Suzy Says

Coming to you from New York City – the state of my birth, though not the city (that distinction belongs to the unlovely town of Syracuse, and that’s the only distinction it has). New York City has plenty of distinction, but also lots of myths and legends which are not entirely accurate.

Myth: It’s sooo easy to get a cab in New York.

Truth: It’s completely impossible. Especially on a hot, humid, and rainy Friday night after a concert in Central Park. Literally the minute the show was over, it started to pour in an epic and Biblical manner (I can’t get used to it raining in the summer – it only rains in the winter in California). It was like walking through a waterfall.

Within minutes I was soaked to the skin, and the streets became mini rivers. I made my way to Madison Avenue and tried desperately to hail a cab. You know it’s bad when a girl in a soaking wet and form-fitting shirt, transformed into a transparent shirt thanks to Mother Nature and her sick sense of humor, can’t get a cab. I walked ten blocks or so before I finally got one, and if I hadn’t been so wet and cranky, I would have been flattered by the alacrity with which the cab driver swerved through traffic to pick me up. Instead, my only thought was, “I have never been so glad to see a cab in my life.”

I ended up taking all my clothes to the hotel laundry to get them dried, including my dripping Keds. It was hard to get them to understand that I didn’t want them laundered or dry cleaned – they had been thoroughly laundered and wet cleaned by Ma Nature – I just wanted dry clothes. More than anything.

I finally got my point across, but they sure looked at me funny. Good practice for the Hamptons.

So it’s been about a million degrees here the past couple of days, which equals an even crankier than usual Me. It’s like living on the sun. By the time I got to the gym after work on Wednesday (it was a mere 88&degF/31&degC that day and I walked there up hill, arriving light-headed: what was I thinking?!), my hands were swollen little sausages and working out, despite the air-conditioning in the gym, didn’t help matters.

It was so hot yesterday that I took the cable car home, because walking up the hill, even on the shady side, was out of the question at 97 fun-filled degrees F (or 36C, which is fun-filled as a bra size but not as weather). Just leaving the overly air-conditioned office building, where I had been shivering all day in my appropriate for the baking heat of the outdoors but inappropriate for the mini-Alaska of the indoors outfit was enough. The heat hit with the force of a blast furnace, and you know what? The sun’s rays really do beat down. Like you can feel them hitting your skin and making it sizzle in spite of SPF 45 sunscreen.

This makes me wonder how people in Arizona and Florida and other places that are legendarily hot on a routine basis survive. They must go from air-conditioned car to equally A/C’d offices and then back to A/C’d apartments or houses, but the unnatural cold of the A/C is almost as unpleasant as the natural heat of the sun. Does one’s body eventually become accustomed to it and better able to cope?

Fortunately for us, the heat wave is supposed to be over by Sunday, and we should be back to our usual daytime highs of around 70 F/21 C. Sweating will once more be relegated to the gym, where it belongs, and I will no longer fear setting foot outside. I can’t wait to hear the fog horns again, signalling the arrival of the blessed fog and its natural air-conditioning.

When the alarm went off this morning, it was raining so hard that I almost called the whole day off on account of weather. But after a cup of coffee and a couple of chapters of The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle, the rain had decided to go and annoy someone else. The sky looked very confused, as if it, like me, was wondering where the hell this rain came from and why it took so long to go somewhere like Seattle, where it belongs. I hope my umbrella stays where it is, gathering dust, until Thanksgiving. After all, it’s practically summer.

Which means that the TV season is ending. Seems like just about every show has its season finale this week or last week, other than Sex & the City, which starts up again in July. It used to start on or near my birthday, but S-J Parker’s unscripted pregnancy seems to have thrown the show’s writers a curve. I wonder how they are going to handle it? They can’t have both Carrie and Miranda with babies. One baby is more than enough, and has often been proved to be too much. Look at Mad About You. Destroyed by Mabel.

I watched the season finale of Dawson’s Creek on Sunday morning. Yes, I realize that I am far too old to be watching the Creek, and that everyone else is over the Creek, but since I have no vices to speak of, I think I can be allowed this one. Anyway, Pacey was trying to talk to Audrey, his justifiably pissed-off girlfriend, before she got on a plane to go home to LA for the summer. So he bribed a security guard to let him use the PA system, and broadcast a heartfelt apology (which of course won her over). He ended his impassioned speech with an equally impassioned “Free the West Memphis Three!”, which I thought was so cool I almost woke John up to tell him about it.

If you aren’t familiar with this case, check out this site and/or watch the two documentary films, Paradise Lost and Paradise Lost 2: Revelations. Truly one of the worst miscarriages of justice in recent years, and especially frightening when you consider that these three young men are facing life in prison in two cases and death in the other simply for daring to be different in their intolerant, Bible-beating home town. So help if you can, and be thankful you don’t live somewhere like West Memphis. If you do, move. Now.

Is there any job, possibly other than Appointed Leader of these great United States, with less accountability than that of weatherman? Our forecast yesterday called for “possibility of light showers in the afternoon and evening.”

When I left work, it was cloudy and misty, but after I had gone a few blocks, it started pouring, with gale force winds. I had to give up completely on my umbrella, because it was either being plastered down around my head by said wind, bending its sad little ribs to the breaking point, or threatening to yank me skyward like a cranky Mary Poppins.

Having given up on the umbrella, my hair became wet, brownish strings, like a very old mop, and my make-up was scoured off before I was even home. Look, Ma! No face!

No matter how wrong weather forecasters are, no-one complains. They don’t have to repay part of their salary or pay a fine for every incorrect forecast. Angry mobs don’t show up at the station, demanding accuracy. The anchors don’t say things like, “He was wrong again, folks!” The weather guy (or girl) just goes on making predictions that are about as accurate as Miss Cleo’s, and they just get away with it. I want a job like that.

It’s been too depressing inside and outside to update this for the past few days. All tragedy and no comedy makes for a boring little blog, n’est-ce pas?

It’s been pouring ever since Friday afternoon. Our (fortunately hilly) street looks like a young river, with the water rushing down it faster than the cars, and the area outside our building’s basement is flooded. The power has been out for two days where my brother and sister live, so everyone’s been congregating chez Jonathan, because he has a generator. I can imagine them all sitting by the fire, playing cards and listening to my old Atwater Kent radio. They could be living 50 years ago.

Here the wind is howling outside, so strong that there are warnings about crossing the bridges. There are high surf advisories, too, and the rain just keeps on coming. It’s dark all day, so we have just curled up with the cats and watched Stephen King miniseries. Yesterday, it was the appropriate Storm of the Century and today, The Stand is our scheduled matin?e. It’s probably an upopular view, but I’d rather have this Charles Addams type of weather (the caption to this cartoon is “Just the kind of day that makes you feel good to be alive”) when it’s the weekend and going out into the elements is optional. I hate being at work all day in storm-tossed attire. Damp nylons are especially unenjoyable. So I hope the storm goes to spread the wealth somewhere else by tomorrow morning. In the meantime, it’s showtime!

It was raining this morning, so instead of walking to work as usual, I had to take the bus. I hate public transit. The whole problem with it is…it’s public. And other people are just so loathsome. As Dorothy Parker said, “other people are hell.” Also I always end up with wet feet and a bad mood, even if it is Friday. You will never find me singin’ in the rain.