Errata

Masks:
You probably know that I use a CPAP machine when I sleep at night. And because of the long summer days in Alaska and the fact that my apartment had no curtains, I also use one of those Lone Ranger style sleep masks. It occurs to me that I look like the insect god when I sleep.

Amenities:
If you know anyone staying for a while in a hospital or extended care facility, among the things that will make life good for them, are:
books
CDs
their favorite herb tea
a real cup to drink it in
lemon drops or other hard candies to combat dry mouth
hand lotion
mustard and salt to "fix" the food
a small amount of fresh ground coffee to cover other smells
dried fruits
nuts
crackers

AWWWWW from Harold

One Saturday morning, about 12 years ago, I was waiting for my favorite restaurant to open. There were two men, obviously very good friends, also waiting. The three of us waited for BaCar's to open every Saturday morning, all three being compulsively early. This particular week, we started talking.










One thing led to another. We started talking every week as we waited. Since we always sat near ecah other, the conversations would continue once we were seated.








One week they said that it would be easier to continue to talk if I joined them. That's how I met Harold and his friend Pete. Later we added Pete's new girl friend and then her boss (who was already eating there when we were) and finally his girl friend became his wife and we added her mother.












Over the years, Pete's wife's need to sleep in on Saturdays caused them to drop off. Her mother recently left to do other things. But Harold and Christina and I still have breakfast every Saturday morning.















Harold and Christina are two of the best friends a person could ever have. I look forward to seeing them on Saturdays; even though I no longer work on Saturdays, and could sleep in if I wanted.*










Harold and Christina and I are cat people. I have my beloved Hooligans, Christina has four cats, and Harold and his father have rescued a herd of feral cats. Harold rounds them up, takes them in and has them neutered, and releases them. Except, he and his dad have kept a number of the kittens.








We tell each other stories of our cats on Saturday mornings.













And Harold e-mails Christina and me pictures of and jokes about cats. Well, other things as well. But definitely cats and kittens.












He sent me these this week, and I am posting them for you.












* Originally, eating breakfast out on Saturdays was my reward to myself for being the only person in my agency who worked on Saturdays.

Peanut Butter Soup

One of the books that the Elves', Gnomes', Leprechauns', & Little Men's Chowder and Marching Society members really loved was John Steinbeck's "Cannery Row", set in Monterey, California in the early 40s. Characters in the book were based on people who Steinbeck had known when he was spending time there. The main character, Doc, based on his friend Ed Rickets, was a personal favorite of ours. And Doc, a marine biologist, liked beer. One of the other characters commented to him once that he liked beer so much that no doubt he would drink a beer milkshake.

No matter how Doc tried to get this bizarre idea out of his head, it wouldn't leave. Finally, one day when he was out of town (he somehow couldn't do this where he was known), he drove into a drive-in and ordered a beer milkshake.

Years after I read this I was living in Cupertino and I used to go to this little restaurant for lunch a lot. I generally ordered their soup and salad special, except for on Thursdays. On Thursdays the soup was peanut butter, and that was just too odd for me.

Except that, every time I would see that sign, "Soup - Peanut Butter" I would wonder why on earth anyone would try such a thing and shudder at the thought. And wonder what it would taste like.

I couldn't get it out of my mind. Like a beer milkshake, it haunted me. I would wake up on Thursday and wonder what I would have for lunch that day, since I wasn't having the soup special. Until, finally, one day I ordered it. Oh. My. Soooooo good. Peanuts. Chili. Smooth and yummy.*

When I told friends about it, I would say, "it was my beer milk shake" and they would not understand at all. They would look at me like I was crazy and begin to wonder if I weren't a secret drinker.

About eight years later, Michael, an old EGL&LMCMS friend from high school, came to visit and I fixed peanut butter soup and he raved about it and so I told him about trying it and as I was telling him about it preying on my mind, he said, "Right. A beer milk shake."

Ah, to be understood.

* The next Thursday I was so excited, all set for another bowl. But when lunch came, the sign read, "Soup - Split Pea". "What," I asked, "happened?" And it turned out that I was one of the few people who tried the soup, so they discontinued it. I had to find a recipe and learn to make it myself. And a very good job I do of it, too. The recipe calls for smooth peanut butter, but I find that extra chunk is much better. And I can add extra chili powder. Heaven. It tastes like Heaven.

Being the Last to Catch On

My office mate, Jessica, is having a baby in August. As the date approaches, it affects her body in a number of ways. She eats earlier, she eats oftener, she eats more, she goes to the bathroom more often, she gets up to walk the kinks out.

We were sitting at our desks, working away, when Jessica mentioned that she was really having kinks today and needed to walk more, and then got up and walked out. I needed to go to the bathroom, but she is after all the pregnant one, so I waited. And waited. And waited. Was getting very needy, doing Boo's little dance sitting down, when I realized that she had gone for a walk. That, indeed, she had told me she was going for a walk.

When she returned, I mentioned this and she said, "There is another bathroom in the hall."

I knew that. Really, I knew that.

Wounded Trainers

I have seldom sat down to blog and had trouble thinking what to write. However, it has happened once or twice. More often than that, I've had an idea when I was away from my computer, and by the time I got there, the idea is gone. Some ideas come back, some don't. A few have come back again and again at inconvenient times and I've never written them. So, when I get an idea, I usually put enough information to remember it in a new post and save it as a draft. Sometimes I put just the title. Mistress' Hoopskirt can only be one thing.

So, I was making notes for several things I had thought about the other night. And then on Sunday I was looking at my drafts, and there was the title "Wounded Trainers" and I couldn't imagine what that was about. Usually my posts tend to be personal or political or profound or phunny, but there was nothing I had to say in any of those categories about Sigfried and Roy. Nor about ratty tennis shoes. And then I remembered. Of course . . .

I wrote about the first part of this inThe Great Snopes Hoax

Which reminded me of the time I was carrying two six packs of Pepsi from the car and fell off my shoes and broke the bottles and cut my hands and arm badly on the glass. Julie had to come home from work and drive me to the ER for 19 stitches in my forearm. . .

I also had bloody knees. The next day my business partner, Alison, and I were training for one of the county offices. I couldn't do it alone, since I needed to sit often and I could hardly use my hands so I wasn't going to be able to drive or write on the flip chart or even cut food at lunch. Alison was going to have a baby any day, so she couldn't go out and do it alone. Luckily that was the only training on the schedule for the day, so we could go together.

All day long we took turns presenting. One would train and one would sit and recover. When it was time to change, neither of us could get out of the chair unassisted -- her pregnancy and my scabbed and sore knees were in the way. She would hold on to my one uncut forearm, and together we would get one out of the chair and one into it. She was putting her hand to the small of her back in an ominous way, which had not only me but the entire class concerned. All went well, we got incredible evaluations (made it tempting to train in bandages all the time!) and a couple of the participants packed up Alison's car. As she drove away from the training site Alison asked me if Julie would be home by now, and when I answered that she would, Alison asked if I minded having Julie come and pick me up at the hospital, because she was in labor and didn't think she could get me home and drive herself to the hospital before the baby was born. Indeed, that baby was born about half an hour after she checked in.

And I'll bet that there aren't any male business partners with a story to top this one.

R2D2! It Is You! It Is You!*

In the comments on Wednesday's post, Fat, was one signed Jack Hairston. One of my best friends from high school. Hell, one of my best friends from life. And so I commented back to ask if he was my Jack Hairston, being pretty darned sure that he was. And he e-mailed me, and it is him! I don't think I've seen Jack since 1975! And, at some point decades ago I discovered that I no longer had his address. This is so exciting. This internet thing is a wonder, isn't it? First Julie finds my older half-sister with it and then she finds Kate with it and now Jack found himself with it. And I'll bet he didn't even know he was lost.

And just in time for my 65th birthday. (April 23. Me, Shakespeare, Shirley Temple, my office mate Jessica, Michael Moore, Ngaio Marsh, Max Planck, Cervantes, my Aunt Flo, and a bunch of other people that I don't know enough about to admire. On my exact birthday and year, Sandra Dee and I have no idea how I feel about that.)

* Have I mentioned that George Lucas went to our high school? Wish I'd known it at the time.

Not Sissies

When Maya's Granny was a young girl called Joy, just about 12 years old, she moved to El Paso, Texas, with her Little Mama and Daddy and brother Forrest and sister Colleen. El Paso is a town out in the desert, just across the river from Mexico (which is an entire different country). It is very hot there and it hardly ever rains.

Well, on the same street where Joy and the rest of her family lived, almost next door, there lived another girl just one month older than Joy, named Linda. Linda lived with her mother, Fern, and her father, Tom. Even though Linda was a year ahead of Joy in school, they became good friends. They were the only girls their age for blocks around, and neither of them was a sissy. A sissy was a girl who made sure to keep her dresses clean and walked quietly when she went places and acted like a lady. Linda and Joy didn't do any of those things. They got their clothes dirty and sometimes they even came home with caterpillars in their pockets and they ran wherever they went and they acted like tom boys.

Linda loved horses and was all the time pretending to ride a horse or to be a horse. And Joy loved space ships and planets and was all the time pretending to have a space ship or be a planet. And Linda and Joy liked each other so much, that Joy would pretend to be a horse with Linda, and Linda would pretend to be a planet with Joy.

They would spend all day, every day, outside. They would run and climb fences and trees and spin around being planets and dig holes and have a very good time.


And they would spend the night with each other and giggle and call complete strangers on the telephone and ask them if their refrigerators were running, and if the strangers said yes, then Joy and Linda would say, "you better catch it before it gets away" and they would think that was the funniest thing a person ever said. They would laugh and laugh and laugh. Of course, if Fern and Tom had caught them doing this (they never dared do such a thing at Joy's house, because her Daddy scared them more than Tom did), they would have been in big trouble. Actually, Granny isn't very proud of having done this, but she did and so she mentions it. And they would stay awake long after the grown-ups were in bed, giggling and telling secrets and carrying on. Then, if they were at Joy's house Little Mama would come in and if they were at Linda's house, Fern would come in and say, "Girls, be quiet. Your father is trying to sleep. If you wake him up you will be in real trouble." and they would try to be quiet, but just a minute or two later, they would be laughing and giggling again.

In A Nutshell follows.

The Road That Was Taken

One day five years ago Granny came home from work and found a letter in her mailbox from her friend Robert Crawford. Now, Granny and Robert had been friends since they were in high school, for all of 48 years, which is a good long time. Way back then, Robert and Bob Dorn and Jack Hairston and Michael Wells and Jane Thornberg and Granny hung out together and called themselves the Elves, Gnomes, Leprechauns, and Little Men's Chowder & Marching Society. So, Granny is always excited to get a letter from him. But today, when Granny read his letter, he said that his son David had died. Granny felt so sad. Granny remembered when David was born, just two years before Uncle Richard was born. David was the first baby born to anyone in the Elves, Gnomes, Leprechauns, and Little Men's Chowder & Marching Society, and Granny had always felt like he was their baby.

Granny wrote an e-mail to Michael, who is now Maya's Gramps, to tell him about it and she wrote a letter to Robert telling him how sorry she was. Then Granny realized that she had to write to Jane as well, because Jane was David's mother. And Granny hadn't seen or heard from Jane since Jane and Robert got their divorce and that was 38 years ago, Granny remembers because it was right after Uncle Richard was born.

Well, Granny wrote a letter to Jane and she was very sad about David all over again. But then, Granny realized that she was sad about something else as well, and what that other thing was, she was sad that it had been so long since she had seen or talked to Jane. That Granny really missed Jane. And she missed her even more when the letter came back and Granny realized that she didn't know where Jane was.

And then Granny got to thinking about all the moving she had done in her life, and all of the friends that she had lost touch with, and it seemed to her that her past was like a landscape littered with lost friends. Little girls that she had known when she was a little girl, like Lupe and Maria, Jean and Rita Pine, Sandy Pettichord, Roberta and Bernadette, and Esther. Teenaged girls that she had known when she was a teenaged girl, like Ruth, Sarah, and Jenny, Jane, and Katy Savage. Young women that she had known when she was a young woman, like Gail Jennings, Nanette, Julie Anne, and Val, Kit Schneider, Rita, Nicola, and Leanne. Full grown women that she had known when she was a full grown woman, like Jean Van Whye and Gloria Desroucher and Alison Hudson and Carol Pevin and Zenia Tata. And Granny really missed them all. Granny thought about the friends she still has from her earlier days, and they are few. Like Linda Lapsley and Linda McKinney. And even they don't live in Juneau near Granny. Granny wished that she could have always lived in one town and always had the same friends and know where they all are and see them all the time.

(Since that day, five years ago, Julie has found Kate for Granny and Michael has found Jane for Granny, and now Granny sees them both when she goes to California and e-mails them and talks to them on the phone. She still doesn't know where her other friends are, and sometimes she still misses them. Sometimes she envies people who stay in one place and have the same friends always.)

And Granny realized that when you choose to wear your blue shirt, your closet is full of shirts you aren't wearing, and when you choose to eat sourdough bread and Limburger cheese the kitchen is full of food you aren't eating, and when you choose to move to a new place, the world is full of places and people you have left behind. And Granny realized that when you are born under a wandering star, sometimes you long for roots.

Being Led Astray By Gail Jennings

Gail Jennings was my first college roommate. We both had these odd backgrounds -- I had spent the last two years of high school living with my great-aunt, and her father had died the year before at the age of 90 (as I remember, he was up mending the roof and fell off, which impressed the hell out of me). I was studying Arabic and she was studying Russian. And you should have listened to us as we practiced our pronunciation at the same time! My, the unusual sounds that came from that room late at night.

We hit it off immediately. I'm sure, that if she were to tell you about those days, I was the one who led her astray, but since the things I suggested we do (sneak break into one of the men's dorms [which happened to be locked] before dawn to watch the sunrise from the roof [above the eighth story] because we started too late to get up in the hills in time, for instance) just seemed like good ideas to me. It was the stuff that seemed like good ideas to Gail that I'm talking about.

You need a little background here. We were entering freshmen in the fall of 1960. The prior spring, the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) hearings had been held in San Francisco and the Daily Californian had written some stories about them, and about students being washed down the stairs by fire hoses when they went to demonstrate, that caused the powers that be to object. In those days, the University stood in loco parentis to students, and the regents simply started censoring the paper. At which point, the editorial staff printed the "We Quit" issue (printing copies of the front page on their shirts as well), walked off, and started their own paper, the Independent Californian. (On the masthead: Valid Student Journalism.) At that point, Gail and I joined the staff of the new paper, becoming cub reporters caught up in the movement. We may have been the only students to join at this point; we were certainly the only ones I can remember who didn't have We Quit shirts. The IC only lasted three weeks. We had to find stories, write them, edit them, put the paper to bed, and get up and sell the paper the next day. While it was exciting for Gail and me, the older students were having problems trying to do all this and study for mid-terms and the ROTC members (translation, all the men, since it was mandatory at that time) were getting told that they would never get security clearance if they continued (and who knew if someday you might want it?). So, our editor, Dan Silver, called us together and we closed. Had a party at his apartment afterwards, and many of us either went back to or, like me, joined the Daily Californian.

As I said, mid-terms were upon us. One night Gail and I were studying late, mangling the sounds of Russian and Arabic at each other, and we got goofy. You know how you do, pulling an all-nighter. Gail wrote a story about how I married Dan Silver (on whom I had such a crush -- he was brilliant! 19, the editor of the paper, and a senior majoring in my very own major, anthropology) and we had 26 kids named after famous anthropologists and mythical beings (my personal favorites, named 17, 18, and 19 because they were born during the years I had severe post-partum depression and so only numbered them) and taught in one of the temporary buildings (quonset huts put up during WWII and still there the last time I looked in the 70s) on the Berkeley campus. She even illustrated it, and one picture I remember showed Dan and me taking the kids to school in a buckboard pulled by four battered VW bugs and . . . It was really very funny. But then -- she decided she was going to mail it to Dan. Panic! I was able to talk her out of it only by allowing her to mail him something. We were eating stick pretzels and I decided she could mail him a pretzel.


Thus was born The Independent Pretzel (Valid Student Nourishment). We published on post cards. All issues had the masthead. The first issue had one pretzel taped on. On the fourth, they spelled out H I. We kept it up, adding one a day, until the post cards were full. Two days before we ran out of room, the Pelican (the UC Berkeley humor magazine) came out with a brief mention that "Dan Silver has been receiving obscene pretzels in the mail." I was sitting waiting for class to begin when I read that. Of course, that night we had to fill the beak of the Pelican's pelican statue with pretzels. (No, I don't know who the guy is but that is the very Pelican's pelican itself! In front of the building that housed the magazine offices.)

The night that we mailed the third pretzel, we just continued walking and talking until we realized that it was 4 a.m., we were way beyond our 10 p.m. lock out, the street we were on was absolutely empty, and there was a police car pulling up. The officer wanted to know where we had been at that time of night and Gail told him we had been visiting my aunt (who lived in another town, for pity's sake!) and when he asked for her address, she gave Dan Silver's! I was standing there picturing this policeman knocking on Dan's door at 4 a.m. with us in tow and trying to figure out how I was going to explain this to a young man who may have known only vaguely who we were, when Gail got the same mental image I was getting and blurted out, " I lied! It's just a big lie! We've just been walking and talking. Her aunt lives in Modesto!" So, of course then the officer wanted to know why Gail had felt compelled to lie to him. "I was afraid you'd think we were prostitutes, being out this late." Laugh! I thought that poor cop would pee his pants! It turns out, as you may already know, that prostitutes don't walk empty streets at 4 a.m.

On another of our all-night walks, we were rescued from thugs in a car by garbage collectors and rode their route with them for two hours, until we arrived at our dorm. Two of the nicest men I've ever met, perfectly happy to take us with them to safety. And how it frustrated those idiots in the car, who kept circling and circling just sure we'd get out of the truck and they could grab us!

We used to study at the Kroeber Anthropology Library. At the foot of the circular staircase, there was a sarcophagus. (Not too much like this one. I lucked out with the pelican; couldn't expect the same fortune twice.) One night Gail decided to find out what it felt like to lay on top of it, so down the stairs we went and up the tomb she went, at which point she realized that there were a couple of male grad students at the top of the stairs looking down at her. Off she rolled, and I did not try that, thank you anyway.

The next night on the way over we took a detour to the roof of one of the more historic buildings and while there, we threw a length of board into Strawberry Creek. (No, I won't tell you why we did these things because I don't know why we did these things. I don't think I ever knew why we did these things.) Then we went down and Gail fished it out (she had the most amazing collection of souvenirs from expeditions like this). So, there we were in the library, Gail carrying this dripping piece of wood, and I looked down and said, "That's not the same board, it's covered in algae." and she answered, "I have an uncle named Algie" and of course we both got a fit of the giggles and people looked up and I heard a male voice say, "My God! That's the girl I was telling you about, the one who was laying on the sarcophagus last night!" I have never been back to that library since.

This poster is titled "Women Walking Over the World" which is exactly what Gail and I were. I think that we lived our friendship on our feet. So many of the memories I have of her are of late or all night walks. Walks where we solved the problems of the world, and where I learned how very differently someone who is very much like me can think and see the world. One of our early all-night walks through Berkeley neighborhoods brought us to an area with oddly shaped trees that for some reason made Gail think of Morlocks, something that would not have occurred to me, but which I could see once she had pointed it out.

(In those days, women's dorms were locked at 10 p.m. and if you were not in, you were "locked out" which could lead to expulsion. How odd that it never occurred to anyone that when a woman was locked out she might then spend the night elsewhere! Gale and I lived in one building of a complex that had the dining hall in another, so we just walked all night, turning up for breakfast as though we had come from our room. Since we were good students, never caught doing the things we did, and didn't boy around, no one ever thought to check and see where we were coming from.)

We hiked in the hills around the UC Berkeley campus and strolled through Bay Area towns and meandered through parks and zoos and museums. We explored the nooks and crannies of the campus buildings, discovering such arcane treasures as a large globe marked with the Confederate States and peppered with shot. We were university students at a time when only very rich students had cars and we went everywhere. If we needed to, we took buses. And then we walked some more.

One bright spring Saturday towards the end of our freshman year, we took a bus to San Francisco prepared to walk across the Golden Gate to Sausalito. The wind was blowing wildly, causing the bridge to sway. As we crossed we sang the Tom Lehrer version of My Darling Clementine, giving great power and drama to the refrain:
Clementine, can't you tell, from the howls of me
This love of mine comes to you from the bowels of me?
which seemed absolutely delightful to us, particularly when we punctuated it with wolf howls. When we reached the center of the bridge, we poured the small bottle of wine we had brought along for the purpose as a libation into the bay, followed by a cigarette. We had intended to drop that lit, but the wind was blowing too hard for me to keep a match going.

We quite fell in love with Sausalito, which in 1961 was all art galleries, book stores, coffee houses, and house boats clustered around the bay. I fell in love with it enough to go into the local newspaper and see if they were hiring for the summer. Since I had received a byline on my very first piece for the Daily Californian, I was sure I was up to it. The editor was a very nice gentleman who managed to turn me down without making me feel stupid for just dropping in and applying on a whim.

We only roomed together for one semester. We had been unable to get into a campus dorm, but lived in University approved housing. (As women students, we were not easily allowed to live out of University approved housing at any age, as I discovered when I returned to school at 23, with two babies.) Towards the end of the semester, there was a fire in the house, and although no one was hurt and nothing was destroyed, the fire department closed it and we were unable to find housing together in the spring. Gail found a room in campus housing and I moved into the Baptist Student Center, which sounds odd for a nice little atheist girl, but wasn't when you realized that the BSC didn't have lock out! After that, Gail had to sneak in and out, but since I didn't, we could return to my place and Nanette (my roommate) was always willing to let Gail sleep on the floor.

From then on, at least four days a week, and often seven, we would meet early in the morning and walk up above the town to watch the sunrise together. One morning when I was walking to pick up Gail a cop stopped his patrol car and asked if he could take my picture to show his wife, since she didn't believe him that at exactly 4:13 every morning he passed this young girl walking along and singing ("If I Had a Hammer" as I recall). He posed me so we could see the clock on the campanile, to verify the time, and then he shared his thermos of coffee with me. Often after that, his wife would pack something for him to share with me when we met. As I think of that, a couple of things amaze me. One that a police officer was out patrolling alone. The other that his wife's reaction to our becoming friends was to pack me coffee and muffins! What an innocent time that was.


I've already told you about the morning that we got a late start and couldn't make it up the hill in time, and so broke into one of the men's eight story dorms so we could watch the sunrise from the roof; we were a touch concerned that we might meet some student on his way to the bathroom and so be caught, but the adventure passed without a hitch.

One fine night at the very end of our freshman year, I had news to impart to Gail. I had managed a major rite of passage that evening, and so we denuded a church flower garden and used the blooms to decorate the car of the young gentleman involved. Wayne Alley was appropriately amused and pleased by my tribute.

And the next spring, we both dropped out and became beatnik/hippies. I moved to San Francisco to starve in an attic and write the great American novel (neither of which I did) and Gale went to Europe. I know we maintained contact for a while, because I remember writing to her when I got my divorce. I think she was back in California by then. I went back to school and graduated, then went to College of Notre Dame and earned my Montessori certificate, moved to Fairbanks and taught. Eventually, I took my maiden name back. What Gail did, I don't know.

We were supposed to graduate in 1964; I actually did in '68. I don't know if Gail ever went back or if she went back, where and when she graduated. I've changed my last name since we lost contact, she may have done so as well. How do you find someone when there are so many unknown variables? When Julie found Kate for me, she knew the high school she attended and the last name she had when she was there. But, I don't remember what high school Gail went to.

My Pal Kate

I've told you a little bit about my pal, Kate. You first met her, briefly, within the first three days of my getting this blog up, in Why Not Do It In Public?. Not long after that, I mentioned the peculiar rites of her Girl Scout Troop in Rabbit-Rabbit-Rabbit which led to a discussion of the fact that many, many, many people do the Turtle Greeting.

We met when we were in high school, through the caring offices of a librarian, which I told you about in Friendship. Kate and I have been friends since 1957, a long time in anyone's book. For years, because we had both moved at the same time and then had both changed last names, we lost track of each other. Julie remembered my saying how much I missed Kate, and found her in 2003 on Classmates.com. Kate and I were delighted to be reunited and have been the same great guns we were way back then, ever since. We even still have sleepovers, just like in high school, although now they last a week and we don't have to worry about waking anyone up is we get a fit of the giggles in the middle of the night.

Kate is the one who got me interested in archeology. She's the one who introduced me to Georgette Heyer books. She's the one who took one look at Julie and recognized that her father wasn't who I thought her father was. She's the one who drove me for hours in a truck without air conditioning during a heat wave to visit another friend. She's the one who, when my original flight was canceled and I needed to stay with her one more day, said "of course" when what of course meant was that she would not be able to have her grandson Ross come to visit the next day and the next day was the last visit they were going to get before school started, which meant it was the last one until Winter Vacation. (Luckily a friend of hers had a solution and she didn't get so horribly dinged for her good deed.) She's the one who visited me in the hospital when I had my tonsils out, bringing me a stuffed rabbit she had made from her father's dress socks and made me laugh so hard they wouldn't let her come back. She's the one who came to visit me in the hospital when I had my hyster out and brought fresh fruit and books and good cheer. She's the one who dressed my wound every day for a week when she is really uncomfortable doing that even once at all. She is the one who drove me all over Sacramento to visit places I missed and eat food I can't get in Alaska. She's the one who made lemonade for me from the Meyer lemons in her back yard.

And she's the one who has a new blog, called Hugging Aspens. Visit it.

BaCar's Nomads

Once upon a time, there was a restaurant in Juneau called BaCar's (pronounced bakers, and named for the cook, Barry [who baked all the bread in the place], and his wife, Carlene). It was enchanted. The food was wonderful. I mean wonderful. The service was superb. The price was, for Alaska, reasonable. The Saturday Morning Breakfast Club ate there for over a decade. So did many, many other people. Saturday breakfast at BaCar's was a tradition, and not just for people who lived downtown.

And then, oh then, they closed. Barry and Carlene had other things to do with their lives, and they left town and did them.

And the BaCar's Nomads have been stumbling around Juneau ever since, trying to find a regular place to have breakfast. Not as easy as one would imagine. There is one good place, but it only seats eight! (And Saturday breakfast at BaCar's seated 100 and more waiting.) There was the place we tried where they barely deigned to wait on us. (I'm sorry, if you don't want to make coffee or cook food at 8 a.m., perhaps you need to not open and act like you do?) There was the place with the undercooked waffles. The place with the overcooked eggs. Then, some of the BaCar's staff went to a new restaurant and we flocked there, only to discover that the prices were too high, the cook wasn't allowed to use as good or as many ingredients as he had before, the oatmeal was undercooked, and someone thought that the way to serve biscuits and gravy was with overcooked biscuits (think hockey puck here) that hadn't been opened, so that the gravy didn't penetrate.

Finally, last Saturday we tried a brand new place that was the worst of all. We were seated in a Dead Zone, one of two tables that were apparently not in anyone's section. People who came in 20 minutes after us were eating and we still didn't have water (or coffee or the attention of any of the staff)! The people at the other Dead Zone table could only wait 45 minutes and had to leave before their food was served. People came out with the coffee pot and filled one cup, didn't look around to see if anyone else needed coffee, and fled back into the kitchen. The food was good. We're hoping they were just overwhelmed (the place was packed. The SMBC isn't the only group of BaCar's Nomads still searching for a home), giving them a couple of weeks, and going back. But, I'm not feeling overly hopeful here.

I want BaCar's back! Not that I suppose it matters what I want. But, I want it. I want a place that will allow substitutions of any sort as well as half and quarter orders. I want a place where the staff know my name and keep my coffee cup filled and know just how I like my eggs and that with oatmeal I want maple syrup and walnuts.

Afternoon Delight

Yes, I know that afternoon delight is supposed to be sex, but sometimes it's friendship. On Tuesday, July 18th, two friends I had never met in person before, Claire and Shay (listed in alphabetical order because there is no other way), came to Juneau on the Norwegian Star. We had met on the internet, and when they decided take a cruise to Alaska, they e-mailed me and I arranged to take the afternoon off work and play with them. Shay rented a car that was delivered to me, and I picked them up and drove them around and used it this morning for a couple of errands before work.

We went to a late lunch in the Valley, because parking during working hours is almost impossible downtown. And then we went to the Mendenhall Glacier. After that we went to my apartment, where they got to meet the Hooligans and try to figure out just how many rooms I have*. And then to dinner. And what did we do? We sat and talked. We talked over and after lunch. We talked at the glacier. We talked at my apartment. We talked over and after dinner.

We already knew that we liked each other. We already knew a lot about each other. But, we didn't know just how delightful we would find each other. We didn't know just how much we agreed with each other about the important things and the little things and the silly things and the serious things. There is no way the internet can tell you how charming someone's smile is or how warm the twinkle in her eye. Only the sound of the voice tells you how totally someone agrees with what you just said about the president or the church or pets or spicy food or breaking free of the restraints that all women are raised with.

Because the Norwegian Sun left late, the Star docked late and instead of our visit starting at 2, it started at almost 3:30. That was a loss for me, an hour and a half stolen from our time together. They left me with gifts: from Claire, a bar of chocolate from the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor's Center, from Shay marbles that her husband had made (who knew that people could make marbles?), some of them with my name on them! The General Tao's chicken and crab we couldn't finish at dinner. I will enjoy and treasure the gifts, they will remind me of these two friends who came to town one afternoon and filled it with delight.

* Is it two? Is it six? Odd angles and strange passages without doors make it confusing. Downstairs may be a living room and kitchen and breakfast nook, or maybe just an oddly shaped room. Upstairs may be a bedroom and office and library, or maybe just an even more oddly shaped room. All I know is, I have two stories.

Friendship

When I was a sophomore attending Hillsdale High in San Mateo, California, I spent a lot of time in the public library. And this odd thing was happening. In those days, when you checked out a book, the librarian stamped the date it was due on a small page attached to the inside cover of the book. So, by looking at that you could see how often the book was checked out and when that had last happened. And what I noticed was that I was checking out a lot of books that hadn't been checked out in years, and then a lot from the very same shelves, and often by the very same authors, that had very recently been checked out for the first time in a number of years. I mentioned it to the librarian who told me that there was another girl my age who was checking out the same books and noticing the same things. I went back and looked in the books I had previously taken, and sure enough, very often there was another reader within a couple of weeks. One day I was in the stacks and the librarian came up to me and said, "Come with me, your friend is here." And that’s how I met Kate.

Sometime that year my sister, Colleen, got tonsillitis. Actually, Colleen often got tonsillitis but they had never been able to take them out before because she usually got it during polio season. This time she got it when it wasn't polio season and the doctor and my parents decided that it would be a good idea to get all three of us taken care of at the same time. And so it happened that Colleen, who was four, and Forrest, who was nine, and I, who was 14, got rounded up and operated on. And while I was in the hospital after my tonsillectomy, Kate came to visit me. She brought this unbelievably funny black rabbit that she had made out of a pair of her father's socks. One arm was sewn inside out and the cotton was poking out the arm pit on the other side, so it looked like the rabbit had left off shaving her pits in the middle. I laughed and laughed. Then, Kate told me that just as she had been finishing it up, she heard her father asking her mother, "Where are my good black socks?" and that was so supremely funny that I laughed until my throat bled and the hospital wouldn't let Kate come to visit me again because she cheered me too far up! And I had that silly rabbit for about forty years and would have it to this day if it hadn't been lost in a move.

Kate and I used to spend the night with each other as often as we were allowed. Once when she was visiting me, my entire family was asleep and we were sitting up in bed reading. One of us was reading James Thurber's "File & Forget". She (I?) began reading it aloud, but it was so funny, that she (I?) laughed too hard to read and the tears began to run and her (my?) glasses fogged up. So, the book went back and forth between us, each reading as long as she could and then surrendering the book to the other, who had barely recovered from her last attempt. Somewhere in there my mother came in about three times to hush us up because, "you are going to wake up your father!" And the funny thing about that is that, although I didn't realize it until recently when I was telling this story, she really meant that we were keeping her awake. And the way that I know that is that my step-father didn't sleep with his hearing aids in.

Control

I am the content moderator for an on-line support group of women who, having recognized that we are not among the 2% for whom diets work (take it off and don't return it with interest), have given up diets and decided to get on with our lives and put all of that energy we were wasting on non-productive yet painful self-absorption into other things.

Today we have been talking about control. One of our dear members is having horrible diet thoughts and she knows it is because with a diet she could control at least her food and her husband is dying and she needs to control something. And there is nothing in the world that I can say to make it better. And cyber hugs don't cut it in a situation like this. Hell, real hugs don't cut it in a situation like this, but at least they help.

People are not meant to bear these burdens alone. And I wonder if my friend in cyberspace has anyone in her life like the members of the Saturday Morning Breakfast Club? How I hope that she does. How I hope that you do.

The Saturday Morning Breakfast Club

For well over a decade now I have been having breakfast every Saturday morning with a group of friends I call The Saturday Morning Breakfast Club. Originally there were two of them, Harold and Pete, who I think ate breakfast together every morning. In those days I worked with at-risk parents who either had their children in foster care or were in danger of the state stepping in. I worked one-on-one helping them to improve their parenting skills, and on Saturdays I gave a parenting class. Since I was the only one in my agency working on Saturdays, I would get into the office at 7:00, put in an hour on files from the previous day's home visits, and then treat myself to breakfast at BaCar's (pronounced Baker's) when they opened at 8. I would usually get there a few minutes before they opened, and Harold and Pete would also be waiting. We would nod. We would smile. One morning we chatted until the doors opened. Soon, we were exchanging comments between tables. Before long, they invited me to join them and I never left. After a few years, Pete came in one morning with a woman (Jann) and then we invited a woman who had always been at another table when we were there (Christina) who happened to be Jann's boss, and a couple of months later Jann's mother (Barbara) moved to Juneau. Then Pete and Jann got married and eventually they stopped coming (Jann likes to sleep in on Saturdays), but Christina and Harold and Barbara and I continue to meet every Saturday morning.

For a good number of years, I walked there and back -- BaCar's wasn't far from my apartment or my office and although in those days I rented a car for home visits two days a week, I turned it in Friday afternoon. Then I injured my foot and Harold started picking me up and dropping me off at my office. Somewhere in there, I changed jobs and was no longer renting a car and so couldn't pick up groceries when I had it and at just that time, I was on a walker with sciatica for seven months and Harold started taking me to A & P after breakfast and the Care-A-Van would pick me up after my shopping. Then Harold's step-dad began to go downhill and Harold moved in with him and wasn't sure that he could come every week and so Christina started picking me up. Now Christina picks me up on Saturdays and drops me at A & P (which is downtown and near the restaurant and my apartment) after, except for about once every two months when Harold takes me to Fred Meyer (which is out in the Valley and close to where Harold now lives) and I do a huge shopping for non-perishables (48 cans of cat food, 12 bottles of Hot and Spicy V-8 among many other things) (A & P is horribly expensive and I buy an absolute minimum there) and Harold takes me home and carries this great weight of stuff up my stairs for me and empties this huge bag of cat litter into a container that Pippin can't get into and spread about and whatever else I need. And on the way home, we stop at the dry cleaner and I exchange dirty clothes for clean ones. And today we stopped at Christina's to see how the work she is doing on her new deck and garden is coming along and at the cherry stand.

And so, when I read something like this, I truly appreciate these staunch and loving friends. I am amazed at how lucky I am. Not only because of Harold and Christina. I really have a good number of friends who are prevented from helping me only by my not asking them. I still have Kate after all these years, who took care of me in California last summer for a week after I had surgery even though it meant packing my wound and she is squeamish. And Robert, a dear friend from my second high school, and his wife Fran who drove for six hours to visit me while I was recovering at my mother's. And Jane, another dear friend from my second high school, who drove to Sacramento in the horrible heat to see me.

And one day I will tell you about my family and the blessing that they are, but they deserve a post of their own, just as The Saturday Morning Breakfast Club does.

Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit

In 1957, in San Mateo, California, my best friend from my first high school, Kate, belonged to a Scout troop that had an unusual custom for greeting each new month. As soon as you got up on the first, you were supposed to jump up and down three times, saying "Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit". If you missed the first, you could satisfy the fates by greeting the second with "squirrel, squirrel, squirrel". I no longer remember what the saving phrase was for the third, but your last chance came on the fourth, with "turtle, turtle, turtle". For some reason, although there was no exchange on the first three days, on the fourth there was added a greeting from one Scout to another. And so, on the fourth of each month, Kate and I would be walking down the hall and she would spot another girl from her troop and it would happen.
"Are you a turtle?"
"You bet your sweet ass I am!"
Fast forward to Fairbanks, Alaska, 2000. I was visiting my friend Linda, who I went to junior high with in El Paso, Texas in 1954 (we moved around a lot when I was a kid) and her husband and her mother. Now, the thing is that Linda and Bobby and Fern have this idea that I know everything, and no matter how I try to dissuade them of this, they save lists of things to ask me when I'm coming. That year we had already gone through a good number of pages of obscure stuff, all of which I knew, including recognizing a photo that had been puzzling people there abouts. "Oh," I said casually as I glanced at it, "that's the old Sutro's Baths in San Francisco." (Which, as it happens, I had visited with Kate.) So, we check the web, and sure enough!
One evening we went out to eat at the Turtle Club. We sat down and the place mats had AYAT? YBYSAIA on them.
"What," asked Linda, "do you think that means?"
"Are you a turtle? You bet your sweet ass I am!"
And Linda said, in a most satisfied tone, "I knew she'd know!"