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30 April 2004
Well, my mother is back in the hospital again. She's spending
the night, but just for "observation." I thought my parents were overreacting by coming home early. Now I’m glad that
they did.
29 April 2004
I love San Francisco. Tonight, as I was crossing Folsom at
9th on the way back from my parents’ house, a seven-foot-tall foam penis stopped in the crosswalk to hug a shirtless
man wearing tiny cut-off jeans shorts.
I had to go to the airport to pick up my parents this evening.
I got a call at 1:30AM Tuesday night from my dad. They cut short their trip to Florence because my mother was having recurring
dizzy spells. We stopped at the grocery store on the way home. It was upsetting to have her suddenly stand still, clutch my
arm, close her eyes, and waver when one of the spells hit; it was worse than I thought. She’s going to the doctor tomorrow.
My sisters and I all asked them why they didn’t just go to the doctor in Rome; they said that they didn’t want
to be trapped in a hospital there so far from us. One of us would have had to go there to stay with them. My mother doesn’t
speak Italian, and my father comes unglued in these situations. Perhaps it’s for the best that they came home. My mother
is worried, of course, and bitterly disappointed. This might be the last time she can ever go.
27 April 2004
The reality of going to trade school is setting in. I’ve
been procrastinating applying for student loans. The amount I’ll need is staggering. One more reason not to go to a
private school.
It’s time for a spring cleaning. I keep looking around
my apartment and asking if I were to move, would I want this? Or this? Or that crap? And the answer is usually no. It’s
time to clear my clutter with feng shui, as Karen Kingston would say.
26 April 2004
Friday seems like a month ago. After work I went to a friend’s
art opening South of Market, and then to the bar at the W for a quick drink. I got up early for the farmers’ market
on Saturday. That night I ended up with the ball-buster course at the restaurant: shellfish ravioli with a shellfish sauce:
the filling was lobster, crab, scallops, a little sole, wild fennel, and plenty of butter (yum). Since I don’t make
pasta very often, my dough was way too wet. My first few attempts at rolling it out (we have an electric machine) were very
“I Love Lucy.” The dough goes from a lump that you can fit in both hands to a sheet about twenty feet long in
the space of five minutes or so.
Sunday was bright and hot by the time I woke up. I made myself
clean the apartment and then I hit the beach. The poison oak has grown very lush in the past few months. There weren’t
too many people there, but touching ensued (such long eyelashes he had!). He and I left the beach at about the same time.
I waited for him at the trailhead, offered him some of my water (we were both panting from the climb), but alas, your poor
Cunégonde didn’t get anywhere. On the way back to the bridge, I stopped at the old white clapboard barracks overlooking
the missile sites. The barracks have been converted into bijoux artists’ studios by the Headlands Center for the Arts.
I had a glass of wine and some toasted almonds with friends from work, which soothed my hurt feelings.
23 April 2004
And for those of you who have been following this for a while,
and to answer the question I keep getting asked, I suppose it’s time for me to come out of the closet about my
trade school aspirations: I’m going to law school next fall. I don’t know where yet, but it will most likely be
in or around San Francisco. I’ve been working directly and indirectly for and with lawyers for almost 15 years, and
I’ve never seen anything they do that I couldn’t do just as well. I put off applying to law school when Steve
became sick. I put it off again when I became a cook. Forty will be coming quickly; I don’t want to put off school any
longer. I still haven't told many people in my life about this.
Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of Cunégonde. The
best thing about it has been getting to know a few wonderful people, including one on whom I have a little (read: big) crush.
One of my new year’s resolutions is to meet you in person.
Thank you, dear readers, everyone one of you, including those
of you who got here by searching for Mark Hanter, Graydon Locke, or just the usual “puka necklace yuba city.” And thanks to those who have generously linked to me, even poor French people searching for "Cunégonde" get this site
as their first hit on google.fr.
21 April 2004
An all-day meeting with the client yesterday. After
the meeting we went to visit the commercial real estate agent, who is so cute that I can barely speak to him since my mind
is filled with unwholesome thoughts. I am a 14-year-old girl.
Since it looks like we’re about to get a lease downtown,
I checked out a gym there. I had an instant crush on a tall curly blond. I couldn’t tell if he’s gay or straight,
but how many straight guys wear a ring on the middle finger of their left hand? I thought I might have to move on to another
crush because he seemed like a weight-swinger, but that was just my misapprehension. Nice body, not too big, but wide, wide
shoulders, and so forth. He gave himself a very thorough arm workout. On the way home I realized that I’ve never, in
the 14 years I’ve lived here, worked regularly in an office downtown. Something to look forward too.
18 April 2004
Exhausted. I worked 13 hours on Friday (office then restaurant),
got home just before midnight, packed, got up at 6:45 Saturday morning, hopped on a plane to Burbank, worked out at the Hollywood
Gold’s Gym (nothing to report), met Yolanda & company at Ammo restaurant on Highland for lunch (delicious ham & gruyère sandwich and a glass of Chimay), helped Yolanda pick out a few wines at
the new Beverages & Mo’ on Santa Monica (a couple of bottles of Tavel rosé, a few of Albariño, and a selection of
Malbecs from Argentina), a nap, a quick shower, a fruitless excavation of my suitcase for my nice black pants (which were
still in the dry cleaner's bag at home), a near disaster with the iron, over to Yolanda’s for drinks before dinner,
one too many of his Brazilian boyfriend’s capirinhas, and, finally, the dinner in the private room at Grace on Beverly. I sat at the family table and helped translate for the boyfriend. Back to the hotel at 1 AM. Up at 5:45
AM to drop off the rental car, catch the plane, and get over to my parents’ place in time to butterfly and roast a leg
of lamb for an early Sunday dinner with my favorite aunt and uncle and my sisters and my favorite nephew. I was a shameless
baby-hogger, but I couldn’t help myself. He’s possibly the best nephew in North America, though you might try to disagree.
15 April 2004
I’m going to see my parents three times this week.
My mother thinks it’s great; my father is a little more ambivalent. Last night my favorite aunt and uncle, and my cousins
and their kids, and my sister and the baby (he has learned to sit! up! in the last two days) were at my parents’ house.
I took Highway 4 to get there, a road I’ve hardly been on, even though it runs just four or five miles from where I
grew up. It’s no longer the two-lane road I remember. At the point where the view of Mount Diablo is most amazing, I took Willow Pass Road through the Naval Weapons Station and then a left on Farm Bureau Road, and
then past my old high school, which still looks like the one-story minimum-security prison that it was. These street names
are of course evocative only if you grew up there. I was in a nostalgic mood after seeing “Dazed and Confused” earlier this week. I didn’t start high school until 1979, but the town I grew up in was such a backwater that
the styles in the movie are the ones I wore. It wasn’t a big party school, but the varsity cheerleading squad my senior
year was disbanded after the (Mormon) vice principal found them under the bleachers getting stoned before a football game.
It’s hard to believe that the fat asshole kid was played by Ben Affleck, and that Mathew McConaughey had only one moment
of lotus-like beauty. In high school I was a combination of the two nerdy boys, and one of my best friends was a wise-cracking
red-headed girl. I ran into the Handsomest Man outside my neighborhood video store just as I was ending the half-blind date.
Half-blind is a nice guy, but I’m not interested, and seeing the Handsomest Man reminded me why. It was a message from
the universe. I wish I could keep my apartment as clean as he keeps his. I’m supposed to be packing for my trip to LA this weekend,
but I just can’t bring myself to do it. I had to run to the Castro to get a new lock for the gym, and I decided to get
out of my rut by going to the gym there (oh yes, I know what you’re thinking: The ghetto gym! That’ll be different!).
I ran into the (I mean “an,” since he’s had so many) ex of my former gay lover. We have a friendly but cautious
relationship, since what we have in common (the FGL) is what we can’t really talk about. Cute guys there, but I don’t
think that going to new places is going to help much until I unwind a little bit, enough to let someone in. The door is still
closed.
11 April 2004
I went to my parents’ today and spent the afternoon
cooking with my mom. It was dinner for just the three of us (I’m the only dutiful (read: single) child they have). When
I arrived, my mother was floury from rolling out pasta for a wild mushroom lasagna. I stuffed a chicken under the skin with
a little sorrel & spinach & green garlic stuffing. I shelled a big bag of peas. I cleaned a fistful of Oregon morels.
I roasted some asparagus. My father was watching and doing the dishes whenever the sink filled up. After a few hours he started
getting nervous because he couldn’t see any dessert in sight or even in our plans. For him, it’s the most important
part of any meal. He started to relax when he saw me hulling strawberries. I added half their weight in sugar and made a little
pot of jam. My mother and I leafed through her cookbooks until we found a promising jelly roll recipe from a usually reliable
source (Betty Crocker, c. 1964). I made it and we threw it out two minutes after it came out of the oven. My father saw our
post mortem on the cake and began to really worry that he’d be reduced to cookies after his Easter dinner. I made another
cake from the recipe I still had in my head from last Tuesday (1/3 C flour, 1/3 C cornstarch, salt, 4 eggs, 2/3 C sugar: mix
the flour, cornstarch, and salt; beat the yolks with half the sugar; beat the whites with the rest of the sugar; combine the
egg mixtures; fold in the dry ingredients; bake 9 minutes in a fairly hot oven). This one worked. I spread it with whipped
cream, the strawberry jam, and a little kirsch syrup, and put it to rest and mingle in the fridge. The lasagna was beautiful,
the chicken was quite nice, and the jelly roll was a poem.
And then I came home and read Little Minx and wonder why
I bother with this. I’m glad that he’s writing again.
10 April 2004
I feel like I’m in a cocoon, even though I’ve
gone out more in recent days than I have in months. Parties, dinners, bars—nothing
is getting through the thick protective web I’ve woven around myself. I’m defending myself from any incursion.
The part-time Canadian was back in town this week. We went
out with another friend to the new Slanted Door in the Ferry Building. At 9 PM
they were no longer taking names for dinner—fully booked. We ate from the snack menu in the lounge and watched a variety
of women in what could be our future Hallowe’en outfits walk by. San Francisco feels like it’s booming again.
Our mutual friend said that he had just received an unsolicited offer to buy his house, even though it’s not on the
market. When they asked him to name a price, he suggested something he thought would put them off ($4M), but they didn’t
flinch, and he realized that he had asked for too little. I’m never going to be able to buy a place here. Never. I’ll
be lucky if I can afford a condo in the outer suburbs 10 years after trade school.
I also realized that I’m going to have to buy a suit
pretty soon. I haven’t had one since 1988. I’ve put off buying another one for years, partly because I never have
the occasion to wear one, and partly because I’ve been working out all these years and getting bigger. I weigh about
30 pounds more than I did back then; I doubt now that I’ll put on more any more muscle at my advanced age. I hope the
prices haven’t gone up.
I’m going on a half-blind date on Monday. My hairdresser
and her co-workers are trying to set me up with one of their clients. He has seen me a few times at the salon, but I’ve
never noticed him. I have no idea what he looks like. We talked on the phone yesterday; he has a good sense of humor. Necessary,
but not sufficient. I’m trying to keep an open mind.
Farmers’ market this morning: a nice, plump hen, asparagus,
peas, tangelos, Savoy cabbage, strawberries.
7 April 2004
The White House announced that Our Leader didn’t want
to be “held hostage” by being asked about Iraq every day.
If Rumsfeld were an honorable man, he would have resigned
by now.
The guava jelly roll was a triumph of a birthday cake.
My hangover didn’t really dissipate until after lunch.
I saw a faun grazing beside the freeway this evening.
And a little grey bird was sheltering on my front steps when
I came home.
5 April 2004
It’s either daylight savings time or ennui, but I’m
tired. I stayed up late last night re-reading Persuasion. It gets better every time. The oldest heroine, and the most bittersweet.
The family reunion on Saturday was fun, but exhausting. Loud
as usual. Lots of cousins. No wine-in-a-box this time, but I’m pretty sure I saw someone having a nice glass of red
wine and 7up. I had to lie down for a little nap at about six. I got to play with my nephew (age 5 months) for about an hour
while my handy sister fixed a troublesome template/master page issue in FrameMaker for me. I couldn’t figure out why
Table <$paranumonly><$paratext><HypertextSmall><$chapnum>-<$pagenum>
wasn’t producing the list of tables in the format I
wanted. The problem lay elsewhere.
Sunday I spent in a basement conference room at a hotel in
Fisherman’s Wharf (!) going over test-taking strategies for trade school. I made it out of
the seminar in time to hit the gym Sunday and somehow I ended up going home with someone I've seen there for a long
time but had never met.
I’m having my former gay lover and a friend over for
dinner tomorrow for his birthday. Tentative menu:
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Chilled green pea soup with avocado
and lime
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Spatchcocked chicken stuffed
with green garlic, and a little ragout of artichokes, asparagus, and spring onions
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A jellyroll cake with a guava
filling
That seems festive enough doesn’t it? Guavas because
both MFGL and his friend spent a lot of time in the South Pacific, and because my favorite avocado vendors at the farmers’
market have been selling fragrant white Malaysian guavas, and I’m addicted. I’ve done all the prep I can; the
dishes are washed, the counter scrubbed, and I'm heading for bed.
3 April 2004
If it weren’t for the annual family get-together this
afternoon, I’d be at the beach. A preview: 30 people at my parents’ house, 29 of whom are talking at any given
moment.
1 April 2004
I just found out this morning that the one trade school that
I want to attend doesn’t have all of the forms it needs to process my financial aid application. Sheeee-it! I’m
going to drop them off in person tomorrow morning, before I head downtown to look for office space. The project is moving
along slowly. It turns out that what the client had in mind was all wrong (just as we had warned her), so now it’s back
to the drawing board. The other good news is that yesterday that I quietly prevented
someone from getting a promotion to a supervisory position above me. I proposed the idea of the promotion, since I thought
the owner of the company might bring it up, and then I convinced the owner that it would be a bad idea. Yes, my last name
does rhyme with Machiavelli.
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