Suzy Says

While Suzy is away, I’ll be blogging for her, so expect a bit of a change in tone…

Cat Update:

Well, I got home from work yesterday (Monday, 8/20/01) and of course the cats were sniffing around for Suzy, all of them acting like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, looking at me like I bumped her off or something. Then, of course, they went apeshit because it was playtime. After I fed them, they all sat on the bed with me while I ate NVGTO* Pizza and did a Tony Soprano, watching a documentary on World War II. I tried to sleep around 8pm, with the phone on my bedside table, anticipating Suzy’s call to let me know she got to London okay. I suffered through intermittant Jackattacks all night as our Siamese 1 year-old leaped around the bedroom and kept messing with the cords attached to our window blinds. The cords have this little plastic ball on them that makes a spectacularly annoying clacking sound whenever they strike the wall, and of course Jack found this to be great fun. I believe that in some third-world countries this is considered a cheap and effective torture technique. Suzy called sometime after 11pm, to let me know she reached her destination safe and sound. I think everyone slept on the bed last night, including Hannah, who slept on me. To her I’m just furniture. This morning I didn’t want to get out from under the covers, but the cats kept running and jumping across the bed. It’s an old, very effective technique. I leap out of bed in a rage and chase them down the hall. They run into the kitchen, and by the time I get there they are sitting quietly, thinking, ‘since you’re here, why not break out the food?’ Works every time. (*NVGTO = Not Very Good Take-Out)

Things That Still Piss Me Off After All These Years #112:

It irks me that the X Files got moved from Friday night to Sunday night. It happened years ago, but it still sucks.

Women Are Strange #76:

The following letter, and reply, were found on a website that deals with testicle trivia (yeah, like YOU don’t surf the net for weird stuff?). The note at the end is the perfect capper to this bizarre entry-

“My husband is getting a vasectomy and we’re going to ask the doctor if we can keep his balls and I’m going to cook them and eat them because I love him. Can you suggest a recipe for human testicles?”

NO!!! When I received this mail the first time, I was sure it was a sick joke. After several years of receiving many variations on this same theme, I’ve begun to figure out that there are people who have perhaps seen their dog (or cow) neutered and misunderstand the process for men. All of these letters are written seriously and earnestly, I’ve decided to include the answer in my FAQ and mail sections. For all the loving wives and girlfriends (and the one boyfriend) out there who want to eat their husband or lovers balls after he has a vasectomy, I’ve got news for ya. Medical science has progressed a li’l bit faster than animal husbandry. Doctors these days simply snip through your vasa deferentia which will keep your spermies from mingling with your semen. They won’t snip through your jewels, not even if ya ask them nicely. Here’s a page which explains the process. NOTE If you have been to a doctor who removed your balls and called it a vasectomy, you should call a lawyer, not a chef. (and I’m neither 🙂

Random Notes:

I hate our downstairs neighbor. This knob has a deck the size of a trampoline, and yet it is always dirty and covered with leaves. The guy will go out there in his fancy designer togs [expensive pullover with the collar turned up, blue jeans with creases ironed into them (jesus), work gloves that come in an assortment of delightful colors (jesus squared!)] and then he will spend, no joke, an average of 10-15 minutes trying to tidy things up before dropping his rake and trashbag and leaving them there as he heads back inside his cigar-rank home. He is useless, and yet has a lot of money, so he must be some whiny executive. He has actually paid consultants to come out and discuss the deck situation, hoping for some radical solution to the dampness and rot, when all he really has to do is clean off all the leaves and slap down a few cans of Thompsen’s Water Seal. Oh, and he bought a super expensive leaf-VACUUM on the weekend. The fucking thing sounds like an F16 taking off and he kept interrupting his work to pointlessly fiddle with it, and Christ, I’ve seen chimpanzees with the munchies use sticks to draw termites out of old logs with more skill than this guy showed. Considering his apparent complete lack of friends and longstanding zero-ranking on the dating scene, maybe he should just turn the damn vacuum around and use it on himself. The stupid fuck. We call him Shithead, because that’s what his actual name sounds like and, well, he IS a shithead. In fact, I think he should be a shithead for real. If I could get one of those window-washer safety-belts, I’d rig it so I could hang out my window while he is uselessly puttering around on his deck and relieve myself right on his goddamn head.

Oh, and here’s the beginning of The Shithead Song (sung to the tune of the Flipper theme):

We call him Shithead, Shithead, greasy and bal-ding

Who’d ever want to be, friends with someone like he…

-Rufus

A few words about Doc

I did not know the professional Doctor David Peakall, the scientist, the toxicologist. I saw glimpses of this side of him from time to time, as he worked on his journals and letters in the quiet of the morning, a cup of tea at his side, body and mind rapt in concentration, or when he discussed issues beyond my comprehension with colleagues, conversing in numbers and values, the hard language of science.

The man I knew was Doc Peakall. The Doc I knew was a family man. He was a man who loved watching birds, understanding their fragile inner mechanisms while at the same time reveling in their song, their plumage, their simple and marvelous act of taking to the skies. This love of beauty also extended to art, and he often gleefully traveled thousands of miles to see a favorite piece in a rare exhibit, expending time and money for a few moments of quiet contemplation before a piece of canvas daubed with color. He got immense enjoyment out of cricket matches, both current, and those from the past, which he could experience through his collection of Wisdens, the bible of cricket. He was a man who always enjoyed a brisk walk across a field or over a hill, and in this pursuit he walked the ground in far-flung lands which many of us will only ever dream about. He was a man who loved to cook, and when in the kitchen his dual natures worked a wonderful harmony as science and art came together, the wizardry of blending elemental compounds being balanced and fixed not by any formula or law, but by the intangible, immeasurable sense of good taste with which he was born, the final result being wonderful dishes that defied description and served no other purpose but to be a feast for the senses. In the kitchen, and afterward at the table, he would work another much more subtle form of chemistry, making people like myself who came late to this family, feel as if I had always belonged there.

Like many great men Doc Peakall could be frustrating, vexing, an occasional pain in the ass. Like all great men, these qualities, which we all have to some degree, were made insignificant by his professionalism, his intellect, his joy of life. Doc had a remarkable ability for self-animation, be it telling an old story and nearly losing track of his narrative in laughter, or venting his wrath upon aspects of modern life which irritated him until he would pound the table with his fist or furiously strut about while tucking his shirt, declaring explicitly, and without shame, exactly how he felt about the object of his ire.

Francois Rabelais once said, ?Nature abhors a vacuum,? and indeed, when something is removed from existence it is always replaced by something else. Yet this particular void can never be filled. With Doc Peakall gone there will always be an empty place inside of us, but we should not treat this emptiness within as a bitter wound. We should instead consider the pain and sense of loss a testament to his warmth, his vigor, his intelligence, and his love, all of which we will miss, even as time tempers the hurt and blends it with the sometimes inexpressible feelings we all had for the Old Bear, feelings that will always be with us in some form, as he himself will be. I know Doc didn?t believe there was anything after this life, but I think he has been proven wrong, in a most wonderful way. If, as a man of science believes, life and thought and spirit are mere energy, then he will go on, transformed and transported perhaps, to some state we can only try to imagine, but he will continue to be, for as the first law of thermodynamics tells us, energy is never lost, it is just transferred somewhere else.

I think no more fitting final words can be spoken than those of Winston Churchill, a man Doc Peakall greatly admired, in a quote which he delighted in passing on to others.

?I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.?

-John (Rufus)

My father passed away this morning. My brother and I are going to London on Monday, and are planning to come home on September 5.

Thank you to everyone for your concern & caring. I’ll be on hiatus until sometime in September.

There are no words.

And you thought family reunions and high school reunions were weird? Worried that you’ll have nothing in common with those people you were forced to co-exist with for all those years? Try a reunion of Alcatraz’s guards and prisoners, an annual event held at the Rock itself. After all this time (the prison stopped being a prison in 1963), the guards and their former charges now have a common enemy: age. Don’t we all?

Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler got lost 2 blocks from the San Francisco Ritz Carlton Hotel and flagged down a Muni driver to ask where it was. Good thinking, Steve! Next time, get a map.

According to a quiz complete with adorable little cartoon dog found on Zalary’s blog, I live right where I’m supposed to! Do you?

The quiz picked San Francisco, followed by Oakland, San Jose, and oddly, Albuquerque, then Sacramento. I must be meant to be a California girl.

Sometimes my dreams are so weird, I wonder if I’m actually insane. But then I think, maybe it’s just mental garbage and having dreams is just the mind’s way of taking out the trash. If you wonder about this stuff, too, check out the Dreambank. Thanks to Becky’s always fascinating and informative blog.

Last week, I had a couple of very vivid dreams — the kind that are so real you can’t believe they aren’t for a few seconds after you wake up. The first one was about my good friend Candi. I dreamed she had a beautiful, redhaired little baby girl on August 17. I guess it’s not going to happen this Friday, but maybe in the future? For added weirdness, Candi told me later that August 17 is the day she and her wonderful fianc? Brian met! And I didn’t know that before I had the dream. {Cue up “Twilight Zone” music here.}

The other dream was about my godfather, Spencer.

He was a truly Renaissance man, an architect who graduated from Cornell and was on the Board of City Planners for San Francisco (it is partly due to his efforts that there are no further abominations like the Fontana Towers

marring our shoreline); a Lieutenant Colonel in the Navy; a connoisseur of wine, women, and song. I never asked him a question he couldn’t answer — his knowledge was far-ranging and diverse and he was a brilliant, amusing, once in a lifetime kind of guy.

He left us in January, 1993, and we had to wait for three weeks to scatter his ahes in the Bay he loved, because Nature seemed to be mourning the loss of this great man along with us, in the form of torrential rain and high winds.

In my dream, Rufus and I were visiting Spence in his house, but not his real house, a dream one with huge glass windows. We were all sitting together drinking Champagne and watching a giant thunderstorm together. Usually thunderstorms terrify me, but with my two guys there, I wasn’t scared at all. We were just laughing and having fun. It was great. It was a visit from Spence.

In search of distraction, and feeling that I couldn’t stand to be in the house one more minute, we went to see “The Others” (the new movie starring Nicole Kidman, not the all too short-lived TV series). It was at the Presidio Theater, which was a real bonus, since I hate patronizing those multi-plexes. And since it’s one of the few small, independent theaters left in the city, there were probably about a dozen other people in the audience.

The movie was great, really really creepy, and definitely scared the crap out of me (but in a good way). Just thinking about it makes me all shivery. Go and see it — you’ll love it!

Dad is doing better, but we still have a long way to go. He is having his gallbladder removed on Tuesday, and in the meantime our fearless Megan is finding everything out about the surgeon (how many of these operations has he done? Success rate? Where did he go to school? How many years experience, etc.). She is set up to talk to the cardiologist and anesthesiologist on Monday. And she just got there. She was lucky enough to get four seats across on the plane, but hasn’t had much sleep. Not that it stops her.

The surgery is really scaring me. The gallbladder is too inflamed and enlarged for the keyhole surgery, so he has to have the big scary opening him up one. But if he doesn’t, it will rupture and he’ll die. Some choice.

I hope Dad will be OK. And I hope Megan will take care of herself as well as everyone else. I am holding them very close in my thoughts, and always in my heart. Please let him get better.

It’s 2 am, and I’m awake and fretting, as Rufus calls it. Just the situation with Dad would be bad enough, but it’s also what we call “crunch time” at work, insanely busy, long days, so I should be getting some damn sleep. Maybe I’ll do something useful, like the laundry, since I’m up anyway.

Dad is doing better, but still in intensive care.

M is for Marvellous Megan. My little sis is heading to London tonight. The Californians in the family just aren’t happy with how the English side is handling things: not asking the doctors questions, not calling us with updates, leaving Dad alone at night. When Dad was in the hospital here after his stroke, one of us was there day and night, even if we had to sleep on the floor in his room. It never occurred to us not to. Yesterday I waited until 6:00 pm London time to call my older sister Beth, and she mentioned she had been back from the hospital for more than an hour! So it’s definitely time to get a Yank over there to kick some ass, and it just happens to be one of Megan’s specialties.

So even though she just got back from visiting Dad on July 20, even though she has to drive nearly 4 hours to get to San Francisco and then get on an 11 hour flight, she’s already on her way. No wonder I love that girl.

Am going to cry and do the laundry, like a disillusioned suburban housewife. Wish I could just sit around and watch soap operas and eat bonbons like said housewife instead of going to work, picking up Meg’s ticket from the other side of town, changing money to UK pounds, and the million other things I gotta do tomorrow. Oh wait — TODAY.

Thanks to everyone for the support and caring. You know who you are.

Today is my only nephew Ben’s 17th birthday, and also my friend Reidun’s birthday, but it hasn’t been a day for celebrating. My father is in intensive care for a severe blood infection caused by a gallstone which blocked the major bile duct of his liver. He’s on serious intravenous antibiotics and is sedated and on a ventilator. My older sister Beth is with our stepmother Margaret and calling me with progress reports. The doctors say Dad is doing wonderfully well, but it’s hard not to worry when you live on the other side of the planet (I live in California and he lives in England). Somehow I think I would feel better if I could see him and hold his hand. I bet Beth felt the same way when Dad had his stroke here last November.

I will know more tomorrow after Beth calls. Whatever your beliefs are, please pray for him, light a candle, or hold him in your thoughts, or whatever it is. We need all the help we can get.

Sorry, Ted, I ain’t buying it. Ted Hughes, the late Poet Laureate and former husband of the still-fascinating poet, Sylvia Plath, is still trying to justify his swinish behavior from beyond the grave. In a letter to a friend, Hughes claims that Plath killed herself due to a bad reaction to anti-depressants. Now, no-one is saying that Sylvia was the most stable person in the world. She had attempted suicide before even meeting Hughes, and like many geniuses, was haunted by demons. But let’s face it — it was Ted’s abandoning Sylvia and her two young children in a strange country for another woman that led her to put herself out of her misery on that cold February day at the age of 30.

Since Ted and Sylvia were still married at the time of her suicide, he inherited all her copyrights, thus gaining from the death he had caused. Oddly, the woman with whom he was having the affair which precipitated Sylvia’s suicide killed herself and her child in the very same way as Sylvia had only a few years before: by putting their heads in the gas oven.

It’s Jo Day today. On this day nine years ago, we met our Jo, and life has never been the same. Ever since Jo died in January, 1999, we have made a donation in her memory to Animal Care and Control, also known as “the pound”, on the day we met her. We hope that our little gift will help other stray cats like our Jo to find a happy and loving home. And I hope that remembering the day we met her and changed our lives forever will be a little happier than remembering the day she left us — as if we could ever forget that dark day. Maybe 7 years of Jo equals a lifetime with a more ordinary cat, though as Da Vinci observed, “Every feline is a masterpiece.”

Love you, Jo.

Happy birthday to Brian! Hope it’s a great one!!

Took all four cats to the vet for check ups today. I’m glad to report that everyone is in good health, though Hannah has one of her recurring ear infections and will need ear drops for a week and Sophie needs her teeth cleaned sometime during the next 3 months. Sophie is now only 12 & 1/2 pounds! She used to weigh 16. Now she’s perfect. I think Jack being a food demon and chasing everyone around has something to do with that. Cleo is always perfect, but we had a blood panel run on her since she’s 8 years old now and submitted her to the indignity of having her claws clipped, because she won’t let us do it. We aren’t allowed to touch her butt or her claws, and that’s the way it is.

All this for $400. *Gasp* I should have been sitting down when I got that horrifying total. And that’s including $70 worth of coupons and the discount for the healthcare plan. No wonder I don’t have kids — I can hardly afford cats!

My old friend (since high school, and no sex ever) Richard and I live about 8 blocks apart, but for some reason I never see him. Last week we finally caught up with each other and decided to meet for drinks at 5:45 this afternoon. At 6:15 I was wondering where he was. Called home, and Richard hadn’t called (is it weird to ask your husband if your “date” has called?) so I called Richard. He had actually forgotten he was supposed to meet me — guess that’s what happens when neither sex nor money is involved, though he denied it. While I was waiting, I overheard two conversation snippets:

Snippet One: One man to another: “I’m too old to groove.”

Snippet Two: Two guys are walking down the street together, and one says to the other, “Man, when my sister was talking to your parents like that, I really thought you were in trouble.”

I would love to know what that conversation was all about.

Richard and I finally met up and had a great time catching up, drinking Cosmopolitans, and eating jujubes (well, the bar had them right out there in little dishes). Eventually I had to remove the jujubes for Richard’s own good.

Richard has a beautiful new girlfriend, who, oddly, lives in the very same building Rufus and I lived in before we bought this place. He was asking me if I have a G spot, or have ever experienced that. I don’t think I have, but I promised to take an informal survey and let him know. In the interests of science and/or love, any girls (or for that matter, guys who know where it is) reading this blog, email me at suzy @ suzysays.net, or just post your comments and experiences. Inquiring minds want to know.

My brother’s kitten Iggy decided to celebrate turning four months old by catching a big western bluejay and wrestling it into the house. Iggy and the jay are both about the same size, so it was quite a battle until the jay managed to get free and fly outside and as far away from Iggy as he could get. If he’s the same bluejay that’s been stealing food from my brother’s kitchen, I bet he’s snacking somewhere else for a while.

OK, like the Canadians allowing medical marijuana use before us wasn’t bad enough? Now Germany has allowed same sex marriages before we have. I am so embarrassed for this country. I never thought I’d see the day that Canada and Germany would be more enlightened and progressive than we are. I guess I can blame it on the Bush dictatorship with its accompanying nouveau conservatism, but damn. Aren’t we supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave?

I find it embarrassing that our neighbors to the north are so far ahead of us in permitting the use of medical marijuana. While some of the states have passed laws permitting the use of marijuana for terminally ill patienets, the Supreme Court under the Bush administration ruled the use illegal. When are we going to get over our puritanical streak and let marijuana be used for medical purposes? If this doesn’t shame us into it, nothing will.

My mother’s mother, Nana, would have been 100 today. How I wish she was still here! She would have had her favorite birthday cake: white cake “iced” with whipped cream and with whipped cream “filling”, garnished with strawberries or raspberries. I would have given her a silly present and a big birthday hug. Those of you who still have your grandparents, go and give them a big hug, whether it’s their birthday or not. You’re lucky, you know.