Suzy Says

When people talk about Seasonal Affective Disorder, they always mean winter, the season of snow, hot chocolate, Christmas presents, the Rockettes, and New Year’s Eve cocktails. Sure, it gets dark early, but that just means you can curl up by the fire and enjoy being inside with your cats and a good book or two.

The main problem with winter is the cold. But here’s the thing: it can be fixed easily with a sweater. Or a duvet. Or someone to cuddle. Easy even for someone as languid as Self.

I think winter is the pit bull of seasons: misunderstood and actually easily handled.

Summer, on the other hand…

Everyone loves it, including, oddly, east coast dwellers who know perfectly well that their heat always comes with a heaping side order of humidity. When I tell people that I hate summer, and start dreading its arrival along about February, they look at me as if I’m completely insane. They back away slowly, smiling brightly, and start looking through the Yellow Pages for asylums.

But the fact is that when you’re too hot, you can be completely naked and still be overheated, as well as aesthetically unpleasing in most cases (why is it always the beauty-challenged who feel compelled to public nudity?). See what I mean? Just a sweater will make you more comfortable if you’re cold, but if you’re hot, you’re doomed.

Sure, some genius invented the air conditioner, and should be high in the pantheon of the inventing gods, along with whoever invented the remote control and taxis. But girls of my lack of means can’t afford the electricity bills induced by using an air conditioner. I do have window fans in the kitchen and bedroom, and floor fans in the living room and bedroom, too, but I can tell you that it’s not even noon and I’m already wretched.

There’s hours of horror ahead, too, since my house retains heat like I retain water, and it will still be sweat-inducing at 9:00 pm, long after it’s cooled off outside. So here I am in the hot, depressing gloom, with all the blinds closed against the evil enemy. My cold shower wore off by the time I got dressed. Sigh.

Is it fall yet?

I think TCM has been reading my blog. Clearly they were inspired by my Riviera reminiscences, because today they decided to show To Catch a Thief. Set on the gorgeous French Riviera and starring the equally gorgeous Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, it’s one of my favorite Hitchcock movies. Beautiful leads, breathtaking scenery, fabulous gowns by the fabulous Edith Head, and all that jewelry. What’s not to love?

It was a scorching day, and my house was doing its very convincing imitation of a convection oven, so it was about all I could do to lounge on the (unfortunately black leather) couch with a glass of frozen italian soda (lemon) and watch the movie as my brain and cheapo granita slowly melted. Not for the first time, I wondered why California architects have either never heard of insulation, or decided it was wholly unnecessary. Same goes for window screens.

It seems the dog days of summer are here with a vengeance, more frightening than any real dog. So I think I’ll pack up my SNEAKERS and the one pair of socks that don’t have holes in them and head up to see my sibs later this week. I’ll escape the mind-numbing heat, and we can talk more about the potential move and maybe come up with a decision on the Green Acres Experiment.

Oh, and my brother sold my old Mustang! It’s been sitting sadly in his driveway for the past few years, undriven but still beautiful. I brought it up there when I could no longer afford to park it in San Francisco, and it’s been there ever since. The guy who bought it knows that it hasn’t been driven in a few years, but my brother still got him to pay $500 over the asking price. Nice, n’est-ce pas?

I superstitiously immediately thought that it would pay for the move. Hmmm.

*The Cat is Cary Grant’s alias in the movie. In case you thought I meant one of my cats.

This is my current favorite coffee cup. Isn’t it adorable? It’s less than three inches tall, and is even older than I am, and you know how I love that. Also, it’s exotic, made in Sweden. Like Ann-Margret and Pippi Longstocking.

Don’t tell the Swedish lovely, but my favorite coffee cups tend to die young and beautiful. I still miss my daisy mug from Stonehouse Pottery.

Although I am pretty much non compos mentis until I have my first few sips of coffee, lately I’ve noticed that I can’t drink much more than a thimbleful and a dash. If I do, I feel all nervous in my body but sleepy in my head, which is a truly unenjoyable sensation. I wonder if this is one of the many joys of getting older.

This summer marks the 30th anniversary of my coffee addiction. You remember Olivier and Thierry? Well, the year after I successfully brat-bashed them in Maine, their beleaguered parents paid my way to the Riviera for a repeat performance as a sort of reverse au pair (I believe that in the au pair business, it’s usually Americans importing girls from other countries instead of Americans being imported, but it was just fine with me).

I had a sitting room and bedroom in a tower in their lovely house overlooking Nice. I would have had the loan of their little white MG convertible if I’d been able to drive then, but perhaps it’s just as well. I got into enough trouble on public transit.

Every morning, the kids would jump into my bed (which had three little wooden steps to get into it and was my first encounter with a featherbed), yelling “Time to get ready! Yes, please!” We’d head down to the kitchen, where the coffee would be ready and seem like a complete necessity. I always drank it black and still do. Nothing gets between me and my caffeine.

So that’s how I started drinking coffee. And even though I can only drink it in moderation, I can’t get thinking or moving without it, so I have to admit that I am in fact an addict. I can’t imagine getting dressed and groomed and going somewhere else before having my daily dose. I’ll never understand those outside coffee drinkers.

I often wonder what June and Audrey do when I’m away. I imagine that as soon as the door closes behind me, they start jumping on the counters and other forbidden places, chewing on CD cases (June) and clawing at the washer (Audrey). If they were human, I know it would take them about .0003 seconds before the house was full of their friends and unsuitable boyfriends, blasting the stereo and dipping into the bar. They’d be shooing them out the back door and shoveling garbage into bags as I drove into the driveway.

They never cease to come up with new and exciting ways to make trouble. I used to thaw food on top of the refrigerator, until I caught Audrey up there. She had merrily chewed through the Ziploc bag and was working on a chicken breast. When I yelled at her, she jumped down onto the adjacent stove and ran away, adding a layer of horror to the outrage – what if the stove had been on?

During the last heat wave, I put a bowl of water on the back porch, where the girls were spending most of their time. June wasted no time in playing with it, knocking it around from paw to paw and moving it across the porch like a hockey puck, spilling water everywhere. After a few more episodes like that, I gave up on it, but it’s not unusual to find a mini-lake in the kitchen from the regular water dish receiving the same treatment.

The Boxes, all 30 of them, are currently stacked in front of the fireplace. One of these days I’ll transport them to my brother’s storage container, but in the meantime, they’re the focal point of the living room. Both Audrey and June enjoy lounging on top the boxes and swatting at me as I pass by. Audrey, however, managed to wiggle her way down the cliff of boxes and into the fireplace, where she presumably managed to climb up the flue partway and hang out (the flue is blocked with old pillows to discourage me from using the fireplace). When she was bored, she found she was unable to climb back up, and started mewing pitifully and clawing at the boxes. I moved enough of them to let her out, and she leapt past me and ran off, looking for more mischief.

I feel confident she’ll find it.

This one’s been going the rounds lately, so I thought I’d jump in. You can imagine it was pretty hard for someone with 30 cartons of books to come up with (or narrow it down to) a sweet sixteen.

The rules are that you’re supposed to do it in 16 minutes, but I can’t type that fast, even if I could think that fast. And no, I don’t get the 16 fetish, either.

Here are the (slightly bent) rules:

Don’t take too long to think about it. Sixteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First sixteen you can recall in no more than 16 minutes.

Here we go, in alphabetical order:

1. The Box of Delights, by John Masefield

My father loved this book as a child, and passed on his love to us by reading it to us every Christmas. I still read it every year. Written by Poet Laureate John Masefield, it tells the adventures of a boy coming home for the holidays who encounters unexpected magical adventures. Or were they?

Look for the unabridged copy if you pick one up. It’s important.

2. Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney

McInerney captures the hedonistic 80s like no-one else.

3. The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger

One of the two books not completely ruined for me by having to study it in school (the other being number 7). Holden’s voice still rings true to me after all these years, the same way it did when I first read it in my teens.

4. Empire Falls, by Richard Russo

Russo and I both grew up in Upstate New York, and most of his novels are set there. Besides my nostalgic enjoyment of the setting, I love his lyric prose and clever plots. This multi-generational tale is a great one.

5. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

I first read this when I was in fifth grade. My teacher was a glamorous, platinum blonde Southerner, and this was her favorite book. I have no idea how many times I’ve read this, and it never fails to capture me from the first page. I’m back in the 1860s, watching Scarlett wreak havoc and break hearts.

6. The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton

Every time I read the tragic tale of the beautiful Lily Bart, I hope it ends differently. But it never stops me from re-reading it. There’s no-one like Mrs. Wharton when it comes to witty social satire. Or descriptions of gowns.

7. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

Truman Capote’s ground-breaking “non-fiction novel” was both the making of him and his undoing. His life and career spiralled out of control after he published this unforgettable book, which chills and fascinates as much today as it did the day it was written. It affects me deeply for days every time I read it.

8. Isaac’s Storm, by Erik Larson

Truth is stranger than fiction, and the way Erik Larson weaves together history and the human experience (as he does again in “The Devil and the White City”) in the face of one of the greatest natural disasters in history is unparalleled. A real page-turner, all the more so for being entirely true and beautifully written.

9. Lucy Gayheart, by Willa Cather

“My Antonia” and “O Pioneers” are Miss Cather’s best-known books, but this is my best-loved of her works. It tells the story of a girl who leaves her small town prairie home for life in Chicago, with unexpected and tragic results.

10. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

The divine Jane at the top of her form.

11. The Ripley Series, by Patricia Highsmith

Miss Highsmith’s novels all deserve more attention, but the series about the charming and lethal Tom Ripley demonstrate her great gifts of observation of human nature and her sly wit.

12. A Series of Unfortunate Events, by Lemony Snicket

San Francisco’s own Daniel Handler shows great skill and cleverness in these small, beautifully written books about the unfortunate Baudelaire orphans. A delight to look at, and to read.

13. The Sweet Dove Died, by Barbara Pym

I love all of Miss Pym’s works, and wish there were more of them. This is the first one of her books I ever read, and still my favorite. She is a modern-day Jane Austen. Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil both named her “the most underrated novelist of the century”.

14. Tales of the City, by Armistead Maupin

I read this series before I lived in San Francisco. When I moved there, I made a pilgrimage to all the places in the books. Living in San Francisco was as wonderful for me as it is for the characters in these funny, delightful books. They originally ran as a column in the “Chronicle” and scandalized the socialites it merry skewered.

15. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy

It’s hard not to be moved by the saga of Tess. None of Hardy’s novels are particularly happy, but this one is particularly moving and is one of his best. I can just see Tess as I read it.

16. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

Looks like I have both of the South’s one hit wonders on my list. And Harper Lee accompanied her childhood friend, Truman Capote, to Kansas to assist in the interviews for “In Cold Blood”. (Mr. Capote appears in “Mockingbird” as Dill.) Miss Lee’s novel is a remarkable gem, a beautifully written and moving small masterpiece.

There you have it. What are your favorites?

I felt like Pee Wee Herman today. No, not the porn movie arrest. You know, the part where someone knocks at his door, and he opens it with happy anticipation, only to discover it’s a door-to-door salesman, and slams the door shut, screaming Salesman! in utter horror.

It all started with one of a series of phone calls from a guy who wants us to hire him. If I had a dime for every time he’s called or emailed me, I’d be able to pay my PG&E bill. I was planning to get back to him after a conference call with my partners today – when I would have an update and an actual decision – but he forestalled my call by several hours. And I got to call him again after the decision was made. Yay!

I really hate it when people like this win the business. I feel like they’re just being rewarded for their bad behavior. If your kid wouldn’t go to bed, would you give him/her a cookie?

Didn’t think so.

Later, when I was making breakfast, two guys loomed in my window and front door. It was, you guessed it, our buddies, the Jehovah’s Witless. Again. And on a weekday morning. I Pee Wee’d them and got back to the business of making toast.

Audrey in particular gets perturbed when people come up the driveway, or loud things, like the street cleaning machine, drive by. She starts making an urgent-sounding meow and pawing at the metal blinds, which clank against the windows and immediately make me long for a valium the size of my head. She also does this when I walk around outside while talking on the phone, but at least then I’m not inside to get the full effect.

So Audrey started doing her alarm mew, with the usual accompaniments. I wondered if the Witless really could be as witless as all that, and peeked out the window to see a guy digging around in the garbage. Not the recycling, the garbage. His chariot, in the form of a shopping cart, awaited him. He who steals my trash, steals trash, I reasoned, as I went back to trying to make our on-line database produce a report.

Hours later, the system was still being as stubborn as a teenager, and I was on the phone again when a guy came up on my porch and started yelling “Strawberries!” and waving a box of them around. It was hard to shoo him away while preserving a modicum of professional demeanor.

No-one offered to cut my lawn with invisible equipment, though.

Living in obscurity – or at least the woods – is looking better and better.

Home sweet home?

You will be amazed to hear that I’m thinking of moving. Again. But you might really be amazed to hear where.

It’s no secret that I hate living in Oakland, or that I’m deeply tired of spending nearly every penny I make to do so. I can’t afford to live in San Francisco, or anywhere desirable in the East Bay. I’m sick of the BART station of death and the weirdness of strangers.

So here’s my possible Plan B: move into my sister’s house (back view from the garden is pictured above). Our brother has already moved out to the property (more or less), so his house is vacant-ish, and my sis and her husband can move there, and I can move into their house. Musical houses!

Yes, it’s even teenier than my current house. It’s in the country. The separation between outside and inside is extremely blurred (and dusty or muddy, depending on the season). It’s a four hour drive from my job. I’m worried about the cats going outside and disappearing forever, which has happened to both my brother and sister.

But…

I’ll be close to my family and friends. I can spend more time with Jessica. Rent will be a third of what I’m paying now, and there will be no more insane water bills. There aren’t any locks on the door, even if I wanted to lock them. Sure, I’ll have to drive everywhere, but I do here, too. And who wouldn’t prefer driving by the ocean to the freeway?

I can consign The Boxes to my brother’s storage container. I can pile up meetings on a couple of days a month, stay in the familiar hotel near my old place in San Francisco. With 24 hours’ notice, I can be there if my boss/partner needs me.

I can even take the good bridge to get there.

Can I do it? Will it be like Green Acres? Will my boss say OK?

Stay tuned.

Thoughts, opinions, notions and moving cartons are welcome. if you’re too discreet to comment, email me at speakall at earthlink dot net. I’ll be glad you did.

The one and only Buddy

They say cats are nocturnal creatures, but mine aren’t afraid to bend the rules. Or break them completely.

Audrey and June seem to be at their most annoyingly active in the early morning hours, say, between two and five. The hours that fill you with despair should you have the misfortune of being awake to observe them, gloomily considering the work day ahead, that week’s errands, the meaning of life, and why people on TV shows always have the lights on in broad daylight.

June was the star of last night’s matinée, waking me up at 4:30 by biting my toes. I think I’ve mentioned June’s chewing affliction before – she has an unfortunate habit of chewing on really hard things, like CD cases and cast iron, with her tiny little teeth. I envision them shattering in a hail of vet bills.

Needless to say, after a rude awakening like that, a girl is awake, at least temporarily. I turned on the light and started reading the witty Personal Days, trying not to think about how soon it would be before I’d have to get up and feign productivity and adulthood.

June availed herself of the light to go behind the TV, climb up on the DVD player, and start merrily gnawing away at the plastic case of my 77 Sunset Strip DVDs. I yelled at her, and she looked up briefly before resuming the task at hand. Sighing, I got out of bed and went over to remove her from the forbidden area. I had hardly found my place in the book again before I heard the distinctive sound of plastic mastication. This time, I both yelled and got up at the same time. June fled the room, and for about the millionth time I thought how convenient it would be if my bedroom door actually closed – and stayed closed.

Thinking that June had finally gotten it out of her system, I returned to my reading. After half an hour or so, she came up on the bed and planted herself on the pillows. I thought this was nice. It reminded me of my very first cat, Buddy (see above), who used to sleep on my pillow every night. I’d say, “Sleep time,” and he’d come padding majestically down the hall and jump onto my pillow. I’d fall asleep to his grumbly purr, and when I woke up in the night, as I always do, I’d go back to sleep much faster, listening to his purr and feeling his thick, soft fur.

The happy, fuzzy Buddy feeling was not to last, though, since June’s purpose was to start chewing on the metal blinds, while clanking them against the windows directly behind me. Arrggh!!

All this time, Audrey was sitting placidly on the bed beside me. Her only contribution to the “Let’s drive Suzy crazy” initiative was to pin down the blankets so I couldn’t actually cover my entire body against the foggy, early-morning chill.

I looked the the alarm clock. Is 5:30 too early to get up?

Henry was lounging on the garage roof this morning, the way he used to when I first noticed him. He hardly ever does that now, even though it’s sunny up there pretty much all day. Lately, he’s been scorning both his plush bed and the tent under the rosebush, preferring to sleep on the dry grass or somewhere else entirely. Sometimes I only see him when it’s feeding time.

Now he comes running partway down the driveway to meet me, and even lets me pet him before putting the food in the dish. He’s recently taken to butting his head against my hand, which I see as huge in the progress of our relationship. Maybe he wouldn’t take me out on Friday night, but I’d probably see him at some point during the weekend.

Today’s breakfast was especially challenging.

About a month ago, I got fed up with June and Audrey hanging around the kitchen, waiting to get their Henry kibbles before I took the food out to him. It was OK at first, but then they turned into vultures, and on top of that, started hanging out in the kitchen in case there was extra food, even though there never was and they drove me crazy getting in my way. So I cut them off and put Henry’s Tupperware-esque food container under the porch.

This morning, I found it overturned and in the far reaches of Underporch. I got a rake to drag it out of the depths, and I think it’s a testimony to Henry’s trust in me that he didn’t run away from the rake. He used to run away when I emptied the water out of his dish to replace it, and any lawn implement made him flee. On the other hand, he also hampered my rescue efforts, and I ended up pulling the container off the lid. I carefully pulled the food-filled lid toward me, but I won’t lie to you: there was spillage.

I fed Henry from the rescued food, and when he was out of the way, put it into the container and added the spilled food I could salvage.

All this before coffee.

Later in the morning, Henry was, as I mentioned earlier, lounging on the garage roof. The girls were of course completely mesmerized, and it was a three-way staring contest. I probably could have walked out there with a steak and they still would have kept staring at each other.

In the end, Henry showed the girls how cool he really is by yawning, turning his back on them, and strolling slowly across the roof and jumping down lightly without looking back. They watched him out of sight, and then had a nap.

I’ve had so much fun reading the 1965 edition of James Beard’s “Menus for Entertaining” which I picked up for free at the Boonville Famer’s Market. It really was a different world back then, at least for the James Beards of the world.

Pretty much every meal, even picnics, concludes with coffee and cognac, or his other favorite, kirsch. I imagine that mixing a stimulant with a depressant would completely flummox one’s system, but what do I know? I’ve never understood the coffee after dinner thing anyway. You’ve just gotten a nice buzz from the wine, so why kill it, especially just hours away from bedtime? And I seriously doubt that a cup of coffee, or even two, could cancel out a dinner’s worth of wine enough for safe night-time driving.

Having said that, though, back in the late 1960s and early ’70s, my parents did attend the occasional cocktail party with their pajama-clad brood in tow. When they were ready to leave, they’d pile us in the car and off we’d go. Nothing untoward ever happened. Many of my baby pictures feature Mom with a cigarette in one hand while she fed me with the other, and cocktails (which I imagine to be a total necessity for every parent) make frequent cameo appearances in several of our baby photos. Those were the days.

Beard suggests topping steak and burgers – to which grated cheese has already been mixed in with the meat and other seasonings – with a pat of butter. He has an alarming proclivity for anchovies, which he puts into everything from deviled eggs to the butter for the steak. Note that he himself lived to the ripe old age of 81, despite all the booze’n’butter (Julia Child*, another butter advocate, made it to 91). One breakfast menu calls for champagne, croustades, chicken hash, chipolatas, asparagus, toasted brioche, and damson preserves.

Among my favorite pronouncements in the book are:

“Nothing is better in the morning than enlivening vodka drinks.”

“Have a picnic at the slightest excuse. It is even fun to have a box lunch and a hot drink in the car on a wintry day, while you look out at a dazzling stretch of landscape.”

“To give a good party you must be on the alert, though you appear to be entirely at ease. What a delight it can be to settle down later with your shoes off and have a few drinks in peace and quiet.”

*I’m really looking forward to seeing Julie and Julia this summer. Also The September Issue. ‘Cause that’s the kind of girl I am. Foodie and fashionista!

The dear departed

My ring has finally sold. I have mixed emotions about it, even though I gave it up three months ago. I guess I could have changed my mind and gotten it back, but if you’re at a financial point in your life where you’re selling your jewelry, you don’t really have the luxury of exercising a woman’s prerogative. The money will definitely come in handy, and I’ll try not to think about how I received less than a quarter of the appraised value.

I’ve been thinking lately about how little I got for the things I’ve been forced to sell versus the appraised value, or the value I thought they had. The truth is that any object, from a house (the one I’m renting was bought about three years ago for $450,000, and is now worth around half that) to a used book, is only worth what someone’s willing to pay for it. And whoever bought my things isn’t going to be able to sell them for a huge profit any more than I could, at least not in the immediate future. And the immediate future is what I’m concerned with right now.

When I first received the news, I immediately thought about the things I’d buy with the money:

• A new teapot to replace the one the kitties broke;
• New socks! I have maybe one pair without holes in them;
• A non-stick pan, since mine now sticks;
• Tickets to the A’s game where Rickey Henderson’s jersey will be retired; and
• Blinds and hanging plants for the porch.

Then I started laughing when I realized how modest these items are. It’s pretty funny to trade in a 2 carat diamond ring for some socks and a frying pan!

Though not suffering from a lengthy (and, I’m sure, in the hot’n’humid east coast summer) stinky strike like my friends in Toronto, there has been a certain level of garbage-related weirdness around here lately.

A bunch of kids play at the cul de sac end of my short street. Sometimes they play basketball – the hoop stays there all year round – sometimes it’s baseball, and often it’s skateboarding. It’s nice to see and hear the kids having so much fun, and I’ve gotten to know them enough that we greet each other as they run past. The day Michael Jackson* died, I saw one of these kids sitting on his basketball across the street with his head in his hands. I went over and asked if he was okay. He lifted his tear-stained young face to me and said, “Michael, man. Michael.” He bowed his head again and I respectfully left him to mourn his fallen idol.

A few days ago, a broken skateboard was left on the lawn of the people next door, the ones with the constantly barking dogs. I didn’t think anything of it until it appeared on my lawn, right next to the garbage can, which was sitting at the curb awaiting collection. I put it into the can and wondered what that was all about.

Last night, a woman was parked outside my house, casually dropping trash out of her windows. Fast food wrappers, bags, huge soda cups, a half-drunk Frappucino, and other detritus. There must have been a couple of pounds of it. I asked her what she thought she was doing, and she started yelling at me that she could do whatever she wanted and who did I think I was. I asked if she’d like it if someone threw garbage all over her street, and she got even angrier.

I gave up on the whole thing and walked back into the house, hearing her continued ranting behind me, including calling me a racist (she was African-American). She left soon after, but I actually worried for a couple of hours that she might come back with an irate boyfriend to continue the argument. Nothing happened, but it was pretty depressing. The truth is that I would have said the same thing to anyone who did that, regardless of race, but I guess you can never disregard race in America. I wonder if that day will ever come.

Not surprisingly, I had a hard time getting to sleep that night. I tossed and turned, finally giving in to the inevitable and reading Sag Harbor (in which race relations also play a role) into the cold light of dawn. As I finally drifted off to sleep, the garbage trucks began to roar up my street.

*I was intrigued by a quote in Joan Acocella’s recent essay in the “New Yorker”, where the great Fred Astaire, having been taught the Moonwalk by Michael Jackson, told the young star that they both danced out of anger.

Etsy has the most fabulous things. Here are some I’d snap up if money were no object:

A pencil urchin ($125). It would look so cute on my desk for the five seconds before the kittens knocked it to the ground and played with it into oblivion.

Florapalooza vase ($84). I have three vases from the wonderful Stonehouse Pottery on my mantel, and they’re Museum Waxed into place. We all know how the girls can’t resist shredding flowers, or the vases they’re in.

Tweed Boston bag with leather corsage ($89.90). Who knew tweed could be so frivolous?

“Koro” ($110): a modern light fixture/chandelier inspired by coral, but made to order of Japanese paper (along with, you know all the lights and wiring and things like that).

Who needs a little black dress when you can sport a summery little white dress ($254)? This has style to spare – I could see Mrs. O in this one.

Be your own Barbie* in a swimsuit ($110) modeled after the original 1959 Barbie’s (up to $8,000), back when she was a sassy brunette. You can finally wear doll clothes in real life!

*I never realized I before that I was so Barbie obsessed. I never had one as kid, or asked for one, but as an adult, I have visited the Barbie Hall of Fame in Palo Alto and totally covet the “The Birds” Barbie. Yet another mystery brought to you by the shallow eddies of Suzy’s frivolous mind.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
— Albert Einstein

Well, I’m no Einstein, and color me crazy, ’cause I refused to admit that I couldn’t get the pictures from my aged camera. I kept trying, and voilà! Here are the cemetery photos I’ve been wanting to show you.

The sign reading “Little River Cemetery” is in the distance.

You can see the grass is golden, and it’s foggy – coastal summer!

The tall marker is for the five children lost by one family in the 1880s.

The forest behind the cemetery.

One side of the “bowl” in the woods.

Peeking through the trees behind the cemetery to the ocean.

The ocean behind the forest.

The kittens’ mother, Quince

I couldn’t resist posting this photo of Quince yawning.

The girls were glad to see me when I got home. I could hear them galloping to the door when I put the key in the lock. They sniffed me and my baggage suspiciously, possibly smelling Other Cats, or just the country smells. Hours of fun! And an excuse not to unpack.

Before I hopped in a cold shower and enjoyed my new Lush gifts, I went out to see Henry. Usually, he’s grumpy when I get back – actually, he’s pretty much a grumpy old man all the time – but this time, he came running to see me, and even bumped his head against my hand when I bent down to pet him. Progress!

While I was away, I only checked my email once, when I ran that report for my boss. Like most people who take a break from the online world, I found I didn’t miss it at all, though I spend a lot of time in that realm when I’m at home. When I did check my email, I found a message from my landlords, saying they’d be by on Sunday to check on the lawn, though they didn’t say when.

You may recall that I’ve been trying to get them to do something about the grass corpse for several months. I was hoping we could talk about it and maybe get some native grasses or something more drought-tolerant than a resource-hogging lawn, but they either didn’t show up, or did an examination without me. Now I just have to wait for the diagnosis and prescription.

Sunday was the day of no-shows: my boss was also supposed to drop by, and he didn’t call or appear, either. I’m beginning to feel unpopular, even though I smell simply mahvellous.

As often happens in the summer, the Golden Gate Bridge was so fogged in that you couldn’t see most of the towers, let alone the ocean, the city, or the Bay. I was disappointed on Jessica’s behalf, since she was so looking forward to the view. I hope she got to see it on her way home.

By the time we passed the Presidio, we were out of the fog. No matter how long I live in or around San Francisco, the microclimates will never cease to amaze me.

Erica decided to drive down Union Street, a well-known and expensive shopping district near my former residence. I hadn’t been there in a while, being unable to support the economy in the style to which I used to be accustomed, and it was fun to see which stores were still there and which were different.

Erica noticed that there was actually a parking space in front of one of our favorite stores, Lush. Not only that, but there were 28 precious minutes left on the meter! It was too good to resist.

We drifted into the store on wafts of delicious fragrance, and were greeted by a charming French guy who spent the next half hour flirting with Erica as we sniffed and envied our way around. One of the great things about Lush is that you can try some of the products, so Jessica and I had fun trying things and splashing around in the basins provided. Somehow, we both ended up with glitter on our noses.

Erica told me to pick out something and she’d buy it for me. I was astonished – surely driving me home and letting me play with Jessica was enough for anyone! But she put her arm around me and said, “I know how much you miss shopping.” I was incredibly touched. In the end, she gave me all these things:

• Sugar scrub (which I used to scrub off the country dirt when I got home, though my long-suffering sandals may never be the same);
• A tiny pot of Potion solid perfume (spicy, delicious carnation scent);
• Sexy Peel soap (selected by Jessica); and
• Eau Roma water (get it?), which was perfect for a sunburned face.

When I thanked Erica, she said simply, “You needed some luxury,” and gave me a hug.

It was time to say good-bye. Along with my hay bale/Beverly Hills haircut, I brought a box of produce with me: tomatoes, almonds, peaches etc. from the Mendocino farmers’ market, tiny potatoes from my sister’s garden (she stores them in a pail of sand so they won’t go green or sprout; some of them were the size of a debutante’s pearls), and Betty eggs. Betty works at the hospital with my sis and brings in her extra eggs from her happy hens. You would not believe the difference between Betty eggs and Safeway eggs.

I went home by modern stage coach: my sis drove me to Boonville, where we planned to meet up with Erica and Jessica at Erica’s shop, Erica having kindly offered to chauffeur me the rest of the way. Megan and I were a bit early, a frequent family flaw, so we poked around the small farmers’ market for a few minutes.

There were books which were supposed to swapped, but having nothing to trade, we were allowed to take our selections for free. I scored a 1965 edition of James Beard’s Menus for Entertaining (which is, very) and Meg found a sci fi book for her husband, which it turned out he hadn’t read. I also got a Sunflower Soother lotion bar from MeadowSweet Soap, based in Ukiah. I am pleased to report that daily applications of it, besides smelling and feeling great, completely prevented my sunburn(s) from peeling.

We went across the street to the store, where Erica was loading up the car. She and Jessica were lucky golden ticket holders for Neil Gaiman’s signing in San Francisco the following day. Only 100 tickets were available, so they were very lucky to get them. And Mr. Gaiman was very lucky to meet his youngest fan in person.

It was a delightful drive. We ate brownies, giggled, and talked. The topic of Halloween costumes came up. Jessica is beginning to learn how to sew, and she wants to be the Oogie Boogie Man from The Nightmare Before Christmas this year. She observed that it would be easy to sew, and Erica agreed, saying it would be a fairly simple shape. She also suggested that Jessica might want to sew some decorations on her Christmas stocking, such as gingerbread men. Jessica said she’d like to put on candy canes, and I asked what was her favorite flavor (last year, we had cinnamon ones). She considered, and then said “I like the classic candy cane flavors, like peppermint.”

As we approached San Francisco, we saw a blimp flying lazily over head. I pointed it out to Jessica, and she said, “That’s an airship!” Later, I mentioned this to my sister, wondering how a six year old would know about airships. Megan said that lately Jessica’s been reading the dictionary in bed at night. One night, it was long after lights out and she didn’t want to stop reading. One of the things that makes Jessica such a charming child is her remarkable obedience about going to bed and staying there, so this was unusual. She explained to her mother, “I’m between diamonds and dinosurs and I just can’t stop!”

Backseat Bale

On our way home, we stopped off and bought a bale of straw. Little did I know that there is a difference between hay and straw, and that there would be a choice of straw. Whenever I run an errand for my brother, I’m always lacking an essential piece of information, so it’s good I had my little purple cell phone handy.

The winning straw was rice! Though fairly modest in size compared to some of the bales on offer, it refused to fit into the trunk of my sister’s trusty and dusty Saturn. But it did settle nicely into the back seat (see above). The straw seller kindly placed a sheet of paper on the seat before depositing the bale, but the car, our hair, and our clothes were soon as straw-strewn as the March Hare on a particularly maddening day.

If you’re wondering why our brother required a single, smallish straw bale, it’s because he’s planning to build a cob oven with the straw and the clay on the property. If you’re curious about these ovens, you can read all about them here.

We unloaded the straw and other BBQ fixin’s at his place, then went on to Megan’s. I stowed the groceries while she created the pie. She makes them so quickly it looks like a breeze. She does something with almond meal that makes the crust magically delicious. And with four pints of fresh local strawberries going into her pie, you can see that she doesn’t hold back.

Pie perched precariously on my lap, and Schatzi in the now vacant backseat, we made our way to our brother’s place. Friends gradually assembled, including Lichen, who brought Schatzi’s good friend Padawan. They play together at least once a week. Padawan is another terrifying breed, a Rottweiler who immediately cuddled up to me, then lay down and allowed me to rub his tummy until my arm felt like I’d pitched ten innings. I guess that’s the real danger!

As Padawan and Schatzi ran off to play, I perched on the straw bale while Lichen cut my hair. He had the cape and the fancy scissors and everything. It turns out that he used to be a stylist in Beverly Hills in a former life, working his magic on stars and starlets. I bet they never had their cut on a straw bale! He refused to let me pay him, even though my hair looks Hollywood fabulous.

In the meantime, my brother was barbecuing free range chicken breasts and farmers’ (thank you, Mike!) market corn, so dinner was ready. There was also salad and cheese buns which my brother had made earlier. For dessert, there was the pie.

As we sat around the dying flames of the barbecue, with the sun dipping lower in the sky, I thought how lucky I am to have such a wonderful family and friends.

The beautiful village of Mendocino

Still dog-dazzied, we headed to the Mendocino farmer’s market.

It’s hard to imagine a more idyllic setting. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this romantic village, it’s on a rocky headland, jutting out into the rocky Pacific ocean. The village was established in 1850, and if you look at the photo above, you will see that it hasn’t changed much over the years. All telephone wires are buried, and fast food stores and chain stores are banned. The Historical Society (or Hysterical Society, as some of the locals refer to it) is diligent about preserving the Victorian look of the town. It is generally considered one of the most beautiful towns in America, and frequently stands in for New England in movies and television shows, notably Murder, She Wrote.

The farmer’s market (I never know if it should be farmer’s or farmers’ – does anyone more grammatically correct know which is right?) takes place every Friday on one of the quaint streets overlooking the sea. With her big basket over her arm, my sister expertly steered me to the best vendors for strawberries (four pints, destined to become a pie), carrots, heirloom tomatoes, fresh spinach, spicy garlic, and my favorite soap from Lovers Lane Farm.

Megan asked the carrot vendor about “the fruit people”. He smiled and pointed across the road, and off we went. On the way across the street, my sister explained that farmer’s market politics had dictated that the Fruit People couldn’t be part of the regular market because they came all the way from Fresno. Her opinion was that if they wanted to drive a couple of hundred miles to sell their fruit, that was their business. Also Fresno is hotter and sunnier than the coast, so their peaches, etc. are much better quality.

The Fruit People were swarmed, locals welcoming them back. The other vendors had circulated a petition to ask for their return. Apparently they had the correct permits and all was well. We got both white and yellow peaches, fresh almonds, and some dried fruit. Everything was delicious. Our basket and my Chico bag were overflowing, so we headed back to the car to go home and get ready for that night’s barbecue.

Up next: the barbecue and the hay bale haircut!

Schatzi enjoys her garden

Undaunted by the banana slug (well, slightly daunted), my sister and I made our way to the local shelter the following day.

Megan inherited her dog, Schatzi, from our mother. Mom was walking her other dogs (who have since passed away) one day when she still lived near San Diego when she heard a sound coming from a Dumpster. She investigated, and found Schatzi. The dog had clearly suffered a lot of ill-treatment, and had also recently had puppies, who were nowhere to be seen*.

Mom cleaned her up as much as she could and took her to the pound, since she already had two dogs. The pound informed her that Schatzi would be killed immediately, without even trying to find her a home. Why, you ask? Because she is a pit bull terrier. A 35 pound, brindled bundle of love, but still, a pit bull terrier.

Mom now had three dogs.

She named this one “Schatzi”, which is German for “sweetheart” or “treasure”, and she is both. And as as Mom said, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

Schatzi is definitely Megan’s treasure. She adores that little canine princess, and as her love for Schatzi has grown, so has her interest in Schatzi’s breed – possibly one of the most misunderstood breeds in the world. She is an ardent supporter of Bad Rap, an Oakland rescue and rehabilitation organization, and works at least one day a week to help train and socialize pit bulls at her local shelter.

This was one of those days, so I got to meet three of the PBs: Tulley, Davis, and Patch. Tulley’s baby, Echo, is deaf and is being fostered by a family who is teaching him sign language. The shelter is holding an adoption day in August, and the staff hopes that if the PBs are well-trained and friendly, they’ll find good homes.

All three were incredibly affectionate, kissing me, wagging their tails, and leaning against me and looking up at me with the heartbreaking affection only a dog can show. And I was a total stranger!

We walked the dusty, rocky roads for more than two hours. Tulley responded well to the clicker, and all the dogs did well, though their natural ebullience broke through the training from time to time.

I was sorry to see them go when it was time to return them to their kennels, but it was an honor and a privilege to work with and cuddle with these beautiful animals, even for a short time. The only reason to beware of these dogs is the serious danger of falling in love.

*Later, Mom learned that Schatzi had been seen around the neighborhood with her puppies, and the general consensus was that they had fallen prey to coyotes. Mom was astounded that not one person thought to help the dog and her babies.