Surprised Kitty

Chinatown

I love Chinatown. Don’t ask me why. Could be the cooked duck swinging in the store window. Could be the dim sum. Could be the smell of baking fortune cookies. Could be the schlocken, and schlocken is a word I made that is the plural of schlock and in mass quantities. Chinatown is the breeding ground for schlock. Ground zero for schlock. Schlocken is rampant in Chinatown. There is no vaccine for that epidemic. And yes, I love to look at it. Again, don’t ask me why. I share with you my latest schlocky discoveries – china pigs on a pillow and fake rubber sushi on a keychain.

Shopping, or not

I went in the Williams Sonoma store today. For someone who was raised on a farm and devoted to isolation, physical and spiritual, I can be absolutely traitorous to my upbringing when it comes to forcing my way through the crowds in these glittery good-gosh-almighty stores in San Francisco. And, I don’t even cook. But, there’s something about Williams Sonoma. Today, it was the pumpkin spice cake. I had one sample, threw away my tiny paper cup and had another. It was then, the sales clerk approached me and asked if he could help.

“No, I’m fine,” I said, thinking just don’t get between me and the free cake. I picked up a wire shopping basket, took a turn around the store, and hit the pumpkin spice cake a third time. About this time, I put some cheese sticks in my basket, took a fourth lap and staggered into a stack of pots. The pots swayed dangerous, but didn’t fall. Sweat popped out on my forehead as I imagined the horrendous noise, or should I say alarm, that didn’t materialize. I feigned interest in the spicy ketsup, the Italian hand made pasta, and the dinner plate with a rooster on it.

As I headed for another bit of cake, the sales clerk blocked my path with, “You know what really makes this good is the dollop of pumpkin butter on the top.”

“I hadn’t noticed. Let me try that,” I said cramming more of the same in my mouth, but now with pumpkin butter. I’m pretty sure I was up to a full sized piece of cake by now and had been marked as a moocher and not a purchaser, but I was losing control and beginning not to care. I took one more turn around the store, this time with the sales clerk close behind. He was going to stop the cake grabbing. And then, it happened. I cut a corner too close and he followed. I skimmed past the stacked pots, but the sales clerk, drafting off me, swayed into them. It was like a cartoon crash, where the pots kept falling, crashing, rolling across the floor, and then when you thought it was done, another fell, crashed and sent something else helter skelter into a stack next to the original accident. I placed myself carefully in front of the peppermint bark. And then while the sales clerk was busy chasing a pot lid, I grabbed two tiny cups of cake, stuffed them in my mouth, and got in the back of the line to buy the cheese sticks.

“Wow! What a lot of noise,” I said as the sales clerk rang up my purchase.

“Yes. It was,” he said as he gave me the stink eye.

Dani vs. Dani

Police Dash Cam Action

How Pumpkin Pie is Made

Jail Diary

Hubby’s brother is currently incarcerated for felony DUI. His letters are entertaining to say the least. I thought I’d share the first paragraph of his most recent letter.

“Just had my 8 month anniversary here at the prison, yesterday on Veteran’s Day. Almost 9 months total time, so it is flying by. On Vets Day, Group and Horticulture were canceled, and for mid-November, it was beautiful outside, mid-50’s. But while most of the prison rotated time outside for an hour for yard, my cellblock was on lock-down. Yes, in the drug/alcohol treatment prison, the only institution in this state where you can earn good time for attending treatment, a couple of knucklehead felons ‘pop’ us all by getting caught making ‘hooch!’ A large bag of fermenting fruit was found in the shower room, so we were all punished till the culprits were found, then punished. They got sent to seg, and I assume, will be shipped out to another prison. The funny thing is all thru the group treatment session neither one admitted they had an alcohol problem, just a ‘lifestyle’ problem.”

Bang

From writing workshop this afternoon…

The .357 magnum was my favorite. I lost it in the divorce. I kept the .38 snub nosed with 5 shots. If you don’t take the thug down with the first four shots to the trunk, you best gamble on a head shot with the fifth. That’s the rule. I keep the revolver in a wooden box that says, “Holy Bible” on the front and has a picture of Jesus with outstretched arms on the box’s interior next to the gun.

I miss John A., May-May, and Larry Mac. They are the only dead people I miss. I look in my viewer at John A. sometimes and beg him to come back and save me. The viewer is an ancient bit of brown rectangular plastic made in the 60’s. You hold it up to a lamp, and John A. lights up with a smile and a head full of Brille Crème slicked white hair. It was his 16 gauge I was really addicted to. He shot the 12, me – the 16.

I saw an old man drinking fluorescent blue liquid from a paper bag clad plastic bottle on the bus. It wasn’t the kind of fluid you drink. It was the kind you pour in a car’s radiator. He sipped it from a straw.

John A. drank Jack Black, two fingers tall in a glass with a half glass water chaser. At Christmas I bar tended until he was drunk, then Dad cut off service.

When John A. died, they wired his jaw shut in an under bite mannequin sort of way. His nephew, Johnny, got drunk at the service, falling on my aunt. Ungracious is the word I would like to use. My brother was so mad he threw Johnny to the ground, and afterward drove him home, popping him in the face for good measure. Only my brother and I understood the appropriateness of the beating.

What’s Happening

Oh well. The dog. Yeah. I wish things were better. The Big Dog has the unending case of diarrhea caused by the chemo. We have pulled the plug on the chemo, and all of the oncological efforts for that matter. The only thing to be said is at least the Big Dog will die from cancer and not the cancer treatments. She’s in a pretty good mood right now because she’s eating boiled chicken, pumpkin, and rice, heated to a warm temperature. I think this counts as cooking. I won’t (can’t?) cook for humans, but no problem if a canine is concerned. Hopefully, tomorrow her diarrhea will abate. I have said that now for the last few days. Last night, we took her to the acupuncturist. Fortunately for me, I can recognize the tiniest sign the Big Dog offers that she going to unload and whisked her outside before she left a messy pile on the carpeted exam room. She hit the sidewalk outside. I had visions of a small child or an elderly person take a ski through the poo before I could get it cleaned up. I asked our vet, who is next door to the acupuncturist, for help, and they sent a tall vet tech with many plastic bags and rolls of paper towels. I apologized but he seemed unphased. He said he did stuff like that all day long.

The weather has turned off a bit nippy here, and by nippy I mean in the 60’s. I’ve taking to swimming at the community pool with a friend of mine. I say “swimming” but what I mean is water jogging. We have water jogging belts we strap on, and then essentially run in the water up and down in the slow lane for about an hour. We cover an amazing amount of ground for as slow as we are. We usually talk and laugh, some times so much so I have to hold onto the pool and the lifeguard gives me the eye, as if he is wondering if he needs to jump in and save me from laughing to death. I do have a big floaty on my back so I’d have to say even if he thinks about jumping in, it’s unnecessary. Even if I were unconscious, I’d still be bobbing about with my head out of the water.

And for the record, because I like to write things for the record, all of you old guys wearing Speedos, that is unnecessary too. Granted, the time we are swimming is the senior/disabled swim and pretty much anything goes, but that doesn’t. I don’t want to see your old ass with overgrown gut pinched into a Speedo. Stop. Please. And for additional records, if you are at the senior swim and you are wearing a Speedo, do not bend over with your buttocks toward the pool. Don’t. It’s TMI – too much information. I may be half blind without my glasses but what little I can see from your show is damaging my retinas.

Rebuilding

The bay bridge has reopened. Some locals refuse to drive across it because they don’t want to be the next winner of the bay bridge lottery and get smacked with tons of falling steal sponsored by the cracked eye beam.

On the way back from the neurologist’s office on Monday, Hubby and I struck up a conversation with a random bus person. We were all noting the bridge was open – again, but for how long? The bus person thought the bridge wasn’t going to make it. It’s amazing how many of the locals subscribe to this theory. He said, “it’s not like the Golden Gate, a suspension bridge. The bay bridge is a stiff erector set with no give or take. A little wind, a little vibration, some earthquake and there’s a whole lot of trouble.”

AZ sent me the following pictures, of the Hoover damn. It’s being rebuilt also. Like the bridge, it’s a monumental project. She had a picture from 1972 and one from current day. We passed through there about a year ago, and they were busy working on it.I love these pictures. I wish I had gotten some of pre and post bay bridge piece failure. I tried. I contacted one of my friends who lives in Richmond across from the pier. She found a guy named Cap’n Tyler, docked at the Richmond pier. His business card said he would take his boat anywhere for a reasonable fee. My friend asked him about motoring up to the broken bridge for some pictures. He was game, except for one problem – a hole in his hull. A buddy of his had rammed his boat while he was salmon fishing in Alaska. He was waiting on a check, all the while insisting his boat was still sea worthy. I had a vision of us sinking immediately below the bay bridge.

Coast Guard: What were you doing out there?
Me: Taking photos.
Coast Guard: Did you know about the hole in the hull?
Me: Ummm, yeah but Cap’n Tyler said the boat was sea worthy.
Coast Guard: (Guffaw)

Anyway, Sunday rolled around, and by then we had come to our senses. Also, Cap’n Tyler said he now had a dog and wife joining us. Mind you, I have nothing against dogs and wives, but if you’re contracting someone to take you somewhere you don’t want the other person to bring their entire family. It would be like hiring a cab and the cabbie stops at his home and picks up his mother-in-law and two kids. Yes, you would all fit in the cab. Yes, you all might be going the same place. But, HEY, I’m paying for the cab. It’s a hire, so what’s with the family?

The good Cap’n called my friend and said, “Looks like we’re going to have to push this little adventure off until Monday because the pier gas is closed on Sundays.” My friend told him we had changed our minds. The Cap’n said something else. My friend said it was like a conversation you have with your soon-to-be ex-boyfriend.

Girl: I can’t take this any more.
Boy: No, don’t. I’m breaking up with you first.
Girl: You can’t do that because I just broke up with you.
Boy: No, you didn’t.

Whatever. The boat trip was canceled. My friend and I packed a picnic and went for a long walk on the river walk, winding around the Richmond pier. My friend pointed out the place where the Cap’n, his boat, his dog, and his wife were docked and then, as we walked farther out by the Exxon tankers, we strolled past the pier gas station with a huge sign hanging from it that read: “Winter Hours. Open Fri – Sat – Sun, 9am – 6pm.” We stopped and stared at the sign and the open gas station, and we wondered out loud if there was really a check coming for the good Cap’n to repair the hole in his hull.