Suzy Says

Since I’ve been up here, I have had time to think, and to think about time itself. Yes, much of the day is occupied with doing chores and taking care of Mom, but there is definitely time left over to think, if not to write. For I find that I am more or less permanently tired and therefore uninspired. I finally have time to write, but no inclination to do so. It seems that the idea of “if I just had time, I’d do [fill in the blank]” is not necessarily the case – or at least, not for me.

Yet I do have time to think.

A year ago today, I marveled at the fact that my brother, sisters, and I had survived an entire year without our father. Another year has passed by, another 365 days, and we have survived that, too. In some ways, it seems like just yesterday that we lost him – the grief and anger and sorrow are still fresh – but in others, it seems like so very long ago. It’s been so long since I heard his voice or his laugh or saw his smile. I have been to London twice since we lost him, and though my head knows he is gone, my heart still expects to see him glance up over his reading glasses, break into a smile while simultaneously folding up “The Times” and hugging me across the barrier at Heathrow. No-one meets me at the airport now, and even if they did, they wouldn’t be my father, my friend.

A day doesn’t go by that I don’t think of you, Dad.

Two years ago, when you were in the hospital, we were consumed with fear and worry about you. Now, we are all occupied with taking care of Mom, knowing that the end is coming, but not when, and doing our best with the time we have left with her. Her departure is as long and lingering and painful as yours was sudden and unexpected and they assured us, painless. The contrast between the two could not be greater. But one thing remains constant: your children united in the face of disaster, doing the best we can under the circumstances and loving and supporting each other.

And one more thing does, too: we all love you, always.

My brother Jonathan is a proud member of the volunteer fire department in this little community. It takes hours of training and the willingness to be yanked out of sleep or away from dinner to respond to an emergency. And without being paid, of course. Jonathan tells me that if his pager goes off while he?s sleeping, he finds his feet are already on the floor before he?s consciously awake. He gets called to the same scenes as my sister Megan does if she is working in her capacity as EMT. Small town, you know.

In case you?re wondering, yes, the fire department does get called out to rescue cats stuck in trees, and a couple of days ago, Jonathan got paged in the middle of dinner and flew off to help with a propane leak. When he got to the scene, propane was gushing into the air in the style popularized by Old Faithful. He asked if they had turned off the tank. They hadn?t. Jonathan turned it off and left. He was back in time for dessert.

While I?ve been up here, it?s been relatively quiet on the pager front, especially considering that it?s vacation time and high season for emergencies: car accidents, swimming accidents, boating accidents – my brother once had to rescue a guy who had fallen off a cliff and survived, and another guy whose logging truck went off a bridge, essentially destroying both legs, but who also survived.

Some people aren?t as lucky. I heard someone’s car leave very fast, very early this morning, when it was still dark and starry. When I emerged from my tent a few hours later, I found my brother in the living room, still in his fire gear and still horrified by what he had seen. And he doesn?t horrify easy. A guy had driven into a telephone pole at full speed, no skidding or any other signs of trying to slow down and stop. My brother said he had never seen so much blood at a scene, which is the same thing the telephone pole repair guy said and the guy who towed away the twisted piece of metal that used to be the accident victim?s car. Megan got called in to help, and is now driving the guy to the trauma unit at Santa Rosa. My guess is there are no atheists in ambulances.

My sister’s little house in the pygmy woods (the soil is too acidic for the redwoods to reach their usual majestic heights, so it’s known as pygmy forest, though pygmy is relative) is far too pygmy itself to accommodate the entire clan. It?s overpopulated as it is, with Megan and her husband; Mom’s hospital bed in the living room, and my other sister Beth sleeping on the couch.

So I’ve been sleeping in a tent in Megan’s garden, like Claudia Salinger in Party of Five, only outside. Sleeping in the tent has made me understand more about silence and darkness. It’s not just the absence of noise and light, but the presence of the silence and the darkness. The silence is so intense you can feel it – it almost presses against the city dweller’s ears, as strong a contrast to the usual city noises as a sudden power outage.

But after a while, you realize that the silence itself is made of many components. The wind in the trees, which almost sounds like the ocean. Distant crickets. Grass rustling. An animal walking through the woods: a cat? A raccoon? A skunk? Maybe even a deer? The mylar ribbons on the flower beds (supposed to deter marauding birds) softly rattling as they turn in the wind. You know how they say, you could hear a pin drop? You can hear a pine needle fall, and you do.

The darkness is as shocking to a city girl’s eyes as the silence is to her ears. There’s no ambient light from a nearby city or town, and no streetlights. So if I’m going to be out at night, I need a flashlight to light the way immediately ahead of me. I am returned to my childhood, when it seemed that any sort of monster or imaginary creature could be hiding in the woods, ready to leap out at me. The shadows in the flashlight’s beam, even my own, grow and move alarmingly and in a very monster-like manner.

But if I look up and away from what’s right in front of me, I see something beautiful: countless silvery stars against the blackness of the sky. Light in darkness. Hope.

These two things could only have happened in a small town.

1. Megan went to the bank to ask about adding herself to Mom?s account. Though we have had Power of Attorney for a year or so, if the account is joint with one of us, it will pass directly to that person without passing Go and going through probate, a thing to be avoided if at all possible, even if one?s assets are on the dainty to non-existent side, as they are in this case.

The bank manager said that Mom would have to come in, and Meg explained that this wasn?t possible due to Mom?s health. The manager thought for a minute, and then said she would call Mom and if Mom agreed to it, the manager would bring the paperwork to Megan?s house herself, and help us fill it out. Megan explained the isolation of her house and the manager was cheerfully undeterred.

So not only was she willing to go way above and beyond the call of duty, she wanted to make absolutely sure that Mom wasn?t being taken advantage of or talked into something she didn?t want to do. Talk about admirable!

2. We went to the funeral home to make arrangements. It was so terrible making those decisions when Dad suddenly died and we were in a state of shock and grief that we wanted to avoid it this time. We had no warning with Dad, we have plenty with Mom. And I guess it?s one way of controlling an uncontrollable situation, or giving oneself the illusion of controlling it.

When we got there, Megan recognized the funeral director as a guy she had treated recently in her capacity as EMT. She asked him if he had experienced extreme dental pain at 3 am a few weeks ago, and he laughed and said, ?That?s where I know you from! You sure helped me – how can I help you?? And with that, he proceeded to give us exactly what we wanted, and nothing we didn?t. He didn?t try to sell us a bunch of fancy, pointless crap, and was very helpful and considerate, telling us what would be legally required (Dad died in England, where the laws are different than they are in California). It was as pleasant as such a transaction can ever be.

Breakfast of champions this morning: cramp bark, multi-vitamin, flax seed oil, black coffee. Follow with a run down the logging road (to get there, take the little path past the garden and slip under the barbed wire fence). Optional accessories: one or two dogs. This morning, there were two dogs, and we ran in age order: the 3 year old, the 10 year old, the 30-11 year old.

The morning run is the best part of the day for me. It gets me out of the house and gives me 40 or so precious minutes to myself. I miss the gym, but this will have to do for now. It feels good to be running among the ancient redwoods in the foggy morning, the air smelling like the forest and the ocean and the flowers. I can almost feel like I’m running away from everything. For a little while.

Thanks to everyone for the outpouring of love and caring. Wow. I can’t tell how much I appreciate it, and what a difference it makes.

We’re just about ready to leave on the next stage of this strange journey. I realize that I have never before packed to go on a trip for an indefinite period of time. I could be gone for a few days, or a few weeks. So I’m bringing a lot of stuff. I’m beginning to wonder if we can lug it all to the bus stop. Where’s Hack when you need him? I bet he’d drive us the 30 miles to Petaluma, where we’re meeting my sisters.

It took me a long time to get myself to pack. I think it’s because packing meant it was real. I finally packed at 2 am last night. As I was packing, I picked up a pretty grey hand-knit sweater. At first I rejected it as too nice to be worn up there (no-one dresses up) but then, almost before I realized I was thinking it, if you follow me, I thought, “It will do to go the funeral home” and put it in the bag.

I was vividly reminded of helping my friend Mary-Lou pack to go home to see her father, who was dying of cancer. She matter-of-factly packed a black dress for his funeral Mass, saying simply, “I know I’ll need it this time.” If I were an actress and needed to cry in a scene, I’d remember the look on my dear friend’s face as she followed her father’s coffin into the church on a winter afternoon, knowing that there was nothing I could do to help her. And I was sitting beside my own beloved father at the time.

Years later, I too have lost my father. And I’m about to lose my mother. But the love and support of my family and friends will get me through it. Thanks again, everyone, for your thoughts and prayers. Keep ’em coming.

Do you think everything happens for a reason? Or that it’s all random? I don’t know – it’s one of those questions like the existence of God that I don’t know the answer to but wish I did – but sometimes things just seem to come together.

Earlier this week, after more than seven years at my job, I was laid off, along with a dozen or so other people. Clearly, it was a decision made by Corporate and not by my own team, who are hugely inconvenienced by my sudden departure. It’s all about getting rid of the most expensive people following the end of the fiscal year and the beginning of the budget process.

My boss was much more upset than I was as she told me. Her hands were shaking and she was almost in tears. I really wasn’t upset. The first thing I thought of was that now I had time to go and take care of my mother.

I haven’t told you, faithful readers, that my mother is dying.

Earlier this month, my sister Megan brought Mom to her place to nurse her through a lung infection. Meg figured it was better to take care of Mom in her own home instead of at Mom’s. She brought Mom in to the hospital where she works, and Mom was diagnosed with pneumonia. In the course of diagnosing the pneumonia, the doctors discovered that Mom’s breast cancer, which had spread throughout her bones last year, is now in her lungs.

There is nothing more they can do. It’s just a matter of time, and not much of that. So on Saturday, John and I are heading up there. He’ll come back on Monday, but I’ll stay until it’s over. It will be good to be with my brother and sisters – Beth is here from England indefinitely – and Mom, to do what I can and to say good-bye.

I’m so glad I now have the time to do that. It’s an incredible gift. And I’m so glad to have the family I have.

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.

Usually, it’s nice having the cats sleep with us. Assuming, that is, that they aren’t right on our feet, pinning down the covers, or taking up the entire pillow with their tiny, furry bodies. You would think that something that small couldn’t take up a whole pillow, but you’d be wrong. Mostly, we feel like our own little tribe, settled in for the night together.

And it’s so cute seeing them snuggled up together. Jack, the Siamese in the picture, is our worst cat (conversely, Sophie, the orange cat in the picture, is the nicest). Jack is loud and obnoxious, yet always has someone to cuddle and play with. No wonder we gave her a boy’s name, since this seems to be true of most men as well.

Yet Jack is not the cause of the striking facial accessories I have been sporting for the past couple of days. Cleo is to blame. She got spooked in the night (and she calls herself a black cat?!) and used my face for a launching pad to escape from whatever monster was after her. I have claw marks across my cheek, beside my nose, and slicing my lower lip both inside and out. I have tried to conceal the damage with make-up, but it’s as futile as if I had gone five rounds with someone and lost. I’m just hoping it will clear up in time for an important meeting I have on Wednesday.

Maybe litter boxes aren’t the worst thing about having cats after all.

Completed the final phase of the annual check-up marathon yesterday. The whole thing is such a production, it’s no wonder I hadn’t been for such a long time. Before I could even make an appointment, I had to fax them the front and back of my insurance card and wait for them to get it approved. Then, and only then, would they dare to set up the appointment.

After the check-up, the doctor gave me orders for tests to be done, which I didn’t have time to do until I came back from Canada. I duly did the walk-in blood testing, etc. a month ago and called to make an appointment for a mammogram. The first available appointment was yesterday (happy Bastille Day!), and off I went after work, to swim through an ocean of paperwork before getting topless and down to business.

It was the first mammogram I had had since Mom was first diagnosed with breast cancer. Now that I’m old and high risk, it is something I can look forward to on an annual basis. The technician doing the screening was really nice, but squashing one’s poitrine into a pancake is not fun, and one of the times a girl feels that symmetry is highly overrated.

You have to endure four squashings before they release you. By the time they got to Squash Three, I very nearly passed out, I don’t know why. I asked them to complete Squash Four anyway, because I just wanted it over with, and afterwards, the technician helped me to a cot to lie down. I didn’t actually lose consciousness, but I felt pretty bad. She went to fetch a nurse, who took my blood pressure (110/80) and said, “Even for a white girl, you’re really white.” I confessed that I hadn’t eaten lunch that day (though I didn’t admit that: 1. I hardly ever do; and b. I routinely go and work out when I haven’t eaten for 12 hours, fearing that their heads would fly off).

They brought me graham crackers and orange juice, making me feel like I was back in kindergarten. It was like nap time, only naked. They checked my blood pressure again and then sent me on my way with an extra packet of crackers. I felt really old and really young all at once.

I’m finally catching up on the New Yorkers that piled up in my absence while I was off being Vacation Suzy. Always instructive yet entertaining, I learned in the combined June 16/23 issue that valium, my drug of choice when faced with the rigors of flying, just turned 40, much like me. It can’t be a coincidence that it was invented when I was a year old; I imagine my advent sent Dr. Leo Sternbach scuttling to his laboratory.

Whether it was my appearance on the scene butt first, or other factors, my mother routinely took valium when I was a child. Many people did. It was the 1960’s and that sort of thing was quite usual, as was my parents’ habit of loading us kids into the car in our PJ’s and taking us to cocktail parties. In their defense, it should be noted that this only happpened when we were in Maine for the summer, and there was very little, if any traffic, in those days. Certainly nothing untoward ever occurred.

Several of our baby pictures feature our parents with a cocktail in one hand and baby bottle in the other; and in my mother’s case, a cigarette is never far away. Now they would probably be charged with child endangerment. These were the 1960’s, the halcyon days of the Rat Pack, and such behavior was the norm, though now it seems almost as remote and antiquated as customs in the 1860’s. I wonder if the enlightened children of today look back at the children who grew up in the Valium Years and feel pity and horror for us.

Dr. Sternbach himself recently turned 95. He confided to the New Yorker that his wife doesn’t let him indulge in his own invention, but that he prefers Scotch anyway.

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.

I got these questions from the always adorable Amber of Lively Lexis. To keep the game going, it’s my turn to ask one of you questions. Volunteers, email me at suzy @ suzysays.net. The questions I ask you won’t be the same as the ones Amber asked me – you’re supposed to think up your own. This may be tough for me, considering my lack of creativity. So while I’m trying to think up questions, you can read my answers:

1. Tell us about a defining moment in your life where the decision you made brought you joy and happiness. A defining moment where you wouldn’t change a single thing.

Considering that my life has been mostly of a Salinger (the Party of Five kind, not the JD kind) or Baudelaire orphan nature, the moments of joy and happiness are few and far between, and the defining moments tend to be horrible, like my father’s death. I think my life needs a serious re-write, actually.

But if I had to pick one thing along these lines, I would have to say taking care of my sister Megan for her last two years of high school following my parents’ scandalous divorce and my father’s retirement to his native England. I am glad that I was able to give her a happy and solid home base for those years, when she needed it the most. I even dare to think that she is the remarkable person she is today in part because of that. And the love I have for her is like no other.

2. I know that you’re well traveled. In your opinion, out of all the places you’ve had the pleasure of visiting, what locale had the most effect on you
and why?

Believe it or not, San Francisco. My brother moved here following our parents’ divorce (you can see it pretty much shook us all up), and the first time I came to visit him, I arrived here at night and he took me up to Mt. Davidson. The city was spread out before us in all its glittery glory and I fell in love with it that minute. I have never recovered. I don’t think I ever will.

Runners-up:

1. The first time I went to Paris. I was 17, it was summer, it was the first time I had travelled alone that didn’t involve any form of family members, it was the late 1970’s, I was staying with friends in their apartment in the Quartier Latin. Did I mention Paris?!

2. The first time I went to Venice. Late spring. As my vaporetto cruised up the Grand Canal, the pink lights along the canal all lit up at once, echoing the pink of the setting sun. Magic.

3. Since we’re quickly approaching Independence Day let’s talk about your
country! What aspect about your country makes you so damn proud to be an American? And if you had the power to change one aspect to make your home an even better place for you to live, what would that be?

Get Bush out of the White House! He shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Either that, or some kind of socialized medicine. It’s appalling that only the wealthy or relatively wealthy can afford medical care. It’s the true class system in this country: those with medical insurance and those without.

I think you can love a country as you love a person: despite all their flaws and shortcomings, and sometimes even because of them. I know we have problems as a country, but we also have great qualities. The fact that we won our freedom from England and created an entirely new form of government is an incredible achievement. Our success as a nation, when we started with nothing, is another. We’ve come an amazingly long way in 220 years. And I think it’s remarkable that our founding principles include the pursuit of happiness. Isn’t that what life is all about?

I love it that within one country there are palm trees, deserts, oceans, mountains, prairies. That it contains natural beauties like the snows of Alaska, the sun of Hawaii, the Grand Canyon, Death Valley, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Salt Lake. That it contains unnatural beauties like the glorious excess of Las Vegas, the brash glamor of New York, the energy and architecture of Chicago, the beauty and tolerance of San Francisco. These places could exist nowhere else on earth.

4. When you were a little girl, what did you think you’d be doing today? Are you generally happy with the outcome or are you still working to achieve the dreams of that little girl?

Whenever I say this, people think I’m fishing for compliments or something, but the truth is that I have no particular talents at all. I never wanted to be, say, an actress or a fireman or anything in particular. I am not particularly ambitious, either. So I didn’t have dreams in that manner at all, and still don’t.

We had a Career Day at school when I was about 12 and I got in a lot of trouble for writing down “idle rich” as a career goal. They thought I was mocking them when in fact I was just being truthful. That’s still about the only thing I’d be any damn good at, but I don’t think I’ll ever get the chance to try.

5. Assuming money isn’t an issue, what would be your dream retirement plan?

I can’t believe it won’t be. Many experts think that Social Security will either be non-existent or dramatically underfunded by the time I’m due to retire. My firm has stopped matching our 401(k) contributions until the economy improves, and what’s in there has been bleeding out so quickly I can’t bear to read my statements. But on the bright side, our apartment should finally be paid off by then!

I wonder if I will actually be able to afford to retire when I’m 65!

NOTE: To see my questions, keep watching Amy’s site!

Happy birthday, America!

Did you know that this is the date the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress, but the actual signing of the document didn’t start until August and wasn’t complete until the following January?

The first informal celebrations took place almost immediately following the public reading of the Declaration, and interestingly, they are still pretty much the same more than 200 years later: parades, fireworks, feasting. However, the first official (mandated by legislature) celebration wasn’t held until 1781, in Massachusetts.

In the “some things never change” category, a Mrs. Hammond of Chicago declared that she would fly the Confederate flag in front of her house on the 4th of July in 1894. According to the New York Times, this caused an angry crowd to assemble in front of the Hammond house, until Mrs. Hammond admitted that she had ordered the flag, but it hadn’t arrived yet. The crowd disbanded, and Mrs. H. promptly displayed a British flag, which was torn down and destroyed by a young boy who was passing by.

And finally: the Fourth is one of only, well, four holidays that are still celebrated in this country on a certain date, regardless of convenience: New Year’s Day, Christmas Day, Independence Day, and Halloween.

OK, all you fashion mavens out there, I need your advice. What does a girl wear to a baseball game? Having never attended one in my life – or any other kind of sporting event – I have no idea.

My first thought was to bring a hat, even though I seem to have a cartoonishly large head, since they rarely, if ever, fit me. Rather, they perch on top of my head quite uselessly, where they can be borne away by the lightest breeze or slightest breath of scandal, which you will agree is a problem. I have been assured that our seats are in the shade, but have a perfectly reasonable fear of sitting in the sun for four hours or more. Yes, it’s San Francisco, but the game starts around 12:30 p.m., when the fog is gone, and it won’t be back by the end of the game.

So I’m pretty much out of ideas, other than sunglasses.

Now, you’re probably asking yourself when I metamorphosized into Sports Suzy, or if I am in fact the real Suzy and not some Pod Suzy or John playing a practical joke. I assure that I am the one and only Suzy, and the only reason I am breaking my life-long record of not going to any form of sporting event is simple: it’s a work thing, and I have to go. If I don’t look out, I’ll end up setting foot in Florida next, or going to Disney World/Land/Universe and all my records will start dropping like dominoes. This better not be the thin edge of the wedge.

It’s my gorgeous niece Cat’s birthday today!

She’s 21, and I am now going to embarrass her by saying it seems like yesterday that she was a baby, and by posting these pictures of her, as a babyand more recently in a family portrait

(left to right: Harry, Cat’s Dad; Beth, Cat’s Mom; Cat herself, and Ben, Cat’s brother). The thing is, she can’t get mad at me because I gave her jewelry for her birthday, and this year I even refrained from posting about it, complete with picture, so it would be a surprise. One of us might actually be a grown-up.

In honor of Cat’s birthday, I will share with you a couple of my fave quotes from her:

1. I’m mad at yesterday.

2. I often say to myself in the morning “Why did yesterday Cat tell today Cat to do that? Yesterday Cat should have done it. Tomorrow Cat, she can deal
with it.”

Words to live by.

Love you, baby! (Or grown-up!)

Woke up on Saturday to a Bay-full of blissful, silver fog. The foghorns joyfully announced the end of the heat wave in their deep, authoritative voices (they are very convincing). In the distance, I could hear the sea lions at Pier 39 barking their happiness at the alleviation of the heat, with the wild parrots’ wild, harsh voices and clatter of wings providing the top note in this San Francisco symphony of hometown noises. The only thing missing was the bright jangle of the cable car bells, since none dare approach our neighborhood. Note to fans: the 40th annual cable car bell ringing contest is coming up in the middle of July. It’s held on or around our friend Mike C.’s birthday, just for him, even if he isn’t here. If you are, check it out!

On the way to work today, I found an origami crane, made of patterned, dark blue paper. It was abandoned on the sidewalk, so I picked it up and brought it to work, where it is currently gracing my computer monitor. Probably good office feng shui, and it ain’t like I don’t need it, what with another quarterly reporting time just around the corner. The good thing is that we finally have another analyst (sadly, not Colin, who decided not relocate to San Francisco and ditch all his summer plans to take the job)*, starting around the time of the cable car bell ringing contest. The bad news is that we’ll be too busy to train him, but will have to find the time.

As I picked up the crane, a guy passed me with an inflatable doll carried on his shoulders, the way your parents may have done when you were a kid, if that’s not too horrifying a conjunction of images. I’m afraid it gets worse, because the doll was wearing vinyl, flame-patterned boots and nothing else, including its head, which was completely missing. The guy was whistling.

*Because then I’d find out once and for all if he’s really a professor at Yale, as I suspect, instead of the high school student he claims to be!

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.

Before we went on vacation, we had one of those delightful condo owner meetings which are always planned for the most inconvenient time possible (for us, anyway), and which always seem to end up costing money. I realize that this is one of the cons of living in a 6 unit building instead of a 60 unit building, since there are fewer of us to pay for things, but being hit with a 25% increase in monthly maintenance dues plus a “one time” fee of $1,000 to repair the building’s roof pretty much ruined my day. Everyone else seemed to take this news with equanimity, since they are all inexplicably wealthy, whereas we were horrified, being the poor white trash of the building and all. At least we have a couple of months to come up with the $1,000. God.

As if that weren’t enough building-related bad news, the neighbor in the apartment above ours announced that she had bought a house (how?! how?!) and would be renting out her place for the princely sum of $2,600 a month. I immediately began to fear the new neighbors being from hell, in the way so many neighbors are. God.

Came back from vacation to find that she had actually sold the place for more than half a million dollars, which suggests that the new owner(s) will have no problem with the $1,000 fee or the monthly fee and that we remain the undisputed PWT of the building.

It’s so weird when you think about owning an apartment. I mean, what do you actually own? We don’t own the building, or the land it stands on. I guess we own air. How surreal is that?