Suzy Says

I finally finished looking through the boxes today. I had originally thought I could get rid of half of them. Ha! I have three boxes of books to be sold, and a box and a half of things for the auctioneer, but that leaves 30-mumble boxes taking up valuable space in my dainty living room. The box on the far left is nothing but cookbooks, including The One Maid Book of Cookery*, which used to belong to my grandmother and starts out “The conditions of living are fast changing, the number of gentle people living in flats with One Maid, or with no maid at all, is rapidly increasing. The One Maid Book of Cookery is specially written with a view to these modern conditions.”

You can almost hear the tone of horror with which the author wrote “with no maid at all” in 1913.

I have the same feeling about the boxes (or, as the cookbook writer might say, The Boxes). I keep looking over at them and being amazed all over again that they’re there. Every morning as I stumble past them/into them, I discover all over again that they have failed to vanish overnight, the way nightmares should.

I’ll avert my eyes and pour a nice, cold glass of Geyser Peak sauvignon blanc. It’s almost time for Jacques Pépin, and I know he’s having a glass, so I’ll join him. Just to be polite.

*When I opened it to copy the preface, I found a file card in my father’s writing for Borscht Moskovski, and a slip of paper in his mother’s beautiful hand with recipes for rice pudding and spiced gammon. Also a newspaper clippings with recipes for cheese straws and oxtail stew. Available upon request.

Remember how I called twice about a house, but didn’t get a response? Well, the owner called me last night and said she’d been out of town and was showing the house today at 11:00. I got some details from her (built in the 1940s; hardwood floors, even in the kitchen; 1,100 square feet; garage; no extortionate move-in costs) and set off in the Saturday morning sunshine.

As I crossed the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, it occurred to me that I have probably gone to Petaluma more in the past month than I ever did when my mother lived there. No wonder I never got that Daughter of the Year award. Just as well: it would be one more thing I’d have to find a place for. Or keep in yet another box.

The house is on a cul de sac, with a view of the rolling Sonoma hills, currently wearing their winter/spring green, though they’ll change their wardrobe to gold soon enough. It has a lovely garden in the back, with room for a vegetable garden, and a lawn bordered by flowery, vine-y plants. On a drip system! Best of all, there’s a sort of secret bower in the back of the garden, made of wooden trellises with a roof, shady and flowery and with an old fireplace.

Inside, the house has a working fireplace, built-in, curved shelves in the living room, a tiny chandelier in the equally tiny dining room, and a small kitchen with an electric (ick) stove, but you can’t have everything. Washer and dryer hook ups in the pantry with original beadboard, and a charming bathroom with the original square sink in a built-in cabinet, with little glass knobs for the drawers. And the bathtub works!

While I was filling out the application, other people started tramping through the house. The owner said she’d make a decision in about a week and let me know.

It’s going to be a long week.

Storm-tossed roses

Well, that decision was made for me. The owners of the white picket fence house want a total of $4,000 to move in. That’s first and last month’s rent, plus a security deposit, plus a pet deposit. All for a small, beige-carpeted house in a small town where it’s 100 degrees in the summer. In a state where unemployment is at an all-time high and the economy at all-time low. You’d think I could get a place in Manhattan for that kind of money.

So it’s out of my price range, and maybe it’s just as well. It would have taken literally every penny I had, plus a loan from my boss/partner, and I’d have no cushion whatsoever if something goes wrong with the car, or the kitties, or Me, for that matter, since I’m health insurance free at this point.

I’ve decided to write a friendly note to my landlords and ask if they would consider taking their stuff out of the garage, so I can put mine in. It would go a long away toward improving my tenuous mental health if I could get rid of the boxes in the living room. Also, I have to admit that it kind of annoys me not to have the full use of the property for which I’m paying rent. Especially when I can’t use the bathtub and most of the doors don’t close.

I’ll also ask if they’d be willing to buy plants, preferably drought-tolerant ones, to replace the sad brown grass. I’ll haul out the old grass and replace it if they’ll buy the materials. Having a severely depressed lawn tends to make Me depressed, too. Maybe if I can make it a little nicer here, I can take my time, save up some money, and look for the right house at the right price.

Maybe I’m just not a white picket fence kind of girl.

My mother would have been 77 today. The biggest gift she ever gave me was her love of music. She may well have been one of the few 70 year olds who enjoyed Blackalicious (though not before coffee). I think it’s a tribute to her that many of the albums she loved and played over and over again when I was young are such classics:

• Carole King, Tapestry
• Herb Alpert, Whipped Cream and Other Delights
• Cat Stevens, Tea for the Tillerman
• Moody Blues, Days of Future Passed
• Fleetwood Mac, Rumours
• Janis Joplin, Pearl
• Elton John, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
• Queen, A Night at the Opera
• Harry Belafonte, Calypso

Wherever you are, Mom, I hope you know that I still love the music you loved, and it comforts me to know that these albums gave you pleasure. I hope you know that we did our best for you, and that you are always with us.

Always being a little behind the times, today I finally realized that there were only three days left of the historic 40 year retrospective of Yves St Laurent’s exquisite work at the De Young Museum. Since two of those days are weekend days, the worst possible for visiting museums, I decided to dash across the Bay and pay homage to Monsieur St-Laurent before it was too late.

Driving through San Francisco on this warm, sunny day, with the windows down to let in the air characteristically spiced with eucalyptus and sea salt and listening to a Marvin Gaye* tribute on the radio, I thought how incredibly beautiful the city is. There is nowhere else like it. I was lucky to have lived there for so many years.

Embarrassingly, this was the first time I had visited the De Young since its alleged makeover was completed in 2005. Up close, I didn’t find it any prettier than it is from a distance, and I have to admit I miss the old building. But then, I am change-averse and past-loving.

So it’s not surprising that I liked the 1960s dresses the best, including a little black number Catherine Deneuve wore in Belle de Jour. Several of the dresses on display were made just for Mlle Deneuve, the ageless beauty who was YSL’s muse, as well as International Best Dressed Hall of Famers Jacqueline de Ribes and Lee Radziwill. Others were from the well-stocked closet of native San Franciscan Nan Kempner, the life-long fashionista who famously said, “I spend way more than I should…and way less than I want.”

Me, too.

*The great Marvin Gaye would have been 70 today. He was shot and killed by his father on the day before his 45th birthday. Amazingly, Marvin Sr. only received six years of probation for murdering his own son.

My BART covets:

The girl wearing a fabulous fuchsia taffeta trenchcoat, short, and carrying the incredible Louis Vuitton Alma bag in rose pop:

Honey, why are you on BART and not being glamorously chauffeured into town?

And then there’s the lovely wearing the sold out J Crew Astrid jacket in ivory:

who, with her knee high sassyboots, should have been stepping into her limo. Haughtily.

I would have felt underdressed if I weren’t wearing these:

And carrying this:

But a girl can still Covet. In the most unlikely places.

You’d think a sunny, breezy Monday, the traditional washing day, would be a good day to do a load of wash.

You’d be wrong.

I was virtuously doing the dishes when I noticed a muddy puddle slowly creeping toward me from the laundry room. I went to investigate, and was horrified to see that the washer was leaking. Not only was it leaking, it had flooded the litter box.

The mop was wholly inadequate to deal with it, so I sacrificed a couple of towels. As I cleaned, I wondered if I dared to wash the towels afterwards. What if it floods again? Is it worth the risk? Should I call the landlord? She may well wonder what on earth I’ve done now, since I’ve already had the sewer problem, the shower problem, the lock problem, and (unbeknownst to her) the mystery fire in just over a year of living here.

Maybe it really is time to move.

Like most tenants, there are a few things that annoy me about my rented accommodation. The garage being stuffed with my landlord’s stuff, so I can’t stuff it with mine and have to pay for storage (extra rent!). The fact that only the front and back doors actually close, so I can’t shut the cats out of the bedroom or have the tidy look of actually closed cupboard doors in the nearly counter-free kitchen. The bathtub taps not working, though the shower ones do. The sad, lumpy brown lawn, no matter how much it rains. The overwhelming, oven-like heat in the house in the summer, and the drafty, refrigerator-like chill in the winter.

But the worst of all is the dogs next door.

They are two smallish, yellowish dogs who live in a fenced cement yard. No grass, no nothing. Just poop and concrete. They apparently are never allowed in the house, because I have both seen and heard them outside in the rain, though there seems to be a little door under the house which is sometimes open. Obviously, the dogs are bored and miserable – I have never seen them taken for walks or petted – and are protesting their deplorable living conditions. But understanding this does not make it easier to endure the ceaseless barking. I have to admit that my sadness at their plight is seriously tempered with bad temper from the nerve-wracking racket.

The thing I find the most incomprehensible is the owner. She is there most of the day, and is even closer to the barking epicenter than I am. Yet I have never seen or heard her admonishing them, or bring them in the house, or do anything to stop it. Once, I saw her standing in the yard, hanging out laundry as the dogs barked their heads off at her feet. No reaction whatsoever. It’s as if she’s deaf and blind. Having spoken with her, I know she’s neither. But she’s certainly blind to the well-being of her dogs. Why does she even have them, when she doesn’t interact with them? And what, if anything, should I do to avoid losing what little is left of my mind?

Villa Scacciapensieri, Siena

Mom and Dad bought a fluorescent orange second-hand Fiat* with red seats, which took us to a tiny mountain village, Monterrigioni. Siena is about 800 meters above sea level, and the countryside is very hilly, so the roads are like corkscrews and it takes a long time to go a short distance.

Dad had always wanted to visit Monterrigioni, and since it was his 53rd birthday, it seemed like a good time to go, camera in hand. We bought some lovely wine there for less than $2 a bottle. I’m beginning to understand lire – you knock off the last three zeroes for a pessimistic estimate (i.e., 10,000 lire is approximately $10, but more like $7).

We then visited another little mountain village, Montalcino, where the last battle against Florence was fought. There are still some remains of the fortress, and Megan convinced us to climb the towers, which had spectacular views. [She always wanted to go to the top of everything then: St Paul’s in London, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, etc. I’m glad she made me climb the Leaning Tower, since you aren’t allowed to anymore.]

We had a special cake for Dad’s birthday, orange with pine nuts. Then we gave Dad our gifts. They were still a little gluey – we didn’t have any tape, so I glued the wrapping paper together [not one of my better ideas]. The gifts were small, since I had brought them with me to Italy: special tea from Crabtree & Evelyn, licorice allsorts [which are so gross, but he loved them], and a lovely book on Newfoundland [where Dad worked at the lab in the summer]. He was very pleased, and it was a good day.

Tomorrow we are to register with the police, so they know we aren’t terrorists.

*I seem to remember that it cost about $500 and we sold it for almost the same price when we left Italy a few months later. Much better than renting a car!

René Lalique, circa 1906-1908, Nesting swallows comb. Gold, carved horn, diamonds.

Well, you have Audrey to thank for me being up so early. One of her many bad (and strange) habits is to reach under the covers or pillow and claw at whatever body part she can find. This is not a pleasant way to wake up. After she clawed me awake, she started knocking things over on my desk, so I gave in to the inevitable and went to make coffee, quietly swearing at Audrey and the fact that I had to be up when the sun wasn’t. You all know how I feel about the twice-yearly time changes.

I haven’t been having much more fun than being clawed awake lately. When I went to the DMV again earlier this week, I emerged with paperwork intact only to discover that the GPS had been removed from the car, along with its stand and charger, and, infuriatingly, a pen. I mean, really, guys? You couldn’t leave me the pen?

Apparently, they couldn’t.

I’m lost without my GPS. I’m also lost with it, from time to time, but my chances of getting un-lost decrease dramatically in its absence. For instance, I decided to go to the Legion of Honor in San Francisco yesterday instead of working or contemplating the ruin my life has become. I Google mapped the directions, and it said to exit at Fell/Octavia. When I saw I was at the Silver Avenue exit, I knew I had, as usual, gone too far, so I got off the freeway and consulted a map.

Once I got onto South Van Ness, I knew where I was. As I drove across the city, I realized that my sister too had been fooled by the Google map thing with the non-existent Fell St exit when she and her husband were going to see the neurosurgeon. Hopefully I will remember this the next time I’m flying solo.

The exhibit was one to gladden the Suziest of hearts: Artistic Luxury: Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique. The fabulous trio exhibited together at the Paris World’s Fair in 1900, and some of the gorgeousness on display was reunited for the very first time since then. It was almost overwhelmingly exquisite: some of the legendary eggs that belonged to the doomed Russian Royal family* (this pansy one was my favorite):

cigarette cases so beautiful that I would have smoked just to use them:

a solid silver dressing table and stool with a red velvet cushion that would have delighted that other doomed Queen, Marie Antoinette:

and some of the most breath-taking jewelry I have ever laid eyes on. As I said to a friend, never in my life have I been so tempted to smash open cases, grab the contents, and run! But I behaved myself, and left the brilliance of the museum for the brilliant sunshine, daydreaming.

*It’s official: no-one made it out of that cellar alive.

What with life exploding earlier this month, I managed to miss the whole Film Noir Festival. Yet another reason, as if we needed one, to hate 2009. So I decided to have a mini festival of my own. While my living room is considerably less lovely than the Castro Theater, and is entirely deficient in live organ music*, the parking is easier. And since it’s been raining steadily for several days (we’re finally at 90% of “normal” rainfall! Yay!), the atmosphere was just right.

First up was The Woman in the Window, starring Edward G. Robinson and the lovely Joan Bennett, who played a femme fatale in real life** as well as on screen, and directed by the fabulous Fritz Lang.

Edward G. plays a psychology professor instead of a heavy, for a fun change of pace. His wife and children leave him unattended in the city for the summer, allowing a mysterious beauty to mess up his previously placid existence, much like Tom Ewell in The Seven Year Itch, though with less comic results. He sees a portrait of a beautiful woman in a shop window one evening, and is amazed to see the painting’s smiling subject reflected in the glass. He turns around, and there she is. He decides to break out of his middle-aged routine and take the model out for a drink. Or two. And rather than inviting her back to his place to see his etchings, she invites him back to hers to see sketches of her.

Once ensconced in her elegant apartment, the evening’s entertainment is rudely interrupted by the model’s friendly neighborhood blackmailer, who makes the mistake of attacking her in the professor’s presence. Robinson may not be playing a heavy in this movie, but he still has skills, and as he puts it, “There are only three ways to deal with a blackmailer. You can pay him and pay him and pay him until you’re penniless. Or you can call the police yourself and let your secret be known to the world. Or you can kill him.”

The suspense builds until the surprise ending. An enjoyable little gem, and I can see why Lang re-teamed them in Scarlet Street, one of his noir best, which would be the ideal double bill with The Woman in the Window.

Next: why hitch-hiking is very bad for you.

*If I ran the hockey world, there would only be cheesy organ music at games, instead of bits of TV theme songs. The score would always be on your TV screen, even during replays. Also, no ads on the boards or ice, better outfits for the players, no more hideous art all over goalies’ helmets, and every team would have cute Ice Girls like the Islanders do. Oh, and no Corporate Name Arenas.

**A few years after this movie was made, Joan Bennett’s husband shot and wounded her agent, mistakenly believing they were having an affair. The scandal essentially destroyed Joan’s career, though, oddly, not her marriage, which survived another 15 years after the shooting.

Honestly, when the kittens are asleep, it’s hard to believe they are as naughty as they are when they’re awake. When I see them all cuddled up together like this, I feel all warm and mushy inside.

Apparently the cats don’t feel the same way about me.

Last night, I woke up around 3. I knew I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I turned on the light and read until sometime after 6. I decided to try and get a little sleep, so I turned the light off and burrowed into my feather pillows, hoping for the best.

But, as usual, the best failed to materialize. The kitties were up, and clearly thought I should be*, too. They walked on me, with special emphasis on the soft and painful spots. Audrey chewed my hair and licked** my forehead with her sandpaper tongue, while June pursued her eating disorder of chewing on the power bar the lamps are plugged into (fortunately switched off in my Scrooge-like cheapness) and the metal doorstop. A pen hit the floor and was enthusiastically batted around in the hard, clacky wood. The metal blinds on the windows behind the bed clanged as the girls played a rousing game of tetherball with them.

I’ll delete the expletives I invoked as I stumbled out of bed toward the beacon of hope that is the coffeemaker.

I know you’re thinking that I should simply shut the bedroom door. But the bedroom door is not one of the two doors (front and back) that actually close in this house. Even the cupboards in the kitchen don’t close properly. According to my brother-in-law, the former carpenter, it’s because their current hinges are the wrong size.

At least I can close and lock the front and back doors. Even if I can’t sleep. Or make the kitties behave.

Update: I wish June would explain the physics of the litter box to her little sister. Although June has a dashing litter box style, spraying litter with drama all over the laundry room, Audrey apparently thinks that clawing the washer will be effective, all evidence to the contrary. So I get the full effect of the poo, as well as the delightful sound of claws on metal. Isn’t this supposed to be instinctive?

*When my brother was very young, he used to get up by 6 am every morning and call out merrily at the top of his voice “Is anybody up?!” They were then. He still gets up early, but now he keeps that news to himself. Mostly.

**Audrey is always licking me, and I kind of hate it, to tell you the truth. While I find it charming when they bathe each other, I find it charm-free when applied to Self. I should have named her Licorice.

I hardly ever have to brave rush hour. There have to be some compensations for being lightly compensated. Today, however, was an exception, and I got up in the dark and headed to the bus stop as dawn broke over the freeway.

I was teased by two out of service buses as I read the Ian McEwan article in the latest “New Yorker” and considered the sense of humor of public transit companies. When I arrived at the BART Station of Death (when will I stop thinking of Oscar Grant when I’m there?), it was flooded with my fellow commuters, among them no fewer than four cyclists. Although they take up a lot of room on the crowded train, the bikes’ owners all seem to have the same defiant air of self-righteousness, since they are demonstrably greener than thou.

Squashed in the train as people stepped on my toes, wedged their briefcases in my butt, and screamed cellphone inanities in my ear, I was thankful that this was not my daily lot. I also noticed that the announcer only tells passengers to make sure they have all their personal belongings when they exit the train at the Embarcadero Station, which is the first one on the right side of the Bay, but not at any other station. Wonder why?

After being swept out of the station on a tidal wave of humanity, I restored my spirits by buying the new Vogue with the fabulously glamorous (or glamorously fabulous) Mrs. O on the cover before heading into the office, where I triumphantly not only had my ID card, but my office keys.

Way to end the week!

My plum tree is beginning to blossom! Also, I have to confess that I liberated a couple of Meyer lemons from a tree on my way home from the market today (asparagus is back in season! Yay!). In my defense, there were dozens of lemons that had fallen to the ground and were squashed and sad, so maybe I saved them from a worse fate.

We’re having a break from the latest winter storm, though the rain is supposed to make a return this weekend by popular demand. In the meantime, I’m enjoying the sunshine.

I’m slowly coming out of the haze of the past week. Sister and BIL are home and doing fine – she’s going on Family Leave to take care of him, so he couldn’t be in better hands.

I still have the Cold from Hell and my mind is a pink fog, which is considerably less fun than it sounds. Sister hooked me up with the good cold meds, but the Cold from Hell merely laughed at them and hung on harder.

Little did I know that getting Sudafed and Afrin was so challenging. Sister and I went into a giant Walgreens on Market Street, which was overwhelming in my weakened condition. She made a beeline for the pharmacist’s counter while I gazed confused at all the weird Asian snacks and swirling hordes of people. When I joined her at the counter, she was showing the pharmacist her ID and signing something. Apparently, Sudafed is one of the main ingredients in meth making, so you have to show ID and sign something to buy it, which explains why I never thought of buying it.

Sister observed to pharmacist that it may, in fact, be easier to buy meth than Sudafed, and the pharmacist burst out laughing. After that, all we had to do was get the case with the Afrin in it unlocked.

Who knew?

I hope the hard-won cold remedies start actually remedying soon, because my lovely friend L is visiting from Toronto and we’re going to explore the brand-new Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park tomorrow. Stay tuned!

It really seems there’s no tiredness like hospital tiredness. I haven’t felt this tired since the long vigil at my mother’s bedside. Having an increasingly bad cold didn’t help, and I felt like Typhoid Mary in there, furtively blowing my nose and expecting to be booted out by an irate nursing staff at any minute.

Actually, it was Brother In Law who made the nursing staff irate, by sneaking onto an elevator and going downstairs to smoke. But then, he is a professional smoker.

How’s this for weird? You can smoke on a sort of balcony on the second floor of the hospital, but not on the sidewalk in front of it. My sister had a much-needed smoke on the sidewalk and got shooed away by an irate and officious valet parker. Yes, the hospital had valet parking!

They also had a visit from an SPCA therapy dog, which was the high point of BIL’s stay there. He and my sister missed their canine princess terribly, and petting the temp dog was just the thing to soothe BIL’s ruffled spirits. The therapy dog was an adorable white Skye terrier named Angus, who gave as good as he got when it came to attention and affection.

BIL’s release was almost as fast as his admittance. He called to say he got his walking papers, so we rushed out to get him some button-up shirts, t-shirts being temporarily out of the question, and to the hospital, with a quick stop at Trader Joe’s so neither of us would have to make dinner that night.

When we arrived, BIL was sitting up in a chair with his huge foam collar on, ready and eager to go. We carefully stowed our precious cargo in the passenger seat and after hugs and kisses, I saw them off in our time-honored family way, watching until the car is out of sight, accompanies by blown kisses and waves.

They got home safe and sound despite the treacherous curvy roads and hills, and he’s on the long road to recovery. Happily, the only pain he has now is from the actual surgery, so that’s a good sign.

Thanks again to everyone for all your concern and caring. It means so much!

Looks like I’ll be scarce around here for the next few days. My sister and her husband are in town, but it’s not to visit me (or not only). My brother-in-law had surgery on his back over Christmas of 2007, and it proved so popular that he’s having more done.

We knew there were problems, but we didn’t expect the surgeon to say he couldn’t understand why BIL could walk at all, and book him in for emergency surgery. So he’s in a nice private room in a San Francisco hospital, with a sweeping southern exposure and the complete inability to have a cigarette, which I’m sure he’s enjoying almost as much as the hospital food.

My sister is here with me, and I expect this weekend will be full of trips to the city and back, and hoping for the best. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers and whatever you believe in, ’cause we need all the help we can get.

When I was thinking about resolutions for the new year, I knew one of them should be “Clean out Mom’s storage”, but I didn’t want to commit to it, since I was pretty sure I wouldn’t actually get around to it. And then I’d have to admit it to my adoring public, and you might adore me less. I just couldn’t take the risk.

It’s a pretty overwhelming job. It’s over an hour’s drive, and when you get there, it’s packed with things and stuff. Mom was a notorious pack rat, and when she got sick, we just stuffed her things in there, thinking she’d get better. When John and I separated, my stuff joined Mom’s, and it’s pretty much full to capacity. I couldn’t imagine how to even start sorting and disposing of it all, and the logistics just made my pretty little head swim, so I put it on indefinite hold. Hope it’s enjoying the Muzak.

I came across an appraiser/auctioneer who has had his own business for 40 years. He lives near the storage facility, and I went to meet him there today. He was a mover before he was an auctioneer, so he said he’d help me excavate and take away things that were worth selling.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in this situation before, but here’s fun news: the items I had had appraised five years ago are not worth anywhere near the appraised value when I went to to sell them. Turns out that appraisals for insurance (replacement value) and appraisals for selling are two different things. Guess which one’s higher?

Why am I not surprised?

He’s interested in a lot of the furniture, though there are some items I can’t bear to sell. He took some today and we’ll meet up again at a later date so he can take more. Even after he does, there are about 900 boxes of books, etc. that I have no place for but don’t want to get rid of. Now who’s the pack rat?

Bleah. Last night, I woke up at 2:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep until 6:30. I lay in bed reading The New Yorker and the New York Times* as the cats slept peacefully and cutely and I envied them. Kitties: what is your secret? Oh, yeah – having everything done for you and not a care in the world. Even the best of Gotham’s writing couldn’t completely banish the dark thoughts swirling around in my head at the bleakest part of the night.

What’s a girl to do? You can’t really have a medicinal brandy or sleeping pill at that hour, and I think we can all agree that homeopathic remedies are laughably ineffective in the face of hardcore insomnia. So I tried not to dwell on the many ickinesses the new year has already tossed in the laps of Self and loved ones. If 2009 doesn’t look out, I’m going to fire it. I was far too lenient with 2008, letting it go on in its vile ways much too long, and I have learned my lesson.

When my cell phone yanked me out of sleep an hour later, I was even more confused than I usually am. All day, I’ve felt like I had jet lag and everything has seemed slightly unreal. And surreal.

Life has simply required cocktails lately, so I think I’ll go fix one. I wish I had an umbrella to put in it. It’s the little things, you know.

*The Books section had such fabulous first editions for sale! Edith Wharton, Kay Thompson, EB White, Dr. Seuss…

On Saturday, I went to orientation at the shelter where I spent my day of service last week (why does it seem so long ago?). I had such a good time there that I wanted to see what else I could do to help. It looks like I’ll be going twice a month to read to the children and keep them amused (!) while their mothers and staff meet. Unlike many such facilities, the residents have no curfew, have keys to the front door and their own rooms, and are involved in all discussions on running the place – hence the meetings.

During the orientation, it was made clear that we could not photograph the residents or discuss anything that happens there, due to confidentiality issues. Many of these women are trying not to be found and to put their old lives behind them, so volunteers have to make sure that they aren’t leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for the bad guys to follow to the door. So what happens there, stays there, much like Las Vegas.

It makes sense, and I’ll obviously respect their wishes, but I’m sorry that I won’t be able to share my adventures with you.

It’s funny, you know, because I’m not a kid person, but the kids really responded to me that day, and I don’t think it’s giving anything away to say that they were glad to see me again and hugs were exchanged. I’m looking forward to seeing them again and doing my bit to help out.