Suzy Says

OK, so yesterday was a fairly Z grade day as days go: exhausted and cranky with teeny burning holes in my face where my eyes should have been; endless crazed phone calls from my mother; mathy work requiring cognitive thought when sleep-deprived.

Now, bad days are always improved by getting the hell out of work and getting home, and yesterday was no exception. But fun things happened between leaving the office and returning home:

1. Saw a pair of red, high-heeled sandals abandoned outside an elegant building on Nob Hill, facing toward the door as if their owner had vanished before she could go inside.

2. A total stranger sitting at a sidewalk caf? said, “Hey, nice hair!” as I passed. I’m pretty sure he was serious, however strange that may be.

3. I stopped by to see my HBO deprived friend Richard, and his cat, the appropriately named Kitty Kelly, bearing a shopping bag from the Mus?e d’Orsay stuffed with tapes of the Sopranos, Sex & the City, and that 9/11 special (he taped from 8-10 instead of 9-11). I’m beginning to feel like a drug dealer. Lat week, he asked to borrow Six Feet Under, of which he had heard much acclaim, and then when he was hooked on that, I hit him with the other HBO Big S shows. Maybe TV really is the opiate of the masses, and not religion. Anyway, it was fun to see him and have Kitty bite me and play with me. I’m still trying to decide if the bites are a compliment or an insult. She comes out to see me, and rolls around, but then she bites me. Maybe she’s just me in cat form.

When I got home, I discovered that it was an especially good mail day. Since letters have been almost universally replaced by e-mail, mail mostly now is bills and possibly magazines, along with the usual junk mail. But yesterday (it seems to be a list-y sort of day):

1. No bills!

2. A little welcome card from the allergist I first saw a couple of weeks ago, endearingly signed by hand, “Dr. Jeff”.

3. A whole box of the Caffe Trieste Mocha Java coffee of my total addiction, with handwritten thank you note on the equally handwritten packing slip. Also, they have new, cute packaging! I am the packaging fan the packaging designers are inspired by.

4. An original drawing by the tragi-comic genius, Lynda Barry! Dedicated to ME! And with an extra, spring-inspired drawing, too. Oh!My!God! Lynda, you are so Number One!

And just to top it all off, one of my travel diaries was lying open in the hallway, as if one of the cats had been reading it and was interrupted.