walking through a winter wonderland

The other night we walked down through the Castro, as I was meeting a friend for drinks and the Sober Husband and children felt like going for a walk.

The walk was particularly enjoyable for me, because I was trying out some new performance socks I'd ordered at a holiday sale.  These particular socks are so advanced that a catalogue I'd received in the mail referred to them as "systems" and had a diagram pointing out the various features.  I had enjoyed ridiculing that diagram, but it was an effective sales technique, getting me to order them, and they are the best socks of my life.  As we walked, I kept reveling in my "systems."  "I am never wearing socks again!  I am only wearing systems from now on," I shared.

A particular child found this annoying and requested that I stop referring to my new footwear as "systems" as it was "dorky" and potentially embarrassing.

"You're not the boss of me," I said maturely.

"I should be the boss of you.  I'd do a better job managing you than you do."

We walked on, me reveling in the joy of my systems.  One particular bar with a balcony was full of festive drinkers, who were shouting at pedestrians trying to egg them into jaywalking.  They shouted and shouted at one particular pedestrian next to us.  "Don't be a little bitch!"  Then one festive gay drunk shamed the others:  "There are little kids down there!"  Much gay drunken guilt followed until I shouted up to them, "Don't worry!  She hears worse at home!", gesturing towards little Lola.  This met with a lot of loud, inebriated approval, and as we walked away, when the lights finally changed, one drunk screamed out, "I wish you were my mother!"

I turned and waved in acknowledgment.  "Are you flipping them off?" asked Iris.

"No, I'm waving!  He said he wishes I was his mother."

"Well, I don't wish that," said Iris fiercely.

"WHAT?" I squawked.  "You don't wish I were your mother?"  I knew she wants to go away to boarding school, but unwishing the very biological bonds that tie us together is another matter.

"No!  I don't wish you were his mother!"

After this misunderstanding was cleared up, mother-child love was restored, and we all parted ways:  the Sober Husband and offspring off to eat cake, and me to have cocktails.

this isn't disturbing; no, not at all

The Sober Husband has been bored at work lately, and he calls me from time to time.  The other day we were chatting, and he shared, "Yesterday I was so bored I watched your dot."  He clarified that he has a program which monitors where my cellphone is.  "I watched you drive up Masonic, then wait on Waller, then drive off.  I was so bored, I just sat there watching for a really long time."

Lola's wacky drug experience

Yesterday Lola went to the dentist, always an ordeal for dentist and patient alike (Lola, who has a huge dental phobia, has been known to vomit and cry during procedures).  One of her baby teeth had broken in half, but the jagged remains remained firmly rooted.  Normally I am the dental parent, but the Sober Husband decided to take Lola this time.  He was sure that the dentist would airily say, "Oh, everything's fine, just let it come out in its own time."  I, on the other hand, was sure that the dentist would remove the rest of the tooth.

Indeed the dentist did want to pull the wretched stump, and it didn't go easily.  After a rough beginning to the proceedings wherein Lola cried and the Sober Husband ordered all of the dental personnel out of the room, Lola took some time to compose herself, and the Sober Husband allowed the dentist and his assistant back in.   (When I heard this story, I winced and became nervous that our family would get blacklisted from this dental practice.  The Sober Husband was quite militant in describing this to me, and I had flashbacks to when we used to go to a particular vet who was afraid of him and would have to visibly brace herself to enter the room if he were with me).

Perhaps understandably the dentist chose to give fragile Lola plenty of nitrous, in addition to numbing gel and a novocaine injection.  As Lola described it later, "It was like I wasn't alive, but I wasn't dead."  After she was done at the dentist, Lola went to school.  She told me later that she was working on a project with one of her best friends, "but I got all giggly.  My teeth were shivering and I couldn't stop giggling, and A. didn't know what to do with me, so she had to take me to Ms. B.  And she didn't know what to do with me either!  So she told me to color or do whatever, and I was giggling and crying at the same time and my teeth were shivering."  Eventually Lola returned to normal.

"Well, Lola, that was quite a day you had today," I said, contemplating it all.  I imagined that the dentist could have used a few hits of nitrous after getting the wrath of the Sober Husband turned on him.

the embarrassment

This year I'm co-teaching a class at Iris's school, where we read and discuss books.  Today the students were trying to guess the age of a character, a rather raddled and frizzled alcoholic who is described as wearing gold stiletto shoes.  This sparked a lively debate, as the description of the character's face, with its wrinkles, made the kids think she might be in her sixties, at least forties, but those gold stilettos... she had to be in her twenties to wear shoes like that.  Maaaaybe thirties at most, but then how would she be wrinkled?

I pointed out gently to the children that I am in my late forties, but I wear stiletto shoes.  They were bemused but soon thought they had me.  "Not gold ones!"

But I was not to be caught out that fast.  "I do have gold ones."

They were nonplussed.  I promised to bring the shoes to our next meeting to prove that a woman in her late forties could wear gold stilettos.

At home I shared this story.  Iris interrupted me at the point where I said, "I told them I wore stilettos."  Moaning, she said sadly, "You had to.  You had to say that.  When did you say that?  So embarrassing."

When I got to where I promised to bring my gold stilettos, Iris erupted.  "When you come into my place of residence, you have a responsibility!"

Perhaps not surprisingly the conversation turned to Iris's obsession, going away to a prestigious boarding school.

"Can I come visit you when you're at boarding school?" I asked.

Evasively Iris answered, "I don't think you'll want to come."

"Well, you'll come home for the summer."

Pensively Iris mused, "I wonder what I'll do for the summers, whether I'll want to come home."

the life of a Debbie Downer

After perking up and feeling happy and energetic for a while, so perky indeed that I was back in the kitchen trying new things (like a homemade caramel and chocolate ganache tarte with a sablé crust and like pasta with baby spinach, fried chickpeas, and fresh mozzarella), I'm back in a slump.

Yesterday I not only went out to a party, but I talked the Sober Husband into coming with.  It's rare he'll socialize with my friends, as he views them as his inferiors.  At the party, there was only one person he enjoyed speaking to, and he was disparaging of my other friends after we left.  The disparagement didn't stop with my friends -- it continued to me.  He referred to "your suicidal bullshit."  I would have jumped out of the car and stalked off right then had we not been driving on an elevated freeway.

Obviously it must be difficult to be married to a suicidal person, but referring to it as "bullshit" seems completely wrong on so many different levels, so trivializing and so apt to provoke the very behavior being criticized.

This argument put me right back where I was, in that dark, deep hole.  I don't even want to look at him or hear the sound of his voice.

how not to take a compliment

After losing over fifty pounds, I've been enjoying wearing smaller, form-fitting clothes.  Not long ago I indulged in a little retail therapy and acquired a dress which I call "my mid-range hooker dress."  It shows a lot of lace-obscured cleavage and is tight all over, and it is one hell of  a dress.  You could go a lifetime without finding such a rewarding dress, just the right amount of sleaziness.

Recently I had the right occasion to wear this dress in public:  a friend had a private party at a wine bar.  After I'd had a glass of wine, a former Marine sergeant I know made his way over to greet me.  "You look great," he said, hugging me.

"Thanks!" I said.  I turned this way and that.  "I call this 'my midrange hooker dress.'"

"That's exactly what it is," he agreed.  "It's good enough that you can go into a hotel or restaurant in it," but we both agreed a call girl would do well wearing it.

"Sexy!" was his final judgment.

"Thanks," I blurted out sincerely.  "That means a lot, because I know you don't like me."

Then came the awkwardness.

fear the judgment of the children

Today was a rainy day, and Lola's thoughts when I picked her up were on another rainy day spent waiting for me at dismissal time.  She and her friend "were sitting in one of the only dry spots on the stairs, you know, it was all wet.  And we had one of the only dry spots.  And then this car came tearing down, it was going so fast, and we all gasped.  And I said, 'You shouldn't drive that way down here, because it is full of judgmental children, AND WE WILL JUDGE YOU. ' And we did."

a very deep thought

"On the outside, I may appear to be an emotionless, sarcastic jerk, but like an onion, as you peel back each layer, you find exactly the same thing.  And then you start crying."  (Courtesy of one of my Burning Man campmates).

insults and metaphor

Today as I was driving Lola to school, she asked me what a metaphor was.  It was especially pleasing for me to get a question I could actually answer, and I delved into metaphors and similes, making up some and quoting famous ones.  "The fog crept in on little cat feet" went over well, but Lolz balked at "Shall I compare thee to a summer day."

"Summer days are hot," said Lola disapprovingly.  She and her sister, native San Franciscans, prefer a cool, foggy day.  For Lola, Shakespeare was an idiot.

"NEWSFLASH, LOLA:  you and Iris are not normal.  YOU ARE NOT TYPICAL."

Lola did not take the point.   A new insult has been found:  comparing someone to a summer day.  Those are fighting words, all right!

sorry

I'm really sorry for all my failures.

the crazy man and the mystery of his shoe size

Act I.

The Sober Husband needs new slippers and new sneakers, but somehow over the nearly five decades of his life, he has avoided learning his shoe size.  I buy his clothes for him, but he's on his own foot-wise.  "If you only managed to learn your shoe size, you'd live in a wonderland," I nagged him the other day, "where I'd keep a stack of slippers for you.  Like when you said you needed new pants, and I told you to look in your dresser, and there was a pile of them I bought when they were on sale."  

We were walking through the Castro when we had this conversation, and the Sober Husband suggested that he walk up a block to visit a store which sells garish sneakers as well as campy t-shirts to get his feet sized.   I vetoed that suggestion.  "Stores like that don't measure your feet," I explained.  "They rely on you to know your size when you go in.  Normal people know what size their feet are.   Iris and I know what size our feet are."   We sneered superiorly.  

The Sober Husband was unconvinced. 

Act II.

The following day, while Iris and I were taking in a matinee of "Seven Psychopaths", the Sober Husband and Lola stopped by that same store in the Castro in an attempt to get his feet sized.  "You were right," he admitted; the store didn't even possess a shoe sizing board.  "They treated me like I was a crazy man.  I think they thought I was insane."  

It was a double victory for me, as the Sober Husband had predicted that "Seven Psychopaths" would be too gory and upsetting for Iris, but in the end she had, as I'd known, enjoyed the movie.  

Epilogue:  

The sad part is this was probably the highlight of my entire year: having a laugh at the expense of my usually better-than-me spouse due to my superior knowledge of how to buy shoes.  It's all downhill from here.

the things we ate

People think Thanksgiving is all about the turkey, but here in this vegetarian household, I bring the feast.  Yesterday we had nine dishes, none prepared ahead of time (due to the chef being in a funk), all made Thanksgiving morning.

- Asian marinated cucumber salad (to give us something light and crunchy),

- garlicky mashed Yukon Gold potatoes (Lola's favorite),

- turnip gratin (so simple but so pleasing),

- lantulaatiko (a Scandinavian rutabaga pudding which has become the Sober Husband and my holiday tradition, served every Thanksgiving and Christmas like clockwork ever since we were
dating and first discovered this food together),

- Tofurkey! marinated and roasted with little potatoes and carrots (mock if you must, but it tastes fantastic),

- homemade cranberry sauce (this year's had cherries, Cointreau, apricot preserves, and ginger, and it was a disappointing recipe which will not be seen next year, the one underperforming dish of the year.  Last year's cranberries with sugar and orange zest were much better),

- green beans cooked in vodka (seen every year),

- mustard-chive monkey bread (the only really time consuming and tricky thing which was made), and

- sour cream pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream.

There was only the one pie, due to the chef's health kick and huge weight loss, and not coincidentally it was a pie which the squash and pumpkin-hating chef does not eat herself.   Another non-coincidence was some complaining by the minors over the relative lack of pies, which was met by the spirited rebuttal that they could eat the leftover tres leches cake in the refrigerator if they needed to stuff their yaps with sugar.

hate reading

It's terrible, it just is, yet I have no shame over my newest filthy, unforgivable habit.  I'm hate-reading,  I'm reveling in schadenfreude over the last election.  I don't feel bad about this, as I was on the losing side for virtually every election during my voting lifetime and have sadly bucked up every four years.

Sadly my supply is running dry as more time goes on past the election.  But here's a toothsome gem, one which doesn't age:  http://dailywitness.com/sifting-the-numbers-for-a-winner-by-karl-rove/

surcharge, shmurcharge

In the aftermath of the election, some CEOs of chain restaurants are spitting mad that healthcare may be in their employees' future.  The head of Papa John is charging 10 cents more per pizza, which frankly strikes me as a bargain. I'm happy to pay an extra dime if it means a struggling, hardworking pizza chain employee can go to the doctor.

As Wonkette reports with delicious snark, another CEO is trying to egg customers into stiffing waiters on their tips to punish them for wanting healthcare and Obama:

 John Metz is nobody’s fool, so John Metz, CEO and owner of Hurricane Grill and Wings as well as some Denny’s and Dairy Queen franchises, is going to pass the cost of Obamacare onto the employees AND the customer. “If I leave the prices the same, but, say on the menu that there is a five-percent surcharge for Obamacare, customers have two choices. They can either pay it, and tip 15 or 20 percent, or if they really feel so inclined, they can reduce the amount of tip they give to the server, who is the primary beneficiary of Obamacare,” Metz told The Huffington Post. Metz is a WINNER, you guys, and WINNERS do not pay for the health care coverage costs of others. They make you, the customer pay for it (SUCKER) and if you don’t want to, then YOU get to be a winner and make the waitress pay for it.

Frankly I'm all for him doing that.   We've done that already in San Francisco, and restaurants, waiters, and diners all seem to be fine after adjusting to a new reality.  When a new law called "Healthy San Francisco" was passed, restaurants of a certain size had to start providing healthcare to their employees.  Many restaurants decided to put a surcharge on the checks labeled "Healthy San Francisco", to make it clear to the consumer that she was having to pay out of her own pocket extra for her meal in order to give the doctor-craving waiters and cooks health insurance.  And you know what?  All the doom that was forecast didn't happen.  Restaurants are still opening at a crazy rate (our economy has perked up here, thanks to Silicon Valley); people are still eating out.

Just yesterday I took little Lolz and a pal of hers out to lunch, and we paid our "Healthy San Francisco" surcharge on top of our tab.  The heavily tattooed staff who waited on us and bussed our table looked healthy, and the surcharge was modest enough.   Funnily enough I didn't have any sort of class rage against my waiter, the way that John Metz seems to think I should.  We all of us get sick, and we all of us need some medical care from time to time.

it's that special time of year

It's that magical time of year, when I am constantly reminded that I am unlovable (the only person in the world who has ever genuinely loved me after getting to really know me is the Sober Husband, and that's probably because by then he was stuck with me), unloved, unlikeable, and mostly unliked.  Also, I've lost the one advantage life gave me, which was that for a while I was pretty damn good-looking.  I was an ugly child, a hideous adolescent, and then I blossomed into a hot chick, but that didn't last long enough.  I have lived too long past my sell-by date.

Yes, it's birthday season!  Happy fucking another year older to me.  I can't wait until it's over.  The actual day is Tuesday, but the dread and funk arrive ahead of time.

a very special genre

I'm co-teaching a "lit club" class at Iris uber Alles's school.  It's like a tiny little foray into the working world, and I love the children.

Not long ago I asked them to tell me about what they like to read, and one shared, "I like books where mermaids commit suicide."

detente pictured

There are a lot of gray animals around here lately, and there is only a fragile detente at best, with your humble narrator at high risk for small bodily injuries.

not appropriate

Iris and I went to a clothing exchange over the weekend, where we each scored some great finds.  Most notably Iris got a beautiful leather jacket and I got a Michael Kors dress; I also ended up with an extremely ornate, bead-encrusted wedding gown.

"I don't understand why you took that wedding gown," said Iris.

"I've always wanted to go to this event called 'Brides of March,' where everyone runs around bars all day in wedding gowns, both the men and the women."  (Indeed several people at the clothing exchange had lit up at the sight of the wedding gown, all thinking of the Brides of March, but it was me that the gown fit perfectly.  Although I've been married twice, I have never owned a real wedding gown.  I have lots of friends who have had inordinate amounts of fun at the Brides of March pub crawl, and I've always intended to get a wedding gown for it, but I've never managed to find one in my size at a thrift store).

Iris made a derisive sound.  "You are a forty seven year-old mother of two!  THERE IS SO MUCH WRONG WITH THAT, I CAN'T EVEN BEGIN."  She shook her head.

so very cute

This morning I was tired, from insomnia-caused sleep deprivation and from far too much exercise over the past several days.  The Sober Husband called my attention to the fact that one of my foster kittens had diarrhea (in the litterbox, good kitten, and which I had already realized and arranged to get some medications).  I had a realization and shared it with him.

"I feel that almost everything you say to me is conveying a piece of negative information.  Like that almost everything you talk about is either damage or disgustingness caused by animals or [perennial topic of anomie and worry not appropriate for the public].  It's making me fear you opening your mouth.  I'm dreading talking to you.  We need to fix that."

The Sober Husband feistily argued the point with me for a while, which caused me to further stiffen in my views.  Then he broke off and stared at the latest foster kitten.  "That orange one is over there.... "  He paused.  "Being cute."

I walked over and saw the kitten, bent over vomiting heartily.  I turned to the Sober Husband and ran my hand through his hair affectionately.  "Well said!"

a mystery

Tonight I had the Sober Husband drop me off at the gym.  He proceeded on to a cocktail party, while I had a good, long, strenuous workout.  By the time I was out of the shower, he was waiting to drive me home.

I felt like exercising, not drinking.  WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME?  I used to be so much fun.