Suzy Says

When I was getting ready for work this morning, I thought of how my sister calls the scrubs she wears to work in the ER her “armor”, noting that it’s funny that her armor is basically pajamas. My armor is even more insubstantial: lip gloss and perfume (Atelier Cologne’s Cèdre Atlas in the fall and winter and Cédrat Enivrant in the spring and summer). But they are integral parts of my faux adult persona.

With all the craziness over the past few weeks, I decided to give myself a break from the madness. I picked up dinner at Mayan Fusion and then headed to the little hotel on the estuary:

I was surprised and delighted to find sparkling wine waiting for me, which I enjoyed as the sun set:

Having a complete kitchen in the room, which is far superior to my kitchen at home:

meant that I could heat up dinner whenever I was ready, which was quite nice.

After dinner, I curled up by the faux fireplace:

and listened to the Leafs game on the radio. I love how wonderfully fake the fireplace is, and it felt so cozy to sit by it on a winter evening.

It was really nice to sleep in until it was light outside, especially knowing that the madness of the time change is upon us once again and I will be getting up in the dark for the foreseeable future. I took my time getting ready, though no lip gloss or perfume was involved, and ran a few errands around town. Usually I try to squeeze them in during or after work, so it was nice not to feel rushed. When the errands were complete, I indulged in luxurious Eggs Benedict and freshly squeezed pink grapefruit juice while reading the paper.

It was a beautiful day, as it often is the day before storms are due. The ocean was a deep, thrilling turquoise with foamy white waves. The sun beamed down on the blossoming cherry trees and magnolias. Arriving home, Mark’s dogs greeted me enthusiastically, though they failed to help me unload my luggage. Inside the house, my heart lifted at the sight of little Clyde scampering happily toward me. Audrey, of course, is far too cool and imperious for such silliness, but she did deign to come downstairs and allow herself to be petted, which is the Audrey version of being happy to see me.

It was nice to have a break, but it was good to be home.

A YEAR AGO: I was at church. For reals. And I wasn’t the grumpiest person there.

FIVE YEARS AGO: I’s rather watch my brother jump into a freezing cold river than do it myself. This has not changed.

TEN YEARS AGO: A book report, despite not being in school. I have no one to blame but myself.

Well, Thursday was a day and a half. Or maybe more…

It kicked off with a power outage about 10 minutes after I arrived at work, out of the proverbial, and in this case, literal, blue sky. In keeping with the theme of the day, the weather would alternate in a schizo manner between blazing sun, high winds, blasting hail, and intense rain. There was snow on higher elevations.

As usual, I was the first one to report the outage to our friends at PG&E. I guess everyone else thinks someone else is doing it, and they’re right. I am.

I texted my boss to let her know what was happening, and looking out of the window, discovered that the people who were running the scrubs sale scheduled for that day had arrived early. They had made the long drive from Oregon and were good sports about unloading their wares into the dark and heat-free conference room.

I held the door open for them since the lack of electricity meant that the doors would not stay open on their own. A behavioral health patient turned up half an hour early for her appointment, in floods of tears. Since she was half an hour early, there was no qualified staff available so I did my best to calm her down while doing my Carlton imitation in the chilly early morning.

Eventually all the scrubs were decanted and the patient delivered into qualified hands, at which point I discovered that there were a couple of conflicts with meetings scheduled in the conference rooms that day. It was too late to cancel anything, so I had to somehow, some way find alternate spaces for said meetings, which I did, moving furniture and trying not to inconvenience anyone more than necessary.

On the bright side, the power was back on by then, so there was light and heat.

I had barely settled back in my office to deal with things needed for a six hour meeting on the following day when one of the meeting participants came out and said that her fellow meeting goers were asking about food. I pointed out that it was 2:00 in the afternoon, and she said that they thought I had made dinner reservations, which I had not, since a) no-one had asked me to; and 2) this was the first I heard of it. Later I had to set up a conference call for them and then call the guy who was supposed to be on the call, only to find that he was on vacation and had to, yes, call yet another person.

I got that sorted out and was then notified that we had been contacted by a doctor who was interested in interviewing. I can’t even tell you how hard it is to find doctors who are willing to work in the middle of nowhere for way less money than they would make working somewhere that is somewhere, so I wanted to schedule the interview with my boss and the Medical Director as soon as Suzily possible.

I went over to medical to check on his schedule, and while checking on it, he appeared. I asked him what his schedule was on the day in question and he said he would be in San Francisco that day and the day before it. I pointed out that there was a standing meeting with all the doctors that day which he led, and asked if I should cancel it. He said yes and disappeared, leaving me unsure of what to do next.

For those of you who do not work in the medical field, I will just say that scheduling doctors’ days is very complicated. The good news here is that the doctors could see patients instead of spending non billable time in meetings, but the challenges are that they have things they need to talk about and letting them know that the meeting was canceled, since many of them do not work on Fridays and others do not work on Mondays. Also finding someone with the correct credentials to open their schedules.

I did get it done, though, and somehow survived the crazy day.

Arriving home, I discovered that the underachieving amaryllis had attempted suicide and was lying on the rug beside the heater with its bud broken off and its blossoming flower was damaged and poured a glass of overdue wine. On the bright side, the Leafs beat the Islanders, unlike the time I actually saw them play.

*I see my photo included the glorious Mats Sundin, number 13. The Leafs have never had such a captain since Sundin retired.

A YEAR AGO: Stormy weather and darkness.

FIVE YEARS AGO: My brother took a courageous leap.

TEN YEARS AGO: A mental vacation in the pages of the New York Times section section.

Well, hello there!

Not much to report from stately Suzy Manor these days. Fortunately, there is always something to report from the local message boards. Indecent slugs? Body parts? Random goats? We got ‘em all, and more! Syntax and punctuation are original.

Looking for used organ. NO body parts please. Looking for a used musical organ. Please call Kate @ xxx-xxxx or email. Thanks!

If Howard can figure this one out, he’ll be a rich man. At least around here:

Does anyone know of a bear proof compost bin? Or a method of making compost that doesn’t attract bears? Thanks. – Howard

Think I’ll pass on this one:

For sale…two cattle prods….c battery’s. Needed….one hundred for pair ..his. Hers…call Bob…xxx-xxxx…Mendocino area

You may not have warned about Bob and his hobbies, but you have been warned about livestock loitering with (or without) intent:

A herd of goats are on the ridge right now 7:45 a.m. There are six of them, above the fire station right now.

LOOK OUT ON YOUR DRIVE DOWN THE RIDGE

Ever wondered about the love lives of slugs? Me neither. For those non-locals reading this, “nanners” refer to banana slugs. Google them at your peril – they are really gross.

[Original Post]:

I’m giving away a fresh collection of smallish slugs. Mostly grey garden slugs, with a fair number of juvenile ‘nanners, and some full-size ‘nanners tossed in. They number 386 in all.

I am willing to meet you in Fort Bragg, tomorrow (Sunday), before 1 PM.
That’s when I absolutely need to let them out of the bucket, at the latest… you know… /SOMEWHERE/. So… it’s a bit urgent.

[Response to Original Post]:

This smells a lot like slugspam – fair warning to the community! A lot like bait-and-slime schemes proliferating on-line and on-vine. Think of how much you can lose getting taken by a slug-charmer! Don’t do it, people!!

Never a dull moment in our little corner of the world!

A YEAR AGO: Stormy weather. And cats and dogs.

FIVE YEARS AGO: A Valentine’s Day spay for Jonathan’s mini cat, Scout.

TEN YEARS AGO: Megan laid her dog Bear to rest in the red light of a lunar eclipse.

Well, February is back, in temperature if not in rain. It’s been chilly and frosty in the mornings this week. It is definitely lighter both earlier and later in the day lately, which must mean the madness of the time change can’t be far away. This morning, the sky was the ethereal enameled blue found in Renaissance paintings, set with a silvery crescent moon.

Megan and I went to a little exhibit at the Kelley House last weekend. The Kelleys were one of the earliest settlers in the Village. Mr. Kelley built a lovely house on Main Street:

to lure his bride all the way from Nova Scotia to remote Mendocino. It worked! The house is now a museum, and has interesting exhibits about local history. It still has a lovely view:

This exhibit was about medical and dental treatments on the coast, and included a very early x-ray:

which Megan could not figure out how to read – is that part of someone’s boot beside the heel? – and a sign for a long ago dentist which was unearthed a few decades ago:

That was about as close as I wanted to get to any dentist after two appointments and three shots* in three days last week. I’m sure that was more pleasant than anything that went on in the delightfully named Dr. Gunn’s office, though.

There were beautifully written poison registers:

and little black bags and brass microscopes. Even now, the area is remote, and some specialists and treatments are not available locally, meaning either a long drive if you’re lucky or being helicoptered to Santa Rosa or San Francisco if you’re not. I imagine you would have had to be pretty tough to live here a century ago or longer. I’m thankful for anesthetic, even when it takes three tries, and antibiotics, among other things.

*It took an hour and a half and three shots to get me numb enough to replace a minor filling at the second of two appointments last week. Good times.

A YEAR AGO: Unlike this year, it was pouring. Like this year, I was watching (and loving) Victoria.

FIVE YEARS AGO: At the fine woodworking show. I missed it this year, but hope to see the year end show in May.

TEN YEARS AGO: Ah, Oaktown. I do not miss you, Sam I Am!

It was the smallest of small town days.

The tone was set right from the start, when I arrived at work to find Megan’s car already there. Knowing she had just finished the third of her 12 hour night shifts for the week, I wondered what she was doing there.

She was planning to finish working on a chart for a patient who had a visit that day, thinking it would only take a little while, but of course, Technology had other plans. By the time she left, she had been awake so long that I asked her to text me when she got home. You will be as glad as I was to hear that she did.

Meanwhile, back at work, I received an email with a patient issue. Emails sent to our website come to me, and I try to get the questions resolved as soon as I can. This one turned out to be from the same person whose dog I hit with my car (and who looked like his old and handsome self when we had lunch recently). I got her issue taken care of quickly and she was very happy. Truly, I do this for every patient when it’s possible, but it is a little nicer when it’s someone you know. Also in keeping with our small town theme of the day.

Unrelated to my attempted murder of a local celebrity dog, Wednesday has been having some issues of her own. When I last had the tires rotated, the tire guy mentioned that I needed to have the brake pads replaced. So I ordered those, and in consulting the little orange notebook that details the adventures of Wednesday, I noticed that she was also overdue for an oil change, so I bought oil and filters. Needless to say, the car parts guy asked me which kind of filter, and as usual, I had no idea, so he sold me both and said I could bring back the runner up.

I gave all this stuff to my brother, and reminded him about the eternal engine light. He and Rob changed the oil no problem, but noticed when applying the new brake pads that the rotors needed to be smoothed out (or something). He jetted into town to get this done so he could continue to work on my car, and when I picked them up later that day, I noticed that the name immediately ahead of mine in the handwritten book of jobs to be done was that of one of my coworkers.

With the manicured rotors safely in the car, I headed for the library, where I found Rob pulling up across the street from me just as I arrived. I asked him if he was interested in some previously enjoyed rotors, and fortunately for me, he was, moving them from my heap to his. Now all we have to do is wait for the parts Jonathan ordered to arrive to complete the brake repair extravaganza. In the meantime, we are a little car-challenged, but we’ll work it out.

A YEAR AGO: Stormy weather.

FIVE YEARS AGO: An update on Jarrett’s puppy, Archimedes, aka The World’s Cutest Puppy. They are still each other’s best friends.

TEN YEARS AGO: Taking a break from Oakland’s homicides for the peace of Mendocino County. Moving here was one of the best decisions I ever made!

It is yet another beautiful day in a series of beautiful days. Hmm…I wonder what I can screw up today?

Monday was Mondayer than usual. My dentist’s office called to see if I could come in on Monday instead of Thursday. Working at the clinic has made me understand the importance of filling a schedule, and I figured why not get it over with anyway, so off I went.

Arriving at the dentist’s office, I pulled up right behind Rob’s car, another small town moment. I was slightly dismayed to discover that my beloved hygienist no longer works there, and the one that now does unearthed a cavity (well, to be fair, a filling that needed to be replaced) in a rather painful manner. I was glad that she found it, but ow. Although I had a full set of x-rays done the last time I was there, the dentist did another one* on the afflicted tooth to be sure it wasn’t worse than it appeared to be. It wasn’t, but I was somewhat disheartened to learn that the repair job was slated for Wednesday. Two dental appointments in one week is definitely a suboptimal experience**.

Back at work, I managed to book my boss’s plane tickets for the wrong day, an error one of us who was not Me noticed right away. I called the airline and rectified the matter. Oddly enough, the new airfare was actually cheaper than the wrong one, and there was no change fee. In fact, I thought the new and improved plane fare *was* the change fee.

I stayed at work late to correct my error, once again having no one to blame but myself. On my way home, I noticed that it is now light until 6:00 pm.

Dinner plans were chicken soup I had made and baking bread from dough I had made on the weekend from this simple recipe. I decided to make one loaf instead of two, and although the outside was brown, crusty, and perfect, the inside was doughy and uncooked, or at least insufficiently cooked for my admittedly not particularly high standards. No matter what I did, the inside stubbornly refused to turn from its caterpillar dough state to a butterfly bread state, so it is now artisan compost.

The recipe involves putting a baking dish with hot water in it on the bottom of the oven. I managed to remove it without burning Self, but unwisely put it in the sink, where there was an intolerable amount of water. The dish broke irrevocably, to my dismay. As I looked at the latest disaster I had created, a final shard popped off the already broken side of the dish like an exclamation mark.

The demise of an admittedly ordinary looking Pyrex baking dish upset me out of all proportion, partly because I used it all the time and partly because it was the last one that had belonged to my parents and was part of my childhood. Admittedly, it was also more than half a century old, which is ancient in dish years, especially a dish that has been used by Calamity Suzy for so long, but I mourn it for both practical and sentimental reasons.

Well, tomorrow’s another day. And a whole new opportunity to screw things up!

*As J. Frank Parnell said in the classic Repo Man, “Everybody could stand a hundred x-rays a year! They oughta have ‘em, too.” Just doing my part.

**I am also scheduled for jury duty on Valentine’s Day. So far, February is not looking that fun.

A YEAR AGO: Just another Saturday. Teenage intruders, bookstore cats…the usual.

FIVE YEARS AGO: A cold and frosty winter, so unlike this one, wrought some havoc with the plumbing.

TEN YEARS AGO: The bête noire of utilities was the water company. Now it’s propane. Guess there’s always one.

You guys! It was 70 degrees yesterday! Above you see the magnificent magnolia in blossom outside the library on Friday afternoon, when it was a mere 65 degrees. Last night, I slept with the balcony door open. It is February, isn’t it?

I stopped at the post office on my way to work one day this week (I was also the wino fairy, dropping off the unopened giant jug of cheapo red wine someone brought to Christmas dinner outside the Gro, undoubtedly to someone’s delight) and discovered that they had just installed a bank of new parcel lockers next to the old one. But apparently not for me, since I found two yellow slips inside my post office box.

The delivery problem is especially annoying since Amazon refused to ship to my PO box in the first place, forcing me to use the street address where I do not receive mail. Last weekend, my landlord Mark turned up with a letter marked “extremely urgent” and a postmark of over a year ago. This is why I have a PO box. Often things that are directed to the street address end up at the PO anyway, like these packages.

I expected one of the packages to contain a DVD among more mundane things, which although mundane, are not readily available in our little corner of the world. When I finally got my hard-won packages, I was displeased to note that it did not include the DVD, though everything else was present and accounted for.

Looking up my account on Amazon, I discovered that I had, in fact, failed to order the DVD along with everything else. So its absence was entirely my fault, and you know how I hate it when I have no one to blame but myself.

I rectified my ordering error – and had the new package delivered to my PO box – and grumpily went to open the second package. Imagine my surprise to find it was a beautiful book sent from a dear friend (and wonderful writer) in Alaska, containing several of the articles he had written. My grumpy mood vanished as quickly as it came, and I have hours of happy reading ahead of me.

A YEAR AGO: A delightful day with the most delightful girls.

FIVE YEARS AGO: An avian intruder.

TEN YEARS AGO: The surreal water bill.