Suzy Says

Despite spending much of my working life in finance, math and I are not close friends. And you will not be surprised to hear that logic and I are but distant acquaintances. However, no matter how slow on the uptake I may be and the fact that I still don’t know all my times tables (and at this point, I think it’s safe to say I never will), it has become abundantly clear to me that:

Let’s review, shall we?

The last time I took time off and had the temerity to venture over the county line, I got the flu from hell which took forever to recover from.

The time before that, it was the Worst Long Weekend Ever, with day after day of blistering temperatures, inside and out, after a summer of working six days a week.

This time, I took two days off in honor of my birthday and ended up with the flu. At least it’s not as bad as last time, but come on! That was a mere six months ago.

I felt so horrible I couldn’t sleep, and texted with Megan, who is up and on duty at 2 am. She stopped by on her way home from work with Pringles, ginger ale, Sudafed, and Afrin. I spent the day on the couch and hopefully tomorrow will be back at work. I wish I didn’t feel so guilty about missing work and letting my boss down. Maybe it really is three strikes and you’re out, and next time I take time off it will actually be fun.

I am pleased to report that the mattress nightmare is finally over!

Like particularly capricious dates, they kept standing me up at the last minute. This happened twice. The day and time was set, and then the night before, I’d get a call saying something had come up and they couldn’t make it after all. Each time, they would defer the fictitious pick up to the following week.

The first time this happened, I was annoyed. The second time it happened, I was enraged. Like the great Ramona Quimby*, I made a great big noisy fuss (though unlike Ramona, I did it via email rather than in person). I didn’t expect anything to come of it other than relieving my feelings, so imagine my surprise when they contacted me to tell me that the pick up was going to theoretically happen a mere two days after it was supposed to, instead of ten days. They also refunded all the money on the spot, which may have been the most surprising thing of all.

The date selected was Saturday, which also happened to be the day after the giant storm, or “atmospheric river”, as the weather men call it. So that made me even more dubious that they would show up.

I went about my regularly scheduled cooking marathon (braised chicken with goguchang; smothered pork chops; curried chickpeas), and much like lighting a cigarette at a bus stop, they turned up in the midst of it all, announced by Mark’s herd of canine doormen. Once again I had to convince the delivery men that the dogs were all bark and no bite.

It didn’t take them long to remove the mattress and be on their rainy way. I felt like a curse had been lifted from the house. I temporarily abandoned cooking operations and went upstairs to unfurl the new and hopefully improved mattress and leave it to puff up and recover while I finished the cooking.

Later, I went back upstairs and made the bed. I discovered that what I thought was a pair of pillow shams was in fact only one, so I ordered another one and used the old ones for now. I also discovered that they new sheets I ordered were not quite the same green as the new comforter set, but that’s the hazard of ordering online. They are 800 thread count, so they feel great, and with the bed all made up, you can’t really tell that they aren’t the right shade:

The new mattress also feels great, being a pillow top memory foam. It has the cloud of bliss feeling I was looking for. Thanks to all of you who recommended memory foam. I should have asked you in the first place, instead of relying on my ever unreliable judgment. It does make me wonder, though, how one mattress can possibly be worth about a billion dollars more than another. In this case, the cheap one felt a billion times better than the super expensive one. Maybe I’m just a cheap date.

*I am delighted to note that Ramona’s creator, Beverly Cleary, just turned 102 yesterday!

A YEAR AGO: A rather wintery spring.

FIVE YEARS AGO: A busy but happy Saturday.

TEN YEARS AGO: Meetings and music.

Spring has definitely sprung. The overachiever is flaunting what is probably its final flower of the season:

as the outdoor garden tries to catch up. I noticed that the jasmine is budding, if not blooming just yet, and that the peony bush is making an appearance. I should probably get out there and do some fertilizing and maybe even some watering, though we are due for rain later this week. I guess I can’t always rely on the Almighty to do my chores for me.

There have been a couple of warm days already, including a couple where the temperatures were in the 70s when I got home, so they were probably around 80 degrees during the day. I had the balcony door open on those nights, and on one of them, I must not have closed it completely, since I woke up to a suspiciously quiet house.

The unusual quiet was due to the house being temporarily cat-less. They had sneaked out at some point during the night. When I turned on the back porch lights, there they were. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to see them, especially Clyde. Though Audrey is the undisputed winner of Survivor: Hooterville, I will likely never get over the loss of Clyde’s brother Roscoe and I never want to go through that again.

My recent carelessness was not limited to the home front. At work, I went to put my library book* in the car. I tossed my bag onto the passenger seat and closed the door, leaving me holding the book and realizing that I had locked my handbag in the car, since my habit is to press the door button rather than the zillion dollar key fob in the hopes of not having to replace it.

So there I was, holding the book instead of the bag.

Fortunately for me, EMS is always close at hand. Even more fortunately, EMS was at our friend Lu’s nearby house, hanging out before her night shift. She was kind enough to bring me a spare key. I was on a conference call, and Megan dropped the key on my desk, observing, “Dork”, before getting back to her regularly scheduled life.

Sad, but true. It may or may not be a coincidence that I drove the 30 year old heap today. Even I can’t lock the keys in it, since it needs a key to lock the door from the outside. Sometimes you have to Suzy-proof your life.

*I have been asked to attend the next library Board meeting with a view to joining the Board. They seem to be fooled by my faux adult exterior, at least so far.

A YEAR AGO: Remembering Mom on her 85th birthday. Miss you, Mom!

FIVE YEARS AGO: A delightful breakfast at Queenie’s. There is no other kind.

TEN YEARS AGO: Yet another Calamity Suzy day. This year’s looks pretty good by comparison, actually. At least I no longer have to wear nylons.

Decision-making is not my forte. I tend to wait until a course of action becomes inevitable and then just go along with it, like the artist Edgar Degas, who believed we were all just “corks* in a stream” and that life was just a random series of events.

If I do make a decision, it almost always turns out to be the wrong one. You know, like getting married. And selling my apartment for a pittance just a few years before it was worth well over a million dollars. And moving to Oaktown. I could go on, but you get the gist. What was I thinking?

Maybe it’s only having two brain cells.

In my finite wisdom, I decided that it was time to replace my ancient Ikea mattress. In my defense, I have had it well over a decade, which is past the normal lifespan of a mattress, and resorted to mattress pads and a featherbed to make it more comfortable. I did a fair amount of research and settled on one that had new technology and rave reviews. I confirmed that they would deliver to what my beloved stepmother used to call “the back of beyond” and that they understood how long it would actually take to drive here from the Bay Area.

It also cost about a billion of my hard-earned dollars, but I had decided – there’s that word again! – that it was an investment in better sleep and hopefully an at least marginally improved Suzy.

So I was pretty excited.

Delivery Day arrived, and the truck pulled up within its delivery window. Its arrival also released the hounds, and it took some persuading to get the delivery guys to get out of the truck and into the midst of Mark’s flock of enthusiastic and enthusiastically barking dogs. The dogs failed to eat the delivery guys, living up to my claim that while there was considerable bark, there would be no bite.

They dragged the heavy new mattress upstairs, removed the old one, and went on their dog-free way back to Civilization.

I couldn’t wait to make up the new bed with the new comforter set I had bought for the occasion, which as you can see got the Audrey seal of approval:

Audrey’s opinion is always important, but since she spends most of the day on the bed getting her beauty sleep, it’s especially important when it comes to new bedding.

With promises of fabulousness dancing in my head, I got into bed under the Audrey-approved covers, and…meh. Rather than the cloud of blissful comfort I expected for the exorbitant price, it was unyielding and implacable, much like Audrey herself. I did not wake up notably more refreshed, or wake up less, either. Nor was it a haven of bliss.

I have to admit I was pretty disappointed. Yes, it met my usual goal of less crappy. It is much less crappy than a decade old Ikea mattress. But it also cost about 100 times as much, and is not 100 times better. And I spent a bunch of money on something that is not wonderful. I steeled myself to spend the money to indulge myself in a luxury, and it’s not. All that money and no enjoyment.

I have 100 days to return it, but now my decision deficient mind has to decide whether to keep the horribly overpriced yet utterly underwhelming mattress, ort search for another one when I have lost what little faith I ever had in my mattress buying acumen.

The entire process is additionally hampered by the fact that the delivery guys took away the old mattress, so if I do get another one, I have to do it before I convince the delivery guys to risk life and limb to come back and pick up the expensive mattress. No matter what I do, it’s going to be a hassle. And whatever I decide will undoubtedly be the wrong thing. Maybe I should be like George on Seinfeld and do the opposite of my instincts, and everything will turn out fine.

As so often happens in life, none of these options are appealing. What do you think? Some of you must be better decision makers than I am!

*It turns out Degas was something of a cork expert, or at least a cork aficionado, since he stuffed his statues with used wine corks.

A YEAR AGO: The local message boards were all aflutter about birds.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Almost time for Dad’s birthday. I still miss him so much, even after 17 years!

TEN YEARS AGO: It looks like I was counting down to the Sex & the City movie, but the post is having technical errors.

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.

The Plague is finally beginning to lose its death grip on our heroine, but after all this time, I am still not fully restored to health and sanity, though of course I am back at work, having burned through 42 hours of paid time off without the advantages of having fun, getting rest, or restoring my severely depleted batteries.

I also failed to enjoy the short weeks over the holidays, being fully occupied with being sick, and now I’m back to the five day a week grind, staring down the barrel of a 12 hour day yesterday and the ordeal of the annual fundraiser, which is of course this month. Basically I am still living on Vernors ginger ale and Jacob’s Cream Crackers.

Plague: 5,042 Suzy: 0

I haven’t seen Mark yet this new year, but I see his dogs every day when I get home from work, and they greet me with outsized and muddy enthusiasm. The current dramatis personae is sweet old Luna; pretty Lupe; cute little Blue; and super bouncy Kovu. This is Kovu:

For some reason, Kovu used to be horrified by me, but he got way over that stage, and now he has the enthusiasm of the converted. If I don’t get out of the car fast enough to suit him, he climbs muddily in, to the detriment of Wednesday’s upholstery and my work wardrobe. I think he would like to move in with me. I might like that too, but Queen Audrey would object and little Clyde would be scared, so for now, all Kovu petting has to take place outside.

As for inside…I went to dig out some potatoes from the buckets in the studio the other day and discovered that potatoes were not all that was in the buckets.

It appeared that Audrey decided that the potato buckets were her personal litter boxes. Undoubtedly, she considered it very thoughtful of the Staff to have so many of them available for her exclusive use, since Clyde has never thought outside the box in his life.

The Staff, however, was less thrilled. An informal survey revealed that Audrey’s contributions were more than surface deep, so I ended up hauling all the buckets outside in the rain, with plans to empty them into the woods if/when I feel up to it or can persuade the long-suffering Rob to do so for me.

A YEAR AGO: The power was on an extended vacation amidst stormy weather.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Be careful what you wish for.

It’s a good thing I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions, since I have not done a thing this entire new year except Be Sick. Either I am really good at it, or really bad at it, since I have been plague-stricken for over a week now, with no signs of the malady’s departure.

So, yes, I was sick the entire time I was off work, and even when I returned to work, I failed to work one entire day all week, leaving early for two days and finally taking yesterday off in the desperate hope that I would be restored to humanity today, but once again my hopes were dashed by whatever the Plague is.

Despite my apparently eternal illness, at some point I will have to get out of bed and get on with the Saddest Day of the Year, when all the Christmas ornaments are stowed away and the bleak winter house is stripped of its temporary sparkle and finery, just when we need it most.

So far, not a great start to the new year.

A YEAR AGO: The power was out on the Saddest Day of the Year. Things can be worse!

FIVE YEARS AGO: Back home with the kitties.

It really does exist

I started the week with a bang – or at least, a flat and smoking tire.

As I left the Big Town, I noticed that Wednesday was not handling the way I was used to. I thought maybe it was the wind, but as time progressed, it became clear that it was more than that.

The “low tire pressure” light came on, but being the genius that I am, I did not make the connection between that and the increasingly rough ride, despite my brother’s exasperated observation of “Suz, those lights on your dashboard aren’t just there to be pretty.” In my defense, though, that light has been known to come on when only the minorest of tweaks was actually necessary. It’s the little light that cried wolf. Unfortunately, this time it wasn’t kidding, and was, in fact, a little too understated.

I finally realized that I had to pull over, and did so just south of Road 409 near the next town. A sheriff’s car with lights blazing pulled up right behind me. Does this count as being pulled over? If so, it’s the first time in my life. I also noticed that my back tire was smoking, and not in a good way.

Getting out of the car, even I could see that my low profile tire was so low that it was, in fact, flat. Also unfixable. Being a faux adult, I didn’t know what to do, so the sheriff said to call the emergency number on the back of my insurance card, which I did. The person answering the phone either could not or would not understand that there was no cross street. He could not locate Road 409 or its alter ego Point Cabrillo Drive, and disclaimed all knowledge of mile markers. He was probably in Kansas or something.

The sheriff took the phone from me and assured the Kansas guy that the tow truck driver would know where mile marker 53.34 was. Mr. Kansas texted me the name, phone number and ETA of the tow truck, which was an entire discouraging hour away.

The sheriff saw me back to my car, told me to put on the hazards, and went on his way. I felt so lucky that he was right there when I needed him. I felt less lucky that I had, possibly for the first time in my life, forgotten to bring a book with me.

It was nerve-wracking feeling my car, otherwise immobile, rocking as cars fully equipped with four working tires swept past me. Not everyone passed by, however. Two friends stopped to check on me, as did a total stranger and the UPS guy from the jobette. It warmed my marooned heart to know that even strangers in our little corner of the world care enough to try and help someone with car trouble.

Eventually, the tow truck appeared. It was manned by an outsized guy who looked like he had recently escaped from ZZ Top without having time to shower or brush his quite remarkable beard. Star would not have enjoyed his look. He told me that the job right before mine was on the mythical Point Cabrillo Drive, so all the time I was waiting for him, he was practically there. Much like the time I required roadside assistance in Florida, after a lengthy wait it took ZZ Top about 30 seconds to change out the utterly destroyed tire for the spare one.

He warned me seriously that I could not drive above 50 miles an hour and that I could not drive far on it, though he added darkly that there were idiots who did and paid the price for their folly. I observed that my fellow drivers would object to such a majestic pace on the highway, and he thrust the middle finger of his meaty paw toward the road and exclaimed, “Fuck ‘em! It’s your life!” He then gave me a shoulder hug, saw me back to my car, and said he would watch my back and tell me when it was safe to pull out, which he did.

As I made my leisurely way home, I was thankful for ZZ Top and his rough concern, the kindness of the sheriff, and the caring of friends and strangers. Also for the 30 year old beater car which got me to work today with its assorted collection of rattles and hums, all in one piece.

A YEAR AGO: A wonderful weekend.

FIVE YEARS AGO: A trip to the DMV. Not as bad as you’d think.

One of the side effects of the mystery ailment is a certain grumpiness and intolerance for nonsense, especially kitty-based nonsense. Unfortunately for me, Clyde’s interest in naughtiness remains unabated, and he has also decided that now is the perfect time for him to up his meowing game. I disagree with him strongly on this point, which he blithely disregards in the way all felines do. Silly humans!

In other cat related news, Jonathan’s mini cat Scout turns out to have Audrey’s intolerance for fleas. She also has Audrey’s intolerance for the vet, and then some.

Jonathan is convinced that if he ever takes Scout to the vet, it will destroy her trust in him forever. This is why it took a village to get her spayed, and why Megan went home after her third night shift and went over to scrobble Scout without sleeping or collecting $200.

Catching Scout and shoving her in a box is no easy feat, despite her diminutive size (less than 7 pounds!). There’s a reason she survived out there in the mean woods of Albion. Megan’s arms and hands were covered with battle scars as she carried her unwilling prey to Dr. Karen’s.

Interestingly, once she actually got there, Scout gave up and stopped fighting anything. It was like she was resigned to her inevitable doom. Dr. Karen agreed that an extended prescription was in order to prevent further Megan-filleting vet visits, and everyone went home. Jonathan reported that Scout was ultra suspicious, peering anxiously out of the windows and making sure her escape hatch had been restored to open mode before she settled down. She is recovering well from the trauma of the vet and the fleas, possibly in that order.

And speaking of pets, my landlord and neighbor Mark has a new puppy! Her name is Blue and she is cute as a button:

How’s that for a new neighbor?

A YEAR AGO: In keeping with our cat theme, Audrey gifted me with an extra-long Sunday. Thank you?

FIVE YEARS AGO: File under miscellaneous.

I am coming to you from the couch, where I am ensconced with several feather pillows (did I ever mention my pillow addiction? I think the usual number residing on my bed is around eight. It’s less than half that on the couch, though they are beaded and/or velvet to make up for it), and my grandmother’s 80 year old quilt of love. Not only is it pink, but it is made of my mother’s baby clothes, my grandfather’s ties, and some of its creator’s aprons. Not to mention the fact that it was restored by Erica and Megan.

Keeping me company is a mug of chamomile tea (the mug with my initial was one of my favorite Christmas gifts), tiny bottles of Schweppes ginger ale, the creepy-poetic Lincoln in the Bardo, a cheery little read about the recently deceased young son of the great President, and some pills. The cats, as you may have noted, are conspicuous by their absence, when they should be keeping me company in my time of need. I’m pretty sure that’s in the contract. Audrey was busy creating a Dada work of art by removing the toilet paper from its roll. There have been several interested calls from New York and San Francisco galleries. Of course Audrey was just concerned that I had become bourgeois and complacent.

Clyde was up in his no girls allowed club house, aka the storage loft over the bathroom. His stealthy brother also enjoyed hanging out in that difficult to access location, but Audrey never goes up there and I usually enlist the services of a passing boy to get the Christmas decorations in and out of it.

So I am alone on the couch, listening to the rain on the roof/walls, which I no longer find soothing after 61 fun-filled inches of rain. I still enjoy the rain-induced frog song, though. I am marooned here because of an intestinal upset that makes trailing up and down the stairs from the sleeping loft to the bathroom an impracticality and annoyance in my (hopefully temporarily) weakened condition,

I am always shocked and annoyed when I’m ill, feeling that the system has let me down and should be more reliable. In this case, it is extra annoying since I was unable to accomplish any cooking or other house-related activities this weekend, and I was also unable to attend family dinner at Rio’s, where chicken enchiladas and Perry Mason* on the Predicta were on the menu. So I will have to face another week of work with no cooking done and no fun behind me.

Of course, Dr. Megan paid a house call, telling me that not eating for two days was “working against me”, despite the nausea, and prescribed toast, rice, apples, and whatever the pills are. What would I do without her?

*Some fun facts about the show are in this link.

A YEAR AGO: Stormy weather, inside and out. Can I stop worrying about the drought for now?

FIVE YEARS AGO: Rob was working around the house, while I was leaving the housework undone. Each according to his ability…

Nothing like a bad night’s sleep to set you up for a weird day at work, I always say.

Clyde the cat decided the middle of the night was an excellent time to leap on my unsuspecting form. Like most males, of the feline persuasion or otherwise, he is decidedly pro-boobs*, persistently making them both his landing place and launching pad, to their owner’s varying levels of discomfort. In this case, I was unable to brace for impact, and my reaction affected his dismount, in which a back claw scratched the hell out of my nose. The Russian judge gave him a 1.0 and I applied Kleenex to the surprising amount of blood. Anything on your face just bleeds like crazy.

Despite my justifiable annoyance and Clyde’s characteristic insouciance – he was equally unperturbed when he celebrated the arrival of the shiny New Year by smashing a shiny new gift which had every reason to be on the shelf where he had no business being – I tried to get back to sleep. I was just beginning to drift away when I realized I was perfectly positioned to take full advantage of the leak in my ceiling. Given the height of the ceiling, the drips were able to achieve maximum velocity, and were able to achieve positively Clyde-like results of surprise and impact. I got a towel to catch the drips and relocated my head to other side of the bed.

Clyde, of course, was fast sleep through all of this. And the alarm.

The next day, I arrived at work to discover that my boss’s sidelight window beside her office door had been shattered by a person or persons unknown. I also had a phone call from the landlord of one of our doctors, complaining of, shall we say, some hygiene issues.

In disposing of lint from the dryer – they share laundry facilities and live on the same property – she discovered a very large and very dead rat in the garbage can. In addition to this non-paying rodential guest, he has failed to take out the garbage for months and his collection of detritus in the laundry room/garage/morgue features a moldering animal skin, or possibly skins.

When asked about this, he said that an injured deer had died near the garage. As anyone would in coming across free roadkill on the premises, he had butchered it and put the meat in the freezer. He considered the problem solved. I explained that memories of the deer remained in the skin and that it, the garbage, and rodents of any kind, alive or dead, needed to be removed from the premises before his landlord removed him. He promised to talk to his landlord.

It is amazing to me that he got through medical school. Though not that his daughter is a vegetarian.

**As Xander Harris aptly observed in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Men like sports. Men watch the action movie, they eat of the beef, and they enjoy to look at the bosoms.”

A YEAR AGO: Feeling powerless. ‘Tis the season!

Little did I know that running screaming hand-in-hand with Jessica through the Haunted Hall of Horrors on Halloween would be the least scary thing that happened to me all that week.

I have always expected to hit a deer at some point on my lengthy commute, especially since the length of my work days cause more driving in the dark than I would prefer. I did not expect to hit a dog in broad daylight on the highway.

He came running out of nowhere, as they say. I slammed on the brakes, but not before I heard a yelp that lives in my nightmares and a flash of his belly as he rolled over. By the time I was able to get across the road, he had already run into his house. His owner came out and was super nice. She blamed herself for not leashing him and the dog for running into the street.

Needless to say, I blamed myself and still feel like a monster. The good news is that the dog is a) alive and 2) “only” has a broken leg. He does not have a mark on him. However, he was surgically repaired in Santa Rosa at vast expense, so it’s lucky for me that the owner absolved me of all blame and even gave me a big hug. We have been texting daily and it seems we both have a new friend. So maybe something good came out of something horrible.

It was a long drive home after that. When I was about half a mile from my house, a stripy kitty streaked across the Ridge in front of my car. Harmlessly, I am pleased to report.

A YEAR AGO: Just in time for Veterans’ Day, a visit from two veterans, telling war stories. Love you guys. And thank you to all veterans for your service.

There hasn’t been much time for anything but work this week.

I have been leaving the house at 6:00 am in a mostly vain attempt to get everything done in time, blasting down the Ridge with Weezer to wake me up. I was amused to pull up to the clinic one day as they were singing Do You Wanna Get High?, a cheery little tune about the joys of opiate addiction.

I should have known that it was going to be a crazy week. The weekend that preceded it foretold doom to come, at least in my ever-superstitious opinion.

A Steller’s Jay got in the house and flew up to the skylight. All of the doors were open, so I hoped that my feathered visitor would escape unscathed, but unfortunately it thought that the highest window in the house was the way to go and made for it at full speed. It smashed into the glass with a horrifying thud and fell to the floor. I ran downstairs, but it was clearly an ex Jay.

Oddly, the cats were totally uninterested. Maybe if it doesn’t move, it’s not fun. I told a friend about the Incident of the Jay in the House:

Me: I think it’s a bad omen.
Him: Maybe if you live in a teepee.
Me, looking at the pointy ceiling: I kind of do.

I was less than thrilled to come home from work and discover that a friend of mine had stopped by my house with another friend. The house was not in my opinion visitor ready. Admittedly it rarely is now that I am out of it (in more ways than one) for 12 hours a day, but I would have appreciated the opportunity to pretend to be more civilized than I really am. And of course, the friend in question has made a pile of money in real estate in the Bay Area*.

I later learned that they claimed to love the house and thought it was really cool. As Erica observed, the house is basically a man cave, so maybe they did. And it was all over before I could do anything about it anyway.

The bad omen really kicked in a couple of days later, when my back went out on strike, making getting dressed and in and out of the car more of an adventure than I’d like. Ever since, I have been unwilling to risk the stairs so I have been sleeping on the couch with my grandmother’s restored quilt over me and Clyde beside me.

A YEAR AGO: My fairy godmother stopped by. One of these days, I should try being home when I have company. Though maybe it’s better this way.

*The few people I still know from long-ago high school days are all annoyingly successful. Richard and his pile of real estate money; my ex boyfriend Andrew, who is a vice president at NBC-Universal in London; and my dear friend Alice, who got a PhD in pure math in her 4th language after she finished her modeling career. She is now a vice president at Barclay’s Capital in London. Call me underachieving…

It was a dark and stormy morning. I started it off on the wrong foot by putting my bare one into an alarmingly big (and remarkably cold) puddle by the table in the kitchen. That’s what I get for running around barefoot. My late, lamented stepmother found this habit deplorable. To her, only poor people went around with no shoes and it was utterly shameful.

Unfortunately for all of us, she was not around to see me get my comeuppance, or to notice the other big puddle near the sliding glass doors. Feeling like my house was falling apart around me, I went to feed the kitties, only to discover a large and slimy banana slug* in Clyde’s dish. I’m not sure which of us was more concerned. Clyde looked at it in horror (maybe it had bare feet) while I threw caution and the slug to the winds by grabbing it in my bare hands and chucking it into the woods. Why should my feet have all the fun?

The fun was just beginning. When I turned on the water in the shower, the water stayed persistently cold. It normally takes a while to warm up, and in the winter, I don’t have to add cold water to the hot, but it soon became clear that the pilot light in the flash heater was out.

As you would only expect in a house as eccentric as mine, where the light switches say “NO” when they’re on and you turn them off by flipping them up, the flash heater is located outside. Yes, where they keep the wind and the rain.

I pulled my coat, hat and flowered rain boots on over my PJs and deplorably bare feet and went out to investigate with a flashlight. It’s at moments like this when you realize that no matter how faux, you are in fact a grown up, and no one else is going to fix your flash heater in the early morning rainy darkness. I thought longingly of my brother-in-law Rob, sleeping innocently just yards away, and his ability to fix everything**. He could take care of this in less time than it took me to put on my coat and hat.

I couldn’t make it light by pushing the igniting button, so I went back inside and got one of those barbecue lighters. Then I pressed the gas button with one hand and, leaning back as far as possible, applied the lighter through the hole in the front and hoped for the best. I am pleased to report that nothing exploded and I lived to tell the tale. Also that the flash heater lit and stayed lit, much like F. Scott Fitzgerald.

On the other hand, my bare feet also discovered that Clyde had thrown up on the bathmat. At least it was on the way into the shower.

*When I still lived in the city, I came up here to visit my sister. Her bathroom is off the front porch, and when I went to use it late one night, I discovered a banana slug had wrapped itself around the doorknob by wrapping my hand around the banana slug. I shrieked with horror and I still think I could hear my brother-in-law snickering.

**He’s building more shelves for me! Stay tuned!

A YEAR AGO: Remembering my beloved father on his birthday.

OK…Take Three!

It took me more than an hour and no less than three attempts to make mashed potatoes, a first (and hopefully, a last) for me.

I dared to schedule a slow cooker dinner on a wild and stormy day, and amazingly was able to merrily use electricity all day to make the following Sunday dinner:

Cider Pork Roast with Apple-Thyme Gravy

1 boneless pork shoulder roast (about 3 1/2 lbs.), tied
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, divided
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 cups apple cider
1/3 cup Calvados or other apple brandy
1 tablespoon plus 1 tsp. finely chopped fresh thyme leaves, divided
1 teaspoon pepper
4 Gala apples, peeled, cored, and sliced; divided
3 tablespoons butter, divided
1 tablespoon flour

1. Sprinkle pork with 1/2 tsp. salt, then brown in oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat, turning as needed, 10 minutes. Transfer pork and pan juices to a 5- to 6-qt. slow-cooker. Add remaining 1 tsp. salt, the cider, Calvados, 1 tbsp. thyme, the pepper, and 1 sliced apple. Cover and cook until meat is very tender, about 4 hours on high or 7 hours on low.

2. Meanwhile, about 20 minutes before pork is done, heat 2 tbsp. butter in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add remaining 3 apples and cook, stirring frequently, until tender and light golden, about 10 minutes. Transfer to a bowl; tent with foil.

3. Transfer roast from slow-cooker to a platter and tent with foil. Strain slow-cooker juices and skim fat; set aside. Melt remaining 1 tbsp. butter in frying pan. Add flour; cook, whisking often, until golden and bubbling. Slowly whisk in juices and 1 tsp. thyme; cook until slightly thickened, 6 to 8 minutes. Transfer to a gravy boat.

4. Slice pork, scatter with reserved apples, and drizzle with gravy. Garnish with thyme sprigs and serve more gravy on the side.

I used the same pan I browned the pork in to sautee the apples and then to make the gravy (why waste the flavor?) and substituted regular brandy for Calvados.

Attempt One to make mashed potatoes came to an end when I smelled something burning. I knew I’d turned the slow cooker down to “keep warm”, so I lifted the lid on the potatoes only to discover that I had forgotten to add water.

I grabbed the pan, turned off the burner, and took the whole thing straight to the compost pile with the pan hissing in the rain.

Back in the house, I filled the burned pan with water and hoped for the best. I filled another pot with water before I even put the potatoes in it. Passing by to check on it progress sometime later, I lifted the pot lid only to discover that this time, I had forgotten to turn on the burner.

I am pleased to report that Take Three, with the three key ingredients of water AND potatoes AND fire was entirely successful.

I am going to be one scary old lady.

A YEAR AGO: A slightly more successful cooking venture, though not without its own adventures.

It turns out hell is decorated quite nicely

Or “How I Learned More Than I Ever Needed to Know About Lottery Tickets”.

I should get a t-shirt that says “I survived the office holiday party”. Or maybe a medal…

Planning a party for more than 100 people is enough of an undertaking without the Powers that Be suddenly changing the date of said shindig to be a week earlier than planned. I had to unplan and replan everything that had already been planned.

I thought I had everything in place for the big day, but I was Foolish and Deluded, as Winnie the Pooh would say. The caterer emailed me that morning asking if it was OK if they brought the food an hour earlier than planned, since they had to get their van in the shop by 1:00. Did it matter if it wasn’t? And should I worry about the mechanically challenged van?

The holiday party was also the venue selected to distribute bonus checks. Four of the many employees have not worked long enough to get a bonus, and their manager was concerned that they would feel left out when everyone else got an envelope. Although the plan was known for weeks ahead of time, this manager waited until the morning of the party to freak about it and ask that these people get some kind of token gesture in envelope form.

It was decided to get lottery tickets. My boss said, “Get $20 worth” and said to put them on the store credit card. I dutifully went to the store and discovered that you need cash to buy lottery tickets. So I bought $20 worth with my own money.

Returning to work, I asked to be reimbursed, and while the accounting person was dealing with that, went to give the lottery tickets to my boss. She then told me that she meant $20 per person, not $20 total. I guess I should have known that “Get $20 worth” meant “Get $80 worth”. So silly of me.

I asked the accounting person to front me the money, and she gave me a $100 bill from the safe. Armed with this, I returned to the store, only to learn that not only do you need cash to buy lottery tickets, said cash cannot exceed $20 denominations.

Back to work to get the $100 bill changed into lottery-appropriate $20 bills, and then yet another trip to the store to buy said lottery tickets. “They’d better effin’ win something,” I said to the accounting person*.

The caterer’s van limped into the parking lot about then, and I helped them unload the giant insulated boxes of food. It soon became apparent that there were no chafing dishes to keep the food hot during the hour before the festivities began, although there were supposed to be. I called the party rental folks down the street, who happened to have some, and I went to the car for the fourth time in less than hour and headed to the rental place.

As I loaded the last minute chafing dishes into the car, I couldn’t help wondering how I had gone from managing millions of dollars of other people’s money to wrangling chafing dishes and buying other people lottery tickets. Clearly adulting is not one of my talents. Good job in the life department there, Suz.

Needless to say, I was too busy running around, cleaning up, and keeping dishes full to eat any of the food, though it got enthusiastic reviews. And no, I didn’t leave early, even though the halls were pretty much vacant by 3:30 in the afternoon.

I definitely didn’t win this lottery, even though I now know how to buy the tickets.

*They did; one person won $20 and another won $15.

A YEAR AGO: At home in a wine cask.

I left work early to go to the physiotherapist, whose office is conveniently located a couple of blocks away. They had a cancellation, so I didn’t have to wait until December as originally planned. After filling out the requisite paperwork in the very Zen looking office, I went into the consultation room.

I explained what happened to the therapist, and she explained what was wrong with my inner ear and its alarming sounding problem of benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. For the daughter of scientist (and someone who had a fairly successful career in finance for a couple of decades), my science and math brain is sadly lacking, so I will just say that the treatment is called an Epley Maneuver, and you can read about it here.

I will also say that the treatment was pretty unpleasant. I sat on a padded bench/exam table thing and the therapist took a firm grip on me before swooping me backwards and to one side with my head off the table. I had to keep my eyes open so she could see the fluttering in my pupils called nystagmus*. She held me there for about a minute as the vertigo jangled and spun its way out, and it was a very long minute. We then repeated this from the middle of the table and then to the other side, before sitting up and leaning over the floor.

You can imagine my enthusiasm for repeating this process a second time, but it was much better the second time, and I was hardly dizzy at all. For the first time in weeks, I was able to put my head on the pillows when I went to bed, and turn over to pet Clyde without suffering attacks of vertigo, though I still had to sit on the side of the bed for a minute before getting up in the morning the day after, but all in all, it was an improvement.

There may have been relief from vertigo, but there was no relief from the bill. Unlike Canada, where everyone sensibly pays a flat tax which rich people can’t get out of to fund healthcare, so things like this are covered, here I had to pay for the whole thing, even though I have insurance. I thought it would be like the dentist, where a certain percentage is covered, but instead, I have to spend $1,500 before the insurance starts paying for anything. So there went the money I had set aside for getting my hair reprettied for the holidays. So I may not be (completely) blonde, but I’m not (completely) dizzy, either.

*My sister told me that drunk people’s pupils also do this. Just another interesting piece of information from years of working on an ambulance!

A YEAR AGO: Back home from the city, with Thanksgiving looming.

The vertigo is fading, though it still rears its ugly head when I lay down my pretty one, and reminds me that it’s still around when I sit up in the morning. I am in line for a referral to a physiotherapist, who is supposed to do some kind of desensitization therapy which I hope will get rid of the vertigo for good (which would definitely be good). A friend of a friend is also casting a spell for me. Whatever works.

Maybe it’s the “it will take you longer to recover because of your age” remark from the doc (who is at least 15 years older than I am), but I keep worrying that this is the beginning of the long, slow decline into old age, even though I’m not that old and I have always been pretty healthy. Maybe I took it for granted all these years. I promise to appreciate it more if the vertigo goes away forever. I swear!

While I was languishing in dizzy world, my sibs were busily canning the garden produce, and I came home one day to find that either the Food Fairy had stopped by, or Santa was doing a trial run*. There were jars of tomato sauce, relish, and salsa verde:

So in the depths of winter, we can open a jar and taste summer again.

*I may not have a chimney, but I do have a wide variety of unlocked doors for the jolly old elf to choose from. Assuming Luna and Lupe (or Audrey) don’t chase him away.

A YEAR AGO: Rejoicing over the Giants’ third World Series win in 5 years. Next year, boys. Next year.

I thought the cold I had was pretty minor. It was really just a runny nose – no sore throat, no fever, or anything else. However, whatever was going on inside my head was bad enough to leave a seemingly endless case of vertigo in its wake.

I wakened last week to find that my house was pitching around like Dorothy’s in the Wizard of Oz. I sat on the side of the bed and waited for it and myself to calm down, and then texted Dr. Megan. Her opinion was that the cold had inflamed my inner ear and I needed meclizine, which she picked up for me along with ginger ale. An unwelcome side effect of the dizziness is nausea, and as the week wore on, I felt an awed respect for all the women who endure months of morning sickness. How do they do it? I was homicidal after two days.

Although I was marooned on my couch with the house spinning around me, I was still typing up handwritten pages which my boss scanned and emailed to me. Looking down made me dizzy, so I propped up the papers on pillows and did my best, since we were up against a deadline.

The next day, I had to be driven to work. I have always wanted a driver*, though of course when I finally get one it’s in a Monkey’s Paw way because I’m too dizzy to drive. Nothing like not being able to drive to make you actually want to do it.

When I was still feeling weird toward the end of the week, I called the patient care coordinator to see if one of the docs could fit me in if they had a no show, and they did. I have to say, being seen is a very different experience when you work there. They called me when they were ready to take my vitals, and then the doctor appeared like magic. This is in sharp contrast to my usual experience of waiting for an hour to see the doctor for fifteen minutes**.

He checked me out and endorsed Dr. Megan’s diagnosis. When I asked him for an ETA on the dizziness leaving the premises, he gave me the unwelcome news that it could take up to two weeks. Why, you ask? Because I’m old! Yes, slowness in healing is apparently yet another of the delightful indignities a girl can expect as she moves gracefully through the years***. Or carefully.

A YEAR AGO: Dinner and a movie.

* I can’t understand why all those celebrities keep getting arrested for drunk driving when all they have to do is hire a chauffeur, which they can obviously afford. And what could be more glamorous and convenient?

***I’m not that old. Not yet, anyway.

I started the week with losing a piece of a filling. One minute, I’m eating an apple at my desk, and the next, there’s a little black thing in my hand and what feels like a giant hole in my tooth.

Uh oh.

I immediately headed over to the dental department, which is conveniently located near my office, thinking that if you have to lose a filling, doing it just feet away from dentists is an excellent choice. Sadly for me (though happily for the clinic), they were booked solid the rest of the week.

So I called my regular dentist, and he was able to fit me in the next day. Fortunately, the hole in my head didn’t hurt, though visions of the million dollar crown that ensued the last time I lost a filling danced in my perforated head. I thought: it can’t be as bad as losing an entire filling and needing a crown right before A) a holiday weekend; and 2) having to fly across the country to testify in front of the Grand Jury. Can it?

It wasn’t. The dentist put in a temporary filling and scheduled me in for a real one later this month. I was delighted to learn that it was only $50 for this session and it will be a mere $34 for the next one, which I think we can all agree is a vast improvement over the $950 the crown cost. I hope from now on that the only crowns I have to deal with are in tiara form, and on my head, not in it. Princess Suzy has such a (diamond) ring to it, doesn’t it?

A YEAR AGO: Home improvements, Rob style.