Suzy Says

Part I

Still more public transit for poor (in every sense) Suzy. This was the first time I had ever taken a Greyhound bus anywhere. Buses in my opinion are not good, but the great Blackalicious adventure was worth it all.

Megan and I got to the frightening bus station with five minutes to spare before catching the bus to Sacramento. We ran down the hallway toward the ticket counter to the visible amusement of the clerk. Whether it was the panic on our faces, or just our faces, I don’t know, but she thought we were pretty damn funny.

Clutching our tickets with our misspelled names on them, we went to the door behind which there should have been a Blackalicious-bound bus, but no. In front of the door was a geeky guy who immediately started a one-sided conversation with us, during the course of which it was revealed that he was a poetry-spouting Jesus freak, which is the very worst kind. Oddly, what annoyed my sister and me the most was that he kept saying he had written a haiku of 22 words (and then reciting it). A haiku, any haiku, consists of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables, not 22 words.

However, the bus was at least 22 minutes late. What with Poetry Guy and the fact that we had to buy our tickets to the show at the door (all advance tickets being sold out), we were approaching freak out point by the time the bus arrived. We made sure that we sat far, far away from Poetry Guy, preferring the company of the far less obnoxious bathroom.

Traffic was very bad, and the bus was already late, so we arrived in the Governator’s town almost half an hour after tickets had gone on sale. We were encouraged by the sight of a dozen cabs lined up outside the bus station, apparently willing and waiting to take us to the club. But most of the cabs were driver-free, and the first one in line, which actually did have a driver, wanted us to wait while he got a jump start.

This idea did not go over well with two girls whose only thought at this point was that we would have endured all of the above only to find the show was sold out. We finally found a cab which was equipped with both a driver and a working motor, and off we went. Less than half a block into the ride, discovered that cab driver was also a Jesus freak and not shy about it. At least he didn’t recite poetry and may have known what a haiku was, though the subject mercifully didn’t come up.

I’m all Jesused out and it isn’t even his birthday yet.

I try so hard to be good. I really do. Possibly the problem is I can’t actually tell the difference between the two, and this gets in the way of any real success. Anyway:

In an attempt to be responsible since I am a) underemployed (almost chronically, at this point); and 2) technically an adult, I decided to take BART to the airport instead of a cab. The fact that it was preceded by a haircut and two hours of shopping at Vickie’s and Sephora and Lush is irrelevant.

So, carrying my purchases and impeccably coiffed for a change (underemployment leads to underachievement in grooming on the whole), I descended into the bowels of BART, and into Hell.

In my innocence, I tried to charge the $4.70 it takes to get to SFO. BART machines will only do credit card transactions for $20 and up, the scam artists that they are. Though the booths are manned, the people manning the booths will not give you change. Why they are there at all I couldn’t tell you. The change machines will only change $20’s, and they will not give you coins. I didn’t have the exact change, so I ended up spending $5 for the ticket and being totally ripped off for 30 cents.

I was incensed, and yes, I realize that someone who spends that much on her hair and underwear shouldn’t get so upset about 30 cents, but again: not the point. The point is that they deliberately stole that 30 cents and you can just tell they make a career of it. Also, no-one gave in to me to fix it, and that is always unacceptable. On top of everything else, public transit. PUBLIC FUCKING TRANSIT, OK? And I haven’t even discussed the smell and all those other people.

So the train finally shows, thinking it’s fashionably late when it’s actually just rude for making everyone wait so long. Two stops into the whole ordeal, train appears to give into the despair I am feeling, and sits dejectedly at the platform. Finally, there’s an announcement that there’s been a damn earthquake again, and they have to make sure everything is OK before letting us go on (even though quake was in Oakland, miles and miles away, and teeny, like the late and notoriously petite Herve Villechaize). Why it couldn’t have waited until I was off BART, I don’t know. Earthquakes are so self-centered it’s really shocking. Sat there listening to Wilco and thinking evil thoughts for an eternity, alternating with thinking of a cab, any cab, with the longing usually reserved for dinner at the French Laundry or a frosty bottle of vintage Cristal.

Finally pull thoughts away from Self and realize this also means I might get to the airport after Beth & Ben emerge from Customs and they would wonder. I have never yet failed to meet someone at the airport when I said I would (even though no-one ever meets me at the airport. Ever). Try to call Beth’s cell phone to tell her I might be late. No service for my cell phone in the deep, dark Hell of BART. But then, what else can you expect? I mean, it *is* HELL, after all, even if they try to disguise this fact by calling it BART.

Finally get the all clear, and as Elvis Costello would say, things got back to normal and the train began to roll again. Get to the airport approximately the same time flight is scheduled to arrive. Even though BART arrives at the international terminal, (which I can never find and always have to ask directions to at least twice every time I’m looking for it), still can’t find the arrivals hall, and yes, have to ask where it is. Turns it out it was only down one escalator, but guy took me there personally, undoubtedly feeling I was too stupid to be trusted on an escalator.

Get to the arrivals hall to discover flight is in fact, delayed, meaning more boredom for poor, beleaguered Suzy, and the boredom quota for today had loooong ago been reached. Beth & Ben finally turn up. I spend $40 on cabfare to get us home in heavy traffic, but the horror of the whole day is immediately redeemed:

Megan has agreed to go to Blackalicious with me tonight!!! But they’re playing in Sacramento and the show starts at 10 pm so we’ll have to stay overnight, but Blackalicious! We’ll have to stay overnight since it will be late when the show is over and it won’t be at the Sacramento equivalent of the Drake.

Also it could be considered rude to ditch your relatives on their second night in your home, but: Blackalicious, baby! And I did ask both B’s if they’d care to accompany us on this intellectual outing and they declined, so I’m not completely without manners. Just almost.

Did I mention Blackalicious?

My sister Beth arrives today from England for her fourth, count ’em, fourth, visit of the year. By now, she must be on very friendly terms with the stewardesses – oh, excuse me, flight attendants*:

Flight Attendant (Heathrow): “How are you today, Mrs. A—-? How’s your Mum? So lovely to see you again!”

Flight Attendant (SFO): “Hi, Beth! Your Mom still around? Wow. Your usual Scotch?”

She and Megan are close contenders for the highly coveted Daughter of the Year Award. I wasn’t even nominated, for obvious reasons.

Beth is accessorized on this trip by her son Ben. I’m hoping we’ll all have some time in the city before heading up to the country together for Trailer Park Christmas. The good news for me is that I’m taking BART to the airport this time, and guess what? It goes straight to the International Terminal, which I can normally never locate without assistance. The powers that be at BART must have taken pity on me. That, or the airport employees I keep asking for directions couldn’t take it anymore and united in demanding that the International Terminal be the BART station so they wouldn’t have to deal with me several times a year.

I know what you’re thinking, but remember, I’m underemployed and nouveau pauvre, so yeah: public transit to the airport. However, we’re taking a cab back to Chez Suzy. You can’t expect people who have endured 11 hours of bone-crushing boredom of public transit, in the form of airplane travel (and in coach! *shudder*) to deal with still more, and at rush hour, too. Why do they call it rush hour anyway, when it actually goes on for 3 to 4 hours and ain’t no-one rushing, which is the whole problem right there?

Also, I’m having a festive Christmas lunch downtown with my old friend Richard that day, and filling in the hour or so before I need to head out to the airport by doing some non-holiday shopping. Fortunately, Lush and Vickie’s and Sephora are conveniently located right near the BART station. Now, if I can handle the horrible hordes of holiday shoppers, I’m set. If I can’t, there’s always the bar at John’s Grill, an oasis of peace and perfect Martinis.

Why can’t we still say “stewardess” (or, as it might be, “steward”)? So much sexier. I mean, can you imagine a Penthouse story that starts, “The flight attendant leaned over me, revealing her full, creamy cleavage”? And who hates being considered sexy?

I must be stopped.

I’m eating PopTarts (raw, not even toasted, and with frosting) while watching Mexican soap operas. I feel like my mascara’s running and I’m not even wearing any.

I have the captioning on in an idle attempt to learn some Spanish (I’m not just eating PopTarts, I’m getting educated over here). It would help me to actually communicate with our cleaning lady. Oh, wait. I don’t have one anymore.

{sob}

Though what else can you expect when you’re trailer trash?

On the bright side, I did have my toes painted festive holiday red today, so it wasn’t a total loss.

?buenas tardes!

Ooh, I’m practically bilingual!

Yee haw! We’re officially trailer trash! Or is it “yeehaw”, one word? True trailer trash would almost certainly know. Though maybe trailer trash in its purest form can’t spell.

Anyway, we bought a trailer for Mom. Those of you familiar with the epic saga of Mom can skip this part – go and have a latte or a glass of wine, depending on where you are and your personal degree of degeneracy, and join the rest of the class later. Those who don’t have the sordid factettes of Mom’s recent life at their fingertips, here’s a quick overview of how we got to the point in our lives where we have our very own trailer park:

– Mom married an asshat half her age who spent all her money and then left her and the country, pretty much in that order.

– Mom is now on welfare. Asshat doing just fine and has not paid her a dime. Such is often the way with asshats, I have noticed.

– Mom has breast cancer which has spread into her bones. She used to live in SoCal, but when her health deteriorated, we moved her halfway between where I live and my younger siblings live.

– Mom’s health got worse. She went to stay with my younger sister Megan and almost died, but didn’t. Still can’t live on her own, so has been living with sis since June.

– House is about 500 square feet and only has a sleeping loft with no door for Megan & her long-suffering husband. Mom in living room 24/7 watching mindless TV and making endless demands. You get the picture.

– Situation has gotten increasingly volatile (think lab rats deprived of personal space, understandably going crazy and attacking each other, only with better vocabularies), so Mom has come down to the city a few times to give everyone a break, but this was obviously just a bandaid on an arterial wound and the real problem had to be addressed.

– Thanks to asshat, we have no money, so we came up with the idea of buying Mom a trailer so she will have her own space and my sister & husband can reclaim their house.

OK, we’re all up to speed. Faithful readers, you can now rejoin the class.

We got the trailer from a friend of a friend. It’s 25 feet long, has a double bed and two single beds (extra sleeping space is a total bonus – we were so short of it in our pre-trailer days that I had to sleep in a tent when I was up there this summer “helping”* to take care of Mom. I hate Nature), a bathroom with one of those little European type bathtubs and a shower, a kitchenette with gas stove and mini-refrigerator like a hotel mini-bar, and really good heating, which is essential. Mom really feels the cold, and it’s a lot colder and rains more up there than it does in the city. The trailer is on Megan’s property, so she’s at hand if needed. All in all, a pretty good deal, and it should make everyone’s life less stressful.

I’m off to Wal-Mart to buy blue eyeshadow and a tube top.

*”Helping” mostly consisted of being bored, complaining, and trying to dodge the more repulsive nursing tasks.

Here’s the final item in our continuing series of Cat/cat related posts. Hope you’ve enjoyed theme week.

Today’s item is my brilliant and charming niece’s take on the joy of tech (or text):

Last night I was being propositioned by A via text message. Isn’t technology wonderful? They should use that as one of their advertising slogans: “With 500 free text messages a months you can hit on chicks from anywhere in the country! Send total filth without fear of getting slapped!”

In keeping with the cat motif this week…

Hannah enjoys an afternoon nap. If the Buddhists are right and there really is reincarnation, I want to come back as one of my cats.

Today I got Cat from Cat.

Usually, my mail consists of: bills, catalogues, flyers, and more bills. It is the mail equivalent of Twinkies.

But today, a small and mysterious package arrived from small and mysterious Wales. Inside, it was wrapped in purple paper – even better. I have to admit that I tore the purple paper off in my eagerness to see what was in it, and I was right to be excited: it was a gem of a book, Cat Haiku, from my gem of a niece, Cat, for no reason except she saw it and thought of me. It totally made my day.

Cat from Cat!

I braved the holiday hordes of shoppers to visit Nordstrom in the San Francisco Shopping Centre (yes, they pretentiously spell it &agrave l’anglais, not that I myself am pretentious in any way whatsoever), and felt positively bruised and exhausted. The only way to holiday shop is to do it on line, have them gift wrap it, and deliver it.

Anyway, while walking through Nordstrom in my search for one particular item, I passed a display of gorgeous ball gowns and thought, “I will never, ever need to shop for one of those.”

Don’t you hate it when you break up with someone and they’re already dating someone else by the end of the week? Well, I have become one of those people and now have a temp job at an investment bank just days, or even hours, after heartlessly breaking the heart of the hell job by dumping its ass. At least I had the decency not to rub it in by informing my ex of its swift replacement, unless someone spills the beans at recess or the ex reads it in the tabloids or something.

Even if this job is hell, too, I know it’s only for a few weeks, and they’re paying quite a lot since it will be over the holidays, when normal people don’t want to work. It’s about time I got off my ass and got back to work.

I don’t know what is the matter with me. I mean, I lost my job of more than 7 years 4 months ago, and shouldn’t I be panicking? Yes, there was generous severance pay and unemployment and the hell job to keep the wolf from the door, but this is one expensive city and we have a (not inconsiderable) mortgage and (not inconsiderable) property taxes to pay. Maybe it’s a mid-life crisis, or a nervous breakdown lite, but I’ll never know since my therapists won’t stop hitting on me and I’m way too shallow and silly to figure it out on my own.

My niece may have gotten it right when she said, “The trouble is you are a creature of comfort. You were born to enjoy the spoils of another’s labor, for which, in return, they get the pleasure of your company and a hot chick to take places. However, fate has interfered with God’s plan. That’s why you don’t feel inclined to work. It’s not a mid-life crisis, it’s your spirit knowing something has gone horribly wrong. This is how we know God is a man. A woman would not have allowed this sort of oversight to occur.”

Makes sense to me.

So I’ll just do my temp job through the holidays and see what happens in the New Year. It could be pretty much anything.

Updates:

1. Thanks to the incomparable Candi’s brilliant husband Brian, my email has seen the error of its ways and is now behaving itself. I don’t think it’s going to dare to step out of line anytime soon. Brian is not only a total sweetheart, but an efficient genius. I’m writing him in for President.

2. Thanksgiving was great. All the California family was together, and Dad’s best friend, Colin W. It was Colin’s first Thanksgiving ever – he lives in a little village in Devon, England – and it was a real pleasure to have him share it with us. I had cleverly ordered the entire thing (turkey; garlic mashed potatoes; green beans with shallots; herbed stuffing; cranberry relish; pumpkin pie) from Whole Foods, so all I had to do was heat it up in the containers in which they arrived and make my world-famous cheese biscuits (if I could figure out a way to sell them, I’d be a millionaire, if not idle rich). This pretty much eliminated all stress, other than having two & 1/2 (the 1/2 being a 2 & 1/2 year old) extra people show up unexpectedly just as we were sitting down, but there was more than enough to go around and a good time was had by all.

3. Was very busy being Tour Guide Suzy with Colin all last week. It was his first visit to San Francisco, so I wanted to make sure he had a good time. Tour included Hyde Street Pier and its historic ships; riding the cable car; Ocean Beach with its wild waves and birds (Colin is a keen bird watcher); the Legion of Honor; the newly re-opened Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park; and the Asian Art Museum. Not to mention Swan Oyster Depot, Le Petit Robert, and Victor’s. I’m getting pretty good at this. If you’re ever in SF, let me know and I’ll be Tour Guide Suzy for you, too.

4. Broke up with the hell job. The relationship wasn’t good for either of us, so I didn’t see any point in dragging it out. The hell job deserves someone who loves it back, just like the rest of us. Sobbed like a girl, though.

5. Being unemployed again and unwell this week has freed me up to catch up on all of this season’s Gilmore Girls to date and to start on the Herculean task of writing Christmas cards. Decided that it makes the most sense to divide them geographically so am tackling the non-US ones first. Between my friends and the ones I inherited from Dad, there are around 70. Yikes!

And I feel that it’s important to actually write something in each one intended for that particular person, rather than just signing my name or, worse yet, including one of those generic letters which are mostly excuses to brag about the accomplishments of children and/or grandchildren (notice how they’ll always include how little Jimmy got into Harvard, but fail to mention his crack problem). I may be chintzy enough to get a pre-cooked Thanksgiving dinner, but at least my Christmas cards are personal. I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere.

I’ve been pretty much incommunicada the past few days. My email suddenly got corrupted, as if it fell in with the wrong crowd at school, and is presently at a corruption level equalling that of the N’Awlins police department. Juvenile delinquent that it is, it completely refuses to work at all. So I have to reinstall it at peril of losing saved messages (including some from Dad) and at peril of my technological stupidity, which is at a level equalling that of any member of the Bush family.

Which means I haven’t yet attempted it, and probably won’t until this weekend, so if you have written to me in the last week or so, for once the old line is true and it’s not you, it’s me. Hopefully all will go well and you will find my words of wisdom in your inbox sometime next week.

Apart from tech issues, you also know that we are experiencing Mo’ Mom. In addition to that, my father’s closest friend Colin W (aren’t I lucky to have two amazing Colins in my life?) has been visiting San Francisco for the first time ever, so I have been trying to be the best Tour Guide Suzy ever since Sunday. Being tour guide is quite exhausting, though at least the weather has cooperated and been sunny and bright. Since Colin lives in England, he doesn’t find 50&deg cold, so he’s pretty happy.

He’s also an excellent cook, so I have been on my mettle producing show-off food all week. Colin and I cook together as naturally and happily as Dad and I did (and Colin and Dad did, for that matter), which was a poignant surprise.

Tomorrow my sis & bro arrive here for Thanksgiving – Colin’s first ever! I know it will be an emotional one, and I hope it will be a happy one, too. I have a great deal for which to be thankful, and having all these people I love together in my home is at the top of the list.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, even if you live where it’s not a holiday. To all of you who read my trivialities, offer your support, advice, and friendship: I am thankful for you, too.

Selling the car has made me think about the whole thing. Have I learned anything from what was essentially a really expensive mistake?

I didn’t learn to drive until I was more than 30 years old, which should be an Awful Warning to others. If you’re going to do it, do it when you’re young and fearless. If you wait until you’re old, like I did, you realize that not only is Death inevitable, but it’s coming for you personally. And driving just makes it all that much easier for the Reaper to get his scythe on you. When I’m driving on the freeway, I’m going the speed limit and everyone else is passing me and I’m thinking, “If anyone hits me, I’m dead.”

When was learning to drive, people kept telling me, “Look at all the idiots who can drive. Anyone can do it.” I did not and do not find that comforting, because that means that some, if not most, of the cars jetting by me at 80+mph are being driven by stupid people. This does not decrease the danger, in my opinion.

I’m just not one of Nature’s drivers, and that’s that.

However, I didn’t know that right away, and once I got my license, I wanted to buy a car. I started looking at used cars, with my brother’s expert guidance, and was shocked by how much a decent used car costs. When I discovered that I could by a 1966 Mustang convertible for the same price as a reliable ugly car, you know I had to go for the Mustang. It was like jewelry I could drive. I never want the sensible and boring if I can have the pretty and impractical instead. And it’s not like I needed a car to commute in every day or take the kids to soccer practice. It was a frivolous car for a frivolous girl.

I didn’t heed my brother’s caveats about old cars, either. In my ignorance, I figured, how much could go wrong with it when it’s such a simple machine? I mean, you look under the hood and there are about 12 things in there. You can see the ground. What I didn’t understand then was that something will always go wrong, and that vintage cars are holes you pour money into and which put you at the mercy of mechanics named (and natured) Snake.

So, I guess I learned that not only am I not one of Nature’s drivers, I’m not one of Nature’s car owners, either. I’ll leave cars, like children, to those who really want and/or need them.

Well, it’s official. My life is completely Josephine-less. We lost our darling cat Jo in 1999 – as befitted a unique and beautiful person, she died young and tragically – and I have now sold my car Josephine, pictured above. Unlike Jo the cat, Jo the car is old (vintage 1966), but as you can see, both Jo’s are beautiful. In fact, I named the car for the cat, because it is the color of her eyes.

When I lost my parking space in the building next door, I looked for another one anywhere within a 12 block radius which was less than $300 a month, and failed. I couldn’t park Josephine on the street, because she has a soft top, the doors don’t really lock, and you could start her with a hairpin. It would be just asking for it (someone keyed the hood when I parked her in the Pier 39 garage. Human nature – you just gotta hate it). I only drove her on the weekends, anyway, so I brought her up to my brother’s in the country for a vacation.

That was three years ago, and in spite of keeping her under wraps over the rainy winters, the car cover wasn’t really enough to prevent the weather from damaging her. I couldn’t find a parking place in the city that wasn’t outrageously expensive or so far away that I’d have to either take public transit {*gasp* – to be avoided at all costs – it’s either walk or taxi for me, thank you} or a cab to get to it. The decision was clear, but facing up to it was hard.

As luck would have it, John has been friends since high school with a guy who is a total Mustang fan, and he agreed to buy Josephine and ship her to her new home. He will have the pleasure of restoring her to her original glory as well as driving her (in fair weather only, of course), and she won’t really be gone – I can still visit her. And in the meantime, I know she’s being loved and cherished.

But I’ll still miss her.

Today you get to walk home with me, only without all that annoying physical effort. There will even be visual aids.

I walk home up Columbus, through North Beach, the Italian neighborhood. Past Beat era icons City Lights bookstore (celebrating its 50th year) and Vesuvio’s, and then past the strip clubs (for some reason, there are a lot of them in North Beach, though they are not noticeably Italian), including what’s left of the Condor.

The Condor has the distinction of being America’s first topless bar, when Carol Doda danced on the bar in mod designer Rudy Gernreich’s topless bathing suit in 1964. The Condor used to have a wonderful neon sign of a nude woman with flashing red nipples, which sadly disappeared after the club was sold and it became the boring restaurant it is now (the new owners thought it was rude!). The sign looked particularly charming in the fog. I miss it.

Turn left on Vallejo* and you’ll see why I say I walk home up it. The hill is so steep that the sidewalk gives up in despair and becomes a stairway. You can’t tell, but this is only the first block of four or so that are stairs (the rest are hidden in the trees). But it’s worth the hike. Halfway up, it looks like this, and then like this, and at the top, this.

If I’m not taking pictures for you (it is, however, fun to play tourist in your own town), I can do all the stairs without stopping, which is very gratifying. Past the multi-million dollar houses and it’s all downhill to Chez Suzy from there.

*Named for General Vallejo, one of the early settlers of Northern California. The guy who answers the phone at my pizza place always corrects my pronunciation of “Vallejo” (Va-lay-o) by giving it the full Spanish treatment: “Ba-yay-ho”. It just wouldn’t feel right if he didn’t.

I might need a therapist to recover from my therapists. If so, it’s going to be a woman, and a straight one.

Before you start yelling homophobe at me, I would remind you that I live in what may well be the gayest city in the world, and ask you to read my (mis)adventures in therapy first. If you still think I’m gay-averse after that, let me have it. I promise not to say, “some of my best friends are gay.” Deal?

Therapist One chose the week before I was slated to go to London for the first time after Dad’s death (not counting the trip immediately after his death), when he knew I was scheduled to clear out Dad’s things and visit his friends and generally be immersed in the horror of being Dadless in Dad’s house, to break up with me on the phone because he had a crush on me. Shouldn’t he have told me in person, at least, and not on the phone? And couldn’t he have held it in for just one more week and told me after I got back? Unbelievable. I was so shocked that I didn’t say much while he was on the phone, and then it seemed stupid to call him back and rant about it, so that was it. PS: Guy is married and has kids.

After a couple of months, I overcame my native slothfulness enough to find another therapist. Last week, I informed Therapist Two that my benefits run out at the end of the month. He took the opportunity to hug me and tell me that I should fire him as my therapist (well, he’s right about that, anyway) and he’d take me out to drink champagne and we could be “friends”. In the course of the hug, his fingers touched my back (the actual skin! Ick). I was horrified and fled. PS: Guy is married and, yeah, has kids.

A couple of days later, he called me on my cell phone and said, “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t too freaked out by what happened last time I saw you.” We still have our standing appointment this week, and I am planning to confront him at it, so I said, “We’ll talk about it when I see you. I have to go now.” There was no way I was letting him off the hook or excusing him or anything like that. And it just shows he knows what he did was wrong.

The thing that kills me is that my first reaction was, “Is there something about me that makes this kind of thing happen?” I can’t believe that I was blaming myself for the actions of these two guys, who are: medical professionals and know most of my horrible secrets, thoughts, and feelings. My trainer thinks these guys must have skipped all the ethics classes in their 10+ years at school, and the whole fiasco is an exercise in ego and power. I think she’ll be my therapist from now on.

So my trainer told me that she made the mistake of asking her boyfriend – they recently moved in together – how many women he had slept with. She was horrified by the total, which included 13 girls before he graduated from high school. I don’t think I know anybody who got that much action in high school, and I found that the most remarkable part of the revelation, though clearly she didn’t.

I said that it was a long time ago, before he knew her, and that all the people he had met and things he had done made him the person he is today, the person she loves, which made her feel a little better. But inside I was thinking, “Thirteen?!”

It made me realize that there is no good answer to that question. If the number is low, the guy is a loser, and if it’s too high, he’s a dog and possibly a walking lab experiment.

It also made me realize yet another fundamental difference between men and women. We always want to know about their romantic and sexual pasts, and not just for our health. We have a Pandora style curiosity that we just can’t help, sometimes with similar consequences, though on a lesser scale, witness my trainer. She would have been much better off not knowing, but had to ask. I have done the same thing with comparable results, but I’m sorry to say would probably ask that question again, even though you’d think I’d know better by now.

If you do ask, rest assured that the guy will not ask you the same question. As much as we want to know, they don’t want to know. They don’t want to think about you with any other guy, even if it was years ago and way before you met them. In the back of their minds, I think they all want really experienced virgins. And if they did ask you, you couldn’t tell them anyway. I personally have no idea what the number is, though I’m pretty sure I didn’t sleep with 13 guys in high school. An informal survey of my friends reveals that men do know what the number is, and women don’t. Some of the guys said that they had actually made a list at one time or another, which I immediately found icky, though I’m not sure exactly why.

I guess the lesson here (if there is one) is: don’t ask, don’t tell. If you can help it.

It seems appropriate to get a reminder of my long-lost father on the Day of the Dead.

The Peregrine Fund sent me an advance copy of their new book, “Return of the Peregrine: A North American Saga of Teamwork and Tenacity”, which tells the story of how the peregrine falcon was rescued from the Endangered Species List.

The book is arranged chronologically, and is beautifully written, researched, and illustrated. It’s a fascinating read for scientists and non-scientists alike. I am honored that my father was included in this labor of love, and I know he would have been very pleased. The chapter on his contribution – figuring out how to measure the level of DDT in the eggshells of peregrine falcons – includes his own account of how he thought of it, which I had never read before, and the brief bio (how I still hate seeing 1931-2001 after his name!) mentions in passing that he published more than 250 scientific papers, which was news to me, too. I knew there had been a lot, but not that many!

So it was another small gift, like the stories and anecdotes his friends and colleagues have shared with me – a way of knowing my beloved father and friend a little better, even though he is no longer here (except in my heart, blood, and memories).

Dr. Cade, the head of the Peregrine Fund, is part of one of my favorite Halloween memories (OK, I’m a day late on this one!). When my brother was four years old, Dr. Cade threw a Halloween party at his house, which was an especially appropriate venue, because it was a Victorian house at the top of a hill, and more importantly, had its own graveyard. I’m not sure if it was the Cade family’s graveyard or the previous owners of the house, but it made a pretty big impression on the seven year old Me. In those days, we lived in rural upstate New York, since my father was working at Cornell, and I later learned that it was not all that unusual for rural families in the 19th century to have their own family graveyards.

Anyway, after the party, the parents were to each take a batch of kids into the town to trick-or-treat. The rule in my family was that you had to be five years old to go trick-or-treating, but there was no way my brother was going to wait another long year to go, especially since his two annoying older sisters got to go. So he sneaked into another family’s car when the time came, and by the time my parents figured it out, it was too late. Even then my brother knew it was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

He approached the first house, still not completely convinced that saying three words would result in candy (a rare commodity in our house). Along with the other kids, he said the magic words, and along with them, received free candy. He raced down the driveway shouting joyfully, “It works! It works!”

On my way home, I saw this sign on a bus stop and found it pretty damn funny. The little arrow pointing to the poor, parka’d victim of the blizzard says “You are NOT here”.

I realize that those of you who live where there is actual weather, real seasons, and full-frontal blizzards with temperatures below zero on both scales will not find this as amusing as I do, but as usual, I was unable to restrain myself. If nothing else, it’s a clever advertising slogan, right?

PS I have no idea why the picture is so very azure. Will blame it on the twilight I now have to endure on the way home, thanks to the time change. Why do we put up with it?!

Happy birthday to the amazing Candi!

It would take a much better writer than I am to describe this remarkable woman. I will just say the following about her:

She is one of my best friends. In fact, she is pretty much a sister to me. She is always there for me, in good times and bad, with advice, a word of wisdom, laughter, or just listening. She always knows what to say, and (sometimes more importantly) what not to say. She is a tower of strength with really great nails (it’s true!). She is a loyal and trustworthy friend, which is a rarity in this world. Her friendship is one of the greatest gifts in my life.

She is one of the smartest and funniest people I know. Her view of the world, opinions, and her way of expressing herself are unique. Pure Candi, and there’s no-one else like her and there never will be. She is unforgettable.

If you haven’t already sent her a present, or a card, or an email, shame on you. Go & do it now. Shouldn’t today be a national holiday anyway?