Suzy Says

I’ve had so much fun reading the 1965 edition of James Beard’s “Menus for Entertaining” which I picked up for free at the Boonville Famer’s Market. It really was a different world back then, at least for the James Beards of the world.

Pretty much every meal, even picnics, concludes with coffee and cognac, or his other favorite, kirsch. I imagine that mixing a stimulant with a depressant would completely flummox one’s system, but what do I know? I’ve never understood the coffee after dinner thing anyway. You’ve just gotten a nice buzz from the wine, so why kill it, especially just hours away from bedtime? And I seriously doubt that a cup of coffee, or even two, could cancel out a dinner’s worth of wine enough for safe night-time driving.

Having said that, though, back in the late 1960s and early ’70s, my parents did attend the occasional cocktail party with their pajama-clad brood in tow. When they were ready to leave, they’d pile us in the car and off we’d go. Nothing untoward ever happened. Many of my baby pictures feature Mom with a cigarette in one hand while she fed me with the other, and cocktails (which I imagine to be a total necessity for every parent) make frequent cameo appearances in several of our baby photos. Those were the days.

Beard suggests topping steak and burgers – to which grated cheese has already been mixed in with the meat and other seasonings – with a pat of butter. He has an alarming proclivity for anchovies, which he puts into everything from deviled eggs to the butter for the steak. Note that he himself lived to the ripe old age of 81, despite all the booze’n’butter (Julia Child*, another butter advocate, made it to 91). One breakfast menu calls for champagne, croustades, chicken hash, chipolatas, asparagus, toasted brioche, and damson preserves.

Among my favorite pronouncements in the book are:

“Nothing is better in the morning than enlivening vodka drinks.”

“Have a picnic at the slightest excuse. It is even fun to have a box lunch and a hot drink in the car on a wintry day, while you look out at a dazzling stretch of landscape.”

“To give a good party you must be on the alert, though you appear to be entirely at ease. What a delight it can be to settle down later with your shoes off and have a few drinks in peace and quiet.”

*I’m really looking forward to seeing Julie and Julia this summer. Also The September Issue. ‘Cause that’s the kind of girl I am. Foodie and fashionista!

The dear departed

My ring has finally sold. I have mixed emotions about it, even though I gave it up three months ago. I guess I could have changed my mind and gotten it back, but if you’re at a financial point in your life where you’re selling your jewelry, you don’t really have the luxury of exercising a woman’s prerogative. The money will definitely come in handy, and I’ll try not to think about how I received less than a quarter of the appraised value.

I’ve been thinking lately about how little I got for the things I’ve been forced to sell versus the appraised value, or the value I thought they had. The truth is that any object, from a house (the one I’m renting was bought about three years ago for $450,000, and is now worth around half that) to a used book, is only worth what someone’s willing to pay for it. And whoever bought my things isn’t going to be able to sell them for a huge profit any more than I could, at least not in the immediate future. And the immediate future is what I’m concerned with right now.

When I first received the news, I immediately thought about the things I’d buy with the money:

• A new teapot to replace the one the kitties broke;
• New socks! I have maybe one pair without holes in them;
• A non-stick pan, since mine now sticks;
• Tickets to the A’s game where Rickey Henderson’s jersey will be retired; and
• Blinds and hanging plants for the porch.

Then I started laughing when I realized how modest these items are. It’s pretty funny to trade in a 2 carat diamond ring for some socks and a frying pan!

Though not suffering from a lengthy (and, I’m sure, in the hot’n’humid east coast summer) stinky strike like my friends in Toronto, there has been a certain level of garbage-related weirdness around here lately.

A bunch of kids play at the cul de sac end of my short street. Sometimes they play basketball – the hoop stays there all year round – sometimes it’s baseball, and often it’s skateboarding. It’s nice to see and hear the kids having so much fun, and I’ve gotten to know them enough that we greet each other as they run past. The day Michael Jackson* died, I saw one of these kids sitting on his basketball across the street with his head in his hands. I went over and asked if he was okay. He lifted his tear-stained young face to me and said, “Michael, man. Michael.” He bowed his head again and I respectfully left him to mourn his fallen idol.

A few days ago, a broken skateboard was left on the lawn of the people next door, the ones with the constantly barking dogs. I didn’t think anything of it until it appeared on my lawn, right next to the garbage can, which was sitting at the curb awaiting collection. I put it into the can and wondered what that was all about.

Last night, a woman was parked outside my house, casually dropping trash out of her windows. Fast food wrappers, bags, huge soda cups, a half-drunk Frappucino, and other detritus. There must have been a couple of pounds of it. I asked her what she thought she was doing, and she started yelling at me that she could do whatever she wanted and who did I think I was. I asked if she’d like it if someone threw garbage all over her street, and she got even angrier.

I gave up on the whole thing and walked back into the house, hearing her continued ranting behind me, including calling me a racist (she was African-American). She left soon after, but I actually worried for a couple of hours that she might come back with an irate boyfriend to continue the argument. Nothing happened, but it was pretty depressing. The truth is that I would have said the same thing to anyone who did that, regardless of race, but I guess you can never disregard race in America. I wonder if that day will ever come.

Not surprisingly, I had a hard time getting to sleep that night. I tossed and turned, finally giving in to the inevitable and reading Sag Harbor (in which race relations also play a role) into the cold light of dawn. As I finally drifted off to sleep, the garbage trucks began to roar up my street.

*I was intrigued by a quote in Joan Acocella’s recent essay in the “New Yorker”, where the great Fred Astaire, having been taught the Moonwalk by Michael Jackson, told the young star that they both danced out of anger.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
— Albert Einstein

Well, I’m no Einstein, and color me crazy, ’cause I refused to admit that I couldn’t get the pictures from my aged camera. I kept trying, and voilà! Here are the cemetery photos I’ve been wanting to show you.

The sign reading “Little River Cemetery” is in the distance.

You can see the grass is golden, and it’s foggy – coastal summer!

The tall marker is for the five children lost by one family in the 1880s.

The forest behind the cemetery.

One side of the “bowl” in the woods.

Peeking through the trees behind the cemetery to the ocean.

The ocean behind the forest.

The beautiful village of Mendocino

Still dog-dazzied, we headed to the Mendocino farmer’s market.

It’s hard to imagine a more idyllic setting. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this romantic village, it’s on a rocky headland, jutting out into the rocky Pacific ocean. The village was established in 1850, and if you look at the photo above, you will see that it hasn’t changed much over the years. All telephone wires are buried, and fast food stores and chain stores are banned. The Historical Society (or Hysterical Society, as some of the locals refer to it) is diligent about preserving the Victorian look of the town. It is generally considered one of the most beautiful towns in America, and frequently stands in for New England in movies and television shows, notably Murder, She Wrote.

The farmer’s market (I never know if it should be farmer’s or farmers’ – does anyone more grammatically correct know which is right?) takes place every Friday on one of the quaint streets overlooking the sea. With her big basket over her arm, my sister expertly steered me to the best vendors for strawberries (four pints, destined to become a pie), carrots, heirloom tomatoes, fresh spinach, spicy garlic, and my favorite soap from Lovers Lane Farm.

Megan asked the carrot vendor about “the fruit people”. He smiled and pointed across the road, and off we went. On the way across the street, my sister explained that farmer’s market politics had dictated that the Fruit People couldn’t be part of the regular market because they came all the way from Fresno. Her opinion was that if they wanted to drive a couple of hundred miles to sell their fruit, that was their business. Also Fresno is hotter and sunnier than the coast, so their peaches, etc. are much better quality.

The Fruit People were swarmed, locals welcoming them back. The other vendors had circulated a petition to ask for their return. Apparently they had the correct permits and all was well. We got both white and yellow peaches, fresh almonds, and some dried fruit. Everything was delicious. Our basket and my Chico bag were overflowing, so we headed back to the car to go home and get ready for that night’s barbecue.

Up next: the barbecue and the hay bale haircut!

A combination of talent and necessity has made my sister an excellent cook. I complain about the lack of decent take out and delivery in Oakland, but she has no delivery at all, the nearest Pizza Hut being a 40 minute drive away, and no edible take-out if she did make the drive (Pizza Hut and Mickey D’s being pretty much the culinary limits, though there are really good sit-down restaurants). So whenever I’m there, the food is always great, and it’s all the better for not being made by Me.

When we got home from the cemetery, she made pizza dough and set it to rise in the sun in her garden. Of course, she had a supply of tomato sauce on hand, along with spicy garlic and lipstick peppers from last week’s farmer’s market, as well as locally made sausage. It seemed to take her no time at all to make calzones for dinner (and a few extra for her lunch during the week), along with baby lettuces and balsamic vinaigrette. Dinner was served, along with organic local wine. My brother-in-law did the dishes while we girls talked and giggled as only sisters can.

Late that night, I emerged from the bliss of quilts to offload some of the wine. At this point, I have to explain that to get to my sister’s bathroom, you go out the front door onto the porch, which has a roof (good in winter) and beautiful plants (good all year). Turn left, pass the Hippies Use Side Door sign, and you’re at the bathroom door. Inside, there’s a skylight over the shower, which is decorated with a unique and gorgeous mosaic pattern, along with the usual appointments.

Imagine my surprise when I grabbed the doorknob and found it to be slimy. And gushy. And gross. I pulled my hand away in horror and examined the doorknob. A banana slug was curled around it, minding its own business and completely grossing me out.

Hmm.

It was around 1 am. I seriously considered waking up my brother-in-law, but I knew that would wake up my sister, and neither of us would enjoy that. (Later my BIL admitted that he heard me squeal and just giggled and went back to sleep.) I finally decided that now was as good a time as any to act like a grown-up, so I got a wine bottle out of the recycling and used the neck to poke it off the doorknob. Ick.

However, I neglected to wipe off the doorknob before turning it, so I got slimed all over again. Beginning to see a theme here with the slow learning?

I had never encountered this particular form of wildlife before (nor do I hope to again), but apparently it’s so common that there is a Banana Slug for Peace float in the local Fourth of July Parade (thanks to Meloukhia for the visual). Trust me, they are much cuter in float form than wrapped around a doorknob late at night.

It must have been kind of weird for Canadians to celebrate Canada Day in the middle of the week. Have a day off, then go back to work! Don’t celebrate too enthusiastically or try and go anywhere too far away, and forget about that long weekend.

Here Independence Day is on Saturday, which is also kind of weird. Most off us have the day off anyway, and not everyone got Friday off (I know I didn’t). Garbage was collected (lucky us, compared to the striking Toronto), but there was no mail. The library is closed today, but I’m not sure yet if there will be mail. The air has been full of barbecue smoke for the past couple of days, and last night there were ad hoc and possibly illegal fireworks here in the ‘hood.

Back when fireworks were legal, the Glorious Fourth was celebrated with style at the Hellman family’s mansion (now known as Dunsmuir House), right here in Oaktown. In 1916, Mr. Hellman spent the equivalent of $2,300 in today’s dollars on fireworks, with the alluring names of Silver Fountains, Dragon Nests, and Diamond Mines. The family hosted their friends at a day-long party, culminating in a formal, candlelit dinner, the fabulous fireworks display, and a dance in the carriage house.

Those were indeed the days.

Quince with two of her seven babies: Audrey (behind) and June (front)

The kittens turn Terrible Two today! They are two weeks old in this picture, and their mother was around nine months old. My neighbor, the wonderful and compassionate P, had finally managed to lure the cat close enough to cut off the flea collar which was nearly choking her. P had seen the young cat around all through the winter, but she had shied away. By the time P got the newly named Quince’s trust, the cat was already pregnant.

P valiantly looked after Quince and the kittens, who were born on her tax returns. All seven survived and found happy homes, ranging from a musician in a bohemian neighborhood to an adoring fashionista in a fancy one. Quince and P have been living happily ever after, and June and Audrey have been living naughtily ever after. For all my complaining about them, I don’t know what I’d do without my beautiful girls.

*Italian for “naughty”. The fact that it contains the word “cat” and mine have been so naughty lately made me think of it. My niece is celebrating her birthday today in Italy (not that she’s naughty, of course – she’s completely wonderful) and I’m reading Bill Buford’s delightful memoir “Heat”, which is set in Italian restaurants, so I kind of have Italy on my mind right now.

My new-ish (and so far unbroken) red microwave has a voice feature, presumably for those who are microwaving blind. You can turn the voice low, high, or off, and I keep it off, since I’m not a big fan of chatting with appliances or being told what to do by them, other than by Jill*, my GPS. When I was getting ready for work this morning, I heard the microwave announce “Voice low” then “Voice high”. And I was nowhere in the room. Puzzled, I turned it to “Voice off”.

A few days ago, I had a similar experience with the radio. It just came on, even though I was in the bedroom and it was in the kitchen. Suddenly, the house was full of Curtis Mayfield on KISS FM. Even stranger, when I tried to turn it off, it stubbornly refused, possibly wanting me to hear the end of Mr. Mayfield’s song about hell. I had to unplug it.

Ghosts? Short circuits? Who knows?

When I arrived at BART today, I inserted my ticket in the machine to add the extra $6.20 I needed for my round-trip to the city (I spent $38 filling up the car today. I’m not kidding. I will be BART-ing more often, I fear), and it spit it out with disdain. I tried again, but the machine again pushed it back at me, making a distressed (and distressing) binking sound.

I went to see the agent. He said it had been demagnetized (by my magnetic personality?), and gave me the forty cents that was still on the old ticket. Somehow it seemed like extra money, getting it in coins.

Finally at work, I had a meeting with a gentleman whose firm we recently hired to manage some money for one of our clients. His phone buzzed, and it was his wife sending him a text message to say she was going into labor with their first child (it’s a boy!). In Chicago. We cut the meeting short and he hastened to the airport. I hope he makes it on time. It does seem like a good omen, though, for the beginning of something new.

*You can choose different voices for the GPS, and “Jill” is the American woman one. They should really have voices that are more fun, like Cary Grant or Zsa Zsa Gabor, but perhaps it would take them too long to drawl, “Turn left in 300 feet, dahling.”

You know, one of the librarians is always kind of weird with me. Not the nice old lady, not the groovy, aloof guy (there has to be a story behind his working there), but the girl with the facial piercings and that ‘tude.

It started off with her remarking on how many books I read. You’d think this would be a positive in the eyes of a librarian, but the way she said it suggested that there was something faintly felonious about it. Was I using up more than my fair share of resources? Do I have deplorable taste in literature? Am I risking her manicure by making her check out so many books at once?

I don’t know, and I haven’t ventured to ask.

When I went in today and returned my books, I handed her my card. Patrons can request books on line, and when they arrive at the local library, you get an email. So I knew I had a couple of books on hold, waiting for me.

She took the card and scanned it, then peered at the computer screen. “You have two holds,” she said. Then she looked at me and said, “I assume that’s why you’re here.”

No, honey, I’m here to admire your mutilations and crankiness.

“Uh, yes,” is all I actually said. She scanned the books and left them on the counter, then walked away.

Weird, right?

On Saturday morning, Brother-In-Law was changing my car’s oil in the driveway. My sister and I heard him talking outside and wondered if he was talking to himself. Peeking out the window, we saw it was a Jehovah’s Witness or two (they seem to travel in pairs or packs, possibly for protective reasons). We were both amazed.

These folks went to an obscure town with a population of 400 people (even locals consider Albion to be isolated), then drove miles and miles down a country road, then down a narrow, rutted dirt road, then walked down an offshoot of the dirt road to find my sister’s house.

Those are some determined would-be converters, my friend.

I have to wonder what their success rate is, if any, in a place populated mostly by people seeking an off the grid, unconventional lifestyle. My guess is that other than atheists and agnostics, most people practice some kind of paganism or nature worship. Albion doesn’t even have a church (or a bar, for that matter – in Oakland, storefront churches and liquor stores seem to go hand in hand). So I can’t believe that any of its non-conformist residents are going to say, “That sounds good! Count me in!”

Two days after I got home, I was visited by my very own pair of JWs. Oddly, it was Monday morning, and you’d think most people would be at work instead of hanging around the living room watching Jerry Springer and waiting to be converted. Again, it wouldn’t seem to be fertile ground for conversion to the cause. I saw them coming down the street and closed the blinds, thankful for once that my doorbell doesn’t work. I did a pretty convincing imitation of not being home, if I say so myself (though the car was in the driveway).

What are the odds of being visited twice in two days, in places so far apart?

Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket.

Today is my fabulous sister’s birthday. As you’d expect, it’s a national holiday. But she’s not celebrating…

Megan’s sweet kitty Ramona decided to wake her up a couple of days ago by jumping on her face and scratching her eye. Clutching her bleeding eye, she asked her husband to drive her to the hospital. Without coffee, to give you an idea of the urgency.

There’s nothing like being an ER employee to get you expedited service. In less than an hour, she was equipped with numbing eye drops, painkillers, and a piratical eye patch (though no parrot, or Johnny Depp, for that matter). She observed later that this was the first time in the seven years she’s worked for the hospital that she’s been on the receiving end, rather than the giving end, of care.

Except, I said, when she applied for that EMT job. On her way to submit her paperwork, Megan had a car accident. Her car was pretty much totaled, but she wasn’t hurt, and, yes, she got the job.

I called her today to wish her happy birthday, and discovered that though my card had arrived on time, it was even less satisfactory than I feared. In fact, it was completely unsatisfactory.

Because it wasn’t there.

Brother In Law picked up the mail on Saturday, and when he gave it to Megan, she saw my handwriting. On closer inspection, the envelope has been torn, and then taped. On even closer inspection, the envelope proved to be completely empty. Torn, taped, and empty.

She took off the eyepatch and looked again, but it was still torn, taped, and empty.

Happy birthday, family style!

I just finished reading Jeff Guinn’s fascinating book, Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde. Coincidentally, today marks the 75th anniversary of their bloody deaths on a bleak back road in Louisiana.

I never knew much about them – the closest I got was Eminem’s eerie “97 Bonnie & Clyde” – and was inspired to read the book by this review in the New York Times (I feed my reading addiction by getting their Books email newsletter every Friday). I’ve always found gangsters (also spies and war movies) kind of boring, but this was a fascinating read, beautifully written and impeccably researched.

What struck me the most about this ill-fated pair is how incredibly incompetent they were. It’s surprising that such an inept pair became so notorious, though the presence of aspiring poet and fashion-plate Bonnie Parker (Clyde, too, was always well-dressed) set the Barrow Gang apart. They grew up in dire poverty in Texas, and the desperate economic conditions in the country at that time definitely resonate today.

I’ve never seen the 1967 film, starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, but guess what I’m watching tonight?

After yesterday’s session, my boss and I headed out of the office. I turned toward the BART station, and he quickly corrected me, saying, “We need a drink.” We did, and I followed him to the Mandarin Oriental’s dimly lit and welcoming bar, where the staff seemed to know him pretty well. Who has he been drinking with there if it wasn’t Me?

We ordered restorative mojitos, and before they appeared, we were treated to a dish of smoked almonds and mixed olives. Boss had to take a call, so I was left to the ministrations of the waiter and the soothing sounds of Frank Sinatra.

When he returned, we rehashed the whole thing. Boss thinks we’ll be fine, though we’ll probably get a letter explaining our faults, which are neither small nor few, as my Dad used to say, but hopefully that should be it. I hope that we won’t be audited again for a long time, but at least we now know what to expect and will be better prepared.

After our drinks, we went to face the horrors of rush hour BART together. The calming effects of Sinatra and alcohol evaporated rapidly once we descended into the dark bowels of BART. BART is the only place I ever see people lining up English-style for public transit. It does make it seem slightly more civilized – at least until you actually get on the train. I only had three stops to go, but Boss had to go to the end of the line. We hugged good-bye, and as the train pulled away, he waved at me and gave me the thumbs up.

I still wish the door had hit them in the ass on the way out, though.

Well, the inevitable was delayed. I got to the office half an hour before the auditrons were due. An hour later, neither they nor my boss had appeared. I called him a few times before we connected, and it turned out that the fun was set to start at 1:00 this afternoon instead of first thing this morning. So I didn’t have to get up at 6:30 after a fitful night’s nightmares, or brave rush hour BART after all.

Good to know.

Since I had time on my formerly manicured hands, I decided to pop out and get a card for my sister’s birthday on Monday and pick up a bagel for brunch. My Etsy addiction has heightened my standards to the point where nothing looked good enough for my sis, but I picked the cutest one they had. So card will probably be late and not up to standard.

I got my bagel and repaired to the office. On opening it up, the interior was suspiciously pink. I sniffed it cautiously. Smoked salmon! Ugh! Salmon is bad enough, but smoked salmon is beyond the pale. So I packed it up and went back to exchange it.

So far, par for the course.

They’re coming back on June 1 to give us our report card. Hopefully that will be it for another few years.

Parents, I hate to break it to you, but your kids are probably always going to hate veggies. You may think you’ve convinced little Timmy to eat his greens, but as soon as he hits the dorm room, it’ll be pizza and beer until he has to start pretending to be a real grown-up, too.

Maybe it’s because my mental age hovers anywhere from 12 to 18, but I’m still not that crazy about them. Potatoes are good, but apparently they aren’t vegetables. Disqualified by yumminess, is my guess. Artichokes and asparagus are good, too, especially with melted butter or hollandaise sauce, though that negates the “good for you” thing. Roasted heirloom beets with clementines and mint are nice, and Brussels sprouts roasted with extra-virgin olive oil and dressed with capers and lemon are also good, though you can see where I’m going with this. The yum factor is solely based on the disguise, rather than the actual vegetable.

I mean, who says, “I’d just love a carrot stick?” Who gets as excited about, say, steamed spinach, as they do about a freshly-baked baguette or croissant? The truth is, if it’s good for you, it’s not delicious.

I kind of hate salads, too, to tell you the truth, unless they’re heavily disguised with dressing and/or things that are bad for you, like croutons and cheese. Again, these negate the “good for you” factor, and you’re totally starving an hour later, just like Chinese food, only way less yummy.

Before you start mailing me vitamins and emailing me about scurvy and such-like, I’ll put your minds at ease by telling you I do eat my vegetables, and mostly unadorned at that. But I always eat them first, to get them out of the way, unless I’m in a social situation where I don’t want to display or explain my quirks.

When we were kids, our parents made us drink milk at dinner. We all hated it, and still do, to this day. Pretty much everything we didn’t like back then, we don’t like now, but then, we are a remarkably picky bunch. My method of dealing with the lactic grossness was to drink it down as fast as humanly possible and then eat something to remove the resulting milk slime from my tongue. This backfired on me once, when I was halfway through before realizing the milk was past its prime, but to this day, I still get the worst things out of the way first, whether it’s work or vegetables.

The audit continues apace. I wouldn’t have thought that a firm which employs three people full-time and two people part-time would have all that much to look through, but I would have been wrong about that (along with many other things). Not only did we spend all day on it, but they’re coming back on Thursday, so Boss and I have that to look forward to (she said ungrammatically).

I’d really, really love to complain about it in detail, but the process has made me paranoid, and I’m afraid they’ll find my blog somehow and I’ll get in trouble. So you’ll just have to take my word for the hideousness of it all, and even if you’re someone I don’t like, I hope it never happens to you.

As I took the train in today, clinging to the metal bar in the rush hour crush and trying not to think about it, it occurred to me that what having money really buys you is time and space. Time to do things you like; to go places when it’s not rush hour. Space in the form of a house big enough for all your things and stuff, far away from barking dogs and other annoyances. Space in the form of a chauffeur-driven car*, where even if traffic is bad, you can be comfortably ensconced in the back seat, reading Vogue or The New Yorker and possibly drinking a martini.

*Whenever I see yet another Hollywood star(let) being arrested for DUI, I always wonder why on earth they don’t have a driver, when they can clearly afford it. Seems like a logical and practical idea. Don’t club-hop without it!

Suggested additions to Oakland’s Wikipedia page:

Sounds: Barking dogs, bass-booming cars

Symbols: Shopping cart people, potholes

Mayor: McCheese

Hobbies: Homicide, foreclosures

A Chronicle columnist recently asked readers which movie they had watched the most. An overwhelming majority picked Star Wars, a movie I have only seen once*.

It was the summer of 1977**. We were in Maine, and my father had volunteered me without my knowledge to baby-sit (or as he more accurately put it, “brat-bash”) two little French kids, Olivier and Thierry, the terrors of the Riviera.

Both parents were marine biologists, and were working at the same lab as Dad that summer. They needed someone to take care of the boys while they were at work. Unbeknownst to me, they had already gone through countless sitters. Part of the problem was their parents’ method of bribing them to behave and being thoroughly inconsistent; part of the problem was the fact that they didn’t speak English. It was a lethal combo, let me tell you.

Unfortunately for me, I had taken French instead of Home Ec when I was in 7th grade. My point was that I already knew how to cook, but I didn’t know how to speak French. Mom and Dad had to persuade the school powers that were to let me, since you weren’t supposed to take a second language until 9th grade. My parents said that if I failed the first semester, I’d go and make Jell-O with everyone else. I got a 97. But I also got Olivier and Thierry.

I was about as enamored with kids then as I am now, so I was less than thrilled with this new assignment, especially when the brattiness became apparent. However, I was mean Mary Poppins with them, and their parents pretty much considered me a miracle worker. They also paid my way to stay with them in Nice the following summer for a return engagement. Score!

Anyway, to reward Olivier and Thierry for breaking most of their bad habits, I took them to see “Star Wars” at the historic Criterion Theater in Bar Harbor. It soon became clear that this was not one of my better ideas, since the afore-mentioned lack of English became an immediate problem. I spent the whole movie explaining what was going on in whispers as they asked “Mais qui est-il?” in their piercing little voices (for some reason, French kids seem to have particularly piercing voices). I still don’t really know what happened in that movie.

I’d have to say my most frequently watched movie is Repo Man. From the Iggy Pop theme to the witty dialogue to the awesome soundtrack and just the craziness of it all, it never fails to charm me, even after 25 years.

What’s yours?

*Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only person in the entire US of A who hates driving and cell phones and would only watch “American Idol” or “Dancing with the Stars” if there was a gun to my head. Also I never text anyone, ever.

**A memorable summer for me for many other reasons and other blog posts.

Hi there! I’ve missed you, too!

I’m sorry to say that I wasn’t lounging by the pool with an umbrella cocktail in my hand, or being the toast of the Cannes Film Festival, or off on a quick trip to Tahiti.

I was being audited.

Well, not me – my firm. But since I’m a partner, I figured I’d be Lucy to the auditors’ Ricky, with lots of ‘splaining to do.

First of all, auditors* like to start early, so I had to be on BART at the rushiest part of rush hour, with all the other suburban losers. We were jammed in there like a Japanese subway. Is that your briefcase, or are you just happy to see me?

The auditors were humor-free, as you would expect, and it was unnerving to have someone writing down everything I said. Sure, it’s worth hanging on my every word, but writing it down? One of my few talents is reading upside down, so I kept sneaking peeks and hoping I wouldn’t get caught.

They wrapped up the day-long session by asking for approximately a zillion more documents. They’ll be coming back on Monday to inspect them and probably ask more questions. If they have enough fun, they might even stay until Tuesday!

When I told our handsome receptionist that we’d need the conference room all day Monday and Tuesday, he started laughing. I asked him why, and he said, “You should have seen your face when you said they were coming back.”

The whole thing was so unnerving that I hadn’t eaten all day, and so exhausting that even the thought of heating up leftover pizza for dinner was out of the question. I fed the cats, drank two martinis, and went to bed.

Note: My boss/partner was there, too. Neither of us enjoyed it.

*My first job after college was as a receptionist at CDIC. I was placing a call to the Auditor General on behalf of the Chairman, and asked their receptionist for “the auditor genital”. Fortunately, she laughed, and the Auditor didn’t hear my gaffe.