Suzy Says

So my brother Jonathan called me first thing this morning (and when I say “first thing”, I mean well before 8:00) to tell me that he’s:

– Coming down to the city sometime today but doesn’t know when (it’s nearly a 4 hour drive one way to San Francisco from Albion, where he lives);

– He’s going to see Spinal Tap at the Warfield tonight with a bunch of friends who also live in Albion;

– He’s not sure if he’s going to stay with us or someone else or go home after the show, even though it will be midnight or later by then.

So now I’m waiting for him to call me back if/when he knows what he’s doing and take it from there. I don’t deal well with this kind of spontaneity, especially on a Sunday night (Rufus and I both have to be at work by 6:00 am on Monday). So stay tuned…

Our cat Cleo just hates pigeons.

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

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

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

Here’s an item from a recent issue of FHM magazine (the UK edition, not to be confused with the sanitized US version):

“Mary Read was one of only two female pirates in the 18th century, and they both worked the Caribbean. Like Anne Bonny [the other female pirate and one of the most feared pirates around of either sex] she’d been made to impersonate a boy and had reacted badly to cross-dressing. She’d lied her way into the Dutch infantry and won medals for bravery — until peace broke out. So she went to sea to find adventure. She made her name when her lover was challenged to a duel by a pirate. To save her man, Read picked a quarrel with the buccaneer, demanding settlement on the spot. She ducked the shot from his pistol and before he could hack her with his cutlass, tore open her blouse to reveal a well-endowed chest. The pirate paused in mid-lunge; Read sliced his head off.”

Read later died in prison in Jamaica, along with her unborn child, and Anne Bonny vanished before she could be hanged (and was never found). Both women were just 20.

I’m telling you, it must be the truffles and champagne! I’m seriously considering moving.

Find out the awful truth! Are you a bad co-worker? I, of course, am a cool co-worker. Ask anyone — except the new guy, who spent half an hour yesterday telling me how the way they did things at his old job was just SO MUCH BETTER. If so, why are you here, pal? OK, better start acting cool again!

This pretty much sums up my math abilities!

Best birthday gift by far: Rufus had a star in the Cassiopeia constellation named for our beloved Buddy, who left us in April, 2000.

Now he is really watching over us forever.

It’s my birthday! It’s sunny and beautiful out, as it often is on my birthday, and I have taken the day off. I never work on my birthday.

It’s only 8:30 am and my whole family has already called me to wish me happy birthday. HBO was especially good to me this year, with 2 new episodes of “Sex & the City”, the second season now on DVD, and a new show, “6 Feet Under”. Sue Grafton has published the latest in her “alphabet” series today, too. So far, so good!

Wouldn’t you think that if your upstairs neighbor staggered in drunk, falling over and knocking furniture onto the floor at 3:00 am, that at least she would sleep in the next morning and you would get a *little* peace and quiet then? Nope, not if your upstairs neighbor is hyper chick. She sleeps about the same amount as Hitler, up again before 7:00 am and stomping around. It’s amazing to me that someone as skinny as she is can make so damn much noise just walking around.

I wish we had our own house so we wouldn’t have to hear anyone but ourselves. Too bad that adorable house for sale on Laguna Street is $1.3 million. If you want a house, get out of the city.

I live in an apartment, so all the gardening I do is read “Garden Design”, water the house plants, and make sure the cats are supplied with wheat grass and catnip. But I love to read about and visit gardens.

I recently came across the Historic Trees website, where you can buy trees and seedlings grown from trees of historical or literary importance. For example, you can grow a tulip polar grown from a tree planted by George Washington (a life-long, avid gardener) himself. Or a red maple grown by Thoreau near his cabin on Walden Pond. Or even an ancestor of a tree planted by Johnny Appleseed.

Years ago, I visited Mark Twain’s house in Hartford. While there, I picked up an acorn from one of his oak trees. It has had a place of honor my desk ever since, and how I wish I could plant it. If I had my own house I could grow a Mark Twain oak tree. But given the insane prices of real estate in San Francisco (example: a 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment around the corner from us is now for sale for $878,000), I don’t think I’m ever going to own a house here, unless I win the lottery. But if my brother and sister manage to buy land, I think I know what my housewarming (or gardenwarming) gift to those two dedicated gardeners will be.

Today would have been Marilyn Monroe’s 75th birthday.

It’s hard to imagine her as an old woman — she always said herself that she would never make old bones. Her untimely death made sure that she remains forever young and beautiful in our minds.

A couple of months ago, Rufus and I visited her grave in Westwood Memorial Park in Hollywood.

Her grave, set into a wall with many others, is undistinguished except for the stains from fans’ hands and lips, paying homage to the star nearly 4 decades after her death. The flower holder on her grave is full of flowers, many with handwritten notes, and other floral offerings are laid on the ground in front of the wall containing her grave. She is still loved and not forgotten, and I think that would please her.

I have felt a certain connection to Marilyn ever since I was a kid and first saw her movies on our tiny black and white TV. Even back then I knew there was only one Marilyn and there would only ever be one. Our birthdays are just three days apart, and I was born the year she died. We have the same middle name, too, and we both have crazy mamas. I have been more fortunate than she was in my life. Perhaps when you are given a gift as great as hers, you get cheated in other areas. I’m sure I am only one of many who think that having a real friend or two might have saved this beautiful woman’s life.

Happy birthday, Marilyn! Your memory lives on.

Yet another bad night last night. Same as Monday night: got to sleep, woke up three or four hours later, couldn’t get back to sleep. Might have something to do with the fact that it was about a zillion unexpected degrees yesterday and there wasn’t a breath of air. I don’t know how people live where it’s that hot all the time or part of the year. But then I guess you have air conditioning so you can actually sleep. I just hate lying under a sheet and sweating. Ugh. Still hot, today, too, “record-breaking” again, and I am just a zombie.

They surprised me at work yesterday with a little get-together in honor of my birthday. It was as unexpected as the heat, especially because my birthday isn’t until next week. They gave me a card and a little present and we had a tray of cheese and crackers, fresh fruit, and champagne. The champagne was coincidentally from Roederer Estates in Anderson Valley, where my friend Mark works. It was really nice that they remembered my birthday, noticed that I don’t like cake and do like champagne, but also really embarrassing! I was blushing!

I know I’m shallow, but shopping always cheers me up. I was tired of our old every day plates (clear glass from Cost Plus bought nearly 10 years ago) so I bought new dishes !

I got 4 sets of the happy yellow ones and 4 sets of the sapphire blue ones. Very Provence. Now to replace the every day silverware. I am going to recycle all the old stuff by giving it to my brother and sister, who can definitely use it.

I hadn’t realized what a Francophile I was until I started this blog. I don’t think a week goes by that I don’t mention France in some way. It’s a voyage of self-discovery without the horrror of airplane food and Customs lines!

Just got an e-mail from my Dad about what sort of funeral he would like to have. The fun never stops.

So I got to sleep OK last night, but woke up four hours later (thanks, Jack) and couldn’t get back to sleep. At all. Although just as I was beginning to drift off, the alarm went off. Why is it that I can ALWAYS sleep when the alarm goes off? So today I feel completely out of it (but in a bad way) and barely able to do the mathy job things.

Walking to work this morning seemed to take forever and was nightmarish and bizarre. Saw a 7 cop drug bust, one cop with his gun actually drawn. Way to start the week!

It’s Memorial Day, and I am thinking about my grandfathers. Both were named Ernest, though one was American and the other English. Both fought in World War One, or as I think of it, the Great War, and both survived. My American grandfather, a farm boy from New York State, was the only survivor of his entire unit. My English grandfather, a streetwise Londoner, was gassed.

This painting, by John Singer Sargent, the great portrait painter, is of soldiers who have been gassed like my grandfather and who are helping each other blindly to the first aid station somewhere in rural France. Sargent painted this on the spot as it actually happened, hence the power of the painting, which is only enhanced by the children playing soccer in the backgroud.

Both of my grandfathers were plagued for the rest of their long lives by nightmares of what they had seen and done while in France, but they never once doubted that what they had done was right and good and worth the sacrifice.

An old friend of my father’s, Allie Cave, whom he had known since he was three years old, once told me that her fiance had been killed in the Great War. Allie had never married, and I, at 15, thought this was because she had loved her fiance so deeply that she couldn’t think of marrying anyone else after he had perished so nobly. Allie laughed at this notion and said, “My dear, you don’t understand. There were no men left. Only old men and little boys.”

That day, she showed me vividly the heavy cost of war, no matter how right the cause. Allie took me to St. Clement Danes, a beautiful church in the center of London built by the great Sir Christopher Wren in 1680.

The church is now dedicated to the Allied soldiers of World War II, and contains several glass cases, each with a book listing the name of a man or woman who was killed. It’s a very moving experience to see all those books, all those names, and to think of the lives they might have had and the loss of those who loved them.

So on this day, I am thankful to my grandfathers and their fellow soldiers who were not so fortunate. Thank you for our freedom. You are not forgotten.

Woke up this morning to discover that our fishtank had changed during the night from a safe haven into a sort of bouillabaisse.

Apparently the heating unit — which is only a couple of months old — overheated and cooked our poor fish overnight. I can hardly stand to think about it. We only fed them the day before yesterday and everything was fine when we went to bed last night. Rufus has taken them out and cleaned the tank, so now it is standing, empty and reproachful, on the kitchen table. I don’t know if we should just put it away or start again in a few weeks’ time. Clearly we are unfit fish parents.

Today my sister Megan turns 30, and I am looking back over these three decades and feeling so lucky that she came along.

Megan was supposed to be born on my birthday, and since I was 8 years old at the time, I wasn’t very pleased. My birthday should be all about me, after all. But on my 9th birthday, Megan was brought home from the hospital, a tiny (5 pounds) brown-haired baby (a thrill for my parents after 3 blondes) and life has never been the same.

My mother was 40 when she had Megan, and this was her second Caesarean section. Both of these things were unusual at the time, and Mom’s parents came to help take care of us since Mom was not well and stayed in bed for what seemed like a long time after Megan’s birth.

Because I changed her diapers, fed her, played with her, gave her baths and so on, she has always been something like my own child to me. This feeling was reinforced when she lived with me for 3 years following our parents’ divorce, in her last three years of high school. So in a way, I know what it’s like to wait up for my daughter to come home, to worry about her, and to be filled with a love and pride that is unlike any other.

Megan and I think we are some kind of twins because we were born 9 years and 9 days apart. We often say the same things at the same time, and rarely go more than two days without talking on the phone. When I look at her, I see all the Megans she has been and is: the little baby laughing in her playpen at the lilacs waving in the wind outside the window (her first laugh); learning to swim in Maine, so skinny that her bathing suit straps were tied together with ribbon; a tall teenager with her beloved rescued stray dog Jesse; just married at 20, her face radiant with love and hope; graduating from Montessori teaching school; teaching, her classroom filled with happy children; on the dark, muddy road the night we found our father fallen from a stroke, and the two of them, the same height, but Megan tall, young and strong with her bright hair and Dad, his hair thinning and grey, being helped to the plane by his tall, lovely child, that little baby he brought home to us 30 years ago, now a strong, beautful woman.

I see all those things and I am so proud of her and the person she is. My little sister, my friend. Today is truly a day to celebrate, the day that brought you to us.

Oh, yeah, making something people really want/need illegal just works soooo well, doesn’t it? Remember Prohibition, anyone? Let’s just waste tax dollars and police time in prosecuting hookers instead of chasing real criminals. An argument could be made, in fact, that being a prostitute is one of the few honest ways to make a living. Their customers get what they pay for, and the cost and services are both agreed upon and paid for on the spot. How many professions can say that?

Making it illegal isn’t going to make it go away.

I do realize that language is an ever-changing, ever-evolving thing (otherwise we’d all still be speaking Shakespearan English — egads!), and I do realize that being a linguistics major makes me both petty and pedantic about the abuse of the English language, but dang. I am sick and tired of language mistakes becoming accepted because so many people make the same mistake.

Prime example: orientated or disorientated. Should be: oriented or disoriented. However, people have been using the “tater” version so long, it is now included in Webster’s dictionary.

Another one that drives me crazy: irregardless. What you have there is a double negative, saying NOT regardless. This is another one that appears in Webster, though with the caveat that it’s really only acceptable in speech. But it’s not far from being acceptable in speech to being included as a real entry in the dictionary.

Other examples:

One of my husband’s co-workers actually told him he “disincluded” something instead of saying “forgot” or “omitted”. Fortunately, even Webster’s, despite their feet (or pages) of clay, don’t recognize this as a real word. Yet.

“I could care less”. Think about this. I COULD care less….but I don’t. Should be: “I couldn’t care less.” In other words, there is no way on Earth I could care any less about this than I do. Get it now? Saying “I could care less” means you do care a certain amount.

“That’s between him and I.” Should be: “That’s between him and ME”. I don’t know why this one trips people up so much. Maybe they think “me” doesn’t sound correct or proper, but newsflash: it is. Anywhere you have words like between, for, with…use me, not I.

“Very unique”. If something is unique, there is only one of them. Period. The thing in question is incomparable, and therefore it cannot be very, sort of, or any other modifier. It’s unique, and that’s it.

“I feel so badly about that.” You feel badly with your hands. That’s what we linguistics freaks call an adverb, and should only apply to a verb. Bad is an adjective and should be used with nouns or pronouns. Often used with linking words like feel, look, sound, or to be. Correct use: “She sang badly at the concert.” “He felt bad about missing their date.” OK?

I could go on, but I have filled my pettiness quota for the day.