Quality People

I had dinner with an acquaintance of mine last week.  She's a surgical nurse, works long hours but really enjoys what she does.  We were discussing men.  She's married.  Not happily, though.  We spent the better part of dinner discussing her husband and his myriad of faults.  Apparently he snores, farts, ogles other women, leaves a mess in the kitchen and has never put the toilet seat down.  He also, according to her, doesn't respect her.   If she is to be believed, his only redeeming quality is that he pays her bills without questioning anything. That is enough for her to stay married, apparently.  But her editorial comments continue.

"Really," she said.  "Why is it so difficult to find a normal one?"

The answer to that question, of course, is the original reason I started this blog.  I know her husband, and he seems to be an okay guy.  She definitely has different taste in men than I do.  I know this because she once set me up on a doozy of a blind date.   This was before my fifteen-minute rule.

The man was a plastic surgeon.  She worked with him, said he was a great guy.  Ever the cynic, I questioned why a great guy who happened to be a plastic surgeon would need to be set up on a blind date.  She shrugged.  "People are busy.  You know how tough it is to meet quality guys.  He has the same problem meeting women.  You should just meet him.  I think you'll like each other."  She looked at my chest.  "Maybe he'll give you a deal on some implants.  You never know."
For some reason this reminded me of the time I went bra shopping at Victoria's Secret, and was immediately accosted by a helpful salesgirl, who insisted that I was a perfect candidate for their new water bra.  Oh, yeah?  What exactly are you saying here???
Chest comment aside, I could see her point, having had the same problem in meeting quality people, I agreed to a dinner date.  I said as much.  She laughed.  "Honey, " she said.  "He's quality.  You'll thank me."

The doctor and I agreed to meet at a local Thai restaurant.  All I knew about him was that he was taller than me, and had salt and pepper hair.  I was pleasantly surprised.  He wasn't bad looking, and only a few pounds overweight.  The only stretching of the truth was the salt and pepper hair- even though all three remaining strands were salt and pepper.  So it wasn't so far off the mark.  We had dinner, the food was good, but the conversation bored me to tears.  Chemistry, or lack of chemistry, appears pretty fast.   He asked me if I could pick him up the next day, after a little procedure he was having; for my trouble he'd buy me another dinner, he just couldn't drive his little car, and he really needed a ride.  I hesitated, because really at this point, I didn't care if I ever saw him again.   I thought it was a little unusual for him to ask a woman he had just met to pick him up, but I decided that he must really need the ride.  So I agreed.

Later that night, after the uninspiring dinner date was over and I was home, I grabbed my wallet for something and noticed something unusual:  my driver's license was in the wrong place.  As a survival skill against impending old age, I have to put everything back in the same place so I can find it again.  I would never have exchanged my driver's license for my debit card.  I racked my brains for when it could have happened.  I did go to the rest room during dinner, and left my purse on the seat, but surely he wouldn't have gone through my wallet- would he?  I looked through it a little more, and discovered that I was missing $20.  Since I often operate on cash, I usually know to the penny how much money I have with me.  Would a plastic surgeon really swipe a twenty from a me?  And pull out, look at, and mix up my cards?  Seemed improbable.  And- I was already on the hook for the next day.  I chalked it all up to another senior moment.

The next day I showed up at the hospital at the appointed time.

The nurse on duty looked down her nose through her glasses at me.   She had major attitude and she hadn't even opened her mouth yet.   "I see you are the next of kin," she said.  I wanted to give her a pair of tongs to help her pull the stick out of her a$$ but instead I gave her my patented stop-seventh-grade-boys-in-their-tracks-look.  "I barely know the man," I said.  "Are you Allyson Wonders?"  she asked in the clipped, officious tone that petty bureaucrats in charge of nothing often invoke. "Yes," I admitted, "I am, but..."  My voice trailed off.  She shrugged in an annoying manner- really, she was getting on my last nerve- and sniffed, "Well, for whatever reason Dr. Boring put you down as his next of kin.  He's almost finished.  Have a seat over there."   She gestured to a bank of chairs against the wall.

Dismissed, I went and sat down, feeling really strange.  The whole situation was too bizarre.  Next of kin for a man I hardly even knew?  Enough.  When Nurse Officious was busy being condescending to the next patient, I grabbed my bag and left.  I had just gotten back to the car when my cell phone began to ring.  I decided to ignore it- after all, one shouldn't drive and talk on a cell phone.
A couple of months later, I was home having dinner and watching a game when suddenly someone knocked on my kitchen window, which overlooks the driveway.  It was Dr. Boring.  How the hell did he know where I lived, anyway?  The driver's license, maybe?  Too creepy.  I wouldn't let him in, I just talked to him through the window, told him to get lost.  He wanted to know, why didn't I pick him up as promised?   I told him to take a hike.  He continued to harangue me.  Hearing the commotion, one of my neighbors came out- asked me if there was a problem.  I explained that Dr. Boring just wouldn't leave, and my nosy neighbor, who also happens to be a cop in the Tenderloin, flashed his badge and told Dr. Boring to go and never come back, etc.     So- off he went.  I ran into him at Safeway, not too long ago.  It was a little awkward but he didn't do much more than mutter hello and make a little jerk of his head in my direction.

Damn.   There go those implants.  Guess I'll just go get one of those water bras, instead.

.

Koyaanisqatsi

What the hell is going on?

Melky was using.  He's out for the rest of the season, taking with him the hopes of all the Giants fans out there.  Will the rest of the team step up?  I hope so, but the thing that rankles in my mind is the fact that management knew this was coming down the pike back in July.  I'm sure that's one of the reasons that they pursued Hunter Pence so aggressively.  And why, just last week, in an interview, Brian Sabean said they were putting further contract negotiations with Melky on hold.  At the time, I discussed it with my boyfriend.  I couldn't understand why they would hesitate to re-sign one of the National League's leading hitters.   Guess what- the boy's been juicing.  The only good thing I can see out of this whole mess is that Melky owned up to it, admitted he made a mistake.  Consider this:  he told the truth.

Nevertheless- I'm not sure what's going to happen to the rest of the Giants season.  They lost yesterday and the Dodgers won, so the Giants have fallen to second place, with a cloud over them.

I'm really sad about all of this.

Another headline caught my eye this morning:  One of the Nob Hill Twins has Alzheimer's, and is hospitalized.  The remaining twin is in financial hardship, but still goes everyday to visit her sister.
I loved those women, they brightened my day when I would see them in the City.

Everything is going up- gas, food, just plain living.

What do we possibly have to look forward to? 

"Softball," my boyfriend told me helpfully.  "My win/loss record.  The Coneheads in the playoffs.  The A's and the Cards in the World Series."

Well, there you have it.  Go, Coneheads.

It Looks Like a WHAT????

This morning in the pool I was talking with a friend as we kicked alongside each other.
"My boyfriend," I said, "grew a tomato with a penis."  She looked at me incredulously.  "Honestly," she replied.  "Anyone else would see a nose, and you see a penis." 

Maybe.  But I'm serious, here.

My boyfriend is a successful gardener.  He is also a fabulous cook, and he assured me, that from the bounty of his garden, we would feast royally all summer.  We were having a discussion in early Spring about how many tomato plants to buy.  I wanted half a dozen.  He decided on two.  "You have no idea how many tomatoes they will produce," he said.  He also got a bell pepper plant, some basil and oregano.  I was in heaven, already tasting the Caprese in my mind, smelling the simmering Bolongnese sauce.

So, he planted, and fussed, and watered, and weeded, and worried.  I waited, plate in hand.  It took months.  Finally- some tomatoes emerged.  Not nearly the bounty I had been expecting, however.  Just a few.  This bothered him;  why was it the tomatoes weren't growing as they should?  Why did we not have a bushel full?  I'm not going to say which one of us wanted to buy more plants.  I'll just say, it's the same person who would have killed even the two he planted.  Black-thumbed-food-sluts can't be choosers.  That in mind, I am grateful for the ones we got.  However, one of them had a little extra growth that grew along with it.

What you call it is a matter of semantics.

Ultimately, the tomato with a penis came to a bad end.  We ate him.  He was delicious.

Water

A shameful secret has come to light.

I admit it, I have two black thumbs, and my fingers and palms are pretty black as well.  Most of my plants are fakes.  I have two live plants, outside in pots.  One is a Christmas Cactus, the other is a Jade Plant.  They belonged to my mother, and I've had them both for twenty years, and they are still alive.  In fact, when I moved, I transplanted them into bigger pots, and not only did they survive, they thrived!  Considering you have to be a hardy plant to survive my talents, I feel I've done well, with no real effort.  This morning I discovered why they are thriving.

My neighbor waters them regularly.

I caught her in the act.  She is a lovely woman, and she twinkled at me as I thanked her.  "Oh,"
she said.  "Not a problem!  I know you're busy." 

Succulents and Cacti need water.  Who knew?

I crave water, myself- I love to swim, and I love to be out on the water.  Any kind- lake, ocean, pond, river, whatever I can get.

I had a date once who decided that I should learn to sail one of those one-man sailboats.  Off we went to a local lake.  The water was a bit chilly, so we put on wetsuits.

Really, is there anything less flattering than neoprene?  The thicker suits, the kind you wear for scuba, they at least hide everything, but the thinner ones, made for  swimming and surfing and kayaking, just accentuate every single bump, wrinkle and flesh-fold.  You feel like a sausage, squeezed into casing, all your fat squishing out above and below.  Not attractive.  Why is it that men, on the other hand, look okay in their wetsuits?  Another inequity between the sexes.

So, there I was, a blob in a shorty suit, fat squishing out above and below the line of the material on my thighs.  Just great.  (My thighs are one of the banes of my existence, anyway, but encased in neoprene.....  run.   Run for the hills.  Whatever you do, don't look back.)  And this damn boat seemed to have a life of it's own.  I could not make the thing listen to me.  It brought to mind a family vacation to Belize, in which my daughter and I went tubing down a river in the rain forest, got separated from the rest of our party, got stuck on some rocks in a swiftly moving current, and had to be rescued.  Our rescuer was the incredibly handsome guide, and we couldn't even enjoy him helping us because we were so embarrassed that we actually had to be rescued.   AND we ripped open one of the tubes.

My very helpful date, no doubt starstruck by my grace and beauty, kept barking out commands.
"Windward!  You're supposed to turn into the wind!  No!  Upwind!  The other way!"

Ever obedient, and gifted with a stellar sense of direction and knowing right from left,  I turned downwind.  That's Leeward.  I tipped that damn boat completely over.

It was quite cold.

At least I can swim well.  And laugh like no one's business.  My date, he didn't have a very good sense of humor about the whole thing.

That was the last date I ever had with that guy, but really, I know the truth.  It was the neoprene that ruined it all for me.