Suzy Says

I haven’t followed my father into oblivion – at least, not yet. I have been (pre)occupied with grown-up things (translation: dull, yet stressful) mostly, but still found a way to have a little bit of fun.

Brought to you by the letter “O” and other letters that just sound like it, the little bit of fun:

– The Turner, Whistler, Monet exhibit at the AGO: Perfection. A visual feast. Extra credit: first time I had looked at Turner’s paintings without my father and I didn’t cry. Go, Me!

– Wilco, live and in person. An unforgettable evening. Jeff Tweedy is so geeky in real life – he looks like a substitute English professor at a community college – that he’s utterly charming. And his voice is magic. Hearing him sing “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” live is a dream come true.

– The Cocteau exhibit: Almost an assault on the senses, film sculpture, drawings, music, poetry. Beautifully arranged, no expense spared, and lit low, so you felt as if you were in a dream – the best way to appreciate the works.

Now back to faux grown-up, real reality.

PS Will the Olympics ever be over?

Wishlist for the summer:

The Art Institute of Chicago’s special exhibit on Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, put into context by paintings by his contemporaries, such as Monet, Pissaro and Renoir. Not to mention that when in Chicago, I can meet up with Colin, Chicagolimited’s very own unlimited source of knowledge about Chicago’s architecture. I might be lucky enough to take one of his personalized skyscraper tours.

Seeing Wilco while they’re on tour for their great new CD, A Ghost Is Born.

The Art Gallery of Ontario’s brilliant exhibit: Turner, Whistler, Monet. Are they the first museum to put on an exhibit which acknowledges that Turner was the first Impressionist – 50 years before the Impressionists were given that name? And to those of you who think that Whistler is just “Whistler’s Mother” (not the title of that famous painting, by the way – it’s “Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter’s Mother “) – check out his Nocturnes.

Spending a few days in the Hamptons with my old friend Paul, who also hosted sis’n’Me in Florida in February. Before you start getting any ideas, he does catering for the rich folks, he ain’t one himself. And I can bring down the tone in the tony Hamptons as well as I do in tony Pacific Heights. I’ve had years of practice.

Visiting the fabulous Kathleen in Motown for her birthday!

Guilty secret #4,392 (of a continuing series, most of which is not fit for public consumption): I just couldn’t finish reading Seabiscuit. Everyone goes on and on about it, but it just doesn’t do a thing for me. I’ve been trying to read it since March, but I can’t get into it*. Normally, I hate being defeated by inanimate objects, but after my sis told me she couldn’t get into it either, I felt better and decided I could just let go.

As usual, she did me one better by renting the movie. She was interrupted partway through the movie by the phone, and never turned the movie back on. Maybe it’s yet another family failing (#4,392 (of a continuing series, most of which is not fit for public consumption).

*On the other hand, I’ve had absolutely no problem re-reading the Shopaholic series or reading The Devil Wears Prada.

It’s a week until my birthday. Normally, I’m all “Only 7 shopping days left”. In fact, normally, I start the birthday countdown three months before the big day in order to make sure there’s lots of shopping time to get me a totally fab gift – I may be spoiled, but I can be accommodating, especially if it means getting more & better gifts. Normally, I have a Birthday Week, feeling that one day just ain’t enough.

But this year, for the first time since I can remember, I don’t really care about it. Can you believe this? It’s not because I’m worried about getting older. I’m still hopelessly immature and feel like a girl, even though I’ll be turning 42 next week. I feel better about myself than I did 20 years ago, and I wouldn’t be 30 or 25 or 18 again for anything (though I’d love to spend a summer week in Maine as a 9 or 10 year old, circa 1970). Construction workers and truckers and college boys still notice me, and yesterday, a girl who looked around 25 hit on me in Whole Foods. So it’s not that, though I am of course aware that my cute days are numbered and I better enjoy them now.

I’m not sure what it is. Part of blogger’s block? The birthday malaise suffered by many, if not most people? Maybe it will go away with sufficient application of champagne and cupcakes. Oh, and maybe sparklers!

The last two times I have opened the front door, there has been a large grey pigeon waddling away in horror, as if I caught him/her trying to break in.

What do I have that a bird could possibly want? And how does a pigeon manage to look so guilty? If I did catch the delinquent avian actually committing whatever crime is on its bird brain, any jury, even one of its peers, would convict in record time.

Of course, it might just be a location scout. One came by last week and wants to film for a couple of hours next month.

I don’t know if it’s part of the whole blogger’s block thang, but I seem to be incapable of accomplishing much, if anything at all, during my waking hours these days. Yet the time blurs by magically. Where the hell did the week go? I think, as I realize that today is in fact Friday again.

Here’s the sum total of my accomplishments du jour:

– Sent a birthday card.

– Actually put in contacts and applied make-up for a change.

– Bought a pair of completely adorable and utterly unnecessary shoes.

– Replenished the wine supply.

– Tried to call my Mom (no answer, so no credit, since she doesn’t have an answering machine or voicemail).

– Got money out of the bank.

That’s pretty much it, and it’s almost dinner time. Am I in a time warp or a wrinkle in time or something?

Is there such a thing as blogger’s block? We’re all familiar with writer’s block, suffered by some of the best – Kafka, Flaubert, Plath – and, come to think of it, neurotic writers of our time. I’m certainly neurotic enough. Maybe writer’s block and blogger’s block be the same thing?

As blockages go, I guess it’s not all that bad. I mean, it’s definitely better than a blocked artery or even (to someone as vain as me) a blocked pore or a blocked sink requiring the expensive and icky services of a plumber.

All I know is that I seem to have lost the inspiration and ability to write like I used to, though I don’t know why. Do they make Drano for bloggers? “Unblock that pesky muse once and for all!”

Well, I am just exhausted.

First, I did my little bit to improve the economy, buying a bottle or few of wine and Calvados. The recycling bin is very happy. It has fancyass tastes and is somewhat greedy. I think we’ve been spending too much time together.

Then, I did my little bit to improve Me, having all my nails done and my eyebrows waxed and so on. Being a girl is just so much work. It seems like I’m always dyeing my hair, having it cut, washing it, styling it, putting on make-up and accessories, taking them off again, waxing, shaving, tweezing, perfuming, manicuring, pedicuring (though not curing cancer or any of my many less attractive character flaws).

Men always bitch about having to shave their teeny little faces (and I don’t know many who actually do it every day), but that’s nothing compared to the acres we girls have to shave. And just think how bad it must be if you’re a transvestite. All the girl work and all the boy work. Not to mention having to find size 12 stilettos.

Woman’s work really never is done, is it?

The recycling has really gotten degenerate these days. It consists almost entirely of wine bottles, with the occasional mineral water bottle and empty jars of olives and artichokes and other assorted delicacies. Granted, the wine is pretty good stuff – no Night Train or Thunderbird (yet) – but it’s really the quantity and not the quality that’s disturbing in this case. Garbage (and recycling) are quite revealing, aren’t they?

I wonder if the recycling collectors look at the dissolute collection with disdain, or wonder where the party is, or don’t even think about it. Probably the last option: just imagine what recycling and garbage guys must see. They’re undoubtedly some of the most jaded people on the planet.

The French have a saying (don’t they always?) which goes something like, “Il faut souffrir pour être belle”, which means something like, “One has to suffer to be beautiful”. Anyone who’s ever had her eyebrows (or anything else) waxed or squeezed into control top pantyhose or worn high heels for an entire evening would agree.

Now, cosmetic surgery is kicking that whole thing up a notch. I think I’m for it, even though my niece has forbidden me to even botox (easy for her to say when she’s half my age and wrinkle-free), which isn’t really surgery at all. I wonder if botox is a gateway cosmetic procedure and just leads to harder things like liposuction and breast implants?

Anyway, I realize there are risks involved in all cosmetic surgery, ranging from disfigurement to death (which would be worse?), but until a good friend of mine had some real work done, I didn’t realize there were other unlovely consequences and weirdness that go along with it.

So, as a public service announcement to my faithful readers, I will let you in on the secrets I learned from her:

1. The operating table looked exactly like the ones they use to execute people, at least in the movies. How unnerving is that?

2. The IV hurts, both when they put the needle in and then the plastic thingie, even though they say it only “pinches”, but since they pretty much knock you out immediately the pain is as short-lived as the careers of most American Idol contestants.

3. If/when you wake up, you have a sore throat of strep-like proportions from the tube they put down your throat to keep your airway open while you’re knocked out. For several days, it’s like swallowing knives. Suggested remedy is gargling with salt water {{shudder}}.

4. You have to stay in bed for a week, which sounds like fun to someone as terminally lazy as I am, but my friend assures me that after the first couple of days when the anesthetic wears off and you start to feel better, boredom sets in. I can’t believe that sitting in bed idly flicking through fashion magazines and watching mindless TV while on prescription drugs could be that bad, but in the spirit of truthful journalism, I have to tell you that this is what she said.

Maybe the key here is to get lots of diversions set up beforehand: visits and phone calls from especially amusing friends and relations, CD’s you love, movies you love and/or have been meaning to watch but haven’t had time because of that stupid having to work thing, and possibly a visit or two from a stripper of the sex of your choice. How boring can that be? Oh, and someone to answer the door, bring you drinks, etc.

5. You can’t take a bath or shower for an entire week, a positively Gallic and gross length of time (can’t get the dressings wet).

6. At least for the procedure she had, you have to sleep sitting up for the whole week, too, like the Elephant Man, only slightly more attractive. And I do mean slightly (see #5 above). Apparently this is harder than you would think, even though they give you painkillers and valium, which has to be the fun part.

7. It’s like practicing for being old, which is pretty ironic, when you consider that the whole point of cosmetic surgery is to retain or create the illusion of youth. There are a zillion pills to take, several times a day; the bedridden thing; and the fact that when you venture out of bed, you have to walk around as slowly and carefully as if you were made of porcelain.

8. This is what I would probably find the worst part: no exercise for 4 to 6 weeks. Though she found it the perfect, cast-iron excuse not to go to the gym, and I bet a lot of people would. I think it would be worse than the boredom, which I truly believe could be kept at bay with good planning.

So there you have it. The risks of cosmetic surgery you never before considered (or at least I hadn’t). Maybe I’m not all that for it, after all.

While lying on the couch the other night, annoyed by the patient ticking of the 250+ year old grandfather clock – yes, the same one I went through hell to restore and ship here from England, and yes, I realize it’s perverse of me to resent this beautiful heirloom, but lack of sleep can change a girl’s priorities, especially in the dark watches of the night – I realized that we have far too many clocks.

There are clocks in every room, and I’m not including those on the many VCR’s and other appliances. There are three in the living room alone, though only one actually works. None of the clocks that do work agree on what time it is, either, so my sense of time when at home (and most of the time, come to think of it) is extremely approximate.

When my nephew was here at Christmas, he took a look around, noticed all the clocks with their individual sense of time, and said, “Cool. You have your own time zones.”

Back in civilization (for now). No dogs, no Mom. Just cats and the city (new HBO series?). Mom is amusing herself by baffling the doctors with her will to live, so unless you hear otherwise, it is, as Talking Heads put it, same as it ever was.

Pretty much the first thing I did, after going through a week’s worth of mail, doing laundry, and other assorted domestic tasks that had accumulated during my absence, was go to the gym. Of course, it magically banished my stress, and my trainer got a good laugh out of my concussion Christmas.

While I was away, San Francisco got itself the first female fire chief in its history. Though I’m not a fan of the new mayor (and even less of the old one) and voted hopefully for his opponent, the great Matt Gonzalez, I think this is a great choice. Now all we need is a woman President. Hillary, are you listening?

We could use some good news in the fire department, since the Governator’s planning to cut the funding for fire departments all over California. Yes, in the wake of the worst fire in California’s history. Don’t tell me there’s no other way to balance the budget.

Fun fire trivia: my brother, who is a volunteer firefighter, told me that San Francisco is the only city in America to use wooden ladders. Everyone else uses metal ones, so San Francisco’s have to be specially made. Couture ladders! He says it’s because of all the overhead tram and streetcar wires. Not a good combo with metal. Oh, his town voted to tax themselves on a per house, per year basis to help fund their fire department.

So my trainer told me that she made the mistake of asking her boyfriend – they recently moved in together – how many women he had slept with. She was horrified by the total, which included 13 girls before he graduated from high school. I don’t think I know anybody who got that much action in high school, and I found that the most remarkable part of the revelation, though clearly she didn’t.

I said that it was a long time ago, before he knew her, and that all the people he had met and things he had done made him the person he is today, the person she loves, which made her feel a little better. But inside I was thinking, “Thirteen?!”

It made me realize that there is no good answer to that question. If the number is low, the guy is a loser, and if it’s too high, he’s a dog and possibly a walking lab experiment.

It also made me realize yet another fundamental difference between men and women. We always want to know about their romantic and sexual pasts, and not just for our health. We have a Pandora style curiosity that we just can’t help, sometimes with similar consequences, though on a lesser scale, witness my trainer. She would have been much better off not knowing, but had to ask. I have done the same thing with comparable results, but I’m sorry to say would probably ask that question again, even though you’d think I’d know better by now.

If you do ask, rest assured that the guy will not ask you the same question. As much as we want to know, they don’t want to know. They don’t want to think about you with any other guy, even if it was years ago and way before you met them. In the back of their minds, I think they all want really experienced virgins. And if they did ask you, you couldn’t tell them anyway. I personally have no idea what the number is, though I’m pretty sure I didn’t sleep with 13 guys in high school. An informal survey of my friends reveals that men do know what the number is, and women don’t. Some of the guys said that they had actually made a list at one time or another, which I immediately found icky, though I’m not sure exactly why.

I guess the lesson here (if there is one) is: don’t ask, don’t tell. If you can help it.

I got the classic wolf whistle today. So retro and delightful!

Ex-boyfriends. I think there should be a planet they get sent to so you never have to see them again. Though if you do have to run into them, it should be exactly the way it happened to my good friend M last weekend.

Many years ago, when we were young and foolish, M was madly in love with a guy who looked quite a lot like Bono. Many girls found D irresistible in spite of (or possibly because of, in the case of those chics who love the bad boys) his treating them like crap and generally being an arrogant, cheating asshole from hell.

Now M is not, and never has been, a girl to take crap from anyone, ever, male or female, so her taking of D’s crap, especially for an extended period of time, was both mystifying and horrifying to her many friends. We all begged her to see reason, but to no avail. Eventually, though, he went back to his ex-girlfriend and that broke the spell. I’m sorry to say it took M years to get over this guy, but we’ve all done the same thing at one time or another. I personally wasted a year of my life on a psycho alcoholic freak who stalked me after we broke up (He went back to his ex-girlfriend, too, come to think of it. And in both cases, the exes were plain, dull girls. Maybe some guys just can’t take the smart beauties.).

Anyway, when M ran into her ex, she was wearing a pink satin minidress and signing copies of her book. So she was looking fabulous and being successful and fêted. What could be better? His career isn’t going very well, he’s aging horribly and no longer looks like Bono at all, and grudgingly has a baby. Of the baby, he quickly informed M that the mother was not his wife, and added that only 30% of children really know who their fathers are (where did he come up with that little gem of information?). Lovely. He could barely hold up his end of the conversation, and M asked me if he had always been that stupid. I said, “Honey, we were all telling you that for years!” Then she asked me if he had always been so short. I think she’s over him.

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.

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.

Still have the headache. I’m going to have to try some of your very helpful suggestions (hee!) and/or stop by one of those scary herb stores in Chinatown for wing of bat or eye of newt. Maybe Shakespeare was onto something.

I had a call yesterday from my friend Paul. I haven’t seen him since we had dinner back in May. His life has been the usual: full of adventure, mostly good (including a new grandchild on the way), and it was great to catch up. He’s wintering in Florida this year, she said grandly, and invited us to come and stay with him. I just might take him up on it, ending my lifetime streak of never going to Florida. But I’m not going to Disney World, or Disney Land, or any other Disney-related place, whether I go to Florida or not.

So, as usual, it was great to catch up with him. And it got me thinking (so look out). I seem to have quite a lot of male friends. Only one is an ex-boyfriend*, and all the others have absolutely no taint of sex at all. There’s Paul. There’s Richard, who has been my friend since high school. There’s Adrian, an all-around great guy. There’s Randy, who used to be my boss (!), and who now lives near Chicago. He will be the first call I make after room service when I go to our conference in Chicago in mid-January (brrr). There’s Gary, who used to be a client, which makes it possibly even weirder that we remained friends after our professional relationship ended than staying friends with your former boss. There’s Raven, who used to be my sister’s boyfriend long ago. There’s Charles, who is also my jeweler. There’s Lance and Sal and Wade, who are admittedly gay, but boys and friends, nonetheless. And that doesn’t include miscellaneous friends of Dad’s, who have become my friends, too, over the years; or the friends I have through John and my brother, but who are also mine; or the husbands/boyfriends of girlfriends who have won me over in their own right (like Candi’s Brian); or the guys whose blogs I love to read and whose minds and wit I admire.

I wonder why I seem to have so many more male friends than female ones. I generally have a higher opinion of women than men, right or wrong, and feel there is a real strength in the bond between women. But if you look at the facts, I have more male friends, though I wouldn’t confide in the male friends in the same way I would the female ones. Maybe a girl just needs both. After all, when I can’t decide between two things, I just take them both. The “all of the above” category on tests was invented just for me, you know.

*Other than him, I wish there was some planet they could be sent to, so you never have to run into them or hear about them ever again. Especially if they’re hugely successful and much happier without you, when they should be in a hell of terrible, searing regret from losing you, even if you are no longer the slightest bit interested in them.

Apart from work and family, the eternal but metaphorical headaches that they are, I have had a real headache since Thursday. This is a very long time to have a headache, and it’s beginning to interfere with what passes for the workings of my mind.

At first, I thought it was just the stormy weather, including unaccustomed thunderstorm. Then I thought it was spending weekend hours, the most precious kind, with my mother. But both of these have passed and I still have the headache. I have tried every remedy known to Suzy from both sides of the Atlantic, and to no avail. I am beginning to wonder if a girl can get a permanent headache. And not only that, why do people say, “It’s all in your head” like that’s better than something attributable to the physical? I mean, if it’s in your head, how can you ignore it? It’s right there, all the time. And as easy to overlook as an elephant in a studio apartment.

So it’s all in my head. But how can I get it out of there?

I ask you: is this the diet of an adult? Even a faux one like me? Here’s what I ate yesterday:

1 cup of perfect black coffee

1 nicely ripe organic Bartlett pear

[serious degeneration about to occur]

1 exquisite old fashioned doughnut from the best place in San Francisco (Bob’s)

“Buttered” popcorn in amounts difficult to quantify

About half a gallon of Sprite, for some reason

1/2 bag of chewy SweeTarts (not a good idea, in case you’re wondering. Stick with the classics in this case)

2 pieces of pizza

1 piece of Entenmann’s pumpkin pie, and it’s not even Thanksgiving yet

What was I thinking?

You know your mailman reads your postcards, don’t you? Yet I was surprised to actually catch one in the act yesterday on my way home. This federal employee was not in my own neighborhood, but a neighboring neighborhood, and was leaning casually against the postcard owner’s door, reading it while having a relaxing cigarette. Somehow, it seemed just a little beyond the casual glance while putting the postcard in the destination mailbox, which would be acceptable even to Miss Manners, I think.

It’s like how people seem to feel it’s perfectly acceptable to look at whatever is on your computer screen when they come over to talk to you, either in your office or in your home. Now, if I’m doing anything even remotely personal, such as email, or writing this blog – things I would never do on my employer’s time, just like a mailman would never take a smoke break and read other people’s mail on his employer’s time – I minimize that window and try to look productive (it helps to always have actual work going at the same time so the switch is fast & easy, the way I like nearly everything). Though my observation is that most people don’t, and that they don’t seem to mind other people checking out what’s on their computer screen.

So the question is: where and what are the personal boundaries?