Can two ah it's over and it was a bella day

Lil' Ninja and OV

Lily Bella

Suenago

I took this riding my bike...Ippoc and Marscat

Marscat

the night before cantua

we were tired from our drive from Berkeley
we drank

we ate

and we watched Lauren's Princess Leia

three years ago we took BART over to SF to get married. there was a long line winding around City Hall. lots of gays ready to make a day of it. they brought folding chairs, sandwiches, their kids. we all just wanted a marriage license and couldn't believe that we were actually going to get one. but first we had to wait. the two women in line ahead of us had a new baby which one of them had strapped to her chest. she wanted us to see the baby and so she pulled back the harness. i think babies are cool but this was an ugly one. looked like a raspberry all folds and redness. "cute," i said. it's name was Aislin or Addison or Aidin, something gender non-specific, like their haircuts. they told us about their old house in the Western Addition, their new house in Cole Valley. they'd just refinanced. they were thinking about adding on. i thought, please lord, silence them. "how about you two?" the one with the baby asked. i told them we rented, had a landlord from Bombay who wanted to take out our kitchen. "oh?" they said. "to remodel?" no, i told them, he just wants to remove it. they couldn't follow the logic; neither could we. that seemed to quiet them.

everyone got tired of waiting. they had to pee. they needed food and water. the couple with the baby asked if we'd hold their spot while they ran up the road for some food. sure, sure, i said, take your time. the two guys behind them were more tolerable and we chit-chatted for a while. but soon city workers came out and tried to tell us to go home; there were too many people to process that day. nobody moved. more couples came. we inched closer to the entrance of the building. we could hear the crowd on the opposite side cheering the married couples as they exited waving their new marriage license. a sheriff walked up and down the line saying, "please, people just go on home." still no body got up and left. the couple came back with slices of pepperoni pizza in triangular cardboard boxes. they sat down in their folding chairs and ate. "Would you mind holding our spot?" I asked. we walked up Van ness and bought two salads. "Any news?" we asked when we got back in line. "they're not issuing any more licenses today," the one with the baby said. "but we're not leaving." she eyed my salad so i offered her some. she took the one slice of tomato, and both olives.

finally after about four hours, a sheriff came out of the building. "Listen up," he said, "Everyone from this point forward will get inside, everyone else will not." he walked down the line and randomly placed his hand into the line of waiting couples, three couples ahead of where we were standing. the couple with the baby said outloud to the sheriff "Come on! We've been waiting for four hours!" instantly, people started trying to edge forward to go around the sheriff "Hey, hey, hey!" he called out and pointed at the cutters and told them to get out of line. But it was just one sheriff against a horde of marriage starved couples. you could tell he was getting anxious like he was thinking this is so not worth the overtime. "You get back," the sheriff shouted to a couple of women trying to sneak into the line behind him. "This is not right," the couple with the baby said. "We've been here since 10am!" a man behind them leaned in and said, "we've been here since eight."

and then i saw an opening. small enough for a small person like me to take advantage of. i walked forward then eased my body in front of a tall bearded man two spots behind the sherrif. the man moved to his right and gave me some room. i got linda's attention and she stealthily followed. we'd done it. we were in. it wasn't fair but i'd do it again. soon we were walking up the stairs getting closer to the entrance. and just as we were about to go inside the door, the lady with the baby strapped to her chest -- the one who i'd shared my salade with -- said, "they cut in line. I saw them. they cut in line!" she pointed her greasy pepperoni finger at me. so much for sisterhood, i thought. and so we got married.

for $15,000 you can do this to your cat.

had another one and one half hour long meeting yesterday. the regular crew was there. Jimmy, soon-to-retire and always delightfully missing the point (or restating the obvious) on all topics was there, as was Chris who refuses to look at Jimmy and winces whenever Jimmy talks off topic was there. my usually jovial boss Kay was there in a big snit. Miracles of miracles Ian who is mostly sick when he is not telecommuting was there. i, of course, was there doing an Oscar worthy performance of someone who cares deeply about the direction of the IST web presence. Cal was there. can't say anything bad about Cal because he's so pure and kind and means well and if you ask him to explain something he will start with the Fall of Mankind. hardworking, quiet, Natalia was there. i like her so i will not say bad things about her. And let's create a business process before we take the caps off our pens Ally was there, marker in hand standing before the board creating groups and sub-groups.

but joy of joy, the subject of the meeting was the dissolution of said meeting. my cup overfloweth! so ally proposed smaller groups and explained how small groups should appoint a group leader.

"thanks mother," Kay snipped which was refreshingly out of character, but taking the words out of everyone's mouth i believe.

"well shouldn't we first meet and get a feel for the project and decide where the project is heading and if there is a best way to approach the project and maybe, i don't know, make someone in charge of the project?" succint jimmy proposed.

many colored pens were used. names were circled. arrows pointed this way and that.

i looked out the window and thought deeply: i should have attacked with three laps to go.

ian coughed hinting at his next block of sick time. Earnest Cal was earnest. Jimmy mentioned his retirement in two months three times. i drew a very geometric box with shadows around the word communication. and a flower with two petals.

at 2:55 jimmy announced we had five more minutes left at which time Ally proposed we create a business process for a lunch meeting to bid adieu to this weekly meeting -- at once plugging in her laptop to the overhead projector and firing up our online Calendar to plug in a lunch date.

"i guess Kay won't be joining us," ally said to kay's retreating form as she up and left the room.

I tap danced all the way to the elevator rejoicing in the timely death of this weekly meeting. nice natalie pressed the button in the elevator and the doors closed.

"I'll miss that meeting," i said to her.
"i'll have to work on my sarcasm," she smiled.

just a wee post before i konk out. we had us a lovely time in balmy Buellton and SB this weekend. i feel so inspired and happy to be on this team. this time last year i was telling linda every other minute, "i'm not racing this year. that's it. i don't want to do it." she started writing a tiny "NR" (Not Racing) in red ink on the calendar every time i said it. between the months of January, Feb and March the calendar was littered with those little red buggers. but this year, crikey, two races and it's only february! what has happened. well OV and all his motivational chit-chat and fun vids, and team-tactic talk and just the way he is as a rider is so damn encouraging that ,well, it's catching. And our queen bee Ms. VB has such a way of keeping the mood upbeat and silly and yet she gets down to business when business needs getting down to. And teammates! what a new concept. i've been bottom feeding for so long in races that it's so nice to have a friendly little school of fishies to go swimming and hunting with. and i will try my darndest to give up my solo scavenger ways and be a team player.

so anyhow today. we went out to Ellens had us some pancakes then rode a little. then drank us some wine and then did Solvang. more wine for Linda, five hours of driving for me and here we are with the babies. now, i ask you. does anyone know where you can get a good Kobe burger in Berkeley? damn you VB.

i just got my pickup-fixed. the rotar needed refinishing. now it's as good as new which is sometime in 1994. it runs well, hardly ever has a problem -- apart from the dead battery which left me and ippoc stranded in the parking lot after our cruise -- but really it's a junky little thing. but i come from a long line of junky car owners and it gives me a warm feeling to drive in it because it reminds me of my father, a Scot, who did not care for things flashy or American (though mostly American) and who could give a flying haggis about what type of car he drove (or, i might add, how uncomfortable his four kids were in the back seat) as long as it got him where he wanted to go.

i remember when we moved back from Scotland he went looking for a car for his family of six. i told my friend Julie Schaffer that he was buying a car. Her dad owned a convertible red Fiat that he picked Julie up in some days after school. when i told Julie that my dad was buying a car she was most excited. she wanted to know if it'll be four-door, a hatch-back, will it be a V8, 4-wheel drive -- she'd obviously grown up in a family who paid attention to these kinds of things. "i have no idea," I said but hoped that there would be more room in the back seat and a little heat and maybe handles on the back window unlike our old Volvo that we'd ran into the ground back in Scotland. "i want bloody power steering," my mother had requested. so when my dad tooted the horn outside of Julie's house, and we ran to the front door and threw it open to see a bright yellow Datsun B210 Honeybee, complete with zippy bee decal, i sensed disapproval when Julie said, "a Honeybee?" i thought it looked kinda cute, like a toy car, but when my dad walked up her driveway toward me, i couldn't help but say, "a Honeybee Daddy?"


the six of us would pile into the Honeybee on weekends and drive along Highway 17 to Santa Cruz. my father who cared about other drivers as much as he cared about cars would creep along at 55mph and i would look out the window at the people in other cars flipping us off. perhaps they were flipping us off for going so slow, perhaps it was just the retarded Honeybee itself. i don't know. i think of it now and wonder, was he insane?

after the honeybee, and a divorce my father purchased a shiny silver Toyota Corolla. it wasn't brand new, but it looked it. for a short period of time, say a week, he kept it in mint condition. when the week was over, the usual decay set in, rotting from the inside out. he smoked inside the car and filled up the ashtray with his butts. he then rolled down the window and let the fresh air kick up the ash from the ashtray and coat the interior of the car creating a kind of Pompei effect. Birds shat on the hood, the windshield, the bumper and he left their white splots there to harden like whiteout. an unopened plastic container of orange juice was left inside the car one summer day. thereafter, the front seatbelt was always sticky and tiny tendrils of orange pulp could be seen dangling from the roof of the car. when the car was sideswiped and the driver's door needed replacing we did not go to a dealer; we went to an auto salvage lot and picked up a black one and had it slapped on. but when my father plowed into a post in his parking lot and accordianed the hood, he found that a little rope was all that was needed this time, no trip to the lot necessary.

so when i drive my little piece of shit, i think of him.

i was in a meeting with the Chief Information Officer for UC Berkeley yesterday seated at the end of a long very narrow table filled with all the members of his office.

i look at the faces of those surrounding me and size them up in a very superficial manner: smart, smart, faker, slacker, brilliant, diligent, hanger-on, go-getter, lifer, retirement-seat-warmer. i do not know where i fit in. i'm a brilliant slacker, a smart faker, a seat-warming lifer. and yet they keep inviting me to these darned meetings as if i have something to add. i start to think, surely i can't be the only one in here who wonders what they're doing in this meeting?

the CIO says the nation watches what happens at UC Berkeley and as a member of this office (the office of him, the CIO) "What we do will affect universities throughout the nation." i think, i do not want to affect the nation or have the nation watching me. i want to leave this meeting immediately and go home and do my one and a half hour easy ride. i want to be with daisy and minnie and go have a mojito with ippoc.

he says after he talks for 45 mins he's going to have a question and answer session about our goals and objectives for this office. immediately, i begin to panic, because i am hopelessly without goals or objectives for this office (although i think it could be heated a little better and the lighting could be brighter, and the stains on the rug ought to be cleaned up). the panic grows as i imagine the brilliant answers those around me will give to his brilliant questions. could i have a coughing fit and leave the meeting and not come back?

"Okay," the CIO says, "that raps up the first part of the meeting. Let's move on. "Who's heard of the Capitol Project?" hands rise all around the room, none of which belongs to me. a moment's pause, then the CIO says, "Erika, what's our target?"

all eyes in the room turn to me.

all my fears come true. i will be caught out for the brilliant faker seat-warmer that i am. but then this other thought occurs. i never, ever, signed on to have goals and objectives for this office. why do i now have to pretend to have them? this is ridiculous, i think and so i say with absolute confidence, "I don't know."

"Good answer," he says. "neither do i."

perhaps this is the beginning of something.

they bought me a new computer at work. it's a laptop. sleek and purdy. runs windows and OSX. and i have a new monitor. it's about the size of the windshield on my pickup.

oh and it all came with this for free. wheee!

now i've got four blogger windows open on my new huge ass screen and thinking about hooking up my new toy and checking out iTunes.

do they want me to work??

i hate public speaking. i'd rather take a shot to the head than speak in public. so we have these 1.5 hour weekly meetings filled with go-getters and me. i never talk in these meetings. sometimes i chuckle which i hope will count for talking, or i nod with gusto.

the truth is, i feel so overwhelmed by the shere brilliance and absolute tedium of my fellow meeting-goers who actually create work for themselves ("I propose we write a proposal and present it to the directors and then write a business procedure to revamp all of the IST websites...") like who asked you?

there's this one super brilliant speciman who is perhaps twenty-six. she changes her hair color, it seems, every other tuesday. this week, she's a blonde. she runs the meetings, and if anyone suggests we need to create a Wiki, or an Excel file, or some such thing to document what we've discussed, she quickly hooks up her laptop to the projector and creates the file right then and there while everyone watches.

go-getter.

i try to make my face look like i'm concerned about the direction of the business procedure plans. i narrow my eyes and lean forward with my hand in my chin. or i sit back in my chair with my arm draped over the back of the chair like i own this meeting. mostly i drift off and wonder how (in the hell?) did i end up here? what strange path led me to this room filled with these inspired people who want to create work for themselves? oh yes. i got canned from my last job making granola.

Look what we won!

So much fun racing with the Bellas. And not so hard as Michael's crit workout last weekend.

PREP

so i vowed i'd do my damn PREP for the Cal Aggie crit but i didn't really want to but in the back of my head was her voice saying, shouldn't you be doing your PREP. but i really didn't want to do my PREP...have i said this? but still i dragged out my messed up trainer that's missing the crank arm that tightens down the wheel. so i had to find a pair of pliers to tighten the crank arm to tighten down the wheel, all the while thinking, i don't want to do my PREP. then my skewer didn't fit into the bolt thingy on the trainer. so i said fuck it, i ain't doing my PREP. but her dang voice was in my head. so i put another skewer in and tightened down the dang crank arm. still the bike was tipping over. and i thought i don't care, i don't want to do my PREP. and she said, don't worry about it, it's only a training race.

love that voice.

called in sick today. so i sit here with the babies. daisy jumps up on the bed to be next to her beloved minnie, who instantly jumps off the bed and curls up in his cup. daisy watches him.

can a cat feel rejection? i think i see it in her eyes. she curls up near me. she lets out a groan and gets to work napping. big day ahead for the three of us.

my mother calls to thank me for the scarf i gave to her at Christmas. she’s at the dog park with Teddy. "hang on a sec" she interrupts. I’m so used to this.

"Teddy!" she screeches and i have to hold the phone away from my ear. "Sorry, he's found a dead rat," she tells me. i hear her running, chasing after Teddy. She's a little winded. She's no match for Teddy. Even in her little Puma tennies. he taunts her, runs in circles around her legs.

"Teddy, put the rat down. Teddy!" i have one eardrum left. i move the phone to the other ear.

I wait gazing at my precious kitties. is that cat pee i smell?

I eye Minnie. I walk around the room sniffing in his pee corners of choice, while my mother's frantic, pleading requests to her crazed rat eating dog go unheeded.

“Teddy come here now!” she commands. as if.

I definitely smell pee, somewhere in this room. I sniff the chair where minnie sleeps. my stack of clean clothing on the desk. i sit back down next to Daisy and wait for my mother.

"He's in a tree," she says. "with the rat. I better go."

Cats. That's where it's at. Non of this screeching in the park, tree climbing, varmint chewing stuff for me and Ippoc. No our precious little babies just sit here, cute and soft and fat (daisy)...and I definitely smell cat pee.

kitty birthday wishes

daisy and minnie want to wish Sabine a happy birthday.

Daisy started celebrating a little too early and paid heavily.


minnie has his own unique sense of birthday style.




before they took a well deserved cat nap, they requested that we wish Sabine a happy birthday.



Happy Birthday Sabine from daisy and minnie!

passion

Bush's new plan is a lost cause. i know this even though i've never fought in a war, never commanded troups, eaten any MREs, fired a gun, piloted a warplane or worn fatigues (apart from a pair of cool shorts from the GAP a few years back). what our man Bush is experiencing is a really bad relationship that's gone wrong and he can't let go. he's a chaser and Iraq is the distancer. the more he piles it on the worse it's gonna get. i know this from experience. i was crazy about this girl once and she said she was crazy about me (i'll add that this came after a few Bushmills). the bad part was that she already had a girlfriend who she lived with who was still crazy about her, so she wasn't about to toss either of us aside, only i was betting on that i was going to win this struggle. (Admission: this was years ago, i was really selfish, and dumb and hardheaded and wouldn't listen to reason: remind you of anyone?) i bored my friends to tears with my woes. i cornered them at cafes and in bars. i got them on the phone and wouldn't let them off. on and on i went about how she would really be with me "except" for this other person who she felt bad about. i learned really quickly which of my friends would give me the responses i wanted to hear. my good friend David would listen quietly and then clobber me with a statment like, "boy you must really love feeling bad." then there was Michael who would simply repeat my words "she would leave if she could," followed by a breathy, questioning "hmmm?" that made me want to take out a gun and shoot him. so i stopped asking them for advice. i went instead to my crazy messed up mother who was in the midst of a rotten relationship with a married man. i can't say she offered me any words of wisdom; she was too busy cursing her boyfriend. but i knew i wasn't going to hear that i was a fool and that i was going down the wrong path. uh-uh. no i got exactly what i wanted to hear: be patient, stick it out, things may change. so i forged onward, bulldozing my way into this girl's life, refusing to take no for an answer. i wasted a lot of years until one day it dawned on me that i would not win the battle because it was not winnable: she was perfectly content to have both of us in her life. the battle was all mine to lose and lose i did but moved onward.

sometimes i don't read instructions, signs, email, labels. I see them out of the side of my eye, hanging off a new purchase, or right there in my email box waiting to be opened, read, obsorbed, processed but i just want to push them aside, delete them.

like this whole blogger thing. there's all this information coming at me each time I want to put up a new post. something about a new blogger, a google account, beta is dead and yet i don't (won't) bother to stop and read it. instead, i click and click and enter in many versions of various passwords and email addresses until i get to where i want to be -- which, in this case, is right here to enter a post.

i don't know i just feel overwhelmed by information coming at me. i know i'm not the only one who must feel this way?

i get all this email at work. announcements after announcements. much of it is not for me, some of it is, bits and pieces of data that i need to take care of. and the one time i say, "screw it," and delete it, it's most often the email that i should have read. and the person who sent it is most often the kind of person who knows for certain she sent it.

oops.

Ippoc is not this way. she reads the fine print. she saves the fine print and the box the fine print came in for years (and years). and this difference between us creates problems. i've tried to be a little bit more diligent. i now save receipts. i put them in a little envelope in my top desk drawer. they sit there and sit there until with great joy i toss them out (sooner than i should, probably).

and as for email, well if it doesn't grab me in the first couple of lines, i start skimming. and the bad part is, i know there's information i should be absorbing, but my head these days feels like a trash compactor; there's just only so much you can shove in there.

but, just what the hell is in there? ippoc often wonders.

but for the sake of a harmonious living situation, i am trying to change my ways. before heading off to bike rides, i now make a point of writing down the directions and then remembering to bring them with me.

i have much work to do. but like that line from that movie with Jack Nicolson and Helen Hunt, she "makes me want to be a better person".

i had planned to do the san bruno hill climb today and last night i dreamed that i was there. it was a lovely day, in the dream, and the hill was a beautiful wooded road. off we all went. there were people i knew. i recognized VB. we were climbing, climbing. and then we came to a flat section at the middle of the climb before the road tips up one last time. and it was there, in my dream, that i decided to stop for a slice of pizza.
but first i had to check my bike and shoes in and so i did. I was given little numbers for my checked items. i recall watching the person preparing my slice of pizza with black olives which is my favorite kind. i admired the way the pizza maker placed each black olive next to the next black olive so that the slice was completely covered in black olives. i was happy with my pizza and ready to enjoy it when i thought "Bella didn't stop for pizza." so i went to fetch my checked bike and shoes to continue onward. i handed over my ticket stubs and waited for my bike. maybe i haven't lost too much time, i thought.

"there you go," the person behind the counter said. "but this is not my bike," i said. they'd given me a motorized bike.

still, i eyed the engine and glanced up the hill.


and then somehow, as dreams go, i found myself in a locker room changing into a swimsuit thinking this'll be cold coming down the hill in. but i put the suit on anyhow.

christmas morning and Ippoc wants to know when i will complete my "assignment". so before the coffee high wears off, here goes:

1. I still have a baby tooth that has yet to come out. and when it does, i do not want this fairy to come and touch anything.












2. the movie "a star is born" with Barbra Striesand affected me profoundly. i did not perm my hair like some people (little voice: ippoc) but after seeing the film, i was a changed person. i knew my life would be meaningless unless i became madly famous and found myself one day onstage singing a very moving song while the audience held up lighters for me.
i knew this was my fate even though i had no musical talent and planned to be deathly ill the day my oral report on the Oxbow Incident was due.



4. i lived in scotland for three years. in a town called Linlithgow with a palace in the center of town. that's it there. i had a friend called Gillian Sprout. we would meet on Sundays and wander around town looking for empty bottles to turn in for cash to buy white pudding and chips. it would take us all day. sometimes during our search we'd wait for trains to pass by on the tracks overhead. and when they roared past we would stand on our hands with our feet up in the air against a wall and flash our underpants (those with "underpant issues", substitute the undergarment word of your choice.)




3. when i first started highschool i had no friends. at lunch i would pretend that i was going home for lunch. I would stride out of the building as if i had somewhere to be in case people who did not know me and who i did not know wondered where exactly i was going in such a rush. i would cross the street and walk through the residential section for exactly twenty minutes then turn around and head back, returning just as the bell rang.



4. my first cat's name was Bruno. (you didn't know that did you?)


5. sometimes i pull clothes out of the dirt laundry pile and wear them to work.

i just ate a current scone, and i swear i feel my ass growing. not a nice sensation...anyhow, i wanted some underpants for our cruise so we went to a mall in L.A. JCPennys was like some giant garage sale at the end of the day when the people having the garage sale start hauling everything and anything out to the side walk hoping to make some extra cash. pyramids of shiny, colorful bottles of gooey, goby stuff that looked like chain lube were stacked eye-high right in the entrance. piles of the stuff. it may have been bath soap, detergent, lip gel, antifreeze, who knows. but JC Pennys sure as heck wanted to move it. and all those rotating jewelry wheels, ladened with the sparkly junk i used to swipe when i was a kid. i'd hide the stuff in my room in a plastic bag because i didn't know what else to do with it until my mother found it and paraded it before my eyes asking, "what's this? where did you get this?" as if she hadn't seen all this crapolla when she told me to "wait right there and don't touch anything," at the pharmacy when she picked up her meds. i told Linda i'd only be "one minute. i'll run in and run out," which i should never have said. Linda's a very literal gal. you say "one minute" and she rotates the little wheel on her watch and gives you one minute. and there's no running in department stores at Christmas. There's full-body slams, side-ways shuffling, small child hurdling, definitely no running. i read somewhere that department stores are designed to disorient. i dunno, when i find myself muttering such things as "get me the fucking hell out of here," i'm maybe a little more than disoriented. and is there some unspoken rule that during the Christmas shopping period (which for me is roughly Dec 24th) if you pick up something only to discover that it's the wrong size, wrong color, wrong price that it's completely okay to chuck it into the air and let it fall wherever it lands? Hmm? anyhow, i found 4 pairs of underpants for $14 dollars and according to linda it took me 23 minutes.

my boss (a most cool lady) just popped her head over my cube and said she's going to sneak out to get her hair cut. "See you at two for our meeting."

uh, it's 10 a.m.


love this time of year at work. it suits my work ethic, of which i have none. i came into work this morning and said to myself: today i will do nothing. i did indeed.

but alas, the better side of me (which is a trembling, half-starved creature that Ippoc throws scraps to) said, do just a little.

so i processed a few copyright notices. i can do this task without thinking.

in fact, i work best while not thinking.

think i'll run for president.

Okay first off, blogger is bugging me. Maybe I need another vacation. I can't seem to organize these pics and it's late so maybe i'll just leave them all iggly piggly. One of these pics shows the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Can you spot it? Where's the boat? Where's the boat? There you are you nutty cruise ship trying to hide beneath that bridge. Our (first) room is right there up on the right side of the boat on the eleventh floor. There are 15 all together, floors that is. There are 2 billion rooms. The balcony in our first room was only a half a balcony with no see-through glass to the water. We harrassed the staff until finally they let us move into the empty room right next door to us. Finally we had see-through glass to the ocean (and just a couple of smudges on the glass beyond my reach that I obsessed about just a bit...not a lot).

Once we had our deck we did a lot of this. Just gazing. reading, eating breaky, drying our swimsuits. On one occasion we dined overlooking a parking lot.
Nice!



Most days though, we awoke to the boat slowly chugging into a new port and we watched the sun come up.



Ah nicer!




The food was so good and there was so much of it that we made ourselves do this three times. It got quite competitive. Linda had the best spin if I do say so. I wanted to hurl just once due to the boats swaying.

We accidently wandered into the middle of a Mexican national festival and found ourselves pleasantly surrounded by hundreds of people who were not wearing t-shirts tucked into kakhi shorts with tube socks up to their waists. All the little boys wore these cute painted on mustaches. It was really very lovely.

What a lovely birthday pressie.

ippoc's got me thinking about the many bad jobs i've had and all the times and many ways i've been fired.

DerWeinerschnitzels, corner of Blossom Hill and Branam Lane, San Jose, 1980. I was told to stay at the fry station. There were no customers that moment. I didn't want to stay at the fry station. It was hot. I wanted to talk to Alison, the cashier by the cash register. Tim the, day manager, told me to get back on fries. I said i didn't want to get back on fries. it was too hot. after i flipped off Tim the day manager, i was asked to hand in my orangey brown apron and kerchief and to clock out. my days of free chili-cheese dogs were over.

Apple Slide and Design, San Francisco, 1987. I was hired as a stat camera person to do camera work for a business card and letterhead company. I had some previous experience, very little of it, however, in stat camerawork. the owner looked at my portfolio while he argued with a customer on the phone. when he hung up, he asked "you want job?" i said yes because no one else was asking me that question. for the next two weeks he walked past me and shook his head or peered into the garbage can at the wasted photo paper and said, "you not know nothing," which wasn't exactly true. i knew some things, just not too much about stat cameras. my sister would sometimes drive me to work. we would drink our coffee in the car in the parking lot. "shouldn't you be going in?" she'd say,when i didn't get out of the car. everday i wanted to quit. the work piled up. orders came in. his wife usually worked the sales desk, taking orders, but sometimes if there was a rush job, she'd come over to the camera area and take the picture herself. "faster, i do it myself," she woud say. in the end he canned me on a tuesday morning just after i'd entered the building. i can't say i blamed him. i only wished he'd done it before my sister left the parking lot.

Account Temps, San Francisco, 2000. During another unemployed period, i worked temp jobs. one job all i had to do for eight hours was staple forms together. everytime i thought i was done, they brought me more. they marvelled at how fast i was. another temp job was for the Golden Gate Ferry Service. I worked in a trailer by the golden gate bridge. it was smallish this trailer like something to transport race horses. There were five of us in there. my job was to enter in the responses from a survey: "If there was a faster ferry would you prefer it? Yes? No?" At lunch the other trailer dwellers would each heat up their food products in the microwave by my desk. i would open the window to let in some fresh air but it smelled like exhaust from all the cars rushing by. The woman who hired me was former military. SS, i think. she said she'd had some problems with the previous temps. Something about the tight-lipped way she said "problems" made me curious. Had they done drugs out the back of the trailer? Stolen one of their dot-matrix printers? "I don't want you on the Internet", she said, "that's not what you're paid for. You understand?" she asked. I said i understood but there's only so much data entry one lonely temp can do in a trailer filled with exhaust and Top Ramen fumes. i lasted two days before i was told to take my things and leave. i think she'd caught me looking at cat pictures on craigslist. sometimes when i cross the bridge i look for that sad trailer.

i didn't race yesterday because i wanted to save my body.

i have much heavy lifting to do next week.

this day is done and she sleeps
go on now go, if you must
and gather up
all you came with
but please, could you leave us this
the persimmon tree beneath the sun
the pink contrail
nicked by the wind
though i never really expected it
to last. and all those red
and fragile leaves
waving like happy ladies
in a parade,
take it all for i have hope
that you'll be back
though the night winds rumble
and shake the house
the siren's wail of a final breath
is no concern to me
right now

there has been much fretting lately. i suspected the source but didn't know for certain. i tend to share my frets with the world. if you ask me how i'm feeling during such moments, i will tell you that i feel blue, that i worry. her way is to fret in silence, or what she perceives as silence. but oh the noise of silent fretting. it fills the house. i hear it shuffling around the place. i want to pull up a chair and sit and talk with it. i want to offer it some tea, get to know it better. make a little space for it.

so i was happy when she sat at the desk before the computer one evening. a glow lighting up the room as she tapped, tapped, tapped. i sensed the fretting was spilling out. her back arched, her lips moved as she re-read her words. i made several fly bys to try to get a glimpse of the post. but she shood me away.

but alas when i logged in the next morning, nothing new was there. had the fretting been let out to wander, to stretch its scrunched up legs and then hauled back inside?

there have been times when she has posted something and i noticed a typo, a little error, something amiss. log in as me, she would say. make the change, do me a favor. and so i would.

so was it so very wrong of me to log in and read her unposted draft, her secret fret?

am i a terrible, terrible snoop?

on the way home from golden gate park, i calculated that i've done four endos in one month. i shared this with linda but she corrected me, "but this is a new month." okay, whatever. way too many even for two months. in fact, i did 2.5 just today. one of them wasn't a true endo, more of a tripple lutz sow-cow or some such thing. now i have a bag of peas thawing on my hip. Linda's in the next room fast asleep on the bed that i didn't even try to hoist myself up onto. it's just me and a bag of peas. and a couple of thawed pea puddles.

a little something i learned tonight: don't drink and operate crutches.

but a good day today despite my crashout. i got myself to the race when i could have bagged it. and boy did i try to bag it. but i'm glad i went. it was nice chit-chatting with the Bellas.

i'm experiencing a little pre-birthday funkage. went to the hairdresser to get my hair cut. Nina cuts my hair and does a good job except she pauses a lot when she gets to talking, or she cuts while she's talking and starts looking into the mirror at my face, and not down at my head where the hair is. "you know what I mean, Erika?" she asks, snip, snip, snip. "i'm mean he's a fucking asshole," she says. she's talking about Bush and still not looking at my head, a host of sharp instruments in her hands that could lead to certain baldage click-clacking away as if on autopilot. "uh huh, uh-huh" i agree looking into the mirror trying to redirect her attention back to the matter at head. "and that bastard Rumsfeld," she continues. she stands away from me and my head then with her hand on her hip, "you know what I mean Erika?" i've never been on a first-name basis with any person cutting my hair because --i don't know -- i guess i just knew it would lead to something like this. and i feel bad now because i'm thinking about ditching her and her politics and going down the street to Le Bam Beauty Express next to the gas station. maybe she picked up on the dumpage vibes; anyhow, she starts paying more attention to my head. but slowly she starts up again. "i don't know," she sighs and fluffs my bangs, what's left of them anyhow. "i get so depressed, you know what i mean Erika?" i want to be there for my hairstylist, understanding of her mood swings, i really do, but i only have an hour for lunch and about a 1/8 of an inch left of hair. the time has come for less confession, more focus. that's what i'm thinking. then she asks apropos i don't know what "how old are you Erika?" forty-two pops out of my mouth. she points out that she is forty-two also, born september 1964. i suggest she re-do her math, because i am 42 and i was born in 1963. (simple mistake -- she is after all a beautician.) now i know that if i were in the midst of a little Rumsfeld water boarding i would have come up with my correct age, but I swear as i sat there and let her mold my hair with a fruity pomade into peaks and crests which i would flatten immediately upon exiting her shop and turning the corner, i believed myself to be 42 on the verge of 43 not 44 on the verge of 45 which is of course on the verge of 50. thanks for the trim, Nina.

i voted

i cannot think of anything to write about but i must push down that pic of daisy because it's starting to freak me out.

i voted today. experienced just a moment's test-taking anxiety when i saw a pen but no bubbles to fill in. a quick peak at the lady next to me (had to really strain to see around the side of her booth) to discover that i was to connect the lines. ah-ha!

anyhow, i like voting. volunteers at the polling stations deserve a big fat raise in my opionion. nicest people. ready with their rulers to locate your name and address. pass you right along to the guy handing out the ballots. real friendly.

now why can't they work at the post office? it seems everytime i enter the post office on shattuck the clerk behind the counter is reaching for the "this window closed" sign and disappearing into the dark back room. or there's some blind old bat (appologies to the blind, the old and bats) who can't decide between judy garland, snowflakes or superheroes. i just don't get the facination with stamps i guess. i mean you lick 'em, stick them on your phone bill and they're gone.

but you know i used to feel the same about checks. I'd always get the boring pale blue ones without any design, maybe a faint stage coach in the background, certainly no puppies or wildflowers. but you know, i gotta admit, i like my new checks with stripes and retro flower designs.

i'm looking at them right now. can't wait to fill in check number 2325.

anyhow, polling stations are very soothing, especially after an early morning fight about cat barf. (which i believe i won.)

in fact, i just might go vote again.

precious

a few years ago, i applied for a Ranger I position with the park services. I really wanted to become a Ranger I and hammer things into the ground and drive around in a green truck with rakes and shovels in the back but there were a few tests i had to take first. one involved marking out a fence with posts. I was given a tape measure and four minutes to calculate how many posts would be needed while three Ranger IIIs observed, holding clipboards and checking their watches every so often.

"You can start anytime," one of the Ranger IIIs said as i stared at the blades of grass beneath my feet, the dew on the blades of glass, the sun reflected in the dew on the blades of grass. "three minutes twenty seconds," they kindly reminded me. finally i figured i better look like I knew what I was doing so i paced back and forth like some high-stepping nazi, prentending to count out posts.

The Ranger IIIs gazed at me like "what have we here?"

So...all this to say i can imagine how much work and planning and calculating it must take to set up these cross courses and let me know if you need help for Surf City #3.

thanks for a great weekend.

looking forward to feeling better because i am sick, sick, sick of being sick and drinking this stuff

my ma- back by popular demand

my ma got busted yesterday and hauled off in handcuffs. petty theft and trespassing. she said she looked awful in the mugshot and complained about the number of fingerprints the police took.

four cops put her in a squad car with the windows rolled up and left her there for bit. she said they were "messing with her probably" because they were just sitting around talking while she was overheating. "it's bloody hot in here!" she shouted at them to roll down the windows. I told her she shouldn't get in their face. cops don't like that. i know she said "but i was starting to sweat".

she gave them hell at the station. chewed them out for just doing their jobs. "what good are you lot? what kind of justice is this?"

she said the cops must have been staking her out. waiting for her.
"yeah, i usually go in the morning but i waited to the afternoon this day". i thought of the cops sitting in their cars waiting for my mother. powdered sugar from their donuts falling onto their laps. bad coffee getting cold.

"did they put you in a cell?" i asked. had she become some gal's bitch?
"oh, no. they were quite nice" at the station. "let me out of the cuffs, too."
"that was nice of them." i said.

she said she could have been charged with a felony for the pipe she used because she'd picked it up on the property. perp with a pipe, i thought.
"they only charged me with a misdemeanor"
"lucky, i guess," i said.
she wanted to know how to spell misdemeanor. she wanted to look it up right then and there and see what kind of a crime it was.
"is it misc?" she asked.
"no, mis" I said. my mother: miss demeanor.
she read out loud the definition while I imagined her picking up garbage at the side of the freeway in an orange vest. it was not a pretty image -- orange's not her color.

her crime: trespassing on private property to feed a neglected and abused dog chained up in a backyard. her weapon: a plastic pipe to funnel dog food over the fence into the dog's bowl. guilty as charged.

Happy Birthday Linda!

here she is in Kansas age three.

cute little thing sitting on top of
the doghouse.







the kitty looks
a lot like
Minnie.











and here's Linda all gussied up.

the perm by her mother, Minnie


the glasses by Catwoman.





Happy Birthday!

of bruises and endos

a fun weekend in Santa Cruz. my body is speckled with greenish blue bruises. I look a little like a moldy piece of white bread. But I did have fun. the cross clinic with Ben JM and Ann Fitzsimons was very informative. XBunny, Lilly Bella and I were put into in the experienced group since we'd all done more than one cross race. however, as we got in line to show our dismounts one at a time to BJM and AF, Lilly Bella and I were eyeing the novice group and thinking about heading on over there. I learned that i was doing practially everything incorrectly which is something you want to find out at a clinic. BJM explained how he sets up his pedal before the run up so that the pedal is right where he needs it when he remounts. Lilly Bella marvelled, "just like a master chess player." we nodded in agreement.

we got to preview the nasty parts of the course like that lovely decent into sand. Thanks VB and OV! we also practised the off-camber molehill section with the sharp left turn. I took a very bad line during practice and went straight toward the tape, under the tape, down the curb and over to the volunteer table where i was quite happy to see that my rice krispie treats were 75% devoured. Yeah!

During the race, Jeni and i urged each other on as best we could, while Wild Dingo (looking glamorous in a mauve beanie) offered encouraging words from the sidelines: "Marscat get up!" as I toppled face forward onto my bike trying to get through a narrow dirt channel. my last lap endo was a little annoying and scuttling through the dirt on all fours to get my bike out of Stella Carey's path was a little embarrassing but all in all it was...exciting.

Lots of fun pics and vids at Ippoc's site and she stayed up way past her bedtime to post them.

food thoughts

i've made rice krispie treats with m&ms for the cross clinic today. i made them last night after 1.5 mojitos. I recall pouring m&ms in with abandon. we never had these as a kid. yes, we were deprived of many good food things: PopTarts, all things Oscar Meyer, hotdogs, kraft cheese. My mother fed us cows tongue and other recipes she found, i believe, in National Geographic. i didn't mind the tongue or the finnin and haddock in milk sauce which concealed little bone harpoons that always seemed to lance my brother in the throat when swallowing. but this does not do my mother's cooking justice. Here, here! my mother is (and still is) a damn good cook (and may one day read this blog). my brother says he grew up hungry and everytime we eat over at my mother's Linda says she goes home hungry. now i understand what my brother was talking about. we were never to open the refrigerator, it was off limits like the medicine cabinet or the liquor bar -- not that we had either in our house, but if we did, i'm sure they'd be as secure as the pentagon. so where am i going with this little post? goodness knows. it's already 7:29 am and I must get my rear on the road and get to this here clinic. oh yes, i'm bringing rice krispie treats with 10lbs of m&ms. i hope people like them. the last time i made something for a little social gathering it was a super dark chocolate cake with super dark chocolate frosting. It was so super dark brown it was black. It looked like a glistening piece of charcol sitting in the middle of the table. an enormous black hole sucking in all my attention: i would make small talk (which I don't do very well to start with) and eye the hunk of coal to see if anyone was sampling it. people were not. they were eyeing it and veering in the oposite direction. i must go learn cross techniques now.

crazy love

VB put it so perfectly..."cross is like abusive relationship love"

i'm already telling myself it'll be better next time, it won't hurt so much, i'll be stronger, i won't let it get to me... I CAN TAKE IT!


i'm trying not to notice all the bruises...

dine and dash

today Linda and i went on a short ride up to the junction of Mt. Diablo from the north side.

On the way back to the car we stopped at an Indian restaurant just off the bike path.

Since there was no place to hide our bikes, the management let us roll them through the dining room (hello, hello) past diners nibbling on tandori chicken.


we ate a hearty meal while in our Bella gear and bike shoes. twenty minutes later we were back on the bike path riding to the car.

ah the good life.

tour de cafe

i'm so bored at work today. the atmosphere here this cold grey friday is so dead that it feels a lot like a morgue, not that i've ever been in a morgue. i decided to go get something to eat to appease my boredom which I know is wrong, wrong, wrong. on my way out the door, i find my banana in my bag and eat it, thereby ruining my appetite and making my quest for food even more wrong. Ah well.

there's this nearby cafe that i love at 6:30 in the morning. linda and I go there as they are just opening. it's empty, they play Aretha Franklin, Al Green and i sit and read my paper in quiet. any time after 7:00 it's packed with students with their laptops. every table occupied. the noise-level is horrendous, like being inside the engine of a 747, not that I've ever been in one of them either. and on top of the general chatter, tap-tap-tapping on laptops, urgent annoying cell-phone calls that simply have to be made in the middle of a noisey cafe, the clatter of cups, saucers, spoons, the management feel the need to have background music. Arrrgh.

I try a new cafe around the corner and because I have only $4.34 on me, limiting my choices greatly, I tell the guy behind me that he can go ahead as I haven't yet made up my mind. Of course he orders a latte which takes the woman behind the counter about 2 hours to make. finally when I think the latte is complete she asks the man if he wants Vanilla. the man doesn't understand what she is asking, so she has to repeat it. Vaneeela? she says. The man still doesn't understand it. I want to jump in and say "she wants to know if you want some frickin vanilla" but I do not. I leave and go around the corner to another cafe.

I like this cafe, because it's always empty and the owners are friendlier than hell "How are you?" the owner who is seated at a table reading the paper greets me. he gets up and goes behind the counter to take my order. there's not a soul in the place, per usual, and I wonder if I am the first customer of the day. "What can i get you?" he asks. A quick glance at the glass case, however, and I know i'm gonna hit the road without making a purchase. i really don't want anything he has to offer, but he has sad green eyes and his wife is seated behind him slicing tomatoes for sandwhiches which probably no one will purchase today. i consider purchasing a chocolate cake disguised as a muffin out of sympathy for his dying business but i do not. i tell him, i'm just looking as if I'm shopping for a new pair of shoes and leave.

I return to work. Linda calls and asks if I want to meet at Saul's Deli. Why yes I do!

my family

I met up with my family this evening to celebrate my niece's birthday. Mia turned two about a month ago so we got together to celebrate. all the family was there, my older sister, my younger sister, my mother, my brother's girlfriend and Mia . Linda decided not to come because both Mia and Christy had been sick and she didn't think she should be around them. The little party at my sister's place was nice. We chatted and opened presents. We ate cake and sipped wine. We took family pictures with all of us together, crammed on the couch. It was nice and enjoyable but when it was over and we said goodbye, I wanted nothing more than to be back home with my little family in Berkeley: Linda, Daisy and Minnie.