Suzy Says

Found this on Alison’sblog (she is literally one of Utah’s finest treasures), and couldn’t resist, narcissist that I am. Much of what came up was quite naughty (Google clearly knows me a little too well), but here are some of the more amusing, accurate, and less naughty results:

suzy is gorgeous

suzy is fictional

suzy is a well written movie that takes place during the war in 1914

suzy is nice

suzy is knowledgeable and sincere

suzy is currently touring colleges and universities throughout the us and canada

suzy is one of our finest

suzy is me

suzy is innocently bathed in the warm blue tones of luciano tovoli’s glorious cinematography

suzy is the last person to see her alive

suzy is a lifeguard on the world famous north shore of oahu where she has lived and surfed for the last ten years

suzy is complaining

suzy is clearly lying about her original story

suzy is alive and well

suzy is ready for a new home

suzy is set for a night out with her girl friends at the new italian restaurant just opened in town

suzy is now offering her range of fabulous handbags online

suzy is adorable

suzy is playing with another picture book idea

suzy is a great talent

suzy is my given name

suzy is my idol luv ya

suzy is curious

suzy is on place 61 on the airplaycharts in japan

suzy is actually available

suzy is the best

suzy is presumed murdered and has been declared dead

suzy is our drug and alcohol specialist

suzy is motoring along the freeway

suzy is just as close to the perfect country music artist as you can get

suzy is the little convertible that can really zip

suzy is trying to figure out ways to pay for a vacation while i’m trying to figure out how to pay for my own funeral

suzy is

suzy is off

It’s my grandmother’s birthday today. My American grandmother, I always say (my other grandmother was English). But we called her Nana. Everyone in town called her The Lady. She never left the house without her shoes and handbag matching. When she died, we found a box, carefully tied with a ribbon, holding the clothing she wanted to be buried in, from the dress right down to the underwear (including a girdle!) and stockings and shoes.

That’s the kind of woman she was.

She was born 104 years ago on a farm in New York State. Her father didn’t want her to go to high school; he said it was as much use to educate a girl as a female cat. Nana didn’t listen to him. She ran away to her Aunt Louella’s house in town – Aunt Louella had shocked the town some years before by getting married in a fuchsia wedding dress – and got a job in a candy store. The store owner wisely allowed the help to eat as much candy as they wanted, since they got good and sick of it quickly and never depleted the stock.

Nana bobbed her hair, as scandalous at the time as Aunt Louella’s wedding dress had been. She not only went to high school, she went to teacher’s college. Her marks were all in the 80’s and 90’s, and she was so proud of her final exam results that she kept them and showed them to me, when she was an old lady and I was a young girl.

She became a teacher and taught in the town high school. She married my grandfather, who became the high school principal. They were devoted to each other for more than half a century. When my grandmother died, my grandfather followed her within a few months. Pneumonia, they said. But it was a broken heart.

I made one of Dad’s recipes for dinner last night. It was Egyptian fish. I love how his recipes always say things like “garnish with coriander” – as if I ever would! The thing is, he *would* (and did) – even if he were dining alone.

Apparently, I need to start eating yogurt. My trainer claims it speeds up your metabolism (mine may well be dead, or at least moribund), boosts your immune system, and basically performs miracles, other than granting wishes (my first wish would be not to have to eat yogurt). But it’s milk. Spoiled milk. And she says you have to get it with… ~shudder~ …”live bacterial cultures”, so it’s germy spoiled milk. Live! Rude! Germs! I’m going to have to come up with some way of disguising it enough that I can fool myself into eating it. Good luck with that.

The other thing that’s supposed to be so wonderful for you is tofu. That right there is desperation food*, I tell you what. I can never *believe* all those people who are like, “Well, if you take tofu and marinate it and grill it and…it’s actually OK”. Basically, what they mean is, “If you remove every tofu-like quality, you might be able to choke it down.” On the other hand, it’s supposed to be good for your heart, and with all the strokes in the family, that can’t be bad.

Honestly, sometimes I just want to say screw it and eat and drink whatever I want and weigh 200 pounds and the hell with it. Problem is, am too vain and want to look good in clothes again before it’s too late.

*Something you eat when there’s nothing else to eat, or cannibalism is your only other option. Especially if potential victim of potential cannibalism is particularly unattractive.

Well, the good will toward the Howler has left the building as suddenly as it came. She escaped through the window again, only this time, she attacked Rita the Wonder Dog, who was on her way home with her owner after spending the weekend with me. It was a brief, yet terrifying encounter. No-one was hurt, and I hope Upstairs Guy is suitably embarrassed. They have caused an astonishing amount of trouble in the short time they have lived here. Talk about getting off on the wrong foot (or paw)!

My sister had an unpleasant experience of her own this weekend. While swimming at the river, someone stole her wallet out of the trunk of her car. No-one locks their car doors there in the depths of the country, but she figured, why tempt people more than necessary, so she put the wallet in the trunk. One of the other swimmers left, and then came back to tell my sister and the other swimmers that her car had had its windshield smashed.

I would have gone up right away to see if my car had been interfered with, but Megan figured, it is what it is, and finished her swim before returning to the parking lot. There was a whopping six dollars in the wallet, and now she has to replace her ambulance driver’s license along with her regular one, and all the other stuff. The worst thing was she carried around a little something I sent with her for encouragement as she nursed Dad through his last illness, and now it’s gone forever.

On the other hand, she’s getting this adorable replacement wallet. Nothing like shopping to cheer a girl up.

And just when I’d pretty much lost all faith in both human- and dog-nature, my friend Charlie returned from a trip to Venice with an adorable handbag for my collection and two shotglasses (Venetian glass!). He knows me too well. Cheered me right up, shallow Suzy that I am.

Hmmm, the last entry has vanished without a trace. I think it must have run away from home, since it’s been 24 hours and I haven’t received a ransom demand from the blognappers. If so, it didn’t leave a note – a tribute to my terrible parenting skills, no doubt.

Following is a recreation of the missing entry. If you see the original anywhere, tell it to come home, or at least send me an email.

Yesterday was one of those days when it seemed the phone would never stop ringing and people kept knocking on my door.

The first visitor was looking for someone else. This happens a lot. My apartment is the only one on the ground floor in the courtyard of the building, so they just stop in and ask. The surprising thing is that they rarely, if ever, know the apartment number, whether they’re a delivery person or just a person. I find this mysterious. Why wouldn’t you get the apartment number before you go? So they usually have to call from Chez Me, so it’s a little like living in a very big phone booth.

The second one was much more exciting. It was a guy from HBO who wanted to film in the courtyard for an upcoming show called “BAD” (“Boxing After Dark”). They wanted to film the boxer running through the passageway and into the courtyard. I found this ridiculously exciting, as if I myself were going to be on TV. This is also mysterious, because there are movies and TV shows being filmed constantly around here, so you’d think I’d be blas&eacute(e), but no. So I introduced him to the building manager so he could get official permission. Maybe I can get a walk-on part, seeing as I was so helpful and all. Wouldn’t that be cool?!

The third one was a guy who was working on the building behind me. He and his fellow workers had witnessed the Howling Dog of the Baskervilles jump out of the window upstairs and then jump over the fence to where they were working. Fortunately, she was unhurt and they lured her with sandwiches to where they could check her collar. She was collarless, but since they had seen her desperate escape and heard her habitual howling (yes, over the construction noise), they knew she lived in my building. They sent one guy to try and find her owners while the others kept the dog from running into the street or otherwise getting into even more trouble. Of course, he tried my door first, and you bet I knew to whom she belonged! I went with him to get her and I have to say, it’s quite a challenge to get a very large dog whose name is unknown to you and who has the spirit (and possibly craziness) to jump out a second storey window to follow you home (especially with no convenient carrying handle). Note to dog owners: even if you don’t let your dog out unattended, get a collar with the dog’s name and your phone number on it. You just never know.

So the Howler and I spent a happy afternoon together. She is a beautiful Malamute and always seemed to be smiling and wagging her tail. She drank lots of water and sat with me companionably as if she’d known me her whole life. She didn’t howl once – it must be boredom that led her to howl and make her dramatic escape – and the thing is, I really got fond of her in the short time I spent with her. I even felt guilty for all the bad things I said and thought about her. I now firmly blame her bad parenting, like a psychiatrist. However, we’ll see if this warm, fuzzy feeling persists during the next howling binge.

Random Wit:

A guy wearing a t-shirt with the slogan “Rehab is for Quitters” – outside a rehab center.

A construction site with the usual warning of “Post No Bills” on the surrounding walls, with, unusually, the stencilled faces of Bill Clinton, Bill Murray, and Bill Cosby beneath the warning.

Mom is still in the hospital, but it seems that the current crisis is past. My teeny, tiny reserves of niceness had long been exhausted, and my pitiful pleas for a niceness transplant were unsuccessful, so I decided I had done all I could do up there (mostly all I did was the least possible, and then complained about it so much that it seemed like I was doing a lot. This technique works quite well in most office settings, too.).

The relief of getting home didn’t last long. I made the unwelcome discovery that in my absence, a guy moved in upstairs who plays bad electric guitar very loudly for hours at a time, and moves furniture very incompetently, testing the laws of gravity to their limits at 2 am. All that’s missing is a colicky baby. I miss the pot-growing jazz bassist who used to live upstairs. True, his grow room did leak into the living room occasionally, and he sometimes wandered around in the courtyard late at night talking to himself with great animation, but never kept me up at night or inconvenienced me in any way, which is really all I require of neighbors.

I tend to be pro-dog, but the ones that belong to Upstairs Guy are, not surprisingly, as unlikeable as he is. They bark at all hours, and one of them howls at the top of his voice like a wolf baying at the moon. Creepy and annoying and apparently there’s an endless supply of howling and barking. I’m beginning to think that Jed, my brother’s Wonder Dog, my friend Phil’s dog Rita, the sassy Kelly’s charming Jazz & Ocho (bonus: they’re a barkless breed!), and the fabulous Candi’s outrageously charismatic Cheeto are the only non-annoying dogs on the planet.

Warning: Extreme puppy cuteness….you have been warned….click at your own risk….

Rumor had it that one of the nurses at the hospital had puppies at her house. Five week old Labradors, to be precise. Now, we all know that rumors can be ugly things, but this one turned out not only to be true, but there wasn’t a trace of ugliness about it. See for yourself:

Exhibit A; and

Exhibit B.

Here they are, being nursed by their mama (when she got tired of it, she stood up, and they rolled around like little fuzzy balls).

And here they are, getting ready to pile up for a nap.

Happiness truly is, as Charles Schultz so famously remarked, a warm puppy. Or seven.

How to be very, very unpopular:

Sleep in Mom’s trailer.

Wake up early, yanked out of sleep by the prospect of visiting the trailer’s official resident in the hospital (I have now spent enough time there to recognize the nurses by their voices – no visual aids required).

Go to bathroom at sister’s house across the yard.

When exiting bathroom, scare the friend who stayed over last night and was on her way into the bathroom, unaware that anyone else was awake.

Friend says there is coffee in sister’s house. Already made. Just sitting there seductively.

Given the looming hospital visit and the unbeatable allure of caffeine to the uncaffeinated, go in house.

Entrance announced by three large barking dogs.

Barking wakes up sister, who is famously unable to get back to sleep after she’s woken up.

Sister comes downstairs and asks, “When you almost never get up before 10 in the morning, why did you have to pick the morning of the day I’m starting three 12 hour night shifts to get up early?” (Note: she’s an Emergency Medical Technician, so it’s not like she’s just going to the office to play with paper and pens.)

I say something about coffee. She’s so scary I’m afraid to answer what was almost certainly a rhetorical question. I also don’t think it’s a good idea to say that I pretty much get up by 8 most mornings.

She points out that there’s coffee in the trailer.

“But not already made,” I tell her.

She looks at me with great disgust and says, “You know better than to come in the house.”

Now I do. And you do, too.

It’s not only a small world, it’s positively minuscule:

The World Famous Hamburger Ranch and Pasta Farm really is. You may not believe it, but there is irrefutable proof: the walls of the restaurant are covered with postcards from visitors from all over the world. What induces people from Holland and Venezuela to visit the little town of Cloverdale, California, I have no idea, but they do. And when they do, they eat at the World Famous Hamburger Ranch and Pasta Farm, just like me.

On my last visit, I noticed a postcard with an English stamp on it. On closer inspection, the postcard proved to have been written by none other than my sister Beth, who lives in England.

Later the same day, when checking into my motel near the hospital, the clerk, on learning my last name, asked me if Jonathan was related to me. Now, in my brother’s younger, wilder days, I wouldn’t necessarily want to admit the truth, but now that he’s a respectable pillar of the community, I’m pretty fearless about the general public knowing he’s my brother.

So I fessed up, and then asked her if she knew him as a firefighter or a teacher, and she said, “Neither – I’m his dental hygenist.”

I got a ride to the hospital with my brother-in-law this morning. Riding with him is like an amusement park ride, as you are tossed around his truck while he careens around curves at high speed. It almost (but not quite) eliminated the need for caffeine. We stopped off in Mendocino to get caffeine, where I discovered that I had no money at all, not even change, so he had to buy me an espresso, too.

I must be running out of brain cells. Yesterday I kept trying to open the car trunk with my house key. It took me three tries to figure out what was wrong. Now, if I could only get a brain transplant…

I went to the Safeway after they carted my mother off to chemotherapy and got a) money; 2) the latest In Style magazine. I confess that I bought an embroidered skirt with tiny mirrors on it in Berkeley last week, but I promise I’m not turning into a hippie.

My sister Beth is on her way back to England this morning. We sent her on her way with a merry little earthquake as an after-dinner treat. I have to say you feel the earthquakes more in a little house in the country than you do in an apartment in the city. It’s quieter, however: more shake, less rumble. Beth found it a little unnerving, though personally I’m more disturbed by the Giants’ seemingly unending losing streak. At least the Yankees are doing badly, too. Maybe neither of them will make it to the playoffs this year.

As the night turned to another bright day, heralded by the seagulls and sea lions and the anxious voice of the foghorns, I wondered if Jonathan or Beth was lying awake, too, and thought of Megan, who was working yet another long night. I wondered if our mother was sleeping her narcotic sleep, or battling her fear and pain. I thought of the long, strange journey that had brought us together yet again under the California stars. Our paths started together, diverged – sometimes by thousands of miles – but we always come back together.

I had been warned of the hazards of country driving, including how cows have to be scared straight by cattle grating in order to keep them in order. However, they never seem to be on the road. They are spectacularly unadventurous, and merely watch you with no particular interest as you drive by. Now, if you were a bale of hay, or a salt lick….

Live cows, however bored, are much, much better than dead deer. I came around a curve (the roads up here are curvier than Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe) and saw a dead fawn right in my way. It was too late, and too dangerous, to try and avoid it, so I actually drove right over the poor thing, squeaking with horror. I will never forget that horrible bump. I drove for a while with my hand over my mouth like the girly girl I am.

My fawn fright was nothing compared to my sister Beth’s early-morning brush with the Reaper, who was probably on his way to the hospital, too, to see if he could finally persuade Mom to come with him (he didn’t, as usual). Beth was driving across a bridge which is more than 100 feet above the river, and infamous among the locals after a logging truck jacknifed and went straight over the edge – and the driver survived*.

Anyway, Beth became aware that the idiot behind her was trying to pass her. The idiot was not aware that a logging truck was bearing down on his side of the road, so Beth, showing remarkable calm and judgment, braked hard enough to let the idiot pass her and the truck and live another day. The logging truck driver, undoubtedly recalling the infamous accident, was gesturing and swearing as he passed my sister. So both of my sisters were life savers that day, and only one of them needed coffee.

*My brother was one of the firefighters who rescued the driver. He said he’s never heard anyone scream like that. The community rallied around the driver, and little pails were set up at various stores to collect money to help with his hospital bills. Some guy actually got caught stealing from the collection pail at the Gas’n’Grub, and was arrested. Who says small town life is boring?

I really need to do a better job with my birthdays. Recently, they have gone from bad to worse:

The One After Dad Died
My first birthday after Dad died was also my 40th birthday, a landmark birthday for most girls. Farewell, lovely youth! Hello, getting older and older. Dad and I had planned to go to Italy together so I could be in Pompeii and Herculaneum on my birthday, thus being surrounded by things that were older than Me. Instead, I stayed home and rode the bummer.

The One in the Hospital
Last year, I spent my birthday in the hospital, with a friend who needed particularly nasty and invasive tests, a ride home, and room service while recovering. Though I was truly glad to be able to help, it was not at all festive.

The One with the Hospital and Too Much Driving
This year, Mom had taken a turn for the worse just days before my birthday, so we all flew to her bedside (literally, in the case of my sister Beth, who lives in England). But she swerved out of it with the enthusiasm of a kid who finally gets to borrow the car for the night. She was comatose the first few days I was here, but now has recovered to the point that she is demanding to be taken shopping. While I can certainly understand this, it isn’t practical when you’re unable to stand or walk, need intravenous morphine or dilaudid every 2 or 3 hours, and have a catheter, along with broken ribs from the sheer force of the cancer at work. She also has tumors in her brain and liver. The Reaper calls her “The One Who Got Away”.

After spending the morning with Mom, I got to drive 3 hours to Santa Rosa, wait 2 hours in the blazing sun for the movers to bring more stuff to Mom’s storage (which took all of 10 minutes), and then got to drive the 3 hours back. Not at all festive, and quite exhausting.

I think the answer is to stop having (or noticing) my birthdays. Maybe I won’t get any older. I’m certainly not any wiser.

What Not to Wear for Dogs

I recently attended a fancy-ass fashion show* where dogs were not only accessories, but accessorized. I seriously think their guardians should be fined or even incarcerated for the fashion crimes and indignities inflicted upon these helpless pups.

I caught one dog, who was understandably trying to make a quick get away and, less understandably, wearing Versace. I felt a pang of regret on handing his leash to his semi-celebrity owner. Who knows what else she’d make him wear?

Other shocking sights:

A huge male dog with silver “pawlish” (yes, they spell it that way) on his claws and rhinestone bracelets on his front paws. Did I mention this was a boy dog? Who knew dogs wore drag?

A tiny black poodle with fuschia fur on her head.

A very large black poodle with most of her fur shaved down, except puffs around feet, tail, and head. Silvery heart-shaped stencils (temporary tattoos for dogs) adorned her derri&egravere. Her head hair was being blow-dried and back-combed and was eventually adorned with a rhinestone tiara with, you guessed it, hearts on it. At this point, I have to admit that some of my ridicule is tinged with envy, since I’ve always wanted a tiara. And I kind of like the idea of sparkly temporary tattoos. But on Me, not dogs.

A very small dog who could hardly move for all the ghetto gold he was sporting around his neck. Some of the necklaces brushed the floor.

A dog in yellow rain boots with a matching slicker and hat.

And the final entry in this walk of shame: No fewer than three outfits worn by human models showed their price tags, and there were two cases of fishnet stay ups that were not staying up.

When did fishnets come back in style? I guess it’s no worse than the poncho thing, though I once heard a woman at Macy’s saying to her friend with great vehemence, “I’d like to kill the guy who invented ponchos.” This fashion show would probably have been the end of her.

*If you’re wondering how the likes of me got invited to a do where there was not only an ice sculpture, but a fountain of dark chocolate – yes, a four layered fountain with fruit to dip in it – I can only say I have friends in high places! Well, one, anyway!

Finally, the plumbing knows who’s boss – Me!

Using my superhuman powers of persuasion, I convinced a friend to plunge away the commode-based ickiness (leaving my ignorance intact). Using my superhuman powers of whining, I finally got the building manager to get a plumber. After all, it’s only been 10 days of showering at the gym (though, as motives go for working out, having no hot water at home is pretty much unbeatable). He fixed it in less than an hour. There must be some mathematical formula for how long you wait for, say, a plumber or the car fix-it guy to show up (an interminably long time) versus how long it takes them to fix whatever it is (a breathtakingly tiny amount of time).

Having hot water seems to have woken up my long-dormant domestic side (actually, it was officially declared dead after being in a coma for so long), since I immediately started performing unnatural acts in the kitchen, like washing the dishes(!) and somehow ending up on a cooking binge.

It all started out innocently enough by deciding to make salsa. I made it, but discovered that I had been far too enthusiastic in my tomato buying, leaving me, like so many cooks before me, with Too Many Tomatoes. I roasted them in the oven with cloves of garlic, olive oil, freshly ground pepper, and thyme until they were soft and then squashed them all up (sans skin). Instant pasta sauce! Then I realized that the cilantro and scallions and limes I had left over from making the salsa could also be used for a Thai salad with the addition of sugar, red pepper flakes, mint (which I happened to have), and fish sauce, so I did that, too.

Quite an achievement for a girl with an unrivalled collection of take out and delivery menus, n’est-ce pas? What with the gardened windowboxes and all, they might start calling me Suzy Homemaker. I’ve been called worse things. I think.

Well, well.

At some point during my {so far ineffective} beauty sleep last night, someone put pots of hydrangeas and lavender in my window box. Taking pity on Me and my black thumb? Or the empty window box, now that Spring has {supposedly} sprung? Oooh, maybe it was a secret admirer!

Things I want to hear:

“You can have a body double in real life. Forever.”

“We have to go. We’re late for the stylist.”

“Dolce & Gabbana got back together just for you. Check out the layouts.”

“You are now a multimillionaire. Tax free.”

“Oh my God! Look what they say about you on Page Six!”

“What should I do with all these boxes from Harry Winston, Tiffany, and Prada? And why won’t this Tom Ford guy stop babbbling about “Suzy is my muse. I must speak to her NOW and show her the latest designs.” Should I throw him out?”

Well, well. My silly little blog turns 4 years old today. That’s a lot of nonsense*.

But more importantly: how long have you been blogging? And what inspired/inspires you to write?

*When I was a kid, my Dad used to shake us upside down while we screamed with delight, saying he was trying to get all the nonsense out. He never could. I’m still trying.

I’m finally released from Car Country. I set out to run some errands – when I say “run”, in my case, it’s really more like ambling, or moseying, or on a good day, strutting – and after about five blocks, I realized I was looking for a taxi. Which is…a car. And…driving. After all that complaining about the cars and the driving. Not to mention the fact that the Frightening Florida Fluff is approaching crisis levels. If I want to be Svelte Suzy again any time soon, I better start strolling those errands. And lots of ’em.

Confidential to Ben: Your idea of restoring my hair color to its original mouse has been vetoed by the Committee. First, it was determined that it would be far too expensive and require too much research to discern exactly what that color is. Even assuming that the natural coloring of the Great Speckled Suzy could be ascertained, it may well be impossible to reproduce it. Finally, the cost of therapy when I see a) What the color is; and 2) How much grey hair there is will be prohibitive and prolonged. So unless you inherit millions, become a rock star, or win the lottery, you will have to put up with your old auntie in her artificial state. That goes for the rest of you, too.

I’m also determined never to have blue poodle hair, either, no matter how old I get.

Brunch be Damned (aka Brunch of the Damned): A couple of friends came over for brunch today. I was planning to make Eggs Florentine, because I’m a big, fat showoff. Everything was going perfectly until, for the first time in my life, my Hollandaise sauce separated before my eyes. One moment, glossy, yellow perfection; the next, a curdled, separated mass of grossness. One moment, a fabulous cook; the next, a humliated culinary failure who can’t have a temper tantrum on account of company. They claimed not to mind, but I’m sensing anecdotes here, and possibly snickering.

Cross “cooking” off the list of things Suzy can do. That leaves shopping, and knowing what wine to serve. Oooh, good idea! Time to banish that care, as the great Thomas Jefferson would say. Go get a glass and join me. The toasts are on you.