Suzy Says

OK, kiddies, John turns 40 today. Yet he remains endearingly immature, as do I.

Plans for today:

Seeing Frailty after work.
Dinner at our favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurant.
Presents.
Incredible cake from Rubicon with stars on it! And those sparkler type candles.

Etc.

Don’t forget, this means less than two shopping months before MY birthday!

Here’s your love/hate for this week. Have fun!

Our cat Jack is the most obnoxious of our cats. She’s the loudest and has the most to say. She is extremely assertive, especially about informing us that it’s time for her to eat (whether it actually is or not), or when trying to scavenge off our plates. But despite her brash exterior, Jack is, in fact, a scaredy cat.

The first time Jack saw my brother’s dog, Jed (who never chases cats and usually sleeps with my brother’s two cats at night), she hid under the couch and wouldn’t come out. I’m sorry to say that I was secretly pleased, because it was Thanksgiving dinner and my brother had also brought his friend Carrie, and I had been somewhat concerned that Jack would either be yowling or jumping onto the table to get at the food. This would have been horribly embarrassing and completely negated the desired effect. This was when we discovered that Jack was a secret wuss.

When I got home yesterday, Jack and Hannah were waiting for me in the hallway as usual, and everything seemed normal until I went to feed the cats. Feeding time at our zoo is not a quiet and refined affair. Cleo starts up, and since Jack thinks Cleo is the coolest thing around (she could be right), she starts up too, trying to imitate Cleo. Sophie also puts in her bid not to be forgotten. Hannah doesn’t really say anything — like Buddy, she knows the food is coming and isn’t worried about it. She also uses the Buddy method of going through the living room and into the kitchen through that door instead of the hall door like everyone else. It’s nice that he lives on in little things like that.

But yesterday, for the first time since we brought Jack home as a dollar-bill sized kitten, she didn’t come running into the kitchen when she heard the music of food. So something was wrong.

It’s amazing how many places there are for a cat to hide in a one bedroom, one bathroom apartment. I looked everywhere and called for her. Finally I tore the couch apart (literally — there were cushions everywhere) and she streaked out from under the couch. And vanished. Again with the searching, but this time not finding. I was pretty much freaking out, even though logic told me she had to be somewhere in the damn apartment. Why didn’t John get home? He can fix anything.

Finally, he did, and was all calm and found her hiding place, took her out and she was 100% fine. Something must have scared her, but I can’t imagine what. I was there the whole time and didn’t hear anything. The funniest thing is: Jack is, paws down, the naughtiest of our cats. But at the thought that something could have happened to her, my stomach ached and I freaked out. It must be why she always has one of the other cats to snuggle with or play with. We love her in spite of her faults. I guess that’s what love really is.

Faithful readers may recall how a few months ago, I had to do both my job and our Admin Assistant’s at the last minute, and without thanks. Well, the same situation arose yesterday. My boss called me (from home) at noon to say that our client, the San Francisco Symphony needed their reports by 3:30 that same day. And they get 25 bound copies. Eek!

So I swung into action and discovered that our AA had not printed the two documents which accompany every single client report, every single quarter, so I had to do those too, which delayed things. So, as I did before, I got the info for the report, put it all together, printed it, had it bound, and delivered it. Again. And so far, sans merci.

I took a cab over to the Symphony with the box of reports, and was beleaguered by horrible traffic (any SF residents who read this: Pine Street is all torn up around Hyde and Larkin, and Civic Center not much better). This gave my cab driver plenty of time to expound on how the Israelis are treating Palestine just like the Turks treated the Greek population of Istanbul (then Constantinople), taking away their land and driving them out and then wondering why they’re pissed off.

We finally arrived at Symphony Hall, where the driver paused to wind up his diatribe as I collected the box of reports.

Despite the fact that the guy who has the apartment below us tortures us on most weekends by blasting classical radio — yes, radio, instead of buying his own CD’s and listening to them, commercial-free — so loud that we can hear every word of the commercials and the Wedgwood on our mantel shimmies alarmingly, I haven’t been put off by classical music. In fact, I have it on as background music at work — the very same station, actually — in the hopes that it will be soothing. I was brought up with it and still enjoy it. So it was quite exciting to go in through the Musicians’ Entrance. I had to sign in and show ID, and once I went through the doors, there were musicians everywhere, carrying instruments, laughing and joking. I got to pass the Green Room, where they were hanging out, and even overheard some of the rehearsal. Cool!

So my industriousness was rewarded, if not by work people. Possibly tant mieux.

Farewell to a great lady. The end of an era.

When you visit somewhere on vacation, do you ever imagine the kind of life you could have if you moved there? I’m always living these parallel lives in my imagination, and since we live where housing is so expensive, it doesn’t seem such an unreasonable notion. We could sell our apartment for more than twice what we paid for it, even given the current recession, and buy something else outright with money to spare.

Recent notions:

This 1845 house near where we used to spend summers in Maine when I was a child.

This “romantic and restful ocean view home”, near where my brother and sister live.

An apartment in Paris, near Caf&eacute Flore. As long as John had a satellite dish, he’d be happy.

Or, why not buy a ch&acircteau with its own vineyard? Ch&acircteau Suzy could be the next big thing to come out of Bordeaux. Well, maybe Ch&acircteau Suzanne.

Then there’s Italy. Imagine a beautiful apartment, perfectly situated in the Tuscan countryside between Italy and Florence. Or on the Grand Canal in Venice. “Liable to occasional tidal flooding.” Well, everything has its drawbacks.

Where would you live if money and other annoyances like work were no object?

I absolutely despise the time change, and am amazed that as a nation we haven’t risen up and rebelled against being forced to change our body clocks twice a year without the reward of going somewhere different, just as we rebelled against unfair taxes and told England to take a flying leap in 1776. We aren’t, on the whole, a nation of sheep or pushovers (or are we?), so it is surprising that we just accept this disruption twice a year without complaint, except for those in right-thinking states who refuse to have anything to do with such a sick and despicable notion.

I don’t really care which one we pick, I just think we should pick one and go with it. Of the two, this change is the least enjoyable for me. I already get up shockingly early to go to work, and of necessity go to bed equally shockingly early. So being forced to get up at 3:30 a.m. instead of 4:30 a.m. (yes, you read that correctly) is not my preference.

And my body, with all its faults, which are neither small nor few, is never, ever fooled. It knows damn well that it got an hour’s less sleep last night, and it’s seconded by my brain, whose performance is correspondingly even more sluggish than usual, especially when faced with the necessity of cognitive thought and/or mathiness as required by work.

I also hate being late, or feeling rushed, and when the time changes in this manner, I wake up at what is really 6:30 on a Sunday morning, but is now, through the forces of evil, 7:30 a.m., and already feel late and short of time, which is not a happy feeling for me.

It’s a fairly new century still, and isn’t it time to not make a change? Let’s rebel against the enforced and senseless time changes and demand freedom for our body clocks once and for all. 2002 can have its place in history, along with 1776!

I’m feeling quite virtuous, which is so unusual for me that I feel compelled to report it. And I feel virtuous even though I have just demolished half a tiny bag of orange spice almonds. Damn Real Foods for putting them right by the check-out, especially because all I was buying was virtuous laundry soap and dish soap, all biodegradeable, no animal products, or testing, etc. Like I said, virtuous.

I have a load of laundry in as I write, and I have also wrapped all of John’s birthday presents. For those who don’t know, it’s April 12, or 1 week away. So go buy something, or e-mail him at bazuemague@yahoo.com (don’t ask).

It’s overcast and depressing today, so I walked (partially virtuous) to North Beach with the intention of taking the 45 bus from Washington Square. I just missed one, and sat down on one of the green benches to await the arrival of the next one. There’s usually fun people-watching there, and you can almost always count on a dog or two, but no dogs today. And it looked like there was a heap of black clothes on the grass on the Moose’s side of the square.

The bus took more than 10 minutes to arrive, which equals one hour in Suzy time, so I was getting really bored and starting to look for a cab when the heap of clothes started moving. It was an elderly gentleman who got up, dusted off his hat, which had a little red feather in it, collected his briefcase, which he must have been using for a pillow, and his cane, and started walking slowly toward the cathedral, looking like Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi in the genius movie Ed Wood (why isn’t that on DVD?), and just as heart-wrenching.

But it made me think: would I have been sympathetic to him if he hadn’t had the accoutrements of cane, briefcase and hat? I probably would have dismissed him as one of the many homeless and/or crazy people who meander the streets. A sobering thought. Feeling less virtuous at this point.

On my way down Polk Street, I saw that La Place du Soleil had a charming and touching tribute to the Queen Mother in their window. It was a picture of her in her coronation robes and crown, in a pretty gold frame and surmounted with a black chiffon bow. I think she would have approved, especially of the little dog sleeping peacefully in front of the photo.

Love/Hate for Friday, April 5, 2002

Heat

I hate being overheated. Hatehatehate. I especially hate sweating. In fact, I personally believe there’s only one good reason to sweat, and it ain’t exercise. At least, not in a gym.

When I lived on the east coast, I used to start dreading summer in February. The summers were hot, humid, and bug-filled. I’d start sweating just getting dressed in the morning, and when I stepped out the door to go to work, it was like a hot, wet blanket had been lifted out of the washer and draped over me. I never felt clean, or comfortable.

After one stifling summer too many, I started renting an air conditioner for the summer. It was an excEt arrangement. The appliance company would come out and install it in May or so, and then take it away again in October, and I didn’t have to come up with all the money to buy my own. And I was able to actually sleep on summer nights instead of tossing and turning with a sweaty sheet over me. Added bonus: the window was closed so the bugs had to stay in their own homes. If you do have to live in a climate which treats you like a TV dinner, going from the deep freeze to the oven, invest in air conditioning, either rent it or buy it. You’ll wonder how you ever did without it.

But when it’s too hot, you can be completely naked and still be too hot, and completely miserable. And it’s very unusual to be naked in most areas of daily life, so even if being naked did help, it wouldn’t make much difference. Your hair will either frizz out or go completely flat, depending on its nature. Your hands and feet will swell with indignation at being forced to endure such absurd extremes of temperature. You’ll sweat everywhere, making you damp, uncomfortable, and eventually, with the addition of oxygen, stinky. Your make-up will slide off your face as if by magic, since your face will be oily and sweaty, and it will begin to sprout zits, no matter what your age.

So is it all that surprising that people go crazy during heat waves and start killing their fellow man or other acts of violence? According to this article in the Guardian, the murder rate in New York City jumped by 75% during the heat wave of 1988, and all of England’s major riots have occurred in the summer. You don’t hear of people going nuts during a cold snap, or at least, if they do, it’s not because of the weather.

The Friday Five last week on celebrity reminded me that I also met Matt Dillon years ago and forgot to include it in my earlier entry on brushes with fame. A friend of mine happened to manage the hotel where Matt Dillon was filming “The Big Town”, and he knew I had a crush on Matt Dillon, so he invited me to come by and meet him.

At this time, I was far from the only one who had a crush on Matt Dillon, and apparently female fans were a bit of a problem. Also Dillon got a reputation for being rude and not signing autographs, etc., but all I can say is, he was very nice to me and kissed my cheek! Oooh.

I still think Matt Dillon’s cute, after all these years. And it got me to thinking of who else I think is cute. I seem to be feeling list-y these days (is that the opposite of listless?). So here goes, in no particular order:

Matthew Fox, of the late lamented Party of Five, and Jeremy London, ditto (he must have a huge following); Will Smith; Joshua Jackson ; Eric Stoltz ; Gary Dourdan (Warrick Brown on CSI and formerly Jack Van Adams on Soul Food); Jared Leto, of the also late, lamented My So-Called Life (am I the kiss of death for TV shows?) and the brilliant movie Fight Club; Michael DeLorenzo of the great and underappreciated Resurrection Boulevard (the Santiagos must be the best-looking and least-watched family on television; Kerr Smith; Johnnie Depp; and James Marsters.

I seem to be feeling link-y, too.

So what do you think? Agree? Disagree? Appalled by my bad taste and/or the political incorrectness of my listing these gentlemen as if they were objects? Or is it perfectly OK since I’m a girl and we’ve been objectified by men for years, and it’s really more of a strike for feminism? Back atcha, guys!

In the spirit of the “100 Things About Me”s I have been seeing around lately, I’ve added Suzy factettes to my bio page. I could only come up with 65 of them, so I must be slightly more than half as interesting as everyone else. Check it out and see if there are any surprises. I bet there are.

OK, I was too obsessed with the distant past to remember to thank the inimitable Candi for installing the newest version of MT for us, rescuing us from the vagaries and caprices of Greymatter, and moving everything over to a new and better world, fixing problems on the way. So a belated but nonetheless heartfelt thanks to Candi, who is a true and generous friend, and totally fooled me with her April Fool’s prank, despite the fact that I definitely should have known better.

Candi also told me of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s passing on Saturday. I’m thankful that this grand old lady — in every sense of the word — died painlessly in her sleep without fear and without suffering the indignities that so often accompany old age. But with her goes a connection to the glorious past, since she was born when Queen Victoria, the Old Queen, was still on the throne and England still had her Empire.

Things have changed greatly in the century she witnessed, but she never lost her qualities of courage, dignity and duty, and we are the poorer for losing her. My heart aches for the Queen, who not only buried her baby sister 50 years to the day after her father in the same chapel this past February, but two months later is burying her mother. The Queen is alone now, the only one left of “Us Four”, as her father called their little family. I hope she finds the courage and peace she needs now, and in the months to come.

My apartment has the scent of childhood.

I bought a bunch of lilacs on the way home on Friday, put them in a vase that belonged to Nana, my mother’s mother, and put them on my bedside table, where they have been delighting me with their beauty and fragrance ever since.

Lilacs are my favorite flowers, and have been ever since I was a little girl. I was about three years old in this picture (I LOVED that dress and it appears in many of the pictures of me taken at that time. I had a red cardigan and red shoes to match), and standing beside one of Nana’s wonderful lilac bushes. She had purple, white, and pink, and I loved them all, though I loved the purple ones best. Still do.

Nana lived in a town called Newark, near Rochester, New York, an area justly famed for its lilacs, and where the annual Lilac Festival is held in May each year. Every time I smell them, or see them, I think of Nana, her beautiful garden, and the long-ago, happy days of my childhood.

If there’s anything that can make you feel worse than taking your cats to the vet, it’s starving them all before you take the chosen victims to their doom.

Cleo had to have her teeth cleaned this morning, so that meant no food after 9 last night, since cats very sensibly insist on being knocked out before allowing their teeth to be cleaned. For those of you not fortunate enough to live in a multi-cat household, let me tell you: if one cat can’t eat, none of them can. So snacks all around at 8 last night, but at 6 this morning, they didn’t hesitate to tell us exactly how hungry they were, and how very much the snack had worn off and was a faint memory.

It really sucks to have coffee and get dressed with all your cats crying and looking at you sadly, as if to say, “Why won’t you feed me?” But we heartlessly bundled Cleo and Hannah into their carriers and walked to the vet. They took Cleo in the back and I felt so horrible seeing her in the cage. She looked exactly the same as she had in when we first saw her at the pound, huddled in the back looking terrified. We made sure to tell her “See you later,” because that’s what we say every morning when we go to work, so she’d know she wasn’t doomed to be there forever.

While Cleo was getting ready, we had Hannah’s ears checked and cleaned. She has had a problem with ear infections since we first got her, because she was, at barely a month old, too young to be away from her mother, and didn’t develop the antibodies she needed. That plus the fact that our vet suspects that she is as inbred as an Arkansas hillbilly (no offense to y’all, especially Mr. Clinton), since she knows something of Hannah’s litter and this is apparently a problem with inbred AND purebred cats, which is kind of interesting. Both royalty and hillbillies subject to the same affliction. There is some kind of poetic justice in that…

Oh, the vet just called and Cleo’s ready to be picked up! See ya!

Love/Hate for Friday, March 29, 2002

Travel: Being There

Once you’re decanted off the plane, have thanked whatever gods or spirits or what have you for your safe arrival (and that of your beloved baggage, too), have cleared Customs and are in the new place, that’s where the fun begins.

Even though the actual plane ride is hideous, isn’t it amazing that you can wake up in London and have dinner the same day in San Francisco?

I should probably admit right off that in addition to rarely having hangovers, I don’t suffer from jet lag, either. I have been as far as 12 time zones away from home and been perfectly fine, as Jacques P?pin would say. My usual technique is to stay awake until 9:00 p.m. on the first day I arrive in Europe, and then go to sleep for up to 12 hours. When I wake up, I’m on the right time zone and ready to go.

Now John will tell you that he has jet lag whenever we are in Europe because I deprive him of a nap on arrival. Naps are fatal to time adjustment, and can only be indulged in for a good reason, such as being able to stay awake until midnight and beyond on New Year’s Eve in Edinburgh, which is one of the best possible reasons. But I do realize that many people have a hard time with the time change.

However, even the worst case of jet lag is more than made up for the wonders of travel. I live in a very new state (California joined the Union in 1850, 31st out of 50) in a very new country, so I am fascinated and delighted by the ancient buildings and culture in other countries. Churches and houses still in use after centuries. Eating a meal or drinking a pint in the same place as Charles Dickens or William Shakespeare. Walking the same streets as kings, queens, poets, artists and ordinary people have for hundreds of years. There’s a wonderful sense of continuity, being connected to the past.

It’s also fascinating to see how other people live and think, how their daily lives are different from yours and how they are the same. To have coffee in a Parisian caf?, watching the crowds go by. To buy wine in an ancient hill town in Italy, where old men play chess in the town square beside a thousand-year old well. To look at masterpieces of artists and sculptors in London’s National Gallery, Paris’ Mus?e d’Orsay, Florence’s Uffizi. To see families strolling hand in hand after dinner in an ancient Mexican town. To see the sun setting over the Grand Canal in Venice and the pink lights beside it all going on at once to illuminate the twilight.

But no matter how wonderful the trip, how dazzling the sights, nothing makes my heart leap like the first sight of the Golden Gate Bridge from the plane or the road, telling me that I’m almost home, home in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

I have our tickets to England. No turning back now, though I’m slightly dismayed to see that we’ll arrive in London on…9/11. Not that I’m superstitious or anything, and I should have thought of that when I booked the tickets. So my sis and I leave SF at 7 pm, arriving in London at 1 the next afternoon (less time to have to stay awake). Home on October 1, when we both leave and arrive on the same day, which I still find amazing, no matter how many times I’ve done it.

Amazing seems to be my word of the week. Guess I’m not so blas&eacute(e?), after all.

Last weekend, I had a call from my old friend Peter, and we talked for an hour. Even if we haven’t talked for months, when we do it’s as if no time has passed. Then today, I had a call from my friend, Mary-Lou, telling me that her first novel is being published today. She’s going to send me an autographed copy. It has been favorably reviewed by Roddy Doyle, who wrote The Commitments, and Yoko Ono has personally requested a copy. Mary-Lou is doing book signings and readings, and is being interviewed for Talk TV today (it’s a CTV show, so if you don’t live in Canada, you probably can’t see it). I’m so thrilled and proud of her!

Mary-Lou and I have been friends since high school. She was my bridesmaid, along with my sister Megan, and I feel lucky to have had her in my life for so many years.

Her good news got me to thinking. I have four friends from high school days: Mary-Lou and Peter, who both live in Toronto; Richard, who lives in San Francisco, and Alice, who lives in Amsterdam. Mary-Lou, Peter, and Richard all are free-lance journalists and are single. Alice and I are the only married ones, and the only property owners. Alice recently started working at Aot, after completing her PhD in math last year, and it’s her first real job. She used to be a model, doing the collection in New York, Paris, and Milan; she was in Vogue, Elle, etc., and once when I was in London, I saw banners with her face on them in the cosmetics department at Harrod’s.

It was fun when she was a model. I got to see what goes on behind the scenes at fashion shows (complete chaos), I learned everything I ever needed to know about make-up, and I hardly ever had to pay for dinner or drinks, because guys will pay for anything to hang out with models. So if you have a friend who is one, you get the perks, too. Eventually, she married a very handsome and sweet Dutch photographer (even though he always said he’d never date a model and she always said she’d never date a photographer) and moved to Amsterdam, where they have lived happily ever after.

But whether their lives have turned out glamorous or ordinary, I’m so glad they’re all still my friends. If someone knew you in when you were a dork in high school and still loves you, that’s amazing.

You know how I had the great mail day a couple of weeks ago? Yesterday, I had the hell mail day, brought to me by our friendly government, local and federal: a summons to jury duty for the Superior Court of California, made extra scary by including a form to be filled out and brought with me (suggests to me a case that will go on for months); and an extremely invasive and personal census form which I’m supposed to fill out and return to Big Brother.

I had jury duty 4 or 5 years ago for the first time, and I’m still recovering from the horror of it. In the City and County of San Francisco, you have to serve five days, whether or not you actually sit on a jury. I have heard of people who have been called for JD and only had to call in, but my own experience was quite the opposite.

Report to the waiting room (which I call the pit of despair, because that’s where you sit for hours before possibly being called into a courtroom — or not) at 8:00 and sit around, waiting, waiting, waiting, like the beginning of Casablanca. A couple of times I did get called into courtrooms, where you can’t read or do anything other than participate in a scientific experiment to see whether it is actually possible for a human being to die of boredom. I am extremely boredom-intolerant, and on the third day, after going home in the pouring rain after 8 hours of this, I sat on the floor of my living room and cried from the horror of having to do it again the next day, and the day after that.

I never did get on a jury. Also, that spell of JD coincided with our busy time at work, and so does this one, slated for April 22. I don’t know if I can stand it.

As for the census thing: I can’t believe we have to tell the government what our mortgage payment is, how much our monthly bills are, etc. They probably ask for bra size and frequency of sexual intercourse somewhere in the questionnaire, which is approximately the length of War and Peace, though I didn’t finish reading it. I’m under no illusion that the government doesn’t already know frightening amounts of information about every one of us, personal and otherwise, probably including bra size, but I just can’t make myself complete that document and send it back to make their invasion of what little privacy, or illusion of privacy, I have any easier.

Well, I needn’t have worried about my trip to England conflicting with Candi and Brian’s visit in June. I just got back from the United ticket office, where I learned that there are no upgrade-able seats available on non-stop flights between San Francisco and London in June or July. Some flights have one seat, but that’s no help when two of you are travelling together, and I can’t stand to change planes (increases your chances of death if you have more take-offs and landings, and it makes a long trip even longer). We could be waitlisted, but what if the waitlist doesn’t clear?

So it looks like we’ll be going in September instead, which is probably just as well.

Proof, as if any is needed, of how very shallow and trivial I am:

Every time I see this banner around town:

I read it one of two ways without stopping to think.

1. In English, as “Laid SF”.

2. In French, as, well, “Laid SF” (“Laid” is French for “ugly”. Doesn’t everything sound better in French?).

It’s an important cause, and I happen to be sponsoring someone who’s riding in it, but I can’t help but wonder if I’m the only one who reads the banners that way.

Sometimes, procrastination is its own reward.

My stepmother asked me months ago if I’d come to London, where she lives, sometime this year to help her to clear out my father’s things and send them/bring them/give them to the right people/places/things. Of course I agreed, since taking care of her is about all I can do for my father now.

Once I started telling people I was going, I started getting e-mails from friends, who are either meeting me in London or having me stay with them in various parts of England. So there started to be some fun in the mix of duty and grief. My little sister decided she wanted to go with me, and it seems it will pretty much take three weeks to get everything done. With one thing and another, mid-June seemed to be the best time to go.

When Dad was alive, I used to plan my trips to England and beyond — since we almost always went to Europe or something, a road trip, as we called it, even if we flew or took a ferry — months ahead. Both Dad and I enjoyed the planning and the anticipation of being together. But for this trip, I still haven’t booked the tickets or finalized plans, even though my failing to do so is mildly inconveniencing all concerned.

The awful truth is: I’m waiting for the air miles in my father’s account to be transferred to mine so I can upgrade both my sister and me to Business Class for the long flight to London. I have enough miles to upgrade my ticket, but not enough to upgrade Megan’s, and even I am not mean enough to make my sis sit wedged in the back while I stretch out up front and drink free champagne. Plus she’s completely fearless and I’m relying on her to hold my hand and reassure me during take-off. Pretty ironic considering I used to change her diapers.

Anyway, this selfish leaning on the rake has been rewarded, because Candi is planning to come out to San Francisco for the first time ever, accompanied by her adorable fianc? Brian, on the very week I should have left for England. Good thing I didn’t have the tix booked, though I would have changed them for this. Candi is one of my dearest friends, practically a sister to me, and we have never met in real life. So this is something to look forward to. And hey, the house is as good as it’s going to get from the obsessive cleaning for the in-laws last month, so it will be worry-free fun, too. I can hardly wait!