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++++++++++++

Stalking
Lone Star Thomas
Goodies

phone home

10/28/04
It’s almost too cold to sit still and write. At least in my apt., and it’s not like we’re at the mercy of our landlord to turn on the radiators (we have gas, electric or whatever, though James insists we don’t have control over starting it up). I can seriously feel a cool breeze from the window next to me. I would be stating the obvious to say that movies and TV warp your perceptions about life events. I mean, I’ve never been to a $50,000+ wedding (actually for my age I think I’ve been to an abnormally small number of weddings) like on TV or had a surprise party thrown for my birthday or witnessed someone giving birth (or even been invited to a baby shower). And as it turns out death isn’t much like it’s portrayed on Six Feet Under (or probably like it’s shown on Dead Like Me either, though there’s no proving so). I haven’t had the opportunity to deal with any quirky, troubled mortician family. Thankfully, I haven’t had to deal with funerals at all because my family doesn’t have them. No open caskets, burials, services, formality. I’m not exactly sure why, and I’ve never asked. I thought it might just be my mom’s side of the family that cremates and moves one, but it appears that the same goes for my dad’s family through marriage. I don’t know if it’s a matter of economy or a dislike for ceremony and tradition. I don’t really have an issue with it. I talked to my dad’s wife a week ago, last Thursday and she was like yeah, they’d already cremated him, there wouldn’t be a service and that they might get people together for sandwiches and wine (I swear she said wine, which is weird because they are so not wine drinkers, or drinkers at all really. My mind kept wandering to what kind of sandwiches she’d serve. I was thinking cured meats, stinky cheese, crusty artisanal bread, but egg salad and peanut butter and jelly are more likely.) on Halloween because it was one of my dad’s favorite holidays (that was news to me). Yesterday, which would’ve been his birthday seemed wrong to her, but I don’t see how Halloween is any less strange. And it’s not like some Day of the Dead steeped in tradition thing, my dad wasn’t Catholic and was totally non-Mexican (though his older brother, my uncle that I saw for the first time in like 15 years, a few weeks ago is super Hispanic [despite looking more Chinese—he swears people thought he was local when he visited Asia], speaks Spanish, has an accent and is fixated on our heritage [particularly the Basque part] and told us all these crazy stories about our distant relatives and how his great, great grandfather was captured by Indians at a carnival in what’s now Texas in the 1850s for sacrificial purposes, but wasn’t killed like the other kids they kidnapped and was raised Indian instead of Spanish, then set free in his twenties). At least I won’t feel bad for missing sandwiches in Tigard with people I don’t really know, “County” people. It’s funny because last week I got a message from my insane friend Lema (she really hasn’t changed since high school, which on one hand is reassuring, but on the other is sort of disturbing. I loved her stories about how it had all gone sour with the divorced, 40-something, clean and sober alcoholic she’d been semi-seeing for the past four years. It was totally Judge Judy; she’s now $40,000 in credit card debt for things she bought him. I was like what the fuck did you buy? The priceless answer was: a woodstove. Oh my god, so Northwest. But that only accounted for $6,000 of it. Now she’s semi-seeing a 28-year-old Jehovah’s Witness, but it can’t turn into anything serious because she’s Catholic and he can’t have sex before marriage. Then after some prodding it came out that they had humped on like the second date and that he started crying afterwards because he was a virgin. I really need to keep in touch with Lema more often, she’s always an endless source of amusement.) about how she’d heard from Gretchen that my dad had died. And I was like who the hell is Gretchen? Lema lives in this world where high school is still current because she’s never left home and she chronically runs into other Gresham people who’ve never moved either. The only Gretchen I could think of was this girl we went to school with that I didn’t particularly care for. I used to refer to her and her crew as the politician’s wives because they dressed in this sensible, middle aged Nordstrom’s style. But somewhere in the back of my head I could remember my dad mentioning Gretchen working at The County. You’d think Portland was this one-horse town the way everyone knows each other in certain circles. The county is simply Multnomah County. I too, was a county employee, as the public library is also an entity (you have to take civil service exams and all that crap). But my dad was one of those types who thinks everyone is on the level and is amiable to all coworkers (as I’ve stated before, think a Mexican Hank Hill) and that if he met someone who had attended Gresham High then that person must be a friend of mine. I didn’t like anyone in my high school, so he was frequently proven wrong. So, my dad was a county mechanic, apparently Gretchen is a county paralegal (and her along with all those politician’s wives, didn’t live up to their potential and are all now divorced with kids and living back with their parents. Even if they could still fit into their teen clothes, they wouldn’t be age appropriate for at least another decade.) and everyone in the goddamn county knows and likes each other and plan on going to this sandwich thing for my dad. I don’t want Gretchen going to my dead dad’s fucked up Halloween non-funeral. Jesus, that’s not how it would work on Six Feet Under. And I have to admit that deep down I was secretly hoping that maybe I’d get some sort of inheritance. I don’t mean this was secret in that I should be ashamed of thinking of wordly goods at a time like this. I mean this was secret because it would be pathetic to even hold that hope. Vicki (the former step-mom—former, right? If the individual who brought you together is no longer in the picture you don’t have to continue a relationship, do you? She said that I shouldn’t be a stranger, if I’m ever in town we should have lunch [sandwiches, maybe]. I doubt I’ll ever see her again, and that’s really bizarre because the image I’ll always have of her is how she looked in the hospital the day before I left. Never mind her spiky dyke cut [the woman is so not heterosexual] but her giant, oversized t-shirt bearing the phrase Hairy Otter with a bespectacled sea mammal made to look like Harry Potter gracing the front, will be forever ingrained in my memory. She’s kind of a hairy otter herself, now that I think about it) made a point of saying that my dad didn’t have much (they always made a fuss about not having money but they both make respectable middle class salaries and own their home outright. I can’t think of major expenses except all the new cars they constantly purchased) but she’d try and find something for me and my sister, there might be some photos lying around. They’d already donated his unused prescriptions and insulin to a homeless clinic and that Jeremy (her nephew) might be able to wear some of his clothes and shoes, and the rest would go to Goodwill. I don’t know, when my grandpa, who really did have nothing, died in the mid-‘90s, my mom at least managed to scrounge up some assorted oddness to give me. At the time, I totally bemoaned getting a grocery bag filled with generic cigarettes, a plastic bag stuffed with colored pencils and a huge jug of peach schnapps. People get houses for fuck’s sake. But now I’m thinking I had it pretty good in comparison to how it’s turned out with a deceased parent. My friend in college received an undisclosed sum when her grandma died and she was able to not work for over a year and travel around Europe for months. I was always envious, and of course she was all “I’d rather have my grandma than the money.” Yes, I suppose. I don’t really need to inherit a house or travel around the world. I’ve been eyeing this overpriced wood grain rug at Pottery Barn Teen. The tiny 3x5’ one is on sale for $99. I would settle for that. I’d like to think I’m worth about one hundred bucks. Oh, even that jug of peach schnapps is starting to sound pretty good.

10/24/04
Even though they are perpetually being created, I always thought most people kind of despised those horrible neighborhood acronyms (like BoCoCa for my area). The latest not-so-serious one I’ve heard is HoBo for that rapidly gentrifying patch near Houston and Bowery. New Yorkers don’t like this kind of inanity, that’s why it’s amusing to see how other cities adopt these silly naming conventions in earnest. I almost puked when I read about LoBu while in Portland. We were actually going to check out the hot new club in question, Doug Fir, the night previous to this Friday Oregonian article. But we got waylaid at Holocene, last year’s hot new bar. Our main purpose was to gross out my sister (who has zero tolerance for trends and scenes) and make her talk to one of the club’s co-owners who used to be a good friend of hers in high school. He wasn’t there that night, so instead we were forced to listen to “the bands,” as one patron described the er, entertainment. Maybe I really am old because I so don’t go in for dirgey, soundscape, electronic music coming from a laptop DJ with nature scenes projected behind him. We wanted lyrics and guitars, OK? Or even electronic music that’s mildly up tempo or danceable. I just don’t go in for that geek genius laptop composer crap. In the old days these guys would have to sit home alone trying to get the chords right to Stairway to Heaven or craft obscure music mixtapes for cooler girls who wouldn’t care. Now they’re allowed outlets and audiences. But laptop DJ had nothing on the bicycle musicians. Yep, a couple young guys and the requisite wise older hippy with a ponytail hit the floor with over turned bikes hooked up to amps to create relentless, abrasive noise-music by messing with the gears and spokes. Brilliant. It was like parody, a scene from a movie spoofing small city experimental artists. The group I was with couldn’t stop laughing, and thankfully the din covered up our disbelief. But nothing can conceal expressions, and every single person in the place was dead solemn and intently fixated on the cyclists. We were like c’mon, crack a smile, make a face, you can’t possibly be buying this sham. But they were. I started feeling ill and only managed two drinks (compared to the 13 gin and tonics from two nights before, you know I wasn’t feeling like myself). So, no Doug Fir. The clientele is what strikes me about these supposed Portland hotspots. I know how much I whine and moan about the predominant ‘80s loving, 25-and-under NYC crowd. It’s hard to respect kids who play Pointer Sisters and Michael Jackson’s Thriller in bars and think they can actually maintain some semblance of cool. But Portland is the other extreme, for better or worse. If you see any of the photos of Doug Fir, the patrons are all easily 30s, dipping into their 40s. They have bland style and can even tend toward paunchy. Sweatshirts, baggy long-sleeved t-shirts, ‘90s facial hair, not a glamorous, nor intimidating bunch. And you’d think I’d appreciate this democratic approach to hip entertainment, but something about it still bothers me. And I think that it’s because they are attempting to emulate a wildly hip, uber designed atmosphere that in a larger city would be too exclusive for the average joe to get into, but it’s really just a clever bar totally unbarred to the masses. It should just be what it is and not posture, no LoBu (for Lower Burnside, a skuzzy bum-heavy strip [at least in my day] just before you go over the bridge into downtown). It’s a former hooker hotel that’s been gussied up timber lodge chic, and admittedly I actually like the woodsy deer murals and lumberjack look, it’d make a great den, but all this “fearless eclecticism” and “urban renaissance” nonsense make me want to barf up a marionberry, hazelnut, venison salad. So, no, I don’t think I will be relocating to Portland any time soon. I’ll stick with the NYC brand of gross over hyped watering holes. New York is supposed to be unobtainable, envy inducing and pretentious, it wouldn’t work if it wasn’t.

10/22/04
No earth shattering observations or revelations, just mindless snippets because my attention span is short and I’m not motivated enough on a Friday work afternoon to elaborate. What is the big fucking deal with flu shots? Am I totally missing something? It’s not like we’re fending off the plague. Fascination with wearing ugly ponchos also needs to be explained to me. At least all those nasty low-rise exposed midriffs are getting properly covered up, I suppose. I’m trying to get the psychology behind Caroline Rhea begin chosen as the host of The Biggest Loser. While not morbidly obese, she’s a bit of a chunk. Why would a show devoted to humiliating sweaty, huffing, puffing, puking fat people have a chubby host? I don’t really care one way or the other about the Yankees Red Sox hoopla. Though I guess I would find satisfaction in being athletically humiliated. Is that what schadenfreude is? I think so, but hesitate to use sweeping foreign words for fear of making myself seem even dumber my misusing them. Ah yes, according to Merriam-Webster: “enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.” My whole existence is one giant mess of schadenfreude. Isn’t schadenfreude reality TV’s primary raison d’etre (oh my, another foreign term, make me stop). Practically all the service industry jobs I came into contact with in Portland and environs were performed by white women in their 30s and 40s. This was weird to me, though my mom and sister didn’t think it was odd in the least. Seniors and teenagers have also been known to dabble in suburban and small town service jobs (my grandma used to work at McDonald’s in Seaside and her fried at Kenny Rogers Roasters). But I know I’m not exaggerating to say that at least 90% of those jobs are not performed by white people in NYC. I’m thinking of places like Old Navy, Dunkin Donuts, movie theaters, and the like. Those aren’t white women (or men much either) jobs in NYC. But what I’m trying to figure out is where moderately skilled, likely college un-educated (though not necessarily—there’s that whole genre of bookstore clerks, library assistants, café staff, health food store worker who also perform non-professional roles. Very ‘90s, Gen X, and still very rampant in Portland, at least). white women do for work here. I don’t mean all the educated go-getter ladies who have flocked here to be in media, entertainment, publishing, finance, law or whatever. I mean just average women, like a good portion of people in America. I wish could link to them, but there is the series of Saturn print ads that are disturbing me. Well, one of them in particular is. The benign one I can remember off the top of my head is of a cute, athletic young woman who looks like she just ran a race (number grease painted on her arm) standing in a kitchen, and the tag line goes something like “the considerably better at sports than her boyfriend girl.” That’s a rough approximation, the gist being that she’s tougher than her man and consequently needs a vehicle to match (I can’t recall what vehicle they were advertising, but likely something sporty). Fine, empowering, whatever. But the one I just saw the other day has an equally cute (I don’t usually go for ad type looks, but both of the models they’ve used so far are attractive to my taste) guy with blonde messy hair standing in a nursery filled with cribs with the exact caption, “the infinitely fertile man.” with a minivan posed on the opposite page (sometimes these ads are two pagers, sometimes one page divided top and bottom). Ew, what is that? So dirty. Clearly, they’re targeting women, first by making them feel stronger than their men, and then by enticing them with a handsome guy who wants millions of babies. Ok, enough pointless pondering for today.

10/20/04
I can’t believe I just wasted an hour and a half of my life watching The Biggest Loser. I needn’t even draw comparisons between the show’s title and myself. Hmm, I forget to mention my piece on chicken that appeared in the NY Post last week. It’s alright, it’s what it is. I was originally semi-excited because I thought I’d get to use the money from the story towards those stupid J. Crew boots, but as it turns out I’m already two months behind on my old undergraduate loans that I’d totally forgotten about from deferring them so long. Debt isn’t even worth thinking about, it’s too scary. I just figured out that I owe slightly over $40,000, all my school loans combined. I can’t even begin to think about the $10,000+ credit card debt I’ve racked up over the past ten years. I guess if you think of a $1,000 per year average, that’s not so outrageous. And it’s not as if this job is going to help put much of dent in any of it. Not to mention that it’s doubtful I will get paid for taking last week off. There are personal days, and bereavement crap (three days, I checked) but I don’t think I’m technically entitled until 2005. So, last night I got the call I was expecting to get this week anyway. I was in the bathroom so I didn’t get it (not that I ever answer my phone anyway) but the step mom was reporting that my dad had been taken off life support. That wasn’t a big shocker, but it’s still freaky to hear it. I can deal with someone being dead, and the idea of not seeing them again, especially when it’s someone you only see every couple years or so anyway. What I can’t get my head around are the little kid concepts like what happens to someone after they die. I would tend to say nothing. At least I’ve always thought so, but that just seems so shitty and impossible. I certainly don’t think people go to heaven (one of my favorite tidbits from last week was how my grandma called my aunt to tell her husband, my grandma’s son that my dad was in the hospital. They’re a weird bunch, they live in Portland, but never do family gatherings, so it was a big deal that I saw them last Christmas, and the uncle is all cuckoo and quit his job [where he used to work with my dad—that’s the connection, and really the only tie between my mom’s side of the family and my dad] and moved to some pig farm in the middle of nowhere and does odd jobs. He’s anti-social [speaking of weird and anti-social, their daughter, my cousin, was working at the airport Coffee People Sat. when I left and I didn’t even go over to say hi.] and unpleasant like most of family, he kept flashing a gun during Christmas and everyone’s afraid he’s going to kill himself. But anyway my aunt commented that my dad would be going to a better place, and my uncle was yelling in the background that that was a bunch of shit. Of course, it’s a load of shit, but my sister and I did agree that wherever a dead person goes, it’s probably better than ran-down ranch-style home in Tigard.) But it seems too pointless to simply die and be dead in the ground or made into ashes or whatever. How stupid is that? I don’t really go in for ghosts. My sister and I were watching that freaky cigarette-voiced Sylvia Browne on Montel last week, and while amusing, the last thing I want to do is communicate with the dead. If my dad decides to come back and haunt me as a ghost (though highly doubtful since as a human he’d only call when he had free Sunday minutes—maybe contact from the other side is cheaper) I will seriously shit myself. And I started worrying about dumb things last week like my cat, Lil Smokey, who isn’t so little anymore. She’s a big, chunky ten-year-old Siamese now. And I started feeling bad for not bringing her here six years ago when I moved, but it really wasn’t feasible. And now she’s a senior cat who might only have a few good years left. I don’t even want to dwell on how long cats live—maybe 14? I’m not really sure. And this one’s a diabetic--even the pets can’t properly create insulin in my family. I got her about this same time in 1994 at a freaking drug store, Newberry’s, which sounds so twisted now. Do they still sell animals in drug and department stores? And she was so insanely tiny that I made a point of fixing it in my mind since I didn’t have a camera. As a point of reference that I told myself to remember was that she was even smaller than the teeny kitten on the cover of Heavenly’s The Decline and Fall of Heavenly, which I’d just purchased. I suppose semi-elderly cats aren’t one of life’s biggest concerns. Maybe I should shift back to stressing over my millions of bills that I can barely pay.

10/17/04
It seems that whenever I go out of town, even for a short period of time, the weather shifts dramatically. I could’ve sworn it was barely cool enough for a light jacket last week. I hadn’t even touched a pair of tights yet. Then Portland warped me, being abnormally warm and rain-free, poking into the 80s on at least a couple days. Now I’m back and NYC feels like winter, the apt. is so cold we’re already having to duct tape the window and the air conditioner only came out Saturday. I’m peeved—I have all these cord, jean, flimsy velvet type jackets that haven’t even seen the outdoors yet and people are walking around in parkas, hats, scarves and gloves (but then, I’ve always thought New Yorkers were too quick to bring out the heavy apparel artillery. It’s a bit much for Oct.). I’m hoping the 40s-50s are a fluke and the 60s will come back for at least a few weeks. The past week was stressful, I’m not one for family visits during the best of circumstances. Sharing a bed with your snoring sister in a chilly mobile home (why is Portland so dank? Like I said, it was actually hot, but my mom’s place was freezing inside and of course there are mushrooms and slugs everywhere you step.) isn’t the ideal way to spend a week off. I didn’t get in till nearly midnight last Sunday and was immediately whisked to the hospital because no one thought my dad would last till the next day. Monday I woke up and heard that Chistopher Reeve had died, and was like shit, if Superman can’t even make it what hope is there for a regular guy? But as things stood yesterday when I left, my dad is still alive. And he did sort of wake up from his coma (which turned into a joke because it wasn’t a natural coma, but a chemically induced one that no one still expected him to come out of. It was like, “I don’t feel so bad for you, it’s not like your dad is in a real coma.) but it’s not like he was awake awake and none of his organs can function without machines and he can’t breathe on his own. I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen, but it doesn’t look good. So, I spent much of my time exploring all the wonderful strip malls around my mom’s place in Beaverton (at least she calls it Beaverton, I swear it’s really Hillsboro, which is really freaking far from Portland proper. There’s a big sign blocks from her place that says Welcome to Hillsboro.). I love chain restaurants to death, but even I got sick of them after averaging two meals a day, one week straight at them. And it sucked because Hillsboro despite being grossly suburban, also has a big Mexican migrant population, so there are taco trucks all over the parking lots at night. But I didn’t get to try any of them because the night we did Mexican food it was giant margarita/chimichanga style and my sister doesn’t eat meat and street food like that doesn’t cater to the vegetarian. And when on Friday, feeling sort of gross and grease-filled, I suggested eating at a “nice” restaurant everyone was like what do you mean. They think I’m a total snot (also because I said I wouldn’t say hi to someone sitting across from me on light rail, the Portland equivalent of the subway. I mean really, do you want some hick/hippy thinking you’re inviting them to strike up a conversation with you? Speaking of hick/hippies, there’s this totally unique to the NW look for men that I’d completely forgotten about and it’s rampant. The best way to describe it is ex-con chic. In fact, an amber alert was sounded while I was there because an autistic boy was kidnapped by his mom’s boyfriend and the license plate broadcast on the news to look out for was X-KAHN, the guy’s last name was Kahn. But ex-con chic involves a usually skinny, sinewy body in an old tee shirt, tattoos, faded jeans, maybe motorcycle boots, definitely a moustache and always a ponytail or braid. These people are everywhere, they might be your waiter, your bus driver, a cashier, the guy who says he likes your socks and starts walking along with you as you try to get to your rental car. They’re a Portland everyman. And while my youth did start to come back to me, how NW social conventions are loose, and that I used to think strangers pestering you on public transportation or while minding your business on the street, or relentlessly panhandling on every available inch of sidewalk, bench or busy street median was normal [irritating, but normal], I still refuse to soften on saying hi to folks on the light rail.) Seriously, like somehow NYC has turned me into some nasty know-it-all, when really if they thought about it I’ve always been a brat that way. I’ve never been able to stand it when people say pop for soda. I remember as a little little kid making a conscious effort to only say soda because the sound pop coming out of my grandma’s mouth sounded so, er, trashy. See? I’ve always been a snob on issues that don’t really matter. I can’t help that I’m fussy about food. It’s not about money or class or whatever (since my sister’s been in England for a decade now, she seems hyper class conscious). I just think it makes more sense to eat a taco made by an actual Mexican for a Mexican customer than to order tacos at a restaurant in a strip mall that serves mostly white senior citizens and families like ours. That doesn’t make me mean. Ha, but the funny thing was how similar my and my mother’s tastes are after all. I noticed we have the exact same camera. I bought it because it was practically the cheapest 3+ megapixel one on Amazon.com. It’s annoyingly chunky and a little slow, but the pictures are fine, so what’s the big deal? Her reasoning exactly. No hip, slick electronics for either of us. And then Friday night we went out to one of the million McMenamin’s brewpubs that have taken over Portland and beyond. That was fine, I forget how much everyone likes to drink (I’m a big drinker and my mom and sister totally put me to shame), and it’s usually good fun. But they decided to pick up more to drink at Albertson’s on the way home. My sister and the step-dude got a case of Hefeweizen, I got a six-pack of Mike’s Hard Lime (as opposed to lemonade) and my mom picked out a bottle of red wine. We were playing some domino game called Mexican Train. I’d never heard of it and have no idea why it’s called that but apparently it’s big with RVers in the NW. After a spell, I noticed the wine my mom was drinking, some crazy Shiraz with an aboriginal type motif on the bottle. This was odd because just the week before I needed to pick up a bottle of wine for a dinner party and couldn’t find the “nice” wine store that I knew was somewhere nearby, and instead had to go to one of those ratty hole-in-the-wall liquor stores. There wasn’t a large selection, and I grabbed this same exact bottle of Shiraz. I’m not sure why, maybe because the label was colorful and it wasn’t super super cheap, but obviously not expensive either. Who knows, but the amusing part was that it was the only bottle of wine among maybe eight or so total that didn’t get touched that evening. My guess is that it looked zany and unserious because of the label design, there were lots of oranges and yellows, and that primitively drawn animal I can’t recall, maybe a kangaroo. Oh, I found a picture, the brand name finally came to me. There’s no denying I’m my mother’s daughter, no matter how much I’d like to think otherwise. At least when it comes to cheap digital cameras and wine, we’re frighteningly likeminded.

10/10/04
Ok, so I’m going to Portland last minute, in two hours, as a matter of fact. Not doing anything is worse than doing something so after my sister called and said she had booked a flight from England it only made sense that I’d do the same. I don’t really like the idea of taking a week off a job you’ve only been at for three weeks, but what can you do. Portland is like third world as far as computers and the internet goes (at least with the friends and family I have there) so I don’t know how connected I will be to email and my website (it’s a sad addiction—at least I have never gotten sucked into IMing and text messaging). And this sucks because I have ebay items I’m watching. Dammit, if I lose on the olive green-and-gold-flocked wallpaper and mod floral tablecloth I have my sights set on. Priorities, you know.

10/7/04
Jeez, today really wasn’t my day. I should’ve known something was up last night after cursorily checking my email and noting there was voicemail from my sister and two 503 area code numbers (no, I didn’t simply look at my phone and get the messages—I’m so not a phone person, hardly anyone call me and vice versa. I do it backwards and see if there are email alerts from Vonage indicating I have phone messages). But I’d just stumbled in a bit drunk after attending a dinner party, and it was already after 2am. All I could think about was how sorry I was going to be come 7am when the alarm would go off. I conked out, woke up feeling kind of ick, and hot tailed it to work, all gross and greasy because I didn’t take a shower. It wasn’t until I settled in at my desk that I checked my messages from the day before. It was all bad stuff about my father being in the hospital, but nothing specific. I wasn’t sure who I should call, and if I should be using the work phone for long distance calls (I suppose situations like this are where a cell phone would be handy) and it’s so super quiet there (it’s a library, duh) it’s not like personal calls are really personal. So, I mulled it over, then called my step mom who would likely have the best facts, she’s very no nonsense and non-hysterical—she works in some truck parts warehouse and used to be a school bus driver, if that’s any indication. It’s not like I would expect anything good to come of a person who’s diabetic, cancerous and heart attack prone, this perpetual bad health thing has been hovering for years now, but this seemed very stark and lacking in any positive spin. It seems that my dad is on life support in a chemically induced coma and his heart and kidneys are failing. I don’t see how that can be a good thing, and I’m not really sure what to make of it. To the point, I’m not sure what this means I’m supposed to do. I can’t just pick up and go out there, and it’s not as if that would be helpful anyway. And if on the off chance someone recovers from this sort of thing, then what, they just exist in this sickly decrepit state until the next medical emergency? He’s not elderly, I think he’s supposed to turn 63 in three weeks (of course my mind went to the fact that hey, I might not have to send him a routine birthday card after all—my sister and I have always found it irksome that he rarely acknowledges our birthdays. Surprisingly, he did call me this year, but instead of just sending me a stupid present was like well, if you come out for the holidays we can get you something, knowing full well that I never come home for Christmas. Never mind that my birthday is in July, not December). How do you deal with someone across the country who’s on the verge of keeling over, anyway? Then I got a confusing email from James, who is out of town, forwarded from our landlord, about one of our cats being in the hall and a neighbor being concerned for its safety. First, I don’t know why a neighbor would call the landlord about a cat in the hall, and second, I didn’t even realize a cat was missing. It had to be Caesar James’s cat because mine, Sukey, was in the apt. when I left. And then, I couldn’t figure out he got loose. I wasn’t so tipsy that I wouldn’t have noticed a cat running out when I came home last night. It had to be that when James left yesterday afternoon with luggage and things that he missed Caesar running out. James was all in a panic that Caesar would get outside and be gone for good. I guess this isn’t the most serious matter, but it started to seriously stress me out, and all I could think about was how I’d come home and he’d be dead in the street and then Vicki (the step mom that we used to affectionately call “a walking fetus with a perm”) would call to say my coma dad is dead. I had to go home. Really, it wouldn’t help the dad situation, at this moment I was spazzing about finding the cat, but I couldn’t say that to my boss of 2.5 weeks, so I had to pull the family emergency card. Life’s emergencies come big and small, right? I rushed home, and as I got a block away that ominous little black squirrel that I’m fascinated by ran right in front of my feet across the sidewalk and scared the shit out of me. I know black cats crossing your path are a bad sign, but what about black squirrels? It was too much. So, the cat wasn’t loose in the hall and the one neighbor who was home had no idea what I was talking about. I just kind of sat around, and after about three hours the daughter of the freaky top floor resident came down with Caesar (which was odd because when I originally knocked on her door she didn’t answer and then really loud music was turned on. Thanks for being helpful.). He immediately ran downstairs and took a dump, not terribly fazed by the ordeal. At least one trauma was resolved, and ending with a crap, what a nice finishing touch.

10/6/04
I’ve been spending so much time in Paramus, NJ lately that I may as well move there. I think it was only a couple weeks ago that I did the Garden State Plaza/Outback Steakhouse combo. This past weekend, we went back for more, but this time experienced the Ikea/Cheesecake Factory doubleheader. I read in today’s Times that the controversial Red Hook Ikea has finally been approved. That’s cool in one way, since it’s practically walking distance from my apt. but you know being NYC, specifically Brooklyn, it’s going to suck Swedish meatballs. The Elizabeth, NJ location that currently caters to New Yorkers with free shuttle buses is way lamer than the stores that are inaccessible to NYC residents because they fuck up all the fun with their irritating urban ways. Paramus, on the other hand, is just far enough out of reach to keep everything orderly, roomy and in stock (the Ikea website just added a new feature where you can check and see if a product is in stock at your location. I tested it using a table I’m considering buying, and you don’t even need me to report the results. Nothing I wanted was at Elizabeth, while everything was available in Paramus). After Ikea we went to a small, weirdo mall (it’s very small and doesn’t have any lowbrow stores, just shops like Tiffany, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bebe, Bloomingdales, oh and Chico’s which I don’t know what to make of, they don’t have them in the city, it’s like tacky, semi-bohemian crap that a drama teacher with a private school salary might buy.) Riverside something, that’s technically in Hackensack (though only a few miles east of Paramus--it’s all the same to me) to immerse myself in the Cheesecake Factory. Being only 5pm, the wait wasn’t insane, but it allowed enough time to take in the Las Vegas oversized stylings. This is the actual Hackensack façade. I don’t know what to call that architectural style that seems grounded in the ‘90s but on some level is probably harkening to something Venetian or Tuscan or whatever overwrought Italian style it is that bourgeois folks think looks rich (though I do note that neo-baroque is all the rage in design now, and admittedly I like it. But that’s not really the same...is it? ) It’s new with a colorful yet dusty palette that feels like Disney World or some such theme park. I was bothered that James didn’t think it was over-the-top, he worries me sometimes. Anyway, we discovered that we both over order and eat too slow to cater to chain restaurant staging. They always end up having to bring the entree while we’re still eating our appetizers because we’re not following their pacing, which is very calculated. Once at Applebee’s they tried to get us to order dessert when we were still eating our mains, and after saying we’d wait till we were done to decide, the waitress informed us it would take some precise number like 5.5 minutes for our dessert to arrive so maybe we’d like to order it now so it could be ready when we finished. A well oiled (and highly greasy) machine. No matter where we go everyone who is seated after us, leaves before we do. I do know that when I eat at places like Olive Garden with my family, we’re in and out of there in under an hour easily. It’s the American way. Anyway, I took my sweet time eating my Southern Fried Chicken Salad: Pieces of Lightly Fried Chicken Breast Tossed with Fresh Corn, Glazed Pecans, Red Onion, Cucumber, Shredded Romaine and Our Own Ranch Dressing, and could only make a dent in about 1/4 of the behemoth. That’s the other thing with chain dining, leftovers are practically built into the dining process. You order knowing there will be food leftover. That doesn’t bother me, it’s an extra meal, but I suspect that’s a low class notion. Somehow the concept of large portions and leftovers came up in a food writing class I took some time ago, and everyone in the room was disgusted by taking food home and never ever did it (of course these are all NYC women). I was the only one who didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, and practiced it routinely. I was also the largest person in the class, so there’s quite possibly a correlation between eating leftovers and heft. I’m just too thrifty to throw out one-third to half my meal. Regardless, Cheesecake Factory, while not remarkable, was worth wasting an early Saturday evening at.