• Enough sleep
• Working out properly
• Working well
• Remembering that dating could be fun
• Reactivating my old interest in photography
• Finishing The Guermantes Way this summer
• Absorbing compliments instead of deflecting them

Feeling blue this morning on the walk to work about the usual conflict between wanting material goods and the trade-off of what I would have to do to get them. Then I saw a guy dressed in a felt quetzal suit trying to flag motorists into a parking garage.  He seemed good-humored about it in a way I wouldn't have been.

Changes at the office. I'm losing my window office, but the new office means I'll be working more closely, I hope, with someone important, which is positive.

Weekend plans: a visit to the Sonoma countryside, lots of reading, and a little cooking.

I had a long séance yesterday at the dentist. Another filling. I felt as if he were carving a little Pietà in the side of my molar. We went to high school together. He shares his office with his father’s dental practice. Nothing has changed since the late sixties. They even process credit cards by hand: no swipe machine. Nothing. The receptionist writes your credit card number by hand on those old carbon-paper forms.

Running late for work again. How could that be?

I am enjoying working downtown. I’m high-enough up that I can see the fog as it creeps in through the Golden Gate. When the wind picks up in the late afternoon and starts to whistle through the fire escape door, one of the partners will come over and prop the door open. In fifteen minutes the whole office is full of fresh, cool ocean breezes. It’s better than a cup of coffee.

Rain = naps.

No pissing to report on my street during Bay-to-Breakers. Hurrah. I had the camera all ready and everything.

I bought six dress shirts for $103 at Crossroads. I love used clothes stores.

Iraq in meltdown, foolish tax cuts for the ultra-rich, Darfur, Iran going nucular, heterosexuals killing each other in church (marriage is, after all, the sacred foundation of society), more coalminers dying, NSA wiretapping. All this, but my biggest concern has been my hair! It is uncontrollably fluffy. I have one cross to bear after another.

WTF? Dark and rainy today. It felt like a different city. Warm, humid, and green. I’ve been taking the F-line up Market Street to the gym after work. I just can’t face going underground at rush hour. A million tourists are in the city now. Lots of overweight, middle-aged Brazilians. A couple tonight with Rio de Janiero accents got off excitedly when they arrived at that “famosa” San Francisco Shopping Centre at “a rua quinta” (Fifth Street). The couple to my left were speaking English with such a thick Irish accent that I thought for several blocks they were speaking some mystery language.

I saw a blue Bentley Continental coupe not a half-block from my house this morning on the way to work. It’s nicer looking than you’d think for such a big car.

A new project at the gym: a Peruvian massagist. We’ll see.

Fanfare, Prologue

little mouse, little mouse

takes me to his mousey house

now he nibbles out my eye

lost without my eye –

I must bake a currant pie –

currant pie with raisins sweet

pick two out, but not to eat,

stick them in to be my eyes.

ah, the sunshine, bright surprise!

Batman and Robin

batman and robin

still lie in their bed

robin’s a nice boy

but batman’s ill-bred.

batman ta-ta

and robin too-too

coffee is on,

and it’s breakfast for two.

These poems are from HK Gruber’s piece Frankenstein!! (1977), which I heard performed at the San Francisco Symphony last Saturday. Gruber himself sang. You have to imagine the him singing cabaret-style in a very heavy Austrian accent.  The piece provides musical settings for the children’s rhymes by the Austrian poet HC Altmann (1921-2000). Translations by Harriet Watts.

Another long day. I worked all day yesterday at my new job. At 5:30 I went to school and studied until 11, walked home, and went straight to bed. I got up early this morning and worked on my school project until 3 PM. Ran a few errands at school, came home, showered, ironed my chef’s jacket, and went to my catering job (a cocktail party in the “Heights” part of Pacific Heights. A starter mansion.) I made tarts: one with an herby ricotta base with green garlic; one with the same herby ricotta but with baby leeks, and one with green garlic, tiny broccoli, paprika, and dried red pepper. And then three blackberry-walnut tartes (from home-canned blackberry compote), and four frangipane-rhubarb tarts. Nice people. Great food. I had a glass of the 1994 Jarvis cabernet as I washed pots & pans & dishes for an hour. It was perfect.

Time for bed.

I don’t need to remind you what kind of day it is.

Farmers’ market report: beef, eggs, fresh peppermint and spearmint, little mustard greens, prunes, and some pink flowers whose name I have forgotten.

I had a long nap around noon today. And then a nice walk with the Handsomest Man in San Francisco, who is back in town for a few weeks. He’s moving up to the countryside in a few days.

Schoolwork: I only have about ten more days of it, but it’s looming large in my psyche. Still to go: two hard finals and a long report, and then two days at the new job, a catering gig, and an early Mother’s Day fête.

I tried to go to the gym yesterday but left after 10 minutes. I’m still too sick. I stopped at Aardvark Books to find something non-legal to read. For $7.01 I got a book of shorter Henry James stories and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise. It’s a period piece. It’s full of slang and dated cultural references that I can’t quite grasp. And perhaps I’m too old to be charmed by a semi-autographical Bildungsroman. Too many elements of wish-fulfillment. It’s hard from this vantage point to see how it seduced a generation.

I talked to A. earlier this week. He gave me an exercise: try to focus on the positive about yourself instead of constantly highlighting the negative. It’s hard for me to think that way.

A very long day at work. I feel so clueless. Lunch was nice, though. A Thai pumpkin curry. Mmm.

I stayed so late that I didn’t have a chance to go to the gym. I had the dandelion greens for dinner, boiled, drained, and dressed with Meyer lemon and olive oil. A liver restorative.

When am I ever going to study for classes or apply for a real summer job?

El Rio was something of a bust for me. A nice big crowd under the lemon and fig trees. The band was good. My friends finally showed up. I didn’t drink too much. My secret boyfriend #29 was there, and he ignored me pointedly once again, which is fine, because I wouldn’t feel worthy. However, it was unfortunate that I arrived just as a loud giggle of A-gays piled out of a big Mercedes coupe (the one that looks like an overfed Acura), cut ahead of me in line, and generally set a bad tone. Trim and tan and in the same uniform of expensive jeans (known as “investment jeans” in L.A.), Botox’d foreheads, overly whitened teeth, Tintin-haircuts, and probably not a thought in their heads. It used to not be like that there. Don’t they have their own parties to go to? It gave me a good excuse to leave early. Sometimes I wish I could fit in better with the Gays. I think part of my angst was the feeling that I had just lost my refuge. Maybe I just need to find another place to hang out. That door has closed. Another will open. On that trite note: it’s bedtime.