Suzy Says

I recently took one of those tests that are supposed to explain the complicated many-splendored thing that is one’s personality. The test decided that I am, or should be, a millionaire.

I heartily concur with this diagnosis, though it has no basis in reality. We consistently fail to win the lottery and live in one of the most expensive states in the Union, a place where you can make $100,000 a year and still be barely scraping by, with the result that we are not in fact millionaires, even if our neighbors are.

I have mentioned before that I got in trouble at my very first Career Day ay school for writing down “idle rich” as my career of choice, the powers that be immediately assuming that this was the worst kind of mockery, when in fact, it was the simple truth. Isn’t it touching to think that my 12 year old self not only considered that goal a possibility, but also didn’t realize that such notions should not be brought to the attention of those in authority? I wonder if that’s where I really started disliking school.

Years later, I still have to stand by that original goal. I have no particular talents, or at least none that are particularly well remunerated or useful. The ones I do have are chiefly and surprisingly domestic for a post-modern girl. It used to bother me, since all of my friends had goals and dreams, most of which they have achieved, but not anymore.

If I had to come up with actual jobs I could do, I could only come up with two. One in the realm of possibility:

Personal shopper. One of my few talents is finding the perfect present and card for anyone, for any occasion. Imagine how cool it would be to be paid to go shopping all day. Making money by spending someone else’s!

And the other in the realm of impossibility:

King’s mistress. Not, I hasten to add, the Queen, who is required to produce a string of heirs and attend boring ceremonial functions. Nope. I’d rather be the amusing and charming power behind the throne. Along the lines of Madame de Maintenon, mistress of Louis XIV (the Sun King, who built Versailles), or Madame de Pompadour, ditto but for Louis XV, both of whom had a salon of writers, poets, and artists and were patrons of the arts, style setters, and had lots of impressive jewelry (which was theirs, and not the Nation’s, unlike the Queen’s. Isn’t the Queen job looking less desirable by the second?). Again, spending someone else’s money, but this time you get to keep the stuff. Of course, if you’re unlucky in your choice of King or political climate, you could lose your head (like Madame du Barry), or be replaced by the next cute thing, though that is a problem not restricted to royalty.

Maybe the best job is no job. Happpy Labor Day!

Love/hate for Friday, August 30, 2002
Shaving

Shaving – I’m all for it. When I shave my legs (and I’m sorry to say that when a girl has been married as long as I have, it’s no longer the daily ritual that it was when I was single, the idea being, I suppose, that one’s husband is more forgiving of imperfections than potential suitors may potentially be), they feel like dolphins, and I love that. I’m also a big believer in pit shaving, for both aesthetic and olfactory reasons. Crunchy granola girls and Europeans be damned. Fuzzy arm pits would ruin the look of the most exquisite strapless gown or lacy bra. And anyway, I generally prefer artifice to nature.

Perhaps familiarity also breeds contempt for men, too, as far as grooming goes, because I’ll tell you, I’m lucky if John shaves twice a week. Even though he mostly feels that the entire world should be arranged to suit my convenience. Even though he knows I love it when he has just shaved and his face is all smooth, instead of doing a convincing cactus imitation which in turn wreaks havoc with my delicate porcelain complexion.

So shaving your face must be wore than shaving your legs and pits, since all men seem to hate it. But as usual, we women have more to do and bitch about it less. The ones who have the most work are definitely transvestites. They have all the boy shaving, and all the girl shaving, plus make-up, wigs, and other et ceteras to deal with. It must take them ages to get ready, especially since they are really guys. In my experience, girls always have to wait on the guys to get ready. But that’s another story.

Love/hate for Friday, August 23, 2002
Clothing variety

This may be one of the classic male/female situations that lead to clich&eacutes: women feel that one can never have too many clothes, and men feel the opposite. Women can stand in front of a closet stuffed with clothes and say with all seriousness, “I have nothing to wear!”, a remark greeted by her husband/boyfriend with utter disbelief. I mean, look at all those clothes in there!, he thinks (though if he is wise, he keeps this observation to himself). But what he doesn’t understand is that once you have eliminated:

– things that are too big (but which you might have altered, so you’re keeping them)

– things that are too small (but which you might lose enough weight to fit into, so you’re keeping them)

– things that need repairs which you haven’t gotten around to doing yet, but you will, so you’re keeping them

– things that are too heavy or too light for the weather du jour

– things that are too formal or not formal enough for the occasion du jour

– things that no longer make you feel good when you wear them (i.e., have lost their fun factor)

there really is nothing left in the closet to wear.

The same thing applies to shoes. At a working lunch, one of my colleagues said that when she and her husband were in Italy on vacation, she had bought 5 or 6 pairs of shoes. Her husband gazed at the new shoes with bemusement and said, “But honey, you already have a pair of black shoes.” All the women in the group laughed at the utter absurdity of his remark. All the men looked at each other in bemusement. Men think one pair of black shoes, a pair of sneakers, and possibly a pair of brown shoes is all you need. They don’t realize that women need shoes with heels of varying heights, some suede, some leather, pumps, mules, boots…the possibilities are endless, and if you don’t have the right shoes, it ruins your whole outfit.

You can tell that guys wrote Star Trek and other shows set in the future, because the first thing they do is get rid of fashion completely and make everyone wear stretchy uniforms. If the future is like that, or the most recent remakes of The Time Machine, where everyone lives in sconces and has the most deplorable rags to wear (and no jewelry), or Planet of the Apes, then no thanks. I would have a hard time living in such aesthetically unpleasing times. On the other hand, no-one has ever predicted the future with any real accuracy, so I can take comfort in that.

I will never understand line dynamics. Not the math kind, or the geometry kind, or the late unlamented dance craze now moldering wherever dance crazes du jour go before being recycled into yet another one, but why lines of people are the way they are.

When we were in line to get tickets for “Road to Perdition” on Saturday, there were only 4 or 5 people ahead of us in line, but it took nearly 15 minutes for us to get to the window, where we paid with exact change and were out of there in seconds. Why does it take other people 10 times as long to buy a movie ticket?

I have observed the same thing in post offices, grocery stores, and airports. In the post office, you wait in line while time seems to stop, as the people ahead of you mail large, untidily wrapped packages of what appear to be body parts to countries with unpronounceable names, and without the correct paperwork or actual money.

The use of actual money is so unusual in this country that I wonder if they aren’t going to do away with it altogether and just implant chips in our hands to access our bank accounts and credit cards. A couple of weeks ago, I let a guy go ahead of me in the express line at the grocery store, because he only had one item. He thanked me and said, “And I’m even going to pay cash.” I joked, “Isn’t that positively un-American?” His response: “I’m Canadian, so I think it’s OK.”

Honestly, though, non-Canadians seem to think nothing of writing checks for $5 or using their ATM card for amounts almost as small. And in the express line, too. If you know you’re going grocery shopping – and how many of us do so on an impulse? – get the money first. Or get it at the ATM with which nearly every store is equipped. Your fellow Americans will thank you. Or at least not openly glare at you while cursing you and generations of your family.

As for airports, even if I’m going to Europe for three weeks, I never have more than carry-on. Bring outfits you like, about 5, and mix and match, doing laundry where necessary. Wear the one good outfit, fit for going out to dinner or to the theater. Bonus: airline staff, on the ground and on the plane, tend to be nicer to you if you’re dressed well, even if you’re flying cattle class. By limiting your baggage to carry-on, it’s a faster check-in. I also always book my seat ahead, which not only makes sure I get what I want (my main goal in life), but also makes check-in faster. But even assuming you haven’t done these things, why does it seem to take so long for people to check in? I’m not talking post-9/11 security measures, I’m talking standing at the counter for 15 or 20 minutes before finally finishing the checking in process. What could possibly take so long? Enquiring minds want to know. Well, not really. I just don’t want you ahead of me in line.

I think it’s a fairly well-known fact that mechanics of the male persuasion tend to pad their bills, overcharge, and/or flat out lie to their female clients. In the short time that I have owned a car, the only honest mechanic I have met is my brother.

Starting from my first personal encounter with a mechanic named Snake when my car broke down on one of the major artery roads through the city and had to be towed on a Sunday afternoon to Snake’s lair in the Haight on down, it hasn’t been good. It might be because I am a very silly girl who doesn’t know the first thing about cars, other than how to put in gas and change the oil (and I have been known to forget to screw the gas cap back on, too. Good thing it’s permanently affixed to the car with a sort of wire thing, so it doesn’t get lost completely). It might be because my car is a 1966 Mustang convertible, which can have strange effects on people, ranging from envy to the person who keyed the hood after it had a brand-new paint job to the uncontrollable urge to pass me when I’m driving it just to say they can. Or it might be a combination of such a fine ride being wasted on one so very ignorant. But for whatever reason, this has been my personal experience, and one I have heard from many other women, including smart, non-Mustang owning ones.

I was discussing this phenomenon with a screenwriter (for Paramount) at a party recently, and his theory is that men, including but not limited to mechanics, are actually afraid of women. In the wild, the frightened animal puffs himself up and tries to appear bigger than he really is to intimidate whatever is frightening him. The screenwriter thinks the mechanic’s bill padding is the same thing, translated into an urban (or suburban) setting. I think he gets points for creativity and charm on this one, but that’s it.

Any thoughts?

96 years ago, the buildings I live and work in hadn’t been built yet. On this day in 1906, the city was awakened at 5:12 a.m. by an earthquake that measured 8.25 on the modern Richter scale (compared to 6.70 for the 1989 quake). Three thousand people were killed, 225,000 were injured, and most of the city burned. Though the quake itself lasted only a minute, it is still considered one of the worst natural disasters of our time.

Here’s how the Financial District, where I work, looked after the quake.
I would have been a little luckier in where I live: the great mansions on my street, particularly the Haas-Lilienthal House, three blocks away, survived. Legend has it that the H-L house’s inhabitants stood on their balcony and watched the city burn. The house preserves a crack in the wall from that disastrous Spring day almost a century ago.

People who don’t live here often ask how we can, when there have been the two “Big Ones” in the past 100 years, countless little ones, and more to come. I wonder the same thing about people who live in places that are routinely flooded, or destroyed by hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards. I guess the answer is that you live with the natural disaster you can handle.

I don’t worry every day about the big quake that is supposed to send California back into the ocean from whence it came, though I know there’s the possibility. We keep a good supply of bottled water, candles, canned food on hand at home, and have a plan for what to do if it strikes while we’re at work.

So while we know it could happen, it’s at the back of our minds, not the front. For us, it’s worth the small risk to live in such a beautiful, temperate, tolerant place, where 96 years later, it looks like this at the dawn of a new Spring day.

Why doesn’t snoring wake up the person who’s doing the snoring? I mean, it’s right by their ears and you’d think it would be louder there at the epicenter than just in the neighborhood. But it never does as far as I can tell.

And why can I always sleep when the alarm goes off, even if I have been awake for hours at other times during the night? Maybe if I set my alarm for 1 a.m. or something I’ll be able to go back to sleep. I can get to sleep OK, I just can’t stay there.

When Buddy was still alive, he used to sleep on my pillow every night. When I was ready to go to bed, I’d say, “It’s sleep time”, and Buddy would pad majestically into the bedroom and jump up on my pillow. So I’d fall asleep listening to his deep, rumbling purr. If I woke up in the night, I’d just cuddle up to his soft fur and listen to him purring and I’d go right back to sleep.

But Buddy is gone and so is my father. The world has gone crazy, and it’s no wonder I can’t sleep. My world is a mess because of Dad’s sudden death. I hadn’t even begun to cope with that when last Tuesday’s disaster hit, so the entire country and in fact the entire civilized world is now a strange and frightening place. In addition, two of our consultants have quit in the past month and one is on maternity leave, so things are weird and chaotic at work too. No peace to be found anywhere. The really amazing thing is that only last month, in the beginning of August, we were fully staffed at work, the World Trade Center Towers were still standing, and my Dad was going to cricket matches and gardening. All that was swept away forever in the space of a few short weeks.

Here’s my goal for 2002: a completely uneventful year. In particular, I’d like the Reaper to leave me the hell alone for at least one year. He’s been an annoyingly faithful visitor over the past three years, and I think it’s about time he picked on someone else for a change.

Remember that scene in “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion” where the two title characters are arguing bitterly about which is the “Mary” (i.e. cute) and which is the “Rhoda” (i.e. less cute)? The argument gets so heated that they actually have to pull over, even though up to that point they were speeding along traffic-free freeways (which never happens to me).

Even when “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” was in its heyday, I thought Rhoda, with her wisecracks and actual personal style — even when she was supposedly fat — was much more attractive than stick thin, uptight Mary with her matronly clothes and stiff, lacquered hair. The Mary of “Dick Van Dyke” was so much cuter and sexier in her little capri pants. What happened? The MTM Show Mary’s puritanical personality could and did rob even a miniskirt of its sex appeal, whereas you got the impression that Rhoda was much more, shall we say, warm-blooded. Plus she’d make you laugh afterwards, and possibly even during, which I consider to be a bonus.

And I gotta say, Rhoda has the last laugh. I saw a few seconds of a trailer for Mary’s latest TV movie, undoubtedly some form of tear-jerker, and she looked freakish and frightening. I don’t know if she’s the victim of platic surgery gone disastrously wrong, but she looks like a hard-faced creature from another planet. Valerie Harper, on the other hand, has made a couple of guest appearances lately looking fabulous — on “Sex & The City” and “That 70’s Show”. She’s still got wit and style and is undoubtedly still turning heads — and not because she looks like an alien. Maybe one day that scene in “Romy & Michele” will be funny because viewers will wonder why anyone wants to be the Mary.

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.