Suzy Says

I hadn’t realized how much I enjoyed walking to work with Rufus in the mornings, until now, when I can’t. I guess that’s human nature for you, both in great and small matters. Now that I’m alone and it’s still pretty dark, it’s a combination of boring and slightly creepy, because I feel so conspicuous on my own. Isn’t it unfair that women feel that way, just because they are women?

I have been walking the most direct route the past couple of weeks, and it’s probably almost the hardest possible walk: down Franklin (heading south, but mostly uphill), then east on California. This way consists almost entirely of hills. You know how people say that walking downhill is harder than walking uphill? Well, all I can say is, I’m not breathless once I start downhill on California.

When I first moved here, I remember that my legs hurt from walking up and down the unaccustomed hills. Now streets that I used to struggle up hardly even seem like hills to me. Today, for example, I walked east on Jackson Street instead of California, and it hardly even seemed like a hill at all. We used to live on Jackson, but I hardly ever walk that way now. It was fun to see what had changed and what hadn’t. The guy who has spotlit mannequins in his window still does (today’s theme: somewhat naughty Santa), and when I passed the cable car barn, the cable cars were yawning and stretching, their bells clanging softly as they prepared for another day of going up and down the hills.

The first car of the day was coming out of the barn as I passed, and the brakeman called out, “Need a ride, young lady?” Despite the fact that I was really, really tempted to (I could get to work in half the time! No effort at all! Yesss!), I said, “Not today, thanks”. I love being called “young lady” and “miss”, especially as age advances. Partly because, well, it’s flattering, and partly because I still think of myself as a girl, and feel like one, too. It’s like that episode of “Ab Fab” when Patsy gets called “Madame” on the plane to Paris and she goes crazy, yelling, “‘Selle! MademoiSELLE!” That’s how I feel, too.

As I headed down Jackson and away from the temptation of the cable car, I saw the twinkling lights on the Bay Bridge, reflected in the dark waters of the Bay, and noticed that the sky was changing from a deep midnight blue to that unearthly shade of cerulean favored by medieval artists. The sky was still scattered with stars and the very last crescent moon, and it shaded to pink at the edges of the east, where the sun would soon be making its daily debut. I thought, “What a beautiful city this is.”

It’s been too depressing inside and outside to update this for the past few days. All tragedy and no comedy makes for a boring little blog, n’est-ce pas?

It’s been pouring ever since Friday afternoon. Our (fortunately hilly) street looks like a young river, with the water rushing down it faster than the cars, and the area outside our building’s basement is flooded. The power has been out for two days where my brother and sister live, so everyone’s been congregating chez Jonathan, because he has a generator. I can imagine them all sitting by the fire, playing cards and listening to my old Atwater Kent radio. They could be living 50 years ago.

Here the wind is howling outside, so strong that there are warnings about crossing the bridges. There are high surf advisories, too, and the rain just keeps on coming. It’s dark all day, so we have just curled up with the cats and watched Stephen King miniseries. Yesterday, it was the appropriate Storm of the Century and today, The Stand is our scheduled matin?e. It’s probably an upopular view, but I’d rather have this Charles Addams type of weather (the caption to this cartoon is “Just the kind of day that makes you feel good to be alive”) when it’s the weekend and going out into the elements is optional. I hate being at work all day in storm-tossed attire. Damp nylons are especially unenjoyable. So I hope the storm goes to spread the wealth somewhere else by tomorrow morning. In the meantime, it’s showtime!

Well, things went pretty well yesterday. Number one, the rain that had been forecast with consistent gloom to be here from Wednesday through Sunday has yet to appear. In fact, the sun even peeped out coyly from time to time. Our stove seems to have recovered from its temporary fit of diva-ness, and roasted the turkey to perfection and turned out several batches of Suzy’s famous cheese biscuits (which, if I could figure out a way to market them, is definitely my million dollar idea).

Dinner was fun and stress-free, and no-one cried. I had my brother, sister and brother-in-law here, as well as my brother’s wonder dog Jed and his friend Carrie, who is expecting her first baby on Christmas Eve. I hadn’t met her before, but I really liked her, and it was a happy and relaxed evening.

Of our four cats, only Hannah was brave enough to approach Jed and smell her curiously. Jack, who thinks she’s so tough, barely looked at Jed for a split second before vanishing for the rest of the evening (later, we found her wedged under the couch). However upsetting this may have been to Jack, it did mean that for the first time since Jack entered our lives, we were able to eat a meal in peace, without her whining and demanding food, or possibly even jumping onto the table, which would have been really embarrassing in front of someone I had just met. So that was good, too.

We left the house at about 12:30 this afternoon with the intention of seeing “Harry Potter”, along with most of the city’s population. Insane traffic snarls, parking problems, crowded theater lobbies, and sold out show after show later, we finally bought tickets for the 4:00 p.m. show at 2:00 p.m., went and had a weirdly late lunch (hey, everyone’s eating habits are all screwed up now anyway) and finally got into the movie. By the way, all the shows up to 11:00 p.m. were sold out when we got back to the theater for the 4:00 p.m. show.

I liked the movie, but they fucked with some plot points for no reason (i.e. Norbert the dragon), and I didn’t like Hermione, but other than that, the casting was great. But Harry’s scar was lame (as my sister said, it looks like someone put it on with eyeliner) and I don’t understand why they didn’t give him green contact lenses when the books make such a big deal about his green eyes and this kid has the standard-issue English blue ones. But, having nit-picked and griped (and you just knew I would), it looked absolutely spectacular and the actors were wonderful. I guess with any beloved book, it’s very difficult to translate it to the screen and win everyone’s approval for how you did it. Definitely worth seeing, and worth seeing in the theater.

So I stopped at Whole Foods on my home from work today. While searching for an acceptable peach (they were mysteriously red but unyielding), two of the guys who worked there had the following conversation:

Guy One: “Do we all look the same?”

Guy Two: “What do you mean?”

Guy One: “Maybe the aprons make us all look the same. That lady” [pointing] “said I told her these peaches were sweeter than those peaches, but I never saw her before. Did you talk to her?”

Guy One: “I never look at the customers.”

I had to go and giggle behind the salad greens. Even if he didn’t look at me, he could hear me.

I was a bad citizen and went through the express line with 11 items instead of the permitted maximum of 10, but nobody said anything.

Remember the “Dont Be an Asshole” graffiti? It has taken on a life of its own. Under the original exhortation, someone else has written “Don’t be an asshole? Don’t be a HOMO!” Following that is the perfectly reasonable question, “What does being a homo have to do with assholes?” which just led the way to the observation “Being a homo has EVERYTHING to do with assholes.” I can’t wait to see what happens next. They’re going to run ot of space on that bus stop pretty soon, though.

It was time to cut off the straggly split ends that were making my hair look like trailer trash, so yesterday I went to visit my hairdresser, Mauro, who practices his art at Elizabeth Arden on Post Street. I have been going to him for several years, and he understands that when I ask for a trim, I do NOT mean “please whack three feet off my hair”. The salon is right across the street from a very fancy bridal salon, so while we catch up on our gossip, we can watch brides-to-be twirling around in tres expensive dresses while they dream about their starry futures.

Mauro is probably one of the few non-gay hairdressers in this town. He’s an adorable party boy from Brazil, who has the best dish and a kaleidoscopic love life. He not only makes my hair look great, he makes me feel fabulous. If I win that $125 million lottery draw tonight, I’m putting him on retainer.

So it’s hardly surprising that I got construction worker attention (“Hey, sexy!!” accompanied with whistles) as I walked home, which gladdened the heart of this girl as she struts toward her 40th decade on earth. Why do girls resent this? Nothing like unbiased flattery to make your day.

Stopped in to see Charles, my friend and jeweler (in that order) on my way home. Hmmm, does having a jeweler sound pretentious? Surely not as bad as saying “my butler” or “my personal shopper”. Charles designed and made over my wedding rings and I buy nearly all my jewelry from him, so doesn’t that make him my jeweler? I guess I should probably admit right here that I have a weakness for jewelry and an incurable carbon addiction. But I only bought a tiny pair of gold hoops this time!

As a further ego booster (like I needed one, you’re thinking), Charles said that I looked “svelte and sassy”, so maybe all that dreary exercise is paying off at last. Went home and finally drank some of that Champagne my co-workers gave me for my birthday. The perfect end to my glama day.

Our cat Cleo just hates pigeons.

She is sitting on top of the refrigerator, which affords her a fine view out of the kitchen windows to the back stairs. Pigeons like to perch here and have even laid eggs in our planter boxes of catnip (I’m sorry to say we disposed of the eggs). The people who bought the house next door last year at the height of real estate madness have spent a lot of time and money attempting to pigeon-proof their investment. They have been only partially successful, but their anti-pigeon campaign has led the offending pigeons to spend more time chez nous, to Cleo’s unending fury. I really think she might like to move next door to the pigeon-free zone. That, or just one chance to go outside and show them who’s boss. She’d probably like that even better.

So there she sits, elegant in her shiny black fur, her golden eyes narrowed as she gazes at the enemy pigeons with unrelenting concentration. If looks could kill, neither we nor the Next Doors would have to worry about the pigeons anymore.

However, Cleo is not content to merely stare at them. She tells them off in Cleo-ese, which has a guttural quality (somewhat Teutonic in nature) but blended with a certain Asianness. She is, after all, a very nearly or even possibly pure-bred Bombay, so she looks like a very small and sleek panther. Her speech is closer to actual words than any cat I have ever heard, almost as if she has been studying our own strange language and is right on the verge of being able to speak to us in it. And I think, if I just listen closely enough, I will begin to undestand what she’s saying. But although I haven’t broken the code yet, I’m glad I’m not one of those pigeons.

On Saturday, we went to see “The Mummy Returns” at the Metro Theater on Union Street. It was a nice walk there and perfect Suzy weather (sunny and warm, but with a breeze). Perfect Suzy weather means: not over 75 degrees and no sweating, but there has to be sun. The Metro is a beautiful neighborhood theater and one of the few left to us. We used to have the utterly charming Alhambra, which looked like a little mosque complete with mosaics and towers, with the Moorish theme carrying on inside, and the Royal, less picturesque but still a reminder of the long ago movie palace days. Both are closed now, although the poor Alhambra is, I’m sorry to say, being converted to a gym. Sacrilege.

The Metro has been entertaining San Francisco residents since 1924, and was recently restored to its Deco glory. So it was the ideal place to see a movie set in the 1930’s. We both loved “The Mummy”, and in spite of the bad reviews of the sequel, enjoyed it tremendously. I am beginning to think I must have bad taste in movies, since I nearly always seem to like the ones the critics trash. This was just a fun adventure with witty dialogue which looked spectacular, from the London sets to the desert. There were perhaps a few more fight scenes than I needed personally, but I do tend to find them boring and just want them to be over so the story can go on. I feel the same way about chase scenes. Also sex scenes.

On the way out, we had a chat with the manager, who has worked there for 10 years without a vacation (so he’s going to Hollywood for his birthday this year, just like Rufus and I did). He told us that the ticket prices just covered renting the movies, and it’s really the concession stands that help them pay their rent. That’s why the little, independent theaters are being eaten up by the huge multi-plexes. The Metro still has two years left on its lease, but then, who knows? It would be very sad if a theater that has served the public for 75 years has to close. So support your local theaters and boycott the multi-plexes!

It was raining this morning, so instead of walking to work as usual, I had to take the bus. I hate public transit. The whole problem with it is…it’s public. And other people are just so loathsome. As Dorothy Parker said, “other people are hell.” Also I always end up with wet feet and a bad mood, even if it is Friday. You will never find me singin’ in the rain.