my child's greatest talent

The more faithful readers may realize that here at the Drunken Housewife, we tend to beat a topic into the ground (as well as talk about ourselves with the lovely royal we). Give us a stick and an equine corpse, and we'll sing a merry tune as we whale away. Remember when this blog was just about elevators, entry after frigging entry? Well, right now we're focusing on the scarily advanced nine year-old Iris Uber Alles, at least until we become concerned that this blog is going to traumatize her or cause her to stick us in a substandard nursing home in our dotage, where there won't even be cocktails.

The other day I wrote about my fears for my academically brilliant daughter, who is prone to bragging insensitively about her intellectual abilities, causing me to wince and worry. Many of the readers had wonderful advice, including Amy, who suggested I send Iris Uber Alles over to the house of another mother from her school, whose beautiful manners and social graces I admired. That suggestion made me laugh out loud. Why? Because Iris is given to passionate hatreds, and this gracious and warm woman is the mother of Iris's current Enemy Number One.

Iris's vitriol sparks her into rants. Spit flies from her lips and her voice gets higher and louder, as she spouts on and on about her enemy. Lola loves to get her fired up and often inquires in a sweet, piping voice, "Any Annie Patrick stories today?" [name changed to protect the feelings of a child who is no doubt a perfectly fine human being]. This hatred goes so far that once a woman of the same surname was coming over, and Iris got me to ask her ahead of time whether she was related to a little girl in the third grade at Burke's, because Iris was extremely freaked out over the possibility of a relative of Annie's setting foot in her home.

Why does Iris Uber Alles hate this particular little girl? When asked, Iris can cite numerous offenses, which include (1) the other child, who is being raised as a devout Catholic, told Iris, who'd exclaimed "God!", that she shouldn't use the name of the Lord in vain; (2) she was astonished to hear Iris doesn't go to church and thinks Iris should; (3) on a field trip to a Chinese restaurant, she told Iris she shouldn't put her elbows on the table; (4) once Annie told Iris she shouldn't call President G.W. Bush "Shrub", and as Iris explained to me with raising volume and shrillness, that was just hypocrisy on Annie's part because although she was offended by Iris's flippancy, she went on to later herself copy Iris and refer to the outgoing president as "Shrub"; and (5) some incident between the two about Jesus, which I can't recall the details of and don't want to ask Iris about because if I get her started, she'll be ranting and raving for some time. However, I can't help but notice that all of these offenses occurred AFTER Iris had formed a strong hatred of Annie (I am sure there have also been eye-rolling and sarcasm on Iris's part towards this other girl).

Iris's father, the Sober Husband, likes to egg Iris on and went so far as to coach her on some aggravating remarks about Jesus which could be dropped into the classroom conversation. After I stopped laughing, I begged him not to encourage Iris, and I tried to be the voice of responsible parenting. "Iris," I said earnestly, "You are going to offend a lot of people if you go around making remarks about Jesus. People are not going to like a little girl who mouths off about Jesus." This devolved into a debate pitting the family's believers, Lola and me, against the family's agnostics, the Sober Husband and Iris, rather than the discussion on social graces I wanted, but it's probably just as well. I should save my time and energy. There's nothing but time which will get Iris past this hatred.

Iris has had enemies since she was four. As a preschooler, she made a comic book starring herself and then-best friend as superheroes defeating two particular boys she disliked (in the comic, Iris's superpower was tattling!). And, of course, there's her arch-rival, her little sister. "She ruined my life!" sobs Iris from time to time. "Why did you have to have her? I hate her!"

In kindergarten, she had a vociferous, burning hatred for a particular little girl. This hatred literally kept Iris up at nights at times. She wrote down a long rant where she told off that girl for everything wrong with her, and Iris worried that sometime this girl might come into her house and find this document. I assured Iris, when these worries arose, that in the unlikely event her mortal enemy came to our house, I'd let Iris know ahead of time so she could hide the rant. Iris was often angry, unbelievably angry with this child, and I used to console her by making up happy endings to the situation. Iris felt that this girl should be expelled from school after she was made to apologize to Iris for her various offenses at a school-wide assembly, and Iris was always cheered up when we imagined that assembly. "And then she'll have to walk out alone, with everyone looking at her, and I'll be there." This hatred lasted well into the second grade, when eventually Annie supplanted the original object of animosity and became the new Iris Enemy No. 1. Now, as far as I can tell, Iris has nothing but indifference for her former chief enemy.

When Iris was in the first grade, I had occasion to meet with the head of the lower school to discuss a number of issues, and I told the head about that hatred. The head was rather astonished and took time to muse over it. "We don't see that at those grades," she said. "That's really a hatred, isn't it? We just don't see that level of intensity starting at kindergarten. We don't see that normally until upper school."

Forget all those parents of violin prodigies or tiny tennis champions: since kindergarten, my child has been hating on an eighth grade level.

a kind of compliment I fail to take well

I had a flu last week, which, as it faded, gave way to a good, old-fashioned head cold. Yesterday I was completely miserable, but it was my day to supervise lunch and recess at the children's school. I only do this once or twice a month, so it was just bad luck it fell on a day, a rainy day, when I was sick. I washed some Benadryl (to reduce blowing my nose) down with a Red Bull (to combat the Benadryl's drowsiness) and took some acetaminophen as well (general headache), dressed warmly, washed my hands really well to reduce contagion, and headed off.

It was an easy day, where I was just called upon to rip open a lot of catsup packets and open one stubborn Tupperware for the children. I didn't see any tears or tricky social situations requiring adult intervention, thank God, as I wasn't feeling up to those.

But then I got myself into one of those tricky social situations where I just fail. The other mother on lunch duty was someone I really like although I don't know her well. She's one of those people who are almost too good to be true: stunningly beautiful in a conventional, skinny blonde way, from a wealthy background, and with such lovely manners and personal warmth that you can't possibly resent her for having it all. She's charming and highly likeable. But then the conversation took a particular turn I have trouble with: she came over to me and said, "Your daughter is so brilliant!" She had chaperoned a field trip to the San Francisco dump and told me that "Iris knew things the guy from the recycling program didn't know." (I had previously heard from another chaperone that Iris had awed the crowd by knowing what "molybdenum" was, or maybe it was "manganese", and its particular role in recycling).

I tried to smile and move the conversation along, saying generally about my own children, "They're so much smarter than their parents" and "It's not anything we did", but the conversation kept going back on its tracks.

"Oh, no," demurred the other mother. "We were talking and we were all saying, 'They must be doing something right at home.'"

I felt tired and stupid from my cold and blurted out, "Actually I'm a horrible mother," but thankfully then some catsup packets needed to be opened and the conversation was over.

I'm having a lot of trouble accepting compliments about nine year-old Iris Uber Alles's smarts. I don't want to take any credit for the lucky combination of sperm and egg (in the Sober Husband's family of origin, there is the scarily smart Sober Husband, but there was also a severely mentally retarded brother who never functioned beyond the level of a toddler. That's a pretty clear illustration of luck's role in combining the genetic material of two particular people). Next, I personally despise those smug mothers who speak in awed tones with pauses where they look at you expectantly, awaiting your homage to their children's "gifts." More importantly, Iris is already teetering on the brink of being obnoxiously conceited, and I don't want to add to that.

At our parent-teacher conference, the teacher informed me, in a deadpan voice, that at the beginning of the year, Iris had informed the entire class that "I am extremely advanced" and already knew most of what would be studied that year. I covered my head with my hands in despair when I heard that reported back. Oh, Iris. The other day Iris said with pride, "Many people say I am the smartest in my grade."

I don't think I need to worry that her confidence needs bolstering. What I do worry about is that she's going to offend and upset the girls who are struggling with the material. And there are a lot of girls in her class who are struggling with the curriculum; there are girls who are seeing the "learning specialists" and who find it hard.

I don't think I would have these conflicted feelings if Iris were a gifted athlete or preternaturally beautiful. I don't think in those instances, I'd be so averse to taking credit or worried about the effects of her bragging. I'm worried about her being a Lisa Simpson, so smart and yet so lonely.

the Great God Lola answers readers' questions

The Great God Lola, a six year-old self-styled deity, has deigned to accept questions from the readers. Herewith the Gospel as dictated to the Drunken Housewife by the temperamental deity:

J9 asked, "Who's nicer, Mommy or Daddy?"

Okay. (Laughing). They are both pretty nice. And very NICE to ME. (Nine year-old Iris says, "You've got to put down that she screeched that.")

Crazy Mo said, "I always buy Honey Nut Cheerios. I want to try something new. What cereal should I buy when I do my groceries?"

Cap'n Crunch is GREAT; you should try that!

Hughman asked, "What do you want to be when you are an adult? Who is your favorite princess? What does your home look like?"

I always wanted to be a Hannah Montana. Rock star. My favorite princess is Princess Garbage. My home looks like a giant white building; it's very nice, with a cababahead that lives here. [Editor's note: we do not live in a "giant white building"; Lola watched the inauguration today and is clearly thinking ahead].

Silliyak mused, "In a no holds barred cage match with Frowsty, who emerges victorious?"

FROWSTY! [The editor must note here that older sister Iris was screaming "FROWSTYFROWSTY
FROWSTYFROWSTY", which clearly affected the interview subject].

Melissa said, "What book are you reading right now? And what's your favorite book? Have you read Tale of Despereaux, and did you like it?"

I haven't been reading, I haven't decided. [The older sister, Iris Uber Alles, was banned from the interview area at this point due to excessive interference aimed at making the interview subject look like an idiot, by pressuring the Great God Lola to provide witless answers]. My favorite book is Cinderella. I haven't read Despereaux [editor's note: her older sister owns a copy but hasn't started it yet, having gotten sidetracked into the Harry Potter series].

Davi says, "My cats are slowly, but surely, destroying my apartment. There's Simi the Spazmatic Kitty, fat male Siamese, and SoCo with Lime, my boyfriend's pretty little bar cat. How do I put a stop to the destruction?!?!"

Get lots of cat toys! They're crazy about those! Just wriggle those when they're doing all the killing department, and then they'll run around. Well, sometimes. But that works best!

Kim said "What kind of dog should I buy? A pocket dog or a big one, like a German Shepherd?"

A pocket dog sounds cute, but a German Shepherd? I think that is a nice dog.

Snowqueen said, "If you ruled the world what is the first thing you would do to make it a better place?"

NO MEAT-EATERS!

Laggin asked, "What's the best thing about having a sister? (Yes. It must be a GOOD thing.) Would you rather have a sister or a wart on your nose? What's the best poem you've ever read?

Actually my sister, she's kind of bossy, but really, she does things. Like chores. And sometimes she helps me, cababahead. I would rather have a sister than a wart. Have I read any poems? That is the question. I've read some fairy poems; they are pretty nice.

Hughman weighed in again to posit, "What would be your favorite piece of trash ever? Who is your favorite teacher and why? What's the best word in the world?

My favorite piece of trash would be recycling, an old Izze, a kind of drink bottle. Ms. Capiello because she's just so nice. Once I was in the bathroom and they were lining up and she helped me. The best word in the world is [made-up nonsense word which Lola was unable to spell for her transcriptionist].

Vodalus inquired, "Which is prettier: the Mandarin Dragonet or Mantis Shrimp?"

The Mantis Shrimp; it is like a peacock!

Joyce asked, "How do I adjust a pattern to make room for my big butt? And what is a better color, orange or green?"

I don't know anything about sewing. Orange is a nice color, but green is a GREAT color!

Is there anything else you'd like to say to the readers, Lola?

Even though orange is a sports color and I do like sports, I would still stick with green. It is even on my uniform!

So there you have it: wear green! Acquire German Shepherds! Enjoy some Cap'n Crunch!

ask Lola!

Here at the Drunken Housewife, from time to time we've had "Ask The Sober Husband", where your questions on any topic and in any degree of seriousness were answered with great seriousness by the Sober Husband himself. Here's a new twist: Ask Lola (a.k.a. the Great God Lola)! Six year-old and self-proclaimed deity Lola has agreed to take your questions.

how growing up in the Castro affects one's nascent theology

Kindergartener Lola has taken to reading "A Child's First Bible" (a gift to her older sister years ago from my parents). The Sober Husband asked her if she thought God looked like the picture in this bible, an old white man with a beard. Lola did.

"How do you know God isn't a woman?"

Lola squawked at that. "God is a daddy!" Then she thought about it. "Maybe God had a sex change operation."

more hoarding woes

Six year-old Lola hoards things and starts up collections and saves the most ridiculous things (most egregiously a Slushee cup from "Wall-E", which is named "Cupy" and lives in our dining room). Today when I picked her up at kindergarten, I pointed out that I'd gotten the car washed. "Doesn't it look nice?"

"Yes," Lola said condescendingly as I unlocked the car. Then Lola climbed into the backseat. "WHERE'S MY GARBAGE COLLECTION? I WAS KEEPING MY GARBAGE COLLECTION BACK HERE!"

all the horrible dental experiences and a paean to Dr Judy Huey

My teeth have not been professionally cleaned for a couple of years, and part of a porcelain cap cracked last year and came off, leaving a slightly jagged metal undercovering behind. This distressed me until I realized that the tooth in question was visible only to me personally, when I turned my head at an angle and peered towards the back of my mouth. The tooth is functional and painfree, and since it didn't affect my appearance, I did nothing about it. Because, as you see, I am without a dentist. My beloved dentist, the goddess of all teeth, Dr. Judy Huey, moved to Scottsdale years ago, leaving me and my teeth in the lurch.

When I was a child, I had a perfectly satisfactory dentist who had a strong resemblance to Superman and who had a pleasant way of chatting while he did his work. As a troubled adolescent, I had braces, and I became so accustomed to having my teeth worked over that I more than once dozed off at the orthodontist's in the chair. I had no dental phobias, despite having been stuck by poor genetic luck with a set of brittle yellowish teeth. I was innocent and ignorant.

Then my bad dental experiences began. For two years, my family lived on naval bases in the Philippines, with my father working as a civilian there. We were in a sort of strange position: we lived in government-supplied housing, officer's housing at that for one of the two years; we could shop at the commissary; but we were forbidden to go near the medical providers. For two years whenever I had a health problem, my parents just dithered and ignored the issue aside from the usual, painful and embarrassing family laying-on-of-hands, faith healing rituals. Thankfully I never got appendicitis, and meningitis was in the future but hadn't yet struck, so I got by for two years without seeing a doctor despite what I thought were ear infections and strep throat and a bout with pinkeye. But I did have dental problems. I had gone to the Philippines with braces on and no plan for getting them taken off, leaving behind my orthodontist in New Hampshire. More pressingly, a boy gave me a piece of gum on the school bus (we had an hour long drive over very bad roads that first year to get to the Department of Defense high school), and as I was chewing it, a large piece of one of my teeth broke off. This was painful and horrible and traumatic, and I never chewed gum again. I was left with a jagged, wretched, painfilled shard of a tooth.

My parents got this deemed an emergency, which allowed me to be treated by a base dentist, who was angry and resentful. During the entire appointment to fix my tooth, this man cursed me out, ranting at me, a shy fifteen year-old girl who was homesick and whose tooth hurt, that he had not trained to fix the teeth of people like me. He was there to fix soldiers' teeth, not stupid girls' teeth, and he should never have been asked to work on my mouth, and he couldn't understand why any dentist ever would touch my abhorrent, teenaged girl mouth. I had never been treated meanly or rudely by a dentist before, and I shrunk up and said nothing in return. Little did I know that this was the first of many horrible, horrible, horrible dental experiences ahead.

More happily in the Philippines my mother found a wonderful orthodontist, trained in the U.S., who had a delightful personality and gentle hands. Some of the happiest days I ever had with my mother, a woman with whom normally I have a lot of tension, especially in those days, were on orthodontist days. We would bring one of her friends, I would miss a day of school, and we would make the long drive to Angeles City. After my orthodontist appointment, we would eat lunch at a fabulous Mexican restaurant offering the Filipino take on Mexican food. We used to pay a street child to watch our car (there was always competition for that position), and I remember giving one of them a bag of Mexican food to his sheer and utter delight. (In the Philippines I learned how wealthy indeed the American middle class is if you look from a global perspective).

When we returned to the States, I went back to my Superman lookalike childhood dentist. When I went to Boston for college, I always did my dental work during the holiday breaks and summers. When I graduated from college and lived in Boston for real, I thought I should get a Boston dentist. I asked my boss, the head of WBUR-FM, what dentist she used (a very particular woman, my boss was, and I thought her dentist must be the best of the best). That led me to Traumatic Dentist Visit #2, as the doddering dentist administered an unbearably painful cleaning, botched the X-rays and couldn't tell from them what needed to be done for work, but insisted I needed many follow-up visits. I managed to get the failed x-rays and, facing reality, went back up to visit my family and my childhood dentist, who in his Portsmouth, N.H. office mocked the wretched X-rays I'd brought along. "That must be some dentist you saw down there in Boston! Can't even take an x-ray! Well, I'm just glad you can bring yourself to come to us here in tiny little Portsmouth, when you could be at a big city dentist."

Then I was accepted at Stanford and moved out west, too far to go to the dentist in Portsmouth. My parents moved at the same time to Tucson, so I wouldn't be able to mix dental business with visiting them. I was dentistless.

At Stanford I got student dental insurance, a kind of dental insurance that turned out to be the worst of the worst of dental insurance. It was a dental insurance that paid a dentist a flat monthly fee for each enrolled patient, as well as negotiated, low amounts for each treatment. The first two dentists assigned to me and my first husband (whom I married at the end of my first year of law school, under the false impression that if our relationship could survive a cross-country move and the first year of law school, it would survive anything and therefore I should just as well turn it into marriage) refused to see us. Whenever we called for appointments, they were too busy. Evidently their plan was to enroll as many patients as possible, pocket the monthly fees, and provide no services. This was Traumatic Dentist Experiences #3 and #4, the dentists who would never see us, no matter how often we called.

We did manage to get reassigned to another dentist (Traumatic Dentist #5) one who was willing to treat our teeth, all too willing to treat our teeth. He just wasn't willing to give us novocaine. It was kind of a shock to go in for fillings and have the painkilling step just omitted without discussion. I was good friends with a doctor at that time who prescribed me some painkillers I would take on the 5 Fulton on the way to this dentist, which helped until the doctor expansively told me that what I was getting from him would not help sharp pains, only diffused ones, and that at best I was getting a placebo effect, which of course vanished after that heartless discurse. This dentist was ambitious and greedy, and he confided in me, whom he saw as a kindred soul given that I was in law school, that he really wanted a Mercedes. On that same visit we discussed the Mercedes, the dentist told me I needed three teeth capped and root canaled. I had never had a root canal and was frankly terrified of having it done by a man who didn't normally administer novocaine. I stalled. On my next visit, the dentist pressured me to set up a series of visits for my four root canals. "I thought you said three?" I said. He clearly prevaricated and mumbled, "One is recommended." This was Traumatic Dentist #5, the most horrifying and traumatic of them all to date.

I left that day and never returned. I didn't get any dental treatment for the next two years, spending all that time fretting from time to time over how three of my teeth must be rotting out of my head due to my not having had them given root canals and caps.

Once I was entrenched as a young associate at a large law firm, I took my improved dental insurance and went nervously out to get my neglected teeth treated. I was assigned to a dentist in a very tall downtown building, a fancy building near my fancy office. This dentist said that I didn't need any root canals at all, which made me all the angrier at my last, sleazy dentist (who went into local politics and whose name I often see plastered across the city at election time, which always brings me flashbacks of those novocaine-less fillings and those threatened root canals). However, this dentist was no great gem, either. He did little work himself, leaving it to his young, fresh-out-of-dental school associates. I had one of my neglected teeth capped, and the dentist's office had no time for me to return to get the permanent cap put on. I went for a long time with the frail temporary cap, which led the head dentist to give the associate dentist assigned to me a dressing-down within my hearing. I sank down further and further in the examining chair as the head dentist railed on and on about how it was a miracle my tooth had survived.

My first husband had a worse experience. This dentist's office was really, really into x-raying, and their greatest pride and joy was a space age x-ray machine which rotated around your skull as you sat still in the chair. While he was being x-rayed, this machine got stuck trying to go around his head (he had a very large head indeed, being 6'4" and with a large head even for that height). While the machine was still attempting to X-ray him, techs had to wrestle with it and shove it and his head about, trying to extricate him from it. After they got it off him, they adjusted it and tried to get him to sit for another panoramic x-ray. He refused, feeling that he'd had more than enough X-ray exposure that day to last him for years, which pissed off the dentists, who truly felt you could never get enough X-rays done. Thus ended our experiences with Traumatic Dentist #6.

We were wondering if there were any acceptable dentists at all in the city of San Francisco, and we took a hiatus from dental work. Then my ex had a friend at his new job refer him to a dentist, a wonderful dentist. "I think I'm the only white patient there," the friend said. "It's the greatest dental office. You won't believe it."

By that point, I was pretty cynical, and my teeth were pretty neglected once again (after the delayed cap and the X-ray horror of my husband, we once again went for a couple of years without dental treatment). In the waiting room, I filled out the history form, and I wrote down all the terrible experiences I'd had. Then a petite woman of Asian descent walked out into the waiting room, and turning her large, kind eyes on me, introduced herself gently as Dr. Judy Huey, expressed her sympathies on my bad experiences, and asked me kindly if I needed some gas to help me get back to the treatment room. My teeth and I were in love, and we embarked upon a happy era of dental health. Dr. Huey had tiny, tiny hands with deft little fingers one can barely detect in one's mouth, and her warm personality made the patient feel confident and relaxed.

I took to gushing about my dentist to everyone I knew. "I never realized how the size of a dentist's hands make such a big difference. I never want to go to a dentist again who isn't an Asian woman, with such tiny little hands. Dr. Huey can put her whole hand in my mouth and I wouldn't notice it." People looked at me oddly when I went on like that, and I was aware that I sounded like a pervert, but I didn't care. Dr. Huey was the goddess of all teeth and deserved to be worshipped and to have her patient acolytes spread the word of her wonders.

During this happy dental era, I not only got my teeth cleaned on a regular basis and filled as needed, but I also underwent optional, cosmetic dentistry. I tried cosmetic whitening (still not getting my teeth up to Hollywood levels, but an improvement). I replaced an old cap to get a better appearance and had a veneer put on the tooth neighboring the cap to make them match. The day did come that I did need a root canal, and it turned out painless (I was so glad again that I'd never submitted to the quack dentist's plans to do four root canals. Dr. Huey sent me to an endodontologist who was also of Asian descent with tiny, gentle hands and who also had generous painkillers and a movie menu for me to pick from).

Along the way I divorced the old husband, and my new husband soon became a regular at Dr. Huey's. Dr. Huey changed offices, and we moved along with her. When Iris was born, Dr. Huey gave her a gentle introduction to dentistry. First Iris was brought along as a toddler to watch Mommy get check-ups, cleanings, and fillings. Then Iris was, with Mommy close at hand, given her own cleaning and had a couple of small cavities filled. This was done so gently and smoothly, and I felt such happiness that my child was being introduced to dental work so kindly. Maybe she could live a life without dental trauma. I wrote thank you notes to Dr. Huey and to her very kind dental assistant for making Iris's introduction to dentistry so happy.

Then dental tragedy struck. Dr. Huey's husband's health required a move to the desert. Soon Dr. Huey was in Scottsdale and I was without a dentist. A very young dentist purchased Dr. Huey's practice, and I didn't have confidence in her. My husband found a dentist, practically enough one near our house, but he told me not to go there. "It's good enough for me, but you would hate him. I just know." He wasn't taken with this dentist at all, but felt he would settle for him due to convenience.

I tried my friend Joyce's beloved dentist, but that was another trauma. The dentist herself was a lovely, gentle person who inspired confidence, but there is no way I am enduring her office staff or dental technicians. My visit was upsetting before I even got there: a nasal, bitchy office worker called me several times on the phone with questions about the dental insurance. In my experience, normally you just present a dental office with your insurance card, and they take care of the rest. Not this office. The woman called me, her tone and voice extremely unpleasant, before I had even set foot in the office, demanding such things as where to submit the claims (which was not printed on the card I had). At that time, my husband's employer, Doggyo, was so small that it had no HR person, which deeply offended the dental office woman, who was quite sniffy about it. I cravenly gave the woman my husband's cellphone number to get her off my back, under the pretense that he, the employee through whom all benefits flowed, was in a better spot to answer her questions. At the end of the day I actually went to the dentist for a routine cleaning and exam, this nasal bitch called my husband seven times on the phone, giving him attitude each time.

While I waited for forty-five minutes after my appointment time, occasionally overhearing the mean, nasal woman calling my husband on the phone, I was stuck enduring a really loud trailer for an offensive Disney movie being shown over and over again at top volume on a large screen TV. I came close to leaving then, and in retrospect, I wish I had. Because when I was finally ushered back, I underwent Traumatic Dental Experience Number Seven. The supercilious tech rammed a painful x-ray plate into my mouth which was clearly too large for my poor mouth, and which triggered my gag reflex. The tech laughed merrily at me as I was dry heaving, and then she took the same plate up again and sadistically shoved it into my mouth again. Once again I was retching, and she was laughing at me. Oh, what a merry sight, a middle-aged woman dry heaving in a dental chair. There was not an apology to be heard, the impression being given that I had made the day of the sadistic staff and that they were well-pleased by the turn of the events. The irony of this? This was a dental practice specializing in traumatized, phobic dental patients!!

I was also somewhat freaked out by the weird office layout. There were no partitions or privacy walls separating patients; we were all in chairs radiating off from a curving hallway. Thus while I was waiting, I had to hear a loud, nervous man have his cleaning and treatment. I don't want to hear other people's dental work, and I also think it was no treat for the other patients to listen to my retching noises.

To further add to that discomfort, the chairs were placed such that you couldn't see the staff, who lurked behind us in the center of the radius of this strange, round dental office. This was not enjoyable for me as some of the staff were happily discussing my hilarious dry heaving, which was evidently the highlight of their day, maybe their whole week.

When I finally met the kindly, chubby, soft spoken dentist with gentle hands and eyes, there had been too much damage already done. There is no way I will ever set foot in that office again. (My friend was a bit upset with me for not liking her dentist, to whom she was greatly loyal, and criticized me for the way in which I'd handled things. A year later, though, she did share with me a spectacularly rude thing said to her by the nasal office bitch).

Meanwhile my poor children underwent their own Traumatic Dental Experience. I signed up my poor, dental orphans with what was considered by virtually every parent I knew to be the finest pediatric dental office in the city. I had the impression that everyone who was anyone took their children to that dentist. Indeed I'd had other parents sniff at my habit of taking Iris along to my own dentist, rather than to this particular pediatric dentist. However, events showed that I had been right. This dentist practice became Traumatic Dental Experience Number Eight for me and Traumatic Dental Experience Number One for Iris and Lola.

Just because a dental office sports a small dog in a tutu and has toys strewn about does not mean that it treats children well. The dental technicians were rough, and one scolded poor three year-old Lola for nervously flipping her skirt up and down. "Sit like a lady!" The original dentist who had made this place so fashionable amongst parents wasn't really about any more (I noticed she had a nameplate up at another building), and the dentists who saw my girls were not particularly warm or nice or gentle. They weren't particularly nice to me, either. Iris was diagnosed as having a cavity with an abscess, and the dentist glared at me. "I hope you knew about this!"

I was stymied. Wouldn't I have been a worse parent if I'd known about the abscess but just not bothered to do anything about it? Iris was puzzled, also. After we left, she whispered to me, "Is an abscess supposed to hurt? It never hurt." We both felt stupid and ashamed.

At a later visit, one of the dentists was lecturing me about how I should be applying topical fluoride to the children's teeth and hounded me about why, why, why wasn't I doing that. I confided that I felt that they got a lot of fluoride already in their tap water and toothpaste and that I'd been reading about fluoridosis online. The dentist rolled her eyes in disgust and slammed her body against the cabinet at what she so clearly saw as my internet-assisted idiocy. Lola had been crying throughout her treatment without much comfort that day, and it seemed appropriate to draw curtain over this particular act in our dental odyssey.

Over a year went by, close to two years, with a perennial item in my To Do List being "Find New Dentists." Eventually, after some canvassing of acquaintances, I had gathered several recommendations for Dr. Katz, a pediatric dentist located conveniently not far from the girls' school. I steeled my nerves for the lecture I was undoubtedly going to get for not having taken the children to the dentist in so long. Instead, Dr Katz was jovial and joking, hugging me and handing out toys to the children. Lola, thoroughly traumatized by her horrible prior dentist, burst into tears the moment her turn came to be examined. Instead of forcing her, as the prior dentist would have done (that dentist was quite gifted at ignoring a small child's sobs), this new, more satisfactory dentist didn't make Lola get into the chair at all. Her cleaning and exam were done with her sitting on a stool, holding my hand, and no X-rays were done because they didn't want to force them on a crying child.

Iris's same old tooth which had had an abscess before, leading the ex-dentist to tell me off, had a new abscess. The highly satisfactory new dentist was critical of the old dentist's decision to leave that baby tooth in place. It would never have formed a new abscess if it had been pulled, and the material used for a cap on that tooth was not in favor any more among dentists who kept up with technology. Clearly that tooth had been mishandled.

I liked hearing criticism of the technique of the old dentist. It made me feel better about having left for personal reasons. As Iris said to the new dentist when he asked why she was changing dentists, "We have to get a new dentist because the old dentist rolled her eyes at Mommy."

On Lola's return visit to get a cavity fixed, the dentist introduced her to the joys of laughing gas. Lola soon went from terrified crying and clutching at my hand to relaxing in the chair. After we left, she confided in me, "Do you know why this dentist is better than the old one? He doesn't make me keep my mouth open too long!" On her second visit, Lola fell in love with the "giggle gas" and had not a single tear. She confided in everyone she knew that going to her dentist makes her giggle and giggle because she gets giggle gas.

Lola had clearly been on the path to lasting dental phobia, but has been saved due to an overdue change in dentists. Iris herself was spared that only because she could remember her kind first dentist (after every visit to the old pediatric dentist, Iris would say, "I miss Dr. Huey" and hound me to find a new grown-up dentist for myself and her alike. Lola could go to the unliked pediatric dentist, but Iris and I, Iris thought, needed a grown-up's dentist). The new pediatric dentist told me that he'd been badly treated by horrific dentists himself and that had inspired him to create his practice, a practice where children would feel no pain or discomfort and would be treated like they were important. It pained him to see that Lola had developed a dental phobia, and he was genuinely happy to see her move past it, aided by the delightful "giggle gas."

Now it is only I who is dentistless, with my poor, uncared for teeth languishing into decay. Iris and the Sober Husband have both taken to nagging me to try another dentist, but I just don't want to. In my lifetime there have only been two satisfactory dental offices for me and so many others which were really and truly awful. My childhood dentist has retired, and Dr. Huey, my only good dentist of my adulthood, is so far away. Occasionally the idea is bruited about that I should just go to Scottsdale twice a year to see my one true dentist. I can't justify that lavish lifestyle, but I can't bring myself to try another San Francisco dentist, either. I'm basically waiting it out until something truly terrible happens in my mouth, which will force me to action.

RIP Parker and Dortmunder

Just two weeks ago, I wrote

the first sentence of "Firebreak" is, in my personal opinion, the best first sentence of a novel I've ever read: "When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man." Such a mix of the banal and the horrific, such an economic use of words.... and it sucks you in and has you prepared for the rest of the ride, right there in the first twelve words. I think that's a better first sentence than the famous first sentence of "Anna Karenina": "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Donald Westlake is the master, and I hope he lives forever.

Today I learned that on New Year's Eve, Donald Westlake died suddenly from a heart attack while getting dressed for dinner in Mexico, on vacation.

I'm absolutely crushed. Mr. Westlake was ninety years old, so it shouldn't have come out of the blue, but he was at the top of his game, publishing a couple of excellent novels a year. There will be one last book, due out from the publishers in April, and then no more. RIP Parker. RIP Dortmunder.

I first became a fan of Donald Westlake before I knew his name. When I saw "The Grifters", I marveled at it, such a dark and strange and witty film. Much later, after I became a fan of Donald Westlake's Dortmunder books, I realized Mr. Westlake wrote the script for "The Grifters", among various other films. Perhaps the most famous film made from one of his works is "Point Blank", starring Lee Marvin as the inimitable Parker.

For those of you who have not acquainted yourself with the work of the master, Parker is the ultimate noir character. Under the pen name of "Richard Stark", Donald Westlake wrote this series for thirty years (given his huge productivity, Mr. Westlake used several nommes de plume, such as "Tucker Coe" and "Richard Stark." Like Stephen King, Donald Westlake had the problem of just producing too much good work for one author to credibly publish). Parker is a killing machine, a severely disciplined and controlled sociopath whose adventures are entertaining beyond belief. I will miss him more than anything.

In a lighter vein, Mr. Westlake wrote a popular series about the adventures of Dortmunder, a stooped, overweight criminal mastermind with the worst luck, and his odd assortment of friends and enemies. These were funny and engaging books, and I loved them dearly. Some of these books were made into movies, at least one with spectacular miscasting. Mr. Westlake wrote once, "Imagine my surprise to find out that Dortmunder was Robert Redford."

Once when I was severely depressed, contemplating suicide and trying to get through just one day at a time, I discovered a new Dortmunder book had come out. It quite literally gave me a new reason to live and made me question my idiocy for having considered suicide to begin with.

On another day during that period, a terrible, sad and dark time, I was driving from Iris's elementary school to pick up Lola when I was delayed by a broken down Brinks truck in the road. One of the armored guards was out waving traffic around, looking deeply depressed himself. I burst into a smile. "It's Dortmunder. It's Dortmunder in the flesh." It would have been just like Dortmunder to successfully hijack a Brinks truck only to have it break down on one of the most busy city streets.

RIP, Donald Westlake. You gave me a reason to live, you gave me so much entertainment, happiness, and food for thought. I will miss you more than I can say. Only your death could have felled the indefatigable, indestructible Parker, only that could have outwitted the brilliant Dortmunder.

"Mommy loves Lucy more!"

My aunt has a tradition of sending ornaments to her many, many nieces, nephews, great-nieces, and great-nephews. Last year she sent Iris Uber Alles a porcelain oranment of a little girl holding a sign reading, "First Born Mommy's Favorite!" and Lola a similar one, holding a "Youngest Child Mommy's Favorite!" sign.

When we were putting up our tree, Iris gloated and gloated over her ornament, and it took a day for Lola to find hers, a stress-filled day for poor Lola. Then all was basically well until today, three days after Christmas, when the Sober Husband discovered that one of the ornaments was broken. After some more searching, he discovered that both those oranments had been knocked down from the tree, and both little porcelain girls' heads had been broken off. He could only find one porcelain head, though... and it fits Lola's "Youngest Child Mommy's Favorite!" ornament.

Now Iris is sulking about the house, screaming periodically, "Why does Mommy hate me?" and "Why does Mommy love Lucy more?" I told her to leave her mother out of this and that it was undoubtedly Princess Henry, the tabby, who had knocked the ornaments down. Now she's still stomping around, moaning, "Why does Henry hate me?" and "Why is Henry bad?" I pointed out that seeing as how Henry is illiterate, I doubt there was anything personal in it, but Iris thinks Henry must have known how much she loved that ornament and destroyed it out of spite.

the twittering pervert

The Sober Husband has been meaning to tweet for ages. He started a Twitter account and sent out one and only one tweet: "I have started to Twitter." Based upon that inauspicious debut, he already has scores of followers, despite months of silence. He feels he should Twitter because "everyone does it", and he shared with us some of the tweets of his colleagues.

One of the programmers who reports to the Sober Husband tweets in the voice of his puppy (or perhaps his girlfriend does, the co-owner of the very adorable young dog). The children were spurred into action by this, feeling that their personal cats deserved Twitters of their own (the family cat and Mommy's cats were not deemed Twitter-worthy). Six year-old Lola started a Twitter feed for Al, "Allofalbert", which has so far mostly chronicled his giardia infection and his feelings about taking his medication. Nine year-old Iris Uber Alles started "Frowsty" to share the glories of Frowst, our especially charismatic cat.

We have four laptops which can be found strewn about the home, and Iris Uber Alles is prone to using the nearest one and being casual about what identity is logged in at any given time. Therefore it was all too predictable that she'd use the Sober Husband's regular laptop to compose a tweet for fluffy Frowst, and that my husband would awaken on Christmas morning to discover that after months of silence, he'd sent out his second tweet:

"I'm lying on my owner's bed, with my legs in the air, waiting for attention."

I laughed and laughed. "They're all going to think you're into SM." I tried to think of a more embarrassing cat tweet the children could have sent out under his name on this account-- which was intended for professional networking-- with no success. Even the messages about giardia would have been less embarrassing.

why, indeed

Nine year-old Iris Uber Alles is reading that timeless classic, "From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwiler." She has no problem understanding why two children chose to run away from home to live in a museum; her problem is the framework, where the entire work is contained in a letter from Mrs. Basil E. Frankwiler to her lawyer, and indeed she is puzzled by Mrs. Frankwiler's motivations vis-a-vis her lawyer. "Why would anyone want to see their lawyer?" she asked with genuine puzzlement.

Her litigator mother snapped back seriously, "Because lawyers are so smart and funny! They're great to be around!"

"I just don't get why someone would want to spend time with their lawyer."

"Lawyers are cute and adorable, like kittens! Who wouldn't want to spend time with them?"

At this point Iris dropped the discussion, unconvinced, but sure there was no point in further exploring her befuddlement.

the horrible timings of things

Two weeks ago my cat Princess Henry became deathly ill. She was repeatedly trying to vomit without success and looking distraught. On the day one, I thought this was a pesky hairball and decided to pick up a tube of that tuna-flavored hairball medicine. The next day I realized, "This is no hairball" and got her down to the vet's. At the vet, Henry was sedated and x-rayed on the theory she ate something inappropriate, possibly a small, plastic object belonging to a child. The vet called me on my celphone to tell me that Henry's stomach was fine, but that her intestines were, if I may paraphrase, all fucked-up. The vet wanted my permission to do an ultrasound on Henry's intestines to determine whether surgery was necessary. The ultrasound showed nothing blocking those angry, angry intestines. Eight hundred dollars later, I took Henry home with a prescription for an anti-emetic and for a soothing medication to calm and coat her intestines. Henry recovered without further incident.

I told my husband repeatedly, "Don't get me anything for Christmas." I felt terrible about spending so much at the vet's.

The next week Al, the skeletal orange cat who is allergic to his own teeth, came down with an epic upper respiratory infection and epic diarrhea, which caused him to have many, many disgusting accidents. I had finally cleared Al up of his chronic flea problem (Advantage does NOT work for Al), only to have him burst out into multiple health crises. The Sober Husband helped me give Al a bath, and cradling him in a towel, I took him down to the vet, having first procured a particularly noxious sample of his diarrhea. "How's Henry? Nice to see you again," everyone said. "Can I give this to you now, rather than waiting for the vet?" I asked, handing over gingerly a sealed ziplock bag which was reeking horrendously. The vet tech who accepted it handed it off with alacrity to another vet tech who was presumably lower on the food chain.

Poor Al had lost over a pound and a half, dropping from seven pounds to just five and a half. (We'd taken to calling the poor thing "the Cat of the Damned"). Even though I'd been holding him wrapped in a towel to warm him up, his body temperature was so low that the tech took it twice disbelievingly. "I had to bathe him," I said. "It was an emergency situation." Al's bloodwork showed that he was anemic and had elevated white blood cell counts. About four hundred dollars later, Al was sent home with antibiotics for his respiratory infection and a stern admonishment that he was never going to be healthy until we got his teeth pulled. I set the appointment for the tooth-pulling for the 29th.

The next day, the vet called. The disgusting, reeking sample revealed the presence of giardia (where is he getting giardia from??? He rarely goes outside, and the tapwater hasn't given any of the rest of us parasites). I went back and paid for some Panacur.

Tomorrow Al goes back down to the vet for more bloodwork, to see if he's improved enough to be ready for surgery next week.

Of course the cats chose December to acquire life-threatening illnesses. After the nobility of insisting, "Don't get me a thing for Christmas --- those vet bills are crazy", I'm now childishly depressed that I won't have any presents to open on Christmas. My parents very generously gave me an embroidery machine earlier in the year as a combination birthday-Christmas present, so really I should wrap that up and put it under the tree for myself to remind myself not to be such a whiny loser. I keep telling myself that it was my idea to get those cats in the first place.

Meanwhile the stresses of the season have taken a toll. The children's school had three events on one morning for which I was supposed to cook: a third grade holiday breakfast, a kindergarten "homes" event, and the faculty holiday breakfast. This was complicated by the fact that I wouldn't be able to cook the day before, as I was volunteering at the school right in the middle of the day to assist at the kindergarten holiday party (where I was assigned to do an insanely complicated paper craft with the children. The first group to come to our crafts station did only about a third of the project and left frustrated and disgruntled. I unilaterally decided to simplify the project, which drew coos of praise from the other chaperones. "You're so smart!" "I would never have thought of that!" "You're so smart!" It was the most praise I'd had all year). I decided to blow off the third grade breakfast as it sounded like many of the third grade parents were participating(sorry, Iris Uber Alles), buy a quiche for the faculty party instead of baking one personally (sorry, teachers, I would have baked it but then I would have had to get up to drive it over to the school by six frigging thirty in the morning, whereas by taking the easy way out, I was able to drive to a yuppie market after the kindergarten Christmas party, purchase a $12.99 fresh quiche, drive back to the school, and drop off the quiche at the same time as I picked up Lola after school), and focus on making Lola's beloved broccoli pasta for the kindergarten event. That turned out to be the right decision, as almost no kindergarten parents cooked anything. Almost to a woman they decided to take the easy option and bring a drink, so there was still lemonade, sparkling lemonade, sweet tea, apple cider, and apple juice, but only one savory food, my broccoli pasta.

Now the children are home for winter break, alternately fighting viciously for hours at a time and playing delightfully in the "Lola Club" or pretending to be puppies who attend "Dogwarts." I've got hundreds of loads of laundry to do and I've fallen behind on my novel. I missed the registration deadline to sign Iris up for the after-school jewelry making class she wanted, and I forgot to take Lola to ballet on Friday afternoon (in my defense, it was the same Friday of the three cooking conflicts and a "Holiday Sing" at the girl's school). It was time to move my IRA fund to a better home, and the bank involved didn't send me the form they said I needed in a timely way, although we'd sent all the forms the new IRA bank said were required (a bank representative invited me to drop by and pick up the form in person, which I thought was a swell idea given that the bank is in St. Louis and I am in San Francisco). I myself have had a pounding headache for days which never goes away. I'm on medication for my insomnia which means I feel drowsy and hung-over every morning and have a sleepy spell in the late afternoon (supposedly these side effects will go away by mid-January). Head aching terribly, I'm sleepily lurching through the season, hoping I don't forget anything really important.

the good, the bad... the just plain witless

Bonus: more book reviews in the comments!

I've been doing a lot of reading lately. It's amazing what a good novel can do for a person. I've been attempting to write a novel lately myself, so I'm a bit more on the lookout for an author's structuring, her use of foreshadowing, whether the first person or the third person works...

As always, the ultimate craftsman is Donald Westlake writing at Richard Stark. The first sentence of "Firebreak" is, in my personal opinion, the best first sentence of a novel I've ever read: "When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man." Such a mix of the banal and the horrific, such an economic use of words.... and it sucks you in and has you prepared for the rest of the ride, right there in the first twelve words. I think that's a better first sentence than the famous first sentence of "Anna Karenina": "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Donald Westlake is the master, and I hope he lives forever.

I do not mean to content that "Firebreak" is a more important work than "Anna Karenina." "Firebreak" does not attempt to grapple with the big issues of infidelity, a woman's place in the world, social hypocrisies, etc.. I assert only that Donald Westlake/Richard Stark writes one hell of a sentence.

More along the lines of "Anna Karenina" (and covering much of the same ground regarding a woman's place in the world, marital infidelity, etc..) was "While I was Gone" by Sue Miller, a thought-provoking and serious novel spanning much of a complex and sometimes dislikeable heroine's life. This was a big bestseller back in 1999 but I just got around to reading it. I hated it for the first forty-five pages or so, stopping every now and then out of disgust to wonder, "Is this really the same Sue Miller who wrote 'The Good Mother'? How can this be so bad?" Then gradually the book became good, so very good I could not believe it, so gripping I could not put it down, and with twists and complexities which had me going back to reread various sections over and over again. Like Donald Westlake, Sue Miller is an astounding master of craftsmanship, and she's not afraid to make her characters deeply flawed. She doesn't play to your sentimentality.

Another surprisingly gifted writer, but writing in a comic vein, is Lisa Lutz, whose "The Spellman Files" is so funny and good that it had me laughing out loud on a filled-to-capacity 1 California bus... after I'd boarded the bus in tears after a traumatic marriage counseling appointment. Lisa Lutz seems to like the review which called her heroine, Isabel Spellman ,the love child of Harriet the Spy and Dirty Harry, and that description does fit, but it's not the character I was so crazy about, lovable as Izzy is. It was Ms. Lutz herself, who deploys the word "fuck" better than anyone this side of Elmore Leonard and builds an insane, but highly plausible, world. (Again, this was a bestseller a few years ago which I just got around to. Ms. Lutz has another book featuring the same characters just out in hardback, but I haven't read that yet and can't vouch for it. I hope she hasn't suffered that sophomore slump so unfortunately common in talented authors... e.g., Curtis Sittenfeld and Chelsea Cain).

"The Spellman Files" is set in San Francisco, and it is dead on. The characters eat where they should go to eat, they live where it makes sense for them to live, in neighborhood-appropriate homes at that. They inhabit the real city of San Francisco (and they don't get all gooey about it). I loved it when one character was sent on an crazy errand to Fisherman's Wharf and stopped for that quintessential tourist treat, a bowl of clam chowder where the bowl is actually constructed out of sourdough bread. The character wondered, given how much he loves this meal, why he never goes to Fisherman's Wharf, but then quickly concludes that even the chowder-in-the-bread-bowl isn't worth going there for. (That is us: people who actually live here avoid Fisherman's Wharf like the plague).

Another novel set in San Francisco that I recently read had it all wrong, wrong, wrong to the point of being maddening: the just-out "The Dirty Secrets Club" by Meg Gardiner. Do NOT waste your money or time on this book, not when there are treasures like "The Spellman Files" or "While I Was Gone" or anything by Richard Stark. Ms. Gardiner starts with an interesting concept: a mysterious organization of powerful or wealthy people who are joined together by criminal or scandalous pasts, who dare each other to do more and more dangerous things. However, Ms. Gardiner doesn't fulfill on the promise of that premise, and the book falls apart.

How many things did I hate about this book? Well, for one, she has her heroine, Jo Beckett, burdened by not just one huge, life-altering and made-for-TV trauma but two. As a child, Jo was trapped with her family in a car beneath the rubble of an Oakland freeway after the big 1989 earthquake... with her brave father singing to keep his children calm. If that's not enough for poor old Jo, later she became a doctor, and she failed to save her doctor husband's life in a helicopter crash due to an elementary error in basic triage principles. (If this isn't schmaltzy enough right there, the helicopter crash HAD to be during a medical emergency evacuation of a sick, angelic little girl with a warm, trusting personality who also dies).

So Jo limps through life (symbolically, not physically), scarred and traumatized and unable to try relationships again but making a fabulous living as a forensic psychiatrist. Her job is to investigate suspicious deaths and determine whether they were suicides or not by delving deeply into the suspects' lives. The San Francisco Police Department pays her very well and values her extremely. This basic concept right there would be highly painful to any of the families of murder victims whose deaths were ruled suicides by the SFPD. (The most notable of these is the case of Hugues de la Plaza. Police say that after an enjoyable night of clubbing, he stabbed himself to death. The problem: no bloody knife was found in de la Plaza's tiny apartment and there were traces of blood on the staircase. Answer: the police say Mr. de la Plaza obligingly washed and put away the knife after stabbing himself but before he fatally collapsed. The French authorities, disgusted by this, actually sent investigators over to do the work which should have been done by the SFPD). The SF Weekly did a cover story not long ago rounding up quite a few of these "suicides", an appalling, appalling history which should cause Chief Heather Fong much guilt.

Author Meg Gardiner was completely tone-deaf in her description of San Francisco. Her jacket bio said she now lives in London but used to live in Los Angeles. One wonders if she ever even visited SF. Among other ridiculous things in a book not meant to be a comedy: Ms. Gardiner said that everyone in San Francisco is in a state of nonstop rage due to the consistent parking problems, and therefore there are no anger management classes in our city because the people who teach anger management are so terrified of parking-enraged San Franciscans that they fear for their lives too much to venture into our city. Uh huh. I have noticed that at most events I attend, the people do not show up in rages. Many of us take mass transit or own bicycles, and taxis are also quite fashionable nowadays. It's also quite easy to park in many areas of the city.

Gardiner also had earthquakes occurring on a near-daily basis. You can actually go years without feeling one here. Her description of a little earthquake where everyone in a Mission taqueria hid under their tables was risible. I've lived here over twenty years, gone through many a quake (including the big one of 89), and I've never seen anyone hide under a flimsy table. When there is a quake, people usually hold still and stay silent, and then as soon as it's done, they all say the same things: "Didja feel that?" "How much do you think that was?" "I bet that was at least a four!" Et cetera, et cetera. It takes a lot to actually get us under a table or in a doorway (the only time I ever did that was during that actual 1989 quake. I was chatting with a classmate from New York at the law school when it hit. A few seconds into it, I realized, "This one is different" and got into a doorway, bracing myself against the frame. My classmate ran about nearby, unsure what to do, and I called to her, "Gina, Gina! Get in a doorway!" She came and took my same doorway with me, and we stared at each other until it was done).

On a regular day, poor old traumatized Jo sees the walls of her house bucking to and fro wildly. (I've never seen that in my own house. My life here is so much duller than Jo's). And of course, by the end of the book, old Jo is trapped once again by falling wreckage in a monster quake. How can regular people survive in San Francisco? You'd think they'd have as much sense as an anger management instructor and shun the city.

want to try out cat ownership with no obligations?

Catless people! Here's your chance to try cat ownership without strings!

From my cat rescue:

We have been asked to foster a 9 month old Maine Coon kitten for 6 weeks. The cat has tested negative for FELV/FIV, but they need to retest in 6 weeks. The reason for this is because of the area where the kitten came from. Some of the cats there tested positive, but not all. The kitten would have to be isolated, so someone who can either keep this kitten separate/not have any other cats/kittens. I know not many fosters don't have cats/kittens.

elevator malfunctions of my own life

We here at Drunken Housewife Dot Com like to run a topic into the ground. Give us a dead horse and a stick, and we will go to town. Before we change the topic back to The Drunken Housewife's Neuroses and Her Really Weird Children, a bit more on the elevators:

* During the time in my life when I was a sole practitioner of the law, I had a couple of really great clients who paid me by the hour to handle anything that came up, big to little. One of those clients had built a little condo building with a new elevator installed in it. That elevator was a lemon, and one of the condo purchasers was obsessed with that elevator. The elevator never actually risked anyone's health while I was involved (at a safe distance from the actual thing); it was just oh so very, very slow --- well below the speed it was warranted to rise at. Every so often the condo purchaser would make a big stink to the developer (my client), who'd call me on the phone, I'd get out the file again, and I'd fax another demanding letter to the elevator manufacturer, who'd send out someone out to go time the elevator and tinker with it but who'd basically do nothing. The nice part of this was that then I'd collect a few more hundred dollars.

* I did once climb out of an elevator between floors, which is a truly stupid thing to do, but I didn't know that at the time. I was a freshman at Boston University, living in that infamous, massive three-pronged monstrosity of a dorm, Warren Towers. The elevators were an endless source of annoyance, and I lived on the 14th floor. Before I gave up on them and took to using the stairs almost exclusively, I was in one with several other students when it stopped between floors. After some little time, a bright freshman pried open the doors, and we discovered we were between floors. We all climbed up and out. One of the other freshmen asked me for my phone number, and the only lasting trauma from that experience was that I embarked upon a near-epically dysfunctional relationship of sorts.

our continuing coverage of elevators

Today's Chronicle reported that "San Francisco police have all but concluded that pro-Israel activist Daniel Kliman got stuck in an elevator between floors last week, pried open the doors and accidentally fell nearly seven stories to his death."

So let that be a lesson to all of you: if you're stuck in the elevator, wait it out. Poor Nicholas White, trapped in a Manhattan elevator for 41 hours, tried repeatedly to pry the doors open. He was lucky the elevator didn't open in a way he could have fallen down the shaft.

And here's another piece of elevator lore, which I learned from the New Yorker: elevator experts say the close door button is meaningless. It doesn't actually do anything. The doors shut on a timer. If the door closes during or after you pressed it, it was accidental. (So why is that button there? It works for firefighters who have a key. Also, it gives elevator riders a sense of control they find comforting).

elevators and an update

The Chronicle reported about the crime scene I walked through earlier this week. It turns out that the elevator did it. A man who sounds fascinating, Dr. Dan Kliman, a dynamic vegetarian doctor who was an anti-car and pro-Israel activist, stepped into a malfunctioning elevator and fell to his death.

Elevators, I tell you. I'm resisting with all my might becoming phobic of them ever since I read in the New Yorker about poor Nicholas White, who went out for a cigarette and got stuck in an elevator for FORTY-ONE HOURS. Forty one hours. This, without exaggerating, appears to have ruined his life. I cannot imagine that ordeal (although I can compare it to the birth of Iris, which took about that same length of time and was pretty frigging awful, but yet didn't completely come out of the blue).

Ever eager to support my mental health, the Sober Husband hunted up the video of Nicholas White's ordeal after we read the New Yorker article (security cameras were on the WHOLE FORTY ONE HOURS that poor bastard was trapped in that little box, but no one bothered to glance at them) and nagged me to watch it.
Poor Nicholas White.

Now every time I get into an elevator, I think of Nicholas White and worry. But in memory of Dr. Dan Kliman, I will always look down first and make sure that the door didn't open on emptiness.

the clash of the socioeconomic classes and why it's nice to stay home

Yesterday I went downtown to see my First Ever Shrink. (My marriage counselor referred me to a psychiatrist to treat my chronic insomnia with medication, and I like him. I've seen him twice, and we're trying a course of medication for my sleep problem). I had to pass through a crime scene to get to my appointment. The Medical Examiner's van was out front of the building, which meant there was a corpse inside, and there were four police cars. It turned out that the crime scene was one of the elevators, which had its workings revealed and was surrounded by a swarm of officers, including some interviewing various, shaken-up looking people. The building's extroverted super whisked me into another elevator and up before I could say, "Wait! I want to know what that other elevator did before I commit!"

The other occupant of my elevator was a freaked out hipster with dark, horn-rimmed glasses and trendy hair. He was completely unnerved. I tried to cheer him up. "At least it's not us. We're fine." He was not so sure he -- or I -- was fine. "We're ambulatory, aren't we?" I said.

That made him smile, and he thanked me. By the time I left, the lobby was quieter, with one uniformed officer guarding the crime scene elevator. This morning's paper revealed that a man had indeed died in that elevator's workings in some sort of mysterious way and that he'd been dead for a week before he'd been discovered. I've been working up a bit of an elevator phobia ever since reading in the New Yorker about a man trapped in his office elevator for FORTY-TWO hours in Manhattan, and this didn't help.

In the evening we all went downtown again by subway to a skating party. The parents of one of Iris Uber Alles's classmates had rented out the entire Embarcadero skating rink for a private party, and the girls were beside themselves with excitement. We skated, Iris doggedly working until she could go around the rink without holding the edge. Lola took great pleasure in falling down and started falling down on purpose, giggling and giggling. I took quite a few turns around to loosen up (I used to love to skate as a child in Maine), but it was hard to safely maneuver around all the falling children. After some time, I returned my skates and joined the parents who had chosen to drink in lieu of athletic activity. I chatted with a number of other parents, including a mother I like a lot, who told me that the thing she was most uncomfortable with about our school was the ostentatious display of wealth by some parents (an example she gave was a limo at a child's first grade birthday party). I laughed and told her that she wouldn't have to worry about that from me because I don't have any money. We discussed our unglamorous socioeconomic backgrounds.

Eventually the party drew to a close. Our hospitable host had ordered massive stacks of pizza and encouraged everyone to take some home. I took a cheese pizza, thinking it would be good for the children's school lunches. Then I went back for another, which I thought I could give to a homeless person. The Sober Husband thought that was not such a good idea. "It's hard to give food away." I disagreed, saying that when I worked downtown, homeless people were happy to get leftovers I gave them, and it was a nice, hot, fresh pizza.

We walked towards the subway. The first homeless person the Sober Husband asked about the pizza declined, saying he'd already had a big dinner. He seemed stoned and barely able to understand the concept. The second person we asked accepted the pizza and called over two other street people. As we walked down into the subway, I turned and saw the three of them eating the pizza with abandon. That made us all feel good, and the Sober Husband decided to give away the second pizza as well (although I wanted to keep it). We ran into a different sort of street person at the fare gates, an enterprising one who had been rummaging through the trashcans for November fastpasses. People who bought December ones threw those old ones away, although they were still good for another three days. We accepted all the Fastpasses and thanked him enthusiastically. The Sober Husband offered hm the pizza. The man hesitated and confided that what he really needed was money, perhaps half what we would have paid for taking the subway. I gave him a five dollar bill because he had been helpful and hadn't asked for anything until we brought up the idea of giving something.

On our way down into the bowels of MUNI, the Sober Husband gave another man our pizza.

While we were waiting on the platofrm, our Fastpass friend came up to me, upset. He said that he'd gone over to the man he saw take our pizza and asked him if he could have just one slice of the pizza, telling him he knew us. Instead of sharing the pizza, that man pulled a knife on him. The Fastpass street person came to me and told me what happened, upset. The Sober Husband was off fiddling around with his iPhone, and I asked him to call the police. A MUNI worker nearby refused to get involved. "I didn't see a thing."

While we were on the platform, discussing this, the pizza-having guy came sweeping down, with a knife in one hand and the pizza box in the other. "What you go telling these people for?" he said to the Fastpass man in a hard voice. He chased towards the other street person, who was right by me on the platform. I pulled Iris and Lola in to me, faces to me, so they wouldn't see anything if someone got stabbed. "Stay close to Mommy." The knife-wielder circled us with his knife out in his hand, me holding the children close and the other street person looking very frightened, and then ran up the stairs with the pizza. "You saw that? You saw that?" said the frantic Fastpass street person. "I saw it, I saw it," I said.

After what felt like a long time, a police officer with two MUNI workers arrived on the platform. I told the officer what had happeneed and that I had seen the knife myself. They all took off in pursuit of the man with the pizza and the knife. Our subway arrived. I was reluctant to get on it, thinking that we might need to give a statement, but the Sober Husband insisted. "I guess no one told us we had to wait," I said as I relented.

On the way home, I reflected about the different socioeconomic classes cheek and jowl down at the Embarcadero Center. One minute we'd been skating with hedge fund managers and drinking wine with millionaires; the next minute, we saw a man pull a knife on another over a piece of leftover pizza. I also thought about the crime scene I'd gone through earlier in the day. I leaned over to the Sober Husband. "You know, it's pretty quiet when you stay home with the cats. It's nice there, staying home with the cats."

I shouldn't have asked.

As we sat down to eat dinner on the last evening of the Thanksgiving weekend, I asked the abstracted Sober Husband, "So what are you thinking about?"

"About how I'm looking forward to getting back to the office."

Lola does it so you don't have to

Yesterday Lola wanted to dip the vegetarian corndog her father had microwaved for her into chocolate sauce, rather than the customary catsup. Her father asked me if I had any objections. I found the whole idea repugnant but waved a lazy, permissive hand. "Whatever you want, Lolabelle."

Within minutes six year-old Lola came in to report. Her face screwed up with disgust, she said, "Corndogs in chocolate sauce taste... taste... taste... " She couldn't think of a word bad enough, and she instructed me never, ever to try it.