Suzy Says

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Random Wit:

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

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

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

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

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

In Which Suzy Learns Why a Hospital is Not Like a Spa:

• People go to spas voluntarily. No-one really wants to go to the hospital (reasons to follow).

• Spas smell like herbs and soothing aromatherapy products. Hospitals smell like hospital food.

• Hospital food tastes (and looks) as good as it smells. Filling, but not delicious. Spa food is generally cunningly arranged greens with a fat free, yet fancy dressing. Delicious, but not filling. Common ground: nearly impossible to convince staff to give you booze with or without food. And in the hospital, it could only help.

• Hospitals make you wear that very unattractive clothing item, apparently made of inferior quality sheets, which reveals the derri&egravere, no matter how attractive or unattractive. It remains a mystery to me why they feel this side of you is the good side – or at least, the side to be on display. Spas give you fluffy robes which pretty much conceal all. Common ground: when staff is doing things to you, whether in the spa or &agrave l’h&ocircpital, modesty is thrown to the winds.

• Spas make you slimmer. Hospitals are svelte-defying when you drive there and then sit there all day, watching your mother sleep, making awkward conversation, or watching tv. The most cardio I get is looking for a nurse or feeding Mom about a million of those high school cafeteria sized tubs of vanilla ice cream. Needless to say, spas are big on cardio, but not on ice cream. Also, diving into comfort food and comfort wine after escaping the Big House for the day doesn’t downsize a girl, however down she may be.

• Spas are tv-free, though not otherwise free. Hospitals, at least when you’re on Medicaid and Medi-Cal, are.

• They call you a patient when you’re in the hospital because you have to be. You’re always awaiting some kind of ministration. Your spa visit is on your schedule.

• You can easily get your nails done at a spa. At Mom’s hospital, they claimed to have a visiting manicurist on Tuesdays, but when we tried to actually get her to visit, no-one knew her name or phone number, rendering our efforts null and void.

• Spas tend to make your skin look better. I now sport a collection of stress-related(read: hospital visitation-induced) zits that would be the despair of any high school student. Big, honking, painful ones, too. They undeniably give me that youthful air, though.

When you call 911 in or near my sister’s little town, you’ll get her (and sometimes my brother) if she’s on duty. She, on the other hand, has no idea what she’s going to get. A couple of recent examples:

1. Arrive at scene to find a man wildly attacking his couch with a machete. Back away slowly, call Sheriff’s Office, and make a run for it. Discuss how call could have been made. Find out later that Machete Man’s friend saw the beginning stages of furniture murder and called 911, then had the wisdom to beat it (though he definitely seems to have bad taste in friends).

2. Arrive at tiny hillbilly shack (cue “Deliverance” theme here) after long and gruelling drive in the pitch dark, with trees and shrubbery scraping the sides of the ambulance as you drive slowly down a dirt track. Wonder if there really is a shack anywhere in the vicinity. See light shining out of open door of shack. Go in, calling out, “Hello? Ambulance! Hellloooo!” No response. Start looking through shack, reasoning that if the lights are on and the door is open and someone has called 911, there should be someone on the premises.

   There is, but it’s an old dead guy, clad only in diapers with his dentures beside him.

   Now, dead men not only don’t tell tales, they don’t make phone calls, either. The mystery of who called is solved by the arrival of the deceased’s extremely drunk niece, whose breath is so horrifyingly flammable that EMT’s and paramedics alike immediately move to the other side of the room in self defense. (A little-known skill of emergency personnel is knowing exactly what form of booze is causing the bad breath in question. My sis tells me she always knows if it’s beer, wine, whiskey, etc.) Call the morgue (ambulances don’t pick up those who are already dead) and get away as fast as possible.

Even when they’re off-duty, they’re on duty. A couple of my sister’s co-workers spotted a couple of overly optimistic tourists getting ready to set out on the Pacific in an inflatable raft. They pointed out to these hopeful folks that the wind and waves were so high that the commercial fishermen wouldn’t venture out. But they went out anyway, resulting in a cliff rescue, courtesy of my brother and his fellow volunteer firemen. Incredibly, they went out again the next day, and even more incredibly, nothing happened. And I was going to bet on them for the Darwin Award this year.

I don’t think I’ve watched as much teevee in the past 20 years as I have in the past couple of weeks. My Mom always has the tv on (ironically, since my parents would hardly let us watch any tv when we were kids) in the hospital, even though she’s asleep half the time. It seems rude to read, so I just watch tv with her, whether she’s awake or not.

The result of this is that I’ve really gotten into ER, about a million years after the rest of the world. There I am, just doors away from a real ER*, watching it on tv (back-to-back episodes at 10 and 11!). My sister, who works in a real ER, just rented the first season on DVD, and when we’re done at the real hospital, we go home and watch the tv one together. Is that weird?

One thing I definitely know is weird is pet food commercials. The makers of these gross-out fests seem to be laboring under the delusion that dogs and cats shop for their own food. No self-respecting cat I ever met would deign to do such a mundane errand, and dogs never know what’s good for them, so the people end up doing the buying.

News for pet food purveyors: We ain’t gonna eat the food. So close-ups of gelatinous brown chunks don’t make us want to buy them. It makes us want to blow them. Got it?

*There’s some debate in my sister’s hospital about renaming the Emergency Room the Emergency Department, since it’s more than one room and everything else is a department. And the ER staff I’ve seen here are nowhere near as cute as the ones on tv. Go figure.

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

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

Exhibit A; and

Exhibit B.

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

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

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

How to be very, very unpopular:

Sleep in Mom’s trailer.

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

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

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

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

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

Entrance announced by three large barking dogs.

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

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

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

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

“But not already made,” I tell her.

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

Now I do. And you do, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This bright, sunny Sunday afternoon, the church bells are ringing out. I wonder whether they are calling out for worship, a wedding, a funeral? A beginning? An end? A comfort? Hope? There’s something about a Sunday afternoon that’s always a little melancholy, invoking thoughts of homework still undone, the week-end at its end, the duties in the week ahead.

I think of my mother, still battling the disease that will eventually win – and there is no winner when it’s your own body that’s attacking and killing you. I think of my sister and brother, who have borne this almost unconscionable burden for more than two years now: watching the woman whose body gave them life destroy itself. This in the wake of our beloved father’s death. It is truly amazing what the human spirit can overcome. I love and admire my siblings more than I can ever say. They are nothing but courage and love.

I think my mother is surviving by a combination of stubbornness and fear of death. I do. I feel the echo in myself. I’ve always been afraid of death. I’m afraid of my impending orphanhood, much as I wish for my mother to be released from her pain and fear. I don’t want to think about the present or the future, with all the fear and uncertainty. I want to remember the past, when I had my parents and my grandparents, and it seemed that nothing could go wrong.

On the other hand, there were a flock of birthdays to celebrate, not just Mine (Megan’s on May 25; Mine on June 4; Erica’s on June 5; Caleb’s on June 3). So Meg threw a big barbecue for us, starring fabulous grilled veggie kabobs, grilled shrimp, turkey burgers, and two works of art disguised as cake, made by the multi-talented Erica.

This is Megan’s cake. Called “Key Lime Trauma”, it features an ambulance going to the rescue of an overturned car. Fortunately, this time the blood is chocolate. The blue-flecked meringue is the ocean. For those of you who don’t know, Meg’s an EMT.

My cake, however, was a glorious chocolate mocha dream, covered with buttercream and roses. The rose in the middle is called Sweet Jessica….

…But this is the real Sweet Jessica, Erica’s daughter and greatest work of art.

And this is as maternal as you’ll ever see Me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am once again fortunate enough to have my friend Phil’s dog Rita, aka the Queen of the Dog Park (I am unfailingly asked if she’s Phil’s Rita whenever I take her to the park. It’s like accompanying a celebrity) for a couple of days. Being a dog aunt is as great as being an ordinary aunt. You can play with them, have a great time, and then give them back to their regularly scheduled guardians. You can take credit for them if they reflect well on you, or blame the parents/guardians if they don’t. All the fun, none of the responsibility, unlike most things in a grown-up’s life. Sorry, kids, but it’s almost all responsibility and hardly any fun. So don’t be in a hurry to get here.

So I was used to having a dog around these days, but I still got the canine surprise of my life yesterday. I had left the front door open so the spring breeze could waft in (Rita is so well trained that she will not sneak out), and it wasn’t the only thing. Suddenly, I found a 130 pound rottweiler on my lap. Both Rita and I were astonished. One minute, it was just Rita and me; the next, a giant dog is licking my face with glee. It was Fidel, the huge, silly two year old rottweiler who lives in my building and sounds like the Hound of the Baskervilles when he barks.

The two dogs started playing together just as Fidel’s guardian came to my rescue…with Fidel’s brother Che (on a leash). That’s a lot of dog for one day. And some serious canine cardio.

At yoga class today, we were in warrior pose when the teacher asked me what warrior I was. I said, “Winston Churchill.”

He stared at me blankly – I guess a fat old guy with champagne in one hand and a cigar in the other isn’t his idea of a role model – and then walked away, saying, “Mine’s Xena.”

Other than the four-tier dark chocolate fountain, which was girl-nip (I don’t think they would have been more excited by, or lined up as long for, Sex God du Jour – is it still suddenly single Brad Pitt? Or am I, as usual, behind the times and it’s someone else entirely?), the best thing at the party was all the waiters circulating with trays of delicacies. Not only were they always giving you shrimp and wine, they took away the empties and then brought you a fresh supply. Wouldn’t it be great to have that at your house? In the morning, they could circulate with croissants and fruit, then change to lunch things and dinner things, and of course, late-night snacks.

The only thing that would be better than that would be living at a very grand hotel. Eloise had the right idea (hmmm. Just noticed that I bear a startling resemblance to Eloise, what with the unruly, stick-straight hair and the pillowy tummy), and was lucky enough to live at the glorious Plaza before it closed. It is now being made into a travesty of itself, with all the rooms with the best views being made into condos, with the rest being hotel rooms available to the po’ folks who can’t afford the condos (or object to them on very solid philosophical and aesthetic grounds).

There are definite advantages to living in a hotel, number one being room service, which is one of my favorite things in the world. No dishes, ever, and if your plumbing acts up, just call the front desk. Daily maid service! On-site gym! Valet parking! They’ll take away your laundry and bring it back, all nice and clean and actually ironed.

And don’t forget the chocolate on the pillow at night.

What Not to Wear for Dogs

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

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

Other shocking sights:

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

A tiny black poodle with fuschia fur on her head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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