Suzy Says

Oh, that Audrey. The most stubborn cat in Hooterville. Or any other ville, for that matter.

Ever since Le Bug descended upon me and I more or less moved into my bed full-time, Audrey has been keeping Megan hours. And keeping me company.

She curls up neatly on the bed and naps all day. I don’t think anyone, cat or otherwise, can look quite so cozy as Audrey as does when she’s asleep. You can tell she really enjoys that beauty rest. When I pet her, she makes little bird-like noises and sometimes stretches, but that’s it.

At first, I was flattered by this. But I soon realized it had its down side, which is that she wants to go out at night and stay out, which is against company policy. All cats have to be inside, present and accounted for, before I go to bed.

But after sleeping all day, Audrey wants to go out and play all night. And since she is the most stubborn cat in the world, she refuses to come when she’s called, and of course, she totally disdains treats, as you would expect from her supermodel figure.

So for the past few nights, I’ve had to go outside repeatedly, shivering in the darkness and coughing up a storm until she appears. My paranoia has not been assisted by reports of mountain lion sightings in Hooterville, though Megan assures me that they are pretty much always around. Either way, I want my kitties inside at night.

Eventually, Audrey shows up, and trots gracefully inside. When she’s good and ready. It’s the Audrey way.

Update: I actually put her outside, in the 65 degree sunshine, a couple of times. She complained bitterly about being picked up – Audrey hates the indignity of being picked up at the best of times, and in the middle of a nap definitely doesn’t qualify – and then came back in about half an hour later and resumed her interrupted program.

Generally, we like to think that we are a little better than the common man. We aren’t the Ugly American tourists giving our great country a bad name. We aren’t tourists at all! We are citizens of the world. But sometimes, we have to face the fact that we are, in fact, the Ugly American tourist, fanny pack and all, speaking English loudly and slowly enough* for those silly foreigners to get it**.

Yesterday, I had to face the fact that I am One of Them.

One of the many, uh, challenges Megan faces at work in the ER is people who come in saying they’ve had back pain or whatever for a month, but they need treatment NOW. Yes, they’ve had it for weeks and could have gone to the clinic or seen their doctor, but instead chose to go to the Emergency Room at night and get in the way of traffic accident victims and people having babies or heart attacks.

The ER staff does not look kindly upon such individuals.

Yesterday, my fever and chills were so bad that I called Megan at work, thoughtfully placing the call about five minutes after her shift started. She calmed me down and said she’d tell Rob what to bring me.

Rob appeared with Tylenol with codeine (later, I noticed that it had been prescribed for one of my mother’s dogs, who died a couple of years ago), cough syrup, and ibuprophen. He also thoughtfully brought their coffeemaker, which he will repo later on today when Megan wakes up.

I took all these things and shiveringly watched “Pan Am” until Megan called to check up on me. This morning, I feel a little better – though not enough to go to work – and as I came downstairs, Megan arrived, bearing ginger ale and soup and hugs. I may be sick, but I’m still lucky.

*My father believed that there was absolutely no point in speaking a foreign language abroad unless you were fluent in it, since offering a word or two in the other person’s native language simply unleashed a flood of it which you couldn’t understand, thus creating a conversational impasse.

**I always loved that line in “Big Trouble in Little China” (filmed in San Francisco!) where James Hong says, “Shut up! You are not brought upon this world to get it! “

Hot (or cold, depending) on the heels of Friday’s triumph came the flu from hell. It started off with a tickle in my throat, and then escalated into fits of the chills so bad that my teeth were chattering, followed by burning up with fever bad enough to sweat through my PJs. Add in a deep, wracking cough (you’d think I was the one smoking two packs a day), endless nose-blowing, and a strange sound like tearing lace every time I breathe, and you have a sick little Suzy on your hands.

The flu persisted through the weekend and into the work week. I can’t remember the last time I was this sick. My ribs and stomach ache from coughing, and not for the first time, I wish I could soak in a nice, hot bath. I have never missed my gracious San Francisco bathroom

quite so much as I have over the past few days.

I’m hoping to head back to the jobette tomorrow, but I fear that my much-anticipated trip to the City next week will have to be put off until later, since I can’t afford to miss two days this week and two days next week.

The phone rang at almost exactly 2:00 on Friday afternoon. I knew the appointment with the judge was at 1:30 (the meeting with the lawyer was at 1:00), so I didn’t think it could be Megan.

But it was.

Me: “Hello?”

Megan: “It’s over! We won!”

Me: “What?!”

It was almost the same kind of stunned feeling I had when she called me to say Dad was dead. I heard the words, but there seemed to be a disconnect between my ears and my brain.

Eventually I learned that they had gotten a really nice judge, and that their lawyer had read all 600 pages of Rob’s medical records and condensed them down into two pages of notes. She had every fact about Rob’s medical condition at her fingertips.

The lawyer led with the three spinal surgeries, the last of which has failed and must be repaired within 6 months. The judge asked Rob a couple of questions, and then made a bench decision, granting him permanent disability payments, as well as back pay – this process has been dragging on for four years. He should start receiving payments as early as next month.

This will enable Megan and Rob to move onto the property with Jonathan. We are hoping that Jonathan can start working a little less once the money starts coming in. He works 60 hours a week to keep the mortgage paid, and lives on $200 a month in a 29 foot trailer, with water from the well he dug and electricity from solar panels he bought and bartered and installed. There aren’t too many people who could or would live so austerely, all in order to save the family land.

On the way home, Rob confessed that it was a little painful to be officially disabled, instead of unofficially, even though it didn’t really change a thing about his physical condition. Still, it’s a little hard to celebrate being officially too damaged to work ever again, when you are still in your 40s.

Still, the relief of the long ordeal finally concluding in the best possible way overcame the sadness, and it happened that the Vintzes, who are buying the property with my siblings, and Jonathan’s old friend Carrie happened to be here that day, so we all gathered at Megan and Rob’s little house, where so many celebrations were held in the past; where Mom lived out her final illness; where Dad visited and Jarrett lived for a while – so many happy and sad memories in one little place. We toasted the future in Champagne, and while remembering the past, looked joyfully toward the future. Together.

Christopher Hayden: Thought our stomachs should start adjusting to French cuisine so I got us croissants and cafe au lait.

— Gilmore Girls, 2006

Yesterday, I turned on the coffeemaker and the heater (in that order; it’s been cold enough to have the orchids in the house at night so the frost doesn’t ruin their budding blooms), and then went to feed the kitties. Arriving back in the kitchen, I checked on the coffee’s progress.

The light was on, but no-one, or at least no coffee, was home.

I peeked inside, wondering if I had forgotten to put water in. Nope. Water and coffee grounds were present and accounted for, but no hopeful brewing sounds were forthcoming.

I went back to the pantry/laundry room/cat dining room area and dug around in the cupboards, looking for the French press. No luck, though I discovered that I had coconut milk, which I had forgotten about, and found the silver polish.

I put shoes on and went over to Megan’s. I knew she would be home from work by then, but I was desperate enough to risk her wrath if I woke her up while stealing some of yesterday’s coffee.

I sneaked in, and was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a full pot of fresh coffee. Olé! I filled up a cup and was preparing to creep out when I heard Rob’s voice. Then Megan’s. Uh-oh.

It turned out that she had taken the night off, so they had just made coffee and were planning to drink it. So I stayed and we had coffee together, which was really nice – I can’t remember the last time we did that. It was a nice way to start the day.

Today is Rob’s permanent disability hearing in San Rafael. As I write, they are heading down the highway toward their 1:00 pm appointment. Apparently the judge has up to three months to make his or her ruling, so we almost certainly will not know today whether Rob will get his very modest monthly payments. But it still feels momentous.

Cross your fingers for us. I have to say I feel like we are due for a change in our luck, after the decade of bad luck and bad times that we have endured since our father’s death. Here’s hoping.

Ernest Raymond, my mother’s father, was not a mystery to me, or anyone who knew him. He was a charmer until his dying day. When he was in his 80s, more or less blind and bald, my grandmother would leave him sitting on a bench outside when we went shopping. Almost every single time, we’d come back to find him surrounded by young women who were laughing at his stories. Nana used to grab his hand and tell him it was time to go. “You’re tired, Ernest”, she’d say briskly. “No, I’m not”, he’d protest as he was led away to the car.

Like me (and Mom), he had green eyes and crooked pinkie fingers, and I have to keep reminding myself that he wasn’t my blood, being my mother’s adopted father. But just as she always regarded her parents as simply her parents*, I regarded them as my grandparents.

Ernest Raymond was born on May 11, 1896, so he was a mere 18 years old when the Great War started. He was also a naive farm boy from New York state, unlike my urban paternal grandfather from the slums of London.

But both Ernests were stationed in France**. My mother’s father told me that his feet literally rotted in the trenches, and he saw his boyhood friends blown to pieces in front of his eyes. He was the only survivor of his unit, simply because he caught the measles and was in the infirmary when everyone else was being blown to pieces.

After the war was over, he had a week in Paris before being shipped back to the farm. That was it. Obviously it’s not as bad as the jeering and harassment that my friend Paul and other Vietnam veterans received on coming home, but Ernest didn’t get any help readjusting to civilian life, or dealing with the horrors he saw in battle.

He grew up to become a teacher, and then a high school principal (unfortunately for my mother, of the high school she attended, since it was the only one in her small town). He and my grandmother were married for more than half a century, and like Ernest Victor, he and his wife adored each other until the end of their days.

I used to sleep on a cot in my grandparents’ room when we visited my mother’s parents, and I know for a fact that my grandfather suffered from nightmares nearly every night. In some ways, I think veterans are always fighting a battle, even if we can’t see it.

*Mom was about three when they adopted her. They always told her, “We chose you out of all the children in all the world. Other parents just have to take what they get.” No wonder she never cared about her biological parents, or felt stigmatized by being adopted.

**I recently came across his infantry drill book from the war, with his own notes in it.

Like the rest of the world, I have fallen in love. Hard. With “Downton Abbey”. “Obsessed” is probably not too strong a word.

Sure, I love the fabulous costumes. The gorgeous settings (Highclere Castle is now a Destination for the Devoted). The wonderful ensemble cast (though I fear the next season appearance of the dreaded Shirley MacLaine, who has not yet learned to be more than mediocre or less than tiresome despite her multiple lives). The scandals and melodramas.

It is the Suzy-est thing EVAR.

But watching Season Two and the Christmas Special made me think less about these frivolous (yet delightful) things, and more about my grandfathers, Ernest and Ernest.

Ernest Victor, named for the Queen, was born in 1893 in Southwark. It was, and remains, a not-lovely part of London. It was bombed heavily during WWII – the war both my Ernest grandfathers fought in not turning out to be as advertised “The War to End All Wars” – and when I went to visit the site of his birth in 1993, the only thing left of that century was the long disused railroad stable, with the fading painted sign on the brickwork.

I only learned afterwards that the day I chose to go – and my father to accompany me, despite his lack of interest in geneology – was in fact Ernest Victor’s 100th birthday: October 13, 1993.

And it was much later that I started to piece together things about him that were odd. His mother registered his birth, a month after the fact, in a time when men almost always did these things. He was barely 21 when war broke out and he signed up.

He went to France and saw unimaginable horrors. He was gassed. He suffered from what I now realize was PTSD, called “shell shock” then. It has lately been acknowledged that most, or perhaps all of the painfully young men who were shot at dawn for desertion suffered from what we now call post traumatic stress disorder – the same thing that haunts every day and night of my friend Paul’s life after what he saw and did in the Vietnam War. The same that woke Ernest Raymond, my mother’s father, screaming, just as it does Paul.

I learned that all 306 young men shot at dawn for cowardice were posthumously pardoned – in 2006.

Ernest Victor never spoke to anyone in his family again after he returned from France, other than his sister Elsie, who in turn would become my father’s confidante.

He was a big shot in international banking at Lloyd’s, an incredible achievement for a man of his background. He never once told his only son he loved him. That was, my father said, understood. But my father’s last words to me were, at the end of a routine phone call, “Love you lots.”

Ernest Victor, for all I loved him, is a mystery to me.

Yesterday, Megan and Rob made the long trek to Civilization (and back) to see the surgeon who worked on Rob’s neck last summer.

The news was not good. The repair is basically collapsing, partly because they used cadaver bone instead of Rob’s own bone, and partly, the surgeon says, because Rob is such a heavy smoker and apparently this thins the bone along with all the other bad side effects.

The doctor says he can’t operate on Rob until he quits smoking, which will be a difficult endeavor for someone who smokes two packs a day and can’t do much to distract himself from the horrors of quitting. It’s not like he can play video games or go bike riding or something like that to keep his mind occupied.

Also it looks like another vertebra will need to be fixed soon.

On the other hand, I can’t believe that anyone can think that Rob can work at this point. He’s had three surgeries in four years and is facing more. He can’t sit, stand, walk, or even lie down for long periods of time. His left hand doesn’t work too well. He can’t really move his head from side to side or drive more than 5 miles. He walks like Frankenstein’s monster. So hopefully this bad news will help at the disability hearing next week. Maybe something good will come out of something really bad.

I was glad that I reinstated Thursday night dinners last month, since they came home to dinner being ready after a long, stressful day. And Megan was happy to discover that I left her a much-needed cocktail in the refrigerator. Sometimes it really is the little things that count.

You can thank Roscoe for the title. He just walked across the keyboard. Pretty good for someone who isn’t two years old yet, though his spelling does leave something to be desired.

It’s also what I was thinking last night when the power went out. I was afraid that it was going to happen after hearing the reports of 25-30 mile an hour winds as well as rain. The windchimes, always a cheery harbinger of the outage, were ringing merrily when I got home last night.

I was concerned enough to set the alarm for 5:30 am on the battered old travel alarm clock that usually lives in my bedside table’s drawer, but too optimistic to make coffee.

When darkness fell both inside as well as out, I regretted this foolish hopefulness. Who needs a glass that’s half full when you really need a coffee pot that’s half empty?

As I pondered these dark thoughts in the darkness, Rob appeared, with his headlamp on, and helped me to haul the generator so kindly donated by the Generator Fairy last fall outside. I paused partway through the process to capture the curious cats and strand them in the bathroom. The thought of them vanishing into the darkness scared me more than the darkness itself.

Rob got it going, showed me the on/off switch, and plugged a giant extension cord in. After we got the thing going, I immediately realized that it was a predator repellent. Even with the door closed and inside, it was LOUD. I later learned that sleeping with a generator on, even with earplugs firmly installed and a feather pillow over my head, is a near-impossibility.

Why do these things always happen when I have to get up early and work, pretending to be a responsible adult?

At least I could make coffee.

The cats cuddled up with me, probably thinking “Things are weird. We’d better stick together.” When I called PG&E, I was the first one to report the outage, news which saddened me, since I knew that it would be ages until a crew could get there and start working on whatever downed tree/power line was the problem.

Sometimes being first isn’t good.

Sorry to scare you all with the tale of things that go bump in the night. If we’re not worried, you shouldn’t be! There are still no locks on any of our doors, and so far, we haven’t had any more late night visitors. I still feel about a zillion times safer here than when I lived in Oakhampton. I have yet to come home to police cars in front of the house, or neighbors holding them off with a rifle, as I did there.

Not that it’s a cop-free zone. When I arrived at the jobette on Wednesday, one of my coworkers had just had a close encounter. As he pulled up in front of the office, two cop cars were upon him, blazing with lights and sirens, to inform him that one of his brake lights was out. Oh, the humanity!

It also turned out that his registration had lapsed the day before, so that lengthened the ordeal. As he sat, marooned in his car by a third of the local police force, our co-worker slunk by, pretending not to know him. After all, why get involved? Especially when there was no-one else to answer the phones.

He tried to pay the ticket and registration at lunch, only to be told they weren’t in the system yet. After he went through the metal detector and waited in line. Even small towns are not immune from bureaucracy.

My sister and I encountered the highway patrol and the fire department on our way home from the movies* on Sunday evening. We were in the truck, bumpkins that we are, and we were a little worried about running out of gas, since we were so busy talking about the movie that we completely forgot to get gas when we were in town, and the local store was closed.

We were stopped by guys with signs and flares in the road about a mile from the turnoff to the Ridge. It turned out that some guy had driven off the road – the curve there is sharper than it appears, as are many around here – and when passing motorists tried to help him, he repaid their Good Samaritan-ness by punching them and yelling at them.

He told the officers who responded to the call that men in fiber optic suits had jumped on his car, causing him to drive off the road. Oh, and he hadn’t slept in 30 hours. The car itself was so stuffed with things and stuff that there was barely enough room for the guy to sit in there and drive.

He was wearing a backpack with $20,000 in it.

He was released and sent on his way. The gas held out and we made it home. All’s well that ends well.

*It was “One for the Money”, based on the first Stephanie Plum novel by Janet Evanovich. Megan introduced me to them. They are fun fluff about a bounty hunter in New Jersey. I was concerned about Katherine Heigl playing Stephanie, but she was great and the movie was really fun.

The other night, Megan and Rob were fast asleep. It was, after all, 1 am, a perfectly reasonable hour to be doing so. In fact, most of us expect most of us to be doing just that.

They were yanked out of sleep by Star barking her head off. Now, neither of their dogs are barkers. Megan has put a lot of effort into making sure of this. I used to laugh at how she’d sneak out of sight when she left them in the car and then come back to admonish them if they barked, but now that I’m in town a lot more, I really appreciate this. Not a day goes by without senselessly barking dogs.

It turns out that Star had every reason to bark. Rob opened the little purple door to reveal a strange man standing on the porch. And I do mean strange. He told Rob some tale about his father and a gun and a few other things, then asked for a cigarette.

Rob cheerfully lied that there were no smokes on the premises, and then suggested that the guy call the cops. He mumbled something and shuffled off into the darkness, with both Rob and Megan wondering a) What the hell just happened here? and 2) Hope he doesn’t head to Suzy’s place.

He didn’t; or at least he chose not to come in any of the five unlocked doors at his disposal. Of course, cats don’t bark, so I can’t be sure, but I don’t think we had any midnight visitors.

The whole thing is really odd, though. We live more than five miles down a narrow, rough, barely paved road from a town where the latest thing open is the store, which closes at 6 in the winter. There are no bars or nightclubs within dozens of miles (or more). There are no streetlights. He would have had to go all that way down the road, and then choose our driveway, which is nothing but a dirt/mud track with giant rocks filling the potholes (Mark’s latest repair effort).

He had to pass the front house, which is usually unoccupied, though huge, and nearly always has a light on, and then pick the little offshoot that leads to Megan and Rob’s place. Theirs is the only house which isn’t on the main driveway, which makes the whole thing even odder. Mine is the most obvious after the front house, and I always have a light on at night. Megan and Rob don’t.

Go figure.

They say this has never happened to them in the many years they have lived here, and our brother says the same. I don’t think it will happen again, and in any case, nothing really did happen. I’m not going to fit locks to my doors (or, more likely, have Rob do it). But it’s certainly a mystery, country-style.

Last week’s storm brought us 7.25 inches of rain in three days, along with the second power outage of the season. It’s hard to believe now, with the sun shining brightly and not a cloud in the sky. It looks like I may have to start watering the garden again soon.

Watering will be easier now, since Rob the genie granted my wish. I happened to mention that I wished I had a hose reel. I hate the way the hose looks, lying all over the garden when not in use, but hose reels turn out to be surprisingly expensive, like fencing of any kind.

About three days later, Rob turned up with a hose reel:

which he had found at “the mall”, aka the dump. He hooked it up and it works just fine. How’s that for granting a wish?

A few days ago, he appeared with a lovely metal candleholder in hand, which he had also found at the mall:

It seems to be in perfect shape. I can’t imagine why anyone would throw it out. It will be a nice addition to the tall yellow candelabras and the table-top one, though now I’m thinking I should spray paint the table top one to match the new one. I’m looking forward to sitting outside by candlelight this spring and summer.

There are already signs of spring as we slide into February. The tulips – the same bulbs from last year’s Christmas stocking – are poking hopefully through the soil:

And the orchids both have flower spikes (on the right):

Hope springs eternal in a garden.

The last couple of “Vogues” had some amazing shoes, especially if money is no object and you mostly travel by limo or taxi.

In the December issue, these plaid Rochas beauties ($980):

Amusingly, they were in the “gifts for country girls” section, along with a lavender chicken who lays multi-colored eggs. As I observed on Facebook, I wish country life were really the way “Vogue” envisions it. Somehow, I can’t imagine myself prancing through the mud puddles on my driveway in peeptoe slingbacks. Sadly.

Equally impractical, yet equally fabulous, are these curlicue heeled platforms from Charlotte Olympia*:

I had to wonder if the designer was inspired by the Beverly Hills Hotel’s famous banana leaf wallpaper, not to mention the vintage 1940s white wrought-iron bar stools in the coffee shop:

Look no further than the fabulous finned cars of the 1950s for the inspiration for Prada’s gorgeous, limited edition ($1,450) shoes embellished with a crystal rose on the toes:

That’s about the average price of a new car in 1950.

*Vogue claims you can find them at charlotteolympia.com, but I couldn’t. So the price remains mysterious.

Sorry, poodles, I was swept away in a tsunami of work, rain, and power outages. But I’m back!

I missed you, too.

Since we last saw our heroine, she has both recovered her beloved MacBook and acquired a brand-new Pee Cee. This seems very appropriate for a Gemini, and in fact it is completely in keeping with the way things have always been with me computer-wise: PC for work, Mac at home (or Real Life).

Why the Pee Cee, you ask? Are you mad?! It’s like having a small Egyptian curse in the house! This is true, but here’s the problem. The Powers That Be at the firm who maintain our database on line from the traffic wilds of Atlanta saw fit to “upgrade” the system so it only runs on Explorer, which does not run on Mac.

Has upgrading ever made things better?

So my hands were tied with respect to work until I got the Pee Cee. The delivery was complicated by the fact that the FedEx truck broke down on the Ridge about three miles from my house. Since I had already observed the only tow truck going the other way with a trashed white car on my way home, I knew the delivery would be late.

Fortunately, I had already put a note on the door of the shed where FedEx and UPS deliver to our property, so even though I was supposed to sign for it, I didn’t have to, which was good, since it was about 9:00 pm by the time it got here.

Now all I have to do is transfer the files from the Mac and catch up on all the work I have not been able to do over the past week due to technical difficulties.

As for the Mac, I picked it up from the nice local computer fixers embarrassingly cleaned up and working just fine. We bonded over our shared affection for Buffalo, with its splendid Victorians, Frederick Law Olmstead-designed parks, and actual record stores.

The next day, the rain started in earnest, and I do mean earnest. We have received four inches (or more than 10 centimeters) in the past two days, and are slated to get more over the weekend. Don’t get me wrong: we need it, but does it have to be so hard and heavy? It’s so loud in my wood and tarpaper shack that I can barely hear the cats complaining about being stuck inside. There’s something about the curved shape of the roof/walls that seems to enhance the sound. It’s kind of like being assaulted, with the wind howling and the rain smashing and battering against the house.

Needless to say, the power went out, and of course it went out when I was finally done with a long series of conference calls that had started at 6 am. I speed dialed PG&E, only to be greeted with a gloomy recording saying that there were widespread power outages and power could be out for extended periods of time.

Fortunately, it wasn’t out that long, though the house was instantly cold and dark. My brother called a few hours later to ask if the power was still out – his never goes out, since he has solar and wind power – so he could walk me through getting the generator he gave me going. I thought that was really nice of him. It also reminded me that I should get a big can of gas and gas stabilizer, just in case.

I’m pretty sure there are more outages in my future.

Also inside. Let’s put it this way: when I got up this morning, Audrey leapt gracefully on top of the propane heater instead of madly clawing at the door to go out.

The propane heater has a thermostat, which tells you how warm it thinks the room is and also how warm it has (supposedly) heated it to. There’s also a little thermometer on the barometer by the front door. Both agreed that it was a very chilly 40 in the house.

After putting on coffee and the heat, I grabbed a flashlight and ventured outside to check the thermometer there, which read a somewhat shocking 25 degrees. This may be the coldest I have ever experienced here in Hooterville.

I’m glad I left my tap dripping last night, and so were the cats – they wasted no time in drinking from it, even though there is fresh water for them daily inside and outside.

The long string of sunny days and freezing nights is coming to an end, though. We are slated to get at least eight days of rain, possibly heavy, which means there may well be landslides and flooding, the banes of a Californian’s winter existence. At least it will be warmer, as it always is when it rains, the clouds providing much-needed insulation. The high today is supposed to be 40. The low tomorrow, after the rains start, is supposed to be 43.

We haven’t had any significant rain since Thanksgiving, and I read an article in the San Francisco paper which said that this was the third driest winter since 1850. Also that there is more snow in Texas than there is on Donner Summit in the Sierras, a place notorious for snow and requiring chains to drive on in the winter.

Seems the weather is mixed up everywhere, doesn’t it?

Heading to aquafit on a chilly, dark winter morning, I thought about how our brother inspired Megan and me to start swimming again last year. And I realized how strongly he has influenced our lives, without appearing to do so. In a way, we’ve been following his lead.

Our parents separated when Jonathan was 18. He decided to head out to California, where he stayed with a family friend while he got on his feet. He arrived in San Francisco with his cat and $100 in his pocket, and never looked back.

I visited him every year, or more often if I could, and it got harder and harder to leave. Eventually Dad retired back to his native England, leaving Megan and me on our own, so we decided to follow Jonathan and move to San Francisco.

Megan moved into a boat near his on Pier 39 and married Rob. I found an apartment on land near by, and fixed it up while John drove our stuff, and our beloved cat Buddy, to our new home, arriving in time for our wedding anniversary in December.

One day, Jonathan witnessed a man being stabbed to death at Pier 39. He decided that the time had come to leave the city. A good friend of his was from the Hooterville area, and Jonathan had spent a lot of time visiting, as Bay Area people tend to do. It seemed like a good place to start a new life.

So he did, and it was. After a few years, Megan and Rob decided to follow him there. It was hard at first, but of course having our brother there made it easier and better.

Having most of my family living in a place only accessible by car inspired me to finally learn how to drive so I could visit. In my 30s. I do not recommend this. Parents: don’t let this happen to your kids! They’ll think driving means freedom, when what it really means is driving to work, running errands, and traffic jams.

As usual, I’m an Awful Warning.

As you all know, after several years and several changes of venue, I, too ended up in Hooterville, living a few yards from my sister and about a quarter mile from my brother. In fact, the house he used to live in is on the same property, and it’s still kind of weird for me that he no longer lives there. I still think of it as his house, and so does everyone else. Mark calls it “Jonathan’s house”.

Jonathan started swimming over a year ago, working up to his present ability to swim for 45 minutes without stopping four times a week. He loved it so much that he kept trying to convince his sisters to go, and eventually, he persuaded us. As our mother used to say, he could sell refrigerators to Eskimos (are you allowed to say “Eskimos” now? I always thought the spelling “Esquimaux” was more elegant, anyway). And we love it, too.

The next time I see him, I’m going to thank him for being such a great leader. And the best brother a girl could ask for. Or follow around.

My brother’s gate

The other day on my way to work, I decided to drop off some curried chickpeas with spinach and Season 6 of “Dexter” (what a cliffhanger!) at my brother’s place.

I always look to see that his gate is closed when I drive by. It’s a habit left over from the bad old days when he first bought the property but didn’t live on it, and a local villain preyed on the redwoods. He and his good time buddies used to knock down the fences and/or gates we put up in order to steal the trees, mill them, and sell them.

It was hard to catch him, but everyone knew who it was. Jonathan called the sheriff several times, but they couldn’t catch him. Rob confronted the miscreant at the store, and eventually the thievery stopped, though he left us with a lovely parting gift of epoxy gluing the $100 lock we used to keep him out. The gate you see above was villain-proof, once we got the locksmith out here to hack off the glued lock and put on a new one.

So whenever I see the gate open, especially if I’m going to the pool early in the morning, I stop and close and lock it, just in case. Once I locked Rob in there, but he got out anyway. I’ll have try harder next time.

As I pulled up to the gate, I wondered why there was a pine cone on it. Closer inspection revealed that it was one of Rob’s finishing touches: a ceramic sculpture he made which looks like a pine cone, cemented to the gate post to make it look nicer. Rob is a man who appreciates the finer things in life.

I made my way slowly down the magnificent driveway, which has excellent drainage and no potholes or mud, making it approximately 1,000% nicer to look at and drive on than mine. Arriving at my brother’s little enclave, I noticed the frost on the hay bales:

and the huckleberry bushes:

My brother works overnight shifts three days in a row, so he was really, really happy to come home to dinner and a movie. Almost as happy as I was to give it to him.

Diagnosis: my iBook (or MacBook) needs a new inverter cable. Apparently years of opening and closing the lid have worn the cable, so a new one is required. The good news is that this was the cheaper of the two repair scenarios. The bad news is that it will take three to five days to get said part. However, once it arrives, it will take about half an hour to install, so that’s good.

I repo’d my computer so I can use it at a bizarre angle with accompanying screen blackouts. Better than nothing, right?

When I got home yesterday, I found that the new router had arrived. I also found that there were three missed calls from Megan, so I called her back right away, knowing that she only had a few minutes before taking off for work. “Come over,” she said, and hung up.

I went over there, and she handed me a letter. The letter said that Rob finally has a hearing date for his disability claim. It’s February 17. We are excited, but scared. If they deny the claim, I think we can appeal it, but it kind of feels like the end of the line.

I can’t believe that anyone could look at him and think he could work, but you never know. As with most things, there are so many dishonest people ruining it for the honest ones. I’m actually thinking of password protecting my blog, in case the powers that be read it and think he’s fine, even though it’s unlikely that they have time to surf the web or would know who he is in relation to me.

Back at home, I installed the router without incident (!), and sure enough, the Kindle connected right away. So once the computer is up and running again, it will be all systems go at Chez Suzy.

Things are looking up!

Also in the Not Working department is the Kindle Fire I received for Christmas. Sort of.

The device itself, as you can see, works fine. The problem is that my router is incapable of getting along with it. I tried to persuade it to see the error of its selfish ways, but to no avail.

A call to the Kindle customer service people revealed that this is a common problem with Kndles, even for people who live in civilization. As Meryl Streep said after swallowing the magic potion in “Death Becomes Her” – “NOW a warning?!”

I tried it out at Mark’s place and it connected instantly. Same goes for a cafe in the Hooterville Flats. So I gave in and ordered the router. Now to wait for it to be delivered…

But since waiting and patience are not in my nature, I took the Kindle to the jobette yesterday (where, yes, it felt an immediate connection to our router), and downloaded both of the Michael Connelly ebooks (well, estories) that are not available in any other form.

Once I get the new and hopefully improved router and get it set up, the hard part will begin: learning how to use it. Wish me luck!

And not the good kind…

Recently, my little iBook (or maybe MacBook, I was unable to answer that question and a host of others) has acquired the bad habit of blacking out suddenly, preferably when I’m in the middle of working or typing. Then I have to close the lid and reopen it, trying increasingly awkward angles until the screen appears.

For example, I can’t really see what I’m writing now.

On Saturday, it appeared to black out for good (or bad, because I had work due today), so I took it to the one repair place in the Big Town. They had a look and said it was one of two things, but they’d have to open it up and look around. Unfortunately, they were about to close, and today they already had five patients booked, so I will have to bring it in tomorrow and hope that it won’t require an expensive part being shipped here from civilization, or an overnight hospital stay.

So far, the theme of the new year seems to be “nothing works”. Let’s hope it makes some new ones and mends its wayward ways soon.