he hears (see Superpowers below) someone coming or going; hoping, undoubtedly, to somehow glean the remnants of an actual life from theirs.

   The Troll noises that I never, ever, want to hear again:

   – Snoring: (And it’s not just Me. The guy who looked after our cats while we were in Canada remarked on it with the amazement usually reserved for phenomena of nature, such as waterfalls or the Grand Canyon).

   – His Radio and TV: He plays the classical music radio station every weekend, commercials and all, at a sound level usually experienced at heavy metal concerts instead of one’s Pacific Heights living room. He has done this for years, which begs the question: why doesn’t he just buy some CD’s and be done with it? CD’s rarely, if ever, have commercials for cars, laxatives, or anything else, for that matter, though what with the lack of a life and all, he may be unaware of this fact. The radio is replaced by TV after dinner, and I could tell you everything he watches, unfortunately.

   The garnish on this cocktail of horror: The Troll has a form of deafness previously unknown to medical science. While he can apparently only hear his radio and TV if they are played at a sound level approximating a jet taking off, he has preternaturally sensitive powers of hearing us. He complains bitterly at every condo meeting about us walking around (shoeless, too), the cats walking around (equally shoeless, and with sound-muffling paw fuzz, too), and once actually complained about the fan in our bedroom by saying, “I thought my refrigerator had turned on.” Bonus: He claims not to hear loud parties in the neighborhood that are shaking the windows and causing small objects to fall off shelves in manner of earthquake until the police are called. Sometimes he flees his cave until the cops have done their duty.

   – Bodily functions: The worst is the unnatural sigh of pleasure while peeing. Hearing both the sigh and the peeing is so beyond disgusting that I won’t even attempt to describe it, fearing the inevitable loss of both my sanity and recent meal. I’m sure just the fact is more than enough for you and me both. I will just say that it’s undoubtedly the most enjoyment he ever gets.

   This is followed closely by the loud and phlegmy coughing that is a feature of every day life in the Troll household, and just another of the hideous side effects of his inveterate smoking of deeply stinky cigars.

   But it’s not just the unloved and unlovable who are the targets of my ire. Ain’t no-one exempt:
   

3. The Cats: I really, really hate the way they demand to be fed. At the top of their voices. Non-stop. Milling around in a manner calculated to get in my way and possibly cause bodily injury if I fall over one or more of them. And even when I am clearly in the feeding process – opening the containers, scooping out the food – they are still milling around and shouting at the top of their voices. Garnish: Cleo keeps giving me shit while I am actually putting the food in her bowl. And she won’t get her head out of the way so I can get the food into the bowl per her incessant demands, so some goes on the floor. Every day. Every single goddamn day.

   Bonus: We have Mom’s neurotic and unrewarding cat staying with us indefinitely. She has been vacationing at our little resort by the Bay for more than 6 weeks now, yet the hissing and fighting have yet to subside. This morning, the kitchen was flooded by an impromptu chase through the kitchen, knocking over the water bowl and accompanied by hissing and yelling. Topper: Cats tried to claim they hadn’t been fed, when I knew for a fact that they had been fed a couple of hours earlier. Not that they shut up or anything.

Buddy’s 21st Birthday

First of all, thanks to all of those who suggested the cushion and the hat. I was the only one of our party with a cushion, and I was definitely the most comfortable. I was also the only one of the women to have brought a hat. We shared it for a while, but they finally caved and went and bought Giants caps, so we all looked like authentic fans but Me. And finally: thanks to the inventors and makers of sunscreen. Despite three hours in the sun, I’m only a couple of shades pinker than I was.

I hope you’re sitting down, because not only did the Giants win, just to honor my very first ball game, but I had a great time. Michel (see comments on Monday’s entry below) was completely right. We had great seats and could see what was going on. I couldn’t be bored, because it took both of my brain cells to figure out what was going on, and what I couldn’t figure out, the boys explained, being my guides to sports and all. Until they got bored and went girl-hunting. Apparently ball games are a good place to meet girls. Who knew? Though given that it was sold out – almost 43,000 people had nothing better to do on a Tuesday – the odds were with them.

Fun things happened, like the ball sailing into the Bay and a few times, into the crowd (miraculously, no-one seemed to be hurt, though the ball was going 95 mph). There are worse ways to spend a sunny summer afternoon than sitting in the sun and eating garlic fries from Gordon Biersch while eavesdropping and people-watching between innings. Being trapped inside an overly air-conditioned office building crunching numbers springs to mind. Could this be the birth of Sporty Suzy?! It’s against all the laws of nature.

I find it remarkable that the two things that came up the most regarding the baseball game were basically:

1. It’s boring
2. It’s uncomfortable

If it’s so boring, how did it get to be our national pastime? Is it the Emperor’s New Clothes of sports, and no-one wants to admit how boring it is? I find this unnerving, since boredom is, as you know, my biggest fear next to death.

And since the makers of ball parks and other arenas know for a fact that you’re going to be sitting on your ass for hours at a time, shouldn’t they make the seats comfortable? Even the airlines don’t do you like that. Maybe the ballpark Powers That Be think that if the seats are really uncomfortable, it will cancel out the boredom and enable the audience to stay awake.

All will be revealed to you on Wednesday, since the game is on Tuesday. I don’t dare to bring my iBook for fear of being perceived to be anti-social, which is the same reason I’m leaving the books and magazines and manicure equipment at home (a helpful friend suggested I use the time to do my nails). I figure I can hide behind my shades and meditate. Zen and the art of baseball.

But I’m bringing the cushion.

So it’s been about a million degrees here the past couple of days, which equals an even crankier than usual Me. It’s like living on the sun. By the time I got to the gym after work on Wednesday (it was a mere 88&degF/31&degC that day and I walked there up hill, arriving light-headed: what was I thinking?!), my hands were swollen little sausages and working out, despite the air-conditioning in the gym, didn’t help matters.

It was so hot yesterday that I took the cable car home, because walking up the hill, even on the shady side, was out of the question at 97 fun-filled degrees F (or 36C, which is fun-filled as a bra size but not as weather). Just leaving the overly air-conditioned office building, where I had been shivering all day in my appropriate for the baking heat of the outdoors but inappropriate for the mini-Alaska of the indoors outfit was enough. The heat hit with the force of a blast furnace, and you know what? The sun’s rays really do beat down. Like you can feel them hitting your skin and making it sizzle in spite of SPF 45 sunscreen.

This makes me wonder how people in Arizona and Florida and other places that are legendarily hot on a routine basis survive. They must go from air-conditioned car to equally A/C’d offices and then back to A/C’d apartments or houses, but the unnatural cold of the A/C is almost as unpleasant as the natural heat of the sun. Does one’s body eventually become accustomed to it and better able to cope?

Fortunately for us, the heat wave is supposed to be over by Sunday, and we should be back to our usual daytime highs of around 70 F/21 C. Sweating will once more be relegated to the gym, where it belongs, and I will no longer fear setting foot outside. I can’t wait to hear the fog horns again, signalling the arrival of the blessed fog and its natural air-conditioning.

Yesterday’s incident affected me more than I thought. In a matter of seconds, a total stranger destroyed my peace of mind in the selfish desire to fulfill a passing whim. It seems deeply unfair that his caprice had this effect; also, that just because I’m a girl, I have to worry about my physical safety in the simple act of walking to work.

I used to really enjoy the walk to work. It was not only what Buddhists call “walking meditation”, but a pleasure. I enjoyed the beauty of the city, its remarkable buildings, secret parks and gardens, the different vistas of the Bay and its bridges, for our city planners knew enough not to obstruct the waterfront with high-rises. I enjoyed the exertion of walking up and down the hills, aware of my body and breathing, present in the moment.

But this morning, I took a different route, however irrational. Perfectly innocent joggers passing me prompted a pang of fear, as did a gentleman in a suit who stepped from the shadows of a building to hail a passing cab. I looked nervously down dark alleys as I walked by them, and over my shoulder every block or so. Never before had I realized how inadequate the street lights are to their task. Many streets only have them on one side, and there are deep pools of darkness in front of many buildings. I felt like a child dared to walk through a graveyard at night. And though it has been many years since I was actually a child, I have always retained that childish fear of the dark, along with other childish qualities, so the walk this morning seemed even more fraught with hazard than it was in reality.

But I can’t live in fear. The truth is that nothing really happened, though it did make it clear that something easily could have. Even had I been armed with any of John’s suggestions, the guy would have been too far away for me to use any of them by the time I got them out of my backpack or pocket, other than the gun. Though I don’t think even Texas considers groping to be a capital offense. I hope that the passage of time will lessen the fear, though I doubt if it will ever completely eradicate the awareness it caused.

I also hope that the flu I came down with yesterday is passing, since I still have way too much work to do and not enough time to do it in. Isn’t it ironic that when you feel really horrible it keeps you from sleeping, and that’s when you need the sleep the most? Here’s hoping that I am both psychologically and physically better real soon.

You will be relieved to know that all four cats, ranging in age from 10 years old to less than 3, are in good health, and as far as I know there are no additional silver hairs among my resolutely gold ones. Hannah had to have her ears cleaned out (she has chronic ear infections, either due to in-breeding* or being taken from her mother before her immune system was developed) and also has to have her teeth cleaned. As Amber so correctly pointed out, it’s not a cheap undertaking. But we have medical insurance for Hannah, so it will cost about half of the whole price. If your vet offers it, it’s definitely a worthwhile investment. And amazingly, the total bill, though horrifying, was no more than last year. And when I was paying it, a guy came in with a two month old yellow Lab puppy named North who was so cute that it completely took my mind off the dizzying total. Now, that’s cute.

In addition to getting the cats checked out and replenishing their food supply, we took the opportunity of having the first obligation-free Saturday in weeks to run errands and get some things done around the house. John put up the new blinds in the bedroom and living room, in the process revealing that our cleaning lady is perhaps not quite as assiduous in dust removal as previously thought. The Okie-style dust storm which accompanied this revelation caused a full-blown allergy attack for me, and I still sound like I have a cold. However, apartment looks great and just in time for my stepmother’s arrival this week. Hopefully by the time she arrives, my nose will be back to normal.

The other revelation of the weekend was that it’s been so long since I had any free time that when I finally got it, I didn’t know what to do with it. Rather shocking. Good thing I’m all booked up for the next few days.

*Isn’t it odd that this affects both the highest (royalty) and the lowest (backwoods hillbillies)? Our vet knows something about Hannah’s litter and at least one of her littermates was too in-bred to survive. Hannah herself was only a month old when we got her and not expected to make it, either. But she showed us!

Well, I’m back. More or less, and for what it’s worth.

Really, there’s been nothing to report in the past two weeks, since my life was pretty much reduced to a treadmill which was even – if you can imagine this – less fun than the one at the gym or the one gathering dust in your basement. This particular one consisted of the following, repeated seemingly ad infinitum and definitely ad nauseam:

1. Work for 9-11 hours with ever-changing deadlines and ever-new crises caused solely by those who never look at anything you give them until the very last minute, which in turn gives you that minute and that minute only to fix it. You can give these things to them two weeks ahead and it won’t make a whit of difference. Digression: when’s the last time you used “whit” in a sentence? And really meant it?

2. Walk to the gym uphill and try to work off the tension accumulated during the day. Can’t be done, at least by me.

3. Run errands on the way home such as shopping, picking up or dropping off cleaning. Get cleaned up from gym exertions, feed cats, make dinner*.

4. Watch less than an hour of TV after dinner. Fall asleep. Be prodded to bed. Sleep exhausted for about four hours, then wake up for another three. Variation: have anxiety attack wake you up. Fall asleep just as the alarm goes off and curse the evil necessity of hauling your ass to work every day.

5. Repeat Step One.
   

And then spend Saturdays with your histrionic and thankless mother, who still gives you a hard time no matter what. There you have it.

*Now, for those of you about to scream sexism, let me just say that I am a very good cook and John isn’t one. Also he does the dishes. And cooking is the only creative thing I do.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that cats dislike water. Rarely, if ever, do you see a cat jumping off the rope swing at the swimming hole, or setting a new record for swimming the Channel, or cluttering up what little beach space is available on the Riviera. The only baths they like to take are sun baths, and they are pretty much unparalleled in their ability to sit in the sun for extended periods of time. Their fur makes them immune to skin cancer and wrinkles, so really, they have no motivation to cut their sun baths short or reduce them to utilitarian sun showers (“I’ll just get my fur warmed up and then get on with day’s business of napping and playing.”). There is no sunscreen for cats.

Despite this well-known distaste for the aquatic, our cats insist on sitting in the still-wet kitchen sink after the dishes have been done, and in sitting/lounging/playing in the bathtub after the water has drained away. Sometimes they are so eager to get in the bathtub that they actually get in it while there is still some water in it, and this does not, for whatever reason, lead to their immediate ejection from the wet surface. They just watch the remaining water go down the drain as if they were watching TV.

I think they must be attracted to the heat retained in the century-old cast iron bath tub, and the heat retained in the considerably younger cast iron kitchen sink. The need for heat must outweigh the distaste for dampness, at least temporarily. I once read that cats were originally desert animals, hence their lust for heat. My sister Megan once had a cat who singed her fur by sitting too close to the space heater. The singed fur smell alerted Megan, who separated cat from heater while cat complained. About being removed from the source of the singe. Our cat Jack routinely sleeps on a part of the stove where the pilot lights make it too hot for me to comfortably rest my hand on for longer than, say, 30 seconds. Amazing.

Well, I’ve been all kinds of bad this weekend. No gym (though in my defense, I really overdid it on Thursday and possibly Friday); way too much naughty food and alcohol; nothing but amusement and no errands. I’ll start being my usual Puritan self again tomorrow, I promise.

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood yesterday. Cold enough for a coat, but so sunny that sunglasses weren’t enough to stop the blindness. But you have to love that in the depths of winter. That and the flowering ornamental cherry trees making a pink haze everywhere. Next to sparkly, pink is the best. I even wore my pink cashmere sweater so I fit right in.

First stop yesterday: local institution Swan Oyster Depot. Although it was barely 11:30, the customary line had formed, necessitating uncustomary patience on my part. At least the brothers who work there are sufficiently civilized to offer those waiting in line wine or beer to amuse them while they wait. Once we got our coveted stools, we shared a shrimp cocktail of perfection, followed by cups of the best clam chowder on the planet. Full of clams and chunks of potatoes and dotted with golden butter, probably about a zillion calories, especially when accompanied by the excEt crusty bread and butter. But what the hell. It’s so fun to eat there, watching the ballet in the narrow space behind the counter, the brothers cheerfully serving and joking, skillfully opening oysters (too bad I find them so repulsive – the oysters, I mean, not the brothers), slicing up the bread, stacking the extra bread next to paperback novels on the shelf above the cash. All without gloves. And you gotta pay cash. No plastic at Swan?s.

After lunch, we went to see 25th Hour, the brilliant and powerful Spike Lee movie starring the brilliant trio of Edward Norton, Barry Pepper, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Nominally about a dealer’s last day of freedom before going to prison for seven years, but so much more than that. Go see it.

After the movie, we decided to stop by and see if John’s barber, Sal, had time to cut his hair. Sometimes, especially on Saturdays, the line for Sal’s ministrations can rival that at Swan’s. But we were in luck. So while John got yet another perfect haircut, I chatted with Sal to catch up on his life. You know how men never ask what you want to know, so I finally had the chance to find out why Sal had moved to Santa Rosa, how he got his second dog, how he was doing at body-building competitions (that’s his passion), and so on. All this for $12 (not including tip), if you can believe that. Sal has been cutting John?s hair for more than a decade now, and only recently raised the price from $10 to $12. I don’t know how they do it. If Sal finds a job in Santa Rosa, I know John will go up there to get his hair cut, no matter what the cost in time and money. A perfect haircut is a rare thing.

Next stop: Bob’s, for the best doughnuts in the city, which I had for breakfast this morning with three very naughty cups of coffee. I better stop bragging that I only have one cup of coffee a day.

After that, I bought a bottle of champagne, or more properly, m&eacutethode champenoise, which just doesn’t sound as good, does it? We had pizza and drank all the champagne while watching American History X, the only possible movie to follow 25th Hour. OK, I drank all the champagne. But no hangover today. Yay!

Here ends my litany of badness. After all, tomorrow is another day. I’ll be good then. Really.

Of all the problems I anticipated having while Mom’s dog was our non-paying holiday guest, the one that really is one is not one I even imagined (and how’s that for a convoluted sentence?).

I knew the endless walking in the endless rain would be an endless pain in the ass, and so it was. I knew that picking up dog poo from the rain-soaked street would also not be my favorite activity ever. I expected that the whiny loser who lives downstairs from us would bitch about her presence (he did; I apologized). I expected that she would scare passers-by and/or get into it with other dogs, and that also happened, though not to a lawsuit extent.

I was mostly worried that she would harass and even hurt our cats, not because she’s bad or mean, but because she is woefully untrained. I discovered that Mom’s approach to dogs is pretty much the same as it was to her kids: either yelling at you or hugging you, for no known reason and no possible prediction of which you’ll get. So you end up with someone who is, uh, challenging to live with (just ask John).

Taking all this into account, we decided that the best thing was to shut the cats in the bedroom while we were at work, giving the guests free reign. They all seemed to be getting along pretty well on the weekends when we were there to observe and police if necessary, so we decided to leave the bedroom door open while we were out for a couple of hours on New Year’s Day.

Big, as Ah-nuld would say, mistake.

We got home to discover the afore-mentioned and completely unanticipated problem. All cats were present and accounted for and unchewed, but the dog had chewed a big hole in the custom-made fabric blind in the bedroom, the one we had to get after the whiny loser downstairs “trimmed” the tree outside said bedroom window so that no fewer than seven windows had a stunning and unobstructed view into our bedroom. I’m shameless, but not that shameless, so we got one of those blinds that lower from the top, preserving our modesty while allowing us to enjoy what remained of the tree.

But now, there’s a huge peephole in the blind, which will have to be replaced ASAP. To be fair, we were aware that the dog had a penchant for blind-chewing, given that she had chewed the metal blinds in the living room the first week she was here. But those came with the apartment and I’m less worried about people looking into our living room than our bedroom, oddly enough. I figured I could just sell the twisted living room blinds on eBay as a sculpture by a hot young Southern California artist (which is sort of true) and see how much I could get for them.

Suzy’s new mantra: only ten days left. Only ten days left.

I’m still sick. It’s still raining. I’m not convinced that the two are necessarily connected, but I’m also not convinced that they aren’t, either. I am, however, convinced that daily dog walking in daily rain is not conducive to evicting a cold.

Worst of all, I actually had to vacuum my own house today. For the first time in years. It’s against all the laws of nature, you know. I figured the cleaning lady couldn’t cope with the sudden, if temporary, appearance of a pit bull at my house (and I feel exactly the same way), also my Spanish, though adequate for menus and getting drinks and even suppressing drive-by flirting, is not up to explaining rental dogs, so I told her not to come back until after Mom has.

So it’s been almost three weeks since her last visit, and with my dust allergy and untidiness intolerance, I had to give in and vacuum today. I really, really hated it and am further convinced that everyone should have a cleaning lady, even the cleaning ladies. Housework, like all forms of work, is to be avoided at all costs, and if avoidance is impossible, you gotta be paid for doing it.

Dentist: No cavities for me, but John got my helping as well as his own and has at least four and possibly more. Looks like there’s some pain in his future.

Other than that, mild flossing lecture and complete removal of what little make-up remained after a day’s work and walking to the dentist’s through torrential rain.

Dinner: Mom and Alice seemed to cancel each other out, proving that there really is some truth to algebra after all and two negatives really do make a positive. And I thought I’d never use algebra in my every day life. Who knew? Though it did take 30+ years to come in useful.

Food was as cafeteria-like as ever, and the pouring rain and darkness didn’t enhance the usually stunning view from the dining room, which looks over Aquatic Park, the historic ships at Hyde Street Pier, and Alcatraz, which was too bad, since it was Mom’s first time there. It will also be her last, since the Officers’ Club is closing at the end of the month.

Mom: Treated us to a visit to a whole new room in the funhouse of her mind. She informed Alice and John over dinner that when I was a kid in Upstate New York, we used to cut down trees (we did have 5 acres of land, including a pine forest, and we really did cut our own tree each year) for every class in our elementary school, treat them with flame retardant, and then bring them to the school, where we also supplied the happy little students with hot chocolate complete with marshmallows. I changed the subject immediately. John and Alice looked bemused, but were too polite to comment.

She was driving me so crazy that when I went to the gym on Saturday, my trainer asked me if I was stressed, because I had the tell-tale flush over my throat and chest that I get when I’m upset. It was gone by the time I left the gym, but reappeared fairly rapidly after getting back home.

Took Mom to the airport in the worst of the storm on Saturday afternoon. Carried her stuff, got her checked in, where she was supplied with a wheelchair and an airline person to push her in it. I had to leave her at security, and as I hugged her good-bye, we both started crying. I am such a perverse little freak. She annoyed the crap out of me during the scant 24 hours she was with me, showing that I am:

1. A really horrible person, since I get annoyed at my terminally ill mother; and 2. A really horrible daughter, same reason.

Weather: Hell. We have been relentlessly pounded by storms and high winds since Friday, and it looks like we are in for at least another week of it. Jonathan was wise not to come down here. They got almost 17 inches of rain up there between Friday morning and Saturday night. Their power’s been out since Saturday, though Jonathan bought a generator a few years ago, so Megan can come and visit the electricity at his house when she’s tired of the silent, lamp-lit dark of her house. It’s funny how close they live to the 19th century there.

Jonathan got 12 calls on Saturday alone, and at one point, he and Jed were trapped in the fire truck on Albion Ridge Road (the road that leads to their “town” and the sea), by downed power lines on one side and fallen trees on the other. He just turned his pager off until help arrived. A tree fell and missed his house by less than a foot.

Guest Pets: I’m already sick of walking the dog in the pouring rain and scraping poop off the soaking wet sidewalks, and we’ve only had her for three days. She is a very sweet dog, but not very smart. For example, she pees on a hill with her butt facing the top of the hill. We also can’t let her in the bedroom, because our cats need their own place to be sans the guest beasts, who get the whole rest of the apartment. So you can imagine how fun it is feeding 5 cats and a dog in separate rooms.

At least Mom’s cat and dog curl up together on the couch, which we have covered with a sheet.

It’s going to be a loooong month.

So I finally lost my virginity.

My gym virginity, that is. Astonishing though the gym employees seemed to find it, I have never been to one before in my life. They tried to account for this with illness or injury and seemed rather taken aback when I assured them it was just sloth and a lifelong distaste for sweat and communal showers. But the mushiness of my upper arms, which are an offense to my aesthetic sense and must therefore be vanquished, inspired me to go. That and the fear of becoming a fragile old lady. It’s time to start giving back to the shell that has served me so well for 40 years, and especially considering some of the things I have done (and not done) to it. Kind of amazing I’m alive, really. Anyway, if I want to keep it for another 40 years, I better start taking care of it, n’est-ce pas?

I have also been inspired by the fit and unflappable Candi, and my cousin Les, who became a gym aficionado between my seeing him in August, 2001 and September, 2002, and let me tell you, wow. So with these shining examples before me, I decided to get off my ass and put myself in the hands of a personal trainer.

Since it’s me, I picked the place that is not only the most convenient, but the prettiest. It used to be the glorious, Moorish-inspired Alhambra theater, built by the architect Timothy Pflueger, who also created Oakland’s Paramount and the Castro Theater in San Francisco (both of these are alive and well and still theaters). But due to the encroaching multi-plexes, the Alhambra closed down and was empty for a couple of years before being made into a gym. I was amazed to see how much (though, alas, not the lobby fountain) of the original interior had been preserved and restored, including the spectacular ceiling and the movie screen, which you can watch while being tortured into a more beautiful you.

As Chandler Bing would say, could I be any more Californian? Vegetarian wannabe; blonde and shallow; inveterate buyer of organic food; has a therapist; drinker of bottled spring water and not much else; pro cosmetic surgery; owner of a vintage convertible; and now has a personal trainer. Thus are stereotypes created. Though I do draw the line at tofu.

Still have the headache. I’m going to have to try some of your very helpful suggestions (hee!) and/or stop by one of those scary herb stores in Chinatown for wing of bat or eye of newt. Maybe Shakespeare was onto something.

I had a call yesterday from my friend Paul. I haven’t seen him since we had dinner back in May. His life has been the usual: full of adventure, mostly good (including a new grandchild on the way), and it was great to catch up. He’s wintering in Florida this year, she said grandly, and invited us to come and stay with him. I just might take him up on it, ending my lifetime streak of never going to Florida. But I’m not going to Disney World, or Disney Land, or any other Disney-related place, whether I go to Florida or not.

So, as usual, it was great to catch up with him. And it got me thinking (so look out). I seem to have quite a lot of male friends. Only one is an ex-boyfriend*, and all the others have absolutely no taint of sex at all. There’s Paul. There’s Richard, who has been my friend since high school. There’s Adrian, an all-around great guy. There’s Randy, who used to be my boss (!), and who now lives near Chicago. He will be the first call I make after room service when I go to our conference in Chicago in mid-January (brrr). There’s Gary, who used to be a client, which makes it possibly even weirder that we remained friends after our professional relationship ended than staying friends with your former boss. There’s Raven, who used to be my sister’s boyfriend long ago. There’s Charles, who is also my jeweler. There’s Lance and Sal and Wade, who are admittedly gay, but boys and friends, nonetheless. And that doesn’t include miscellaneous friends of Dad’s, who have become my friends, too, over the years; or the friends I have through John and my brother, but who are also mine; or the husbands/boyfriends of girlfriends who have won me over in their own right (like Candi’s Brian); or the guys whose blogs I love to read and whose minds and wit I admire.

I wonder why I seem to have so many more male friends than female ones. I generally have a higher opinion of women than men, right or wrong, and feel there is a real strength in the bond between women. But if you look at the facts, I have more male friends, though I wouldn’t confide in the male friends in the same way I would the female ones. Maybe a girl just needs both. After all, when I can’t decide between two things, I just take them both. The “all of the above” category on tests was invented just for me, you know.

*Other than him, I wish there was some planet they could be sent to, so you never have to run into them or hear about them ever again. Especially if they’re hugely successful and much happier without you, when they should be in a hell of terrible, searing regret from losing you, even if you are no longer the slightest bit interested in them.

Sometimes, it’s nice to be proved wrong.

Can you believe I said that? She who is always right?

After work on Friday, I went to MOMA, with the intention of seeing the exhibit of Lewis Carroll’s* photographs. On arriving at the museum, I discovered not only that my membership had lapsed (a problem which has been rectified), but that there is a wonderful artist I had never heard of before and whose works I had never seen, a problem also rectified on the same day.

Before I reveal the artist’s identity, I have a confession to make, which is: I have never been to Germany or Austria, and that those Germanic parts of the world don’t appeal to me in the slightest. A friend kindly pointed out to me recently, and with some truth, that this means that I am seeing these places only through the prism of others’ experiences, which is probably true, but still doesn’t have me reaching for the phone and calling Lufthansa.

Having said all that, I will now say this: Gerhard Richter, the subject of the MOMA exhibit, 40 Years of Painting, has a versatility and range I have never before witnessed in any artist ever. Most artists stay within a certain scale, big or small, and paint similar subjects (portraits; landscapes), and develop a style over the years that is uniquely his/her own. But Richter is equally successful at large and small scale, abstract paintings and paintings that look like artistically blurred photos. It amazed me to think that all of these paintings- rooms of them – were painted by the same man, and painted well.

To give you some idea, here are three examples:

One

Two

Three

And they were all painted in oil, on canvas. Amazing.

*Am I the only one not convinced that he was a raging pervert? That seemed to be the gist of most of the remarks I overheard while looking at the photos.

You know your mailman reads your postcards, don’t you? Yet I was surprised to actually catch one in the act yesterday on my way home. This federal employee was not in my own neighborhood, but a neighboring neighborhood, and was leaning casually against the postcard owner’s door, reading it while having a relaxing cigarette. Somehow, it seemed just a little beyond the casual glance while putting the postcard in the destination mailbox, which would be acceptable even to Miss Manners, I think.

It’s like how people seem to feel it’s perfectly acceptable to look at whatever is on your computer screen when they come over to talk to you, either in your office or in your home. Now, if I’m doing anything even remotely personal, such as email, or writing this blog – things I would never do on my employer’s time, just like a mailman would never take a smoke break and read other people’s mail on his employer’s time – I minimize that window and try to look productive (it helps to always have actual work going at the same time so the switch is fast & easy, the way I like nearly everything). Though my observation is that most people don’t, and that they don’t seem to mind other people checking out what’s on their computer screen.

So the question is: where and what are the personal boundaries?