Things I Have Done

In addition to healing from surgery, which is going well but is tedious:

I made a cute arrangement from random yard flowers. I love this tiny cast iron pot. If I was only going to keep one item of my mom's, I'd say it would be this, because it has elephant handles, and because flower arranging used to be her jam.

I had to get two dresses altered last week and while I visited the dry cleaner / tailoring shop I sampled the wares of various other stores in the little mall.

The other morning I heard some tap-tapping outside the bedroom. Boy kitten came running, and I had to look over the fake deer statues in the back yard to see a young deer eating my geranium (James Thurber moment). Then he heard the sound of my phone and pranced away.

I bought about 75 too many hand screen-printed circus posters at an auction. I can't wait to put them everywhere.

I finally found the perfect art for the lady bathroom.

And yesterday I made mackerel mousse, and it was delicious.

And I had an un-stressful visit with my mom yesterday. She said "Make it better." and "Take me home with you." and I told her that we could do that if she could practice using stairs. Then she fell asleep and I watched Property Brothers, alone. Her breathing was lousy so we summoned the nurse. No Covid, good blood oxygen, no temperature. 

That was *my* day, but prior to that she'd been arguing with my dead dad all night. The caregiver was a good sport about it, and when my mom was telling her to intervene with my dad, the caregiver pointed to my imaginary dead dad and said "Don't tell me! Tell him!" And after I left she threw juice, bit caregivers, bit herself, and needed an Ativan.

The Rainbow Connection

Cross-posting

There’s an a capella group at the company where I work. Back then I was an active member. That’s already a blessing and I guess that’s like telling you that Rosebud’s the sled, but whatever. I had taken a sick day. Several, actually, in order to have some Mohs surgery on my face. It was more extensive than I had realized. In putting me back together the surgeon took one of my frown lines and cut it into little quilt pieces to cover the hole near my eye where the bad parts, now vanquished, had set up shop over the years. I would forever look frownier, but be less cancer-y. My face inflated painfully over the hours that this procedure took, and I’m as sure that someone said something to me about my return appointment as I am that the roar in my ear and residual tinnitus from years of rock music drowned it out. I did hear that they could not give me Tylenol. I’d have to white knuckle it on the long ride home.

Later that day, on the sofa with an ice pack over half of my face and a laptop in my lap, I read that the founder of our company had died. It was not unexpected, and in preparation I’d put together a collection of photos for just this occasion. I phoned a colleague to let her know where she could find the CD in my office. I felt both the loss of this founder, and the loss of sharing the loss with my colleagues.

The next day an email came in from the leader of the a capella group asking if there was interest in singing at a gathering. He’d restructured a song that the founder had liked, that the group had sung for him years earlier. Over the weekend we could rehearse on our own. We rehearsed it twice as a group before the gathering, knowing that if it was awful we could just bail, but it sounded so beautiful and heartfelt. It was good to be with my people in that moment. I had spent the previous three days on the sofa with more ice packs and my face resembled, in the eloquent words of my husband, “as if Albert Einstein had gone through the windshield of a car” (although I felt Edward G. Robinson was more apt). My face was shocking to see, but nobody in our group gawked or joked or made much mention. They could tell that my presence was an act of devotion. I stood in the back, face bandaged.

We rose to the moment. The late Autumn sun streamed into the room where the company stood when we sang. In a perfect world, the final notes would ring out and people would quietly disperse. And that’s what happened. I went back to bed feeling better than when I left.

Sumo + Sushi, November 2022

I heard that an event called Sumo + Sushi was happening in our town. It's a night of demonstration sumo and they feed you sushi. I really wanted to go, but we were going to be out of town on the day it was happening. I mentioned it to my sumo buddy, thinking that she would want to go without me. And I joked that if she wanted to go with me we could go the following week but would have to fly to another city. Amazingly enough, she took me up on it. We bought seriously expensive seats and made plans. Found a budget hotel room nearby, and we were in business. 

Mrguy took us to the airport. We were pampered little princesses. I learned that like me our friend likes to get places early. She brings food with her wherever she goes. Major props for taking hard boiled eggs on an airplane. Not sure why I never did this myself. And she had things she wanted to do while we were there.

We took a Lyft to Grad Central and ate delicious things. 

We split a smoked sturgeon and cream cheese  everything bagel. Someone was super excited to see oysters.

Then we walked back to the hotel through the old theater district. I admit to being apprehensive about walking, because it was getting late in the afternoon and unhoused folks were settling in for the night. Plus there were lots of vape stores everywhere. So much pot. None of this is in my comfort zone now that I am older and can't outrun people. Anyhoo the architecture was fantastic, there was so much to see and I would walk this path again gladly in the future. I even found a friend's band on a marquee.

We changed our outfits for the event, and went over to the venue. Look at how close our hotel was to the club!!

We made friendly conversation with the people in front of us who had fancy tickets. That allowed them (and us) to enter at 4:30 for the 5:30 event. We presented our tickets, followed the friends ahead of us, and then after those folks got to their seats they took us to our seats WHICH WERE ON THE STAGE. They said "This is Konishiki's chair. Do you want to sit next to him?". omg. Now my buddy knows that he is a big deal, but he's not from her era of sumo so she was completely chill and sat in the chair next to him. It was perfect.

Our friends from the queue mouthed up to us "How did you end up there?" and really I don't know. We paid dearly for the tickets, is all I can say. I had no idea that we'd luck out to this extent. We kept looking at each other and laughing out loud at the situation. Somehow we were on a stage in a club in LA watching a sumo exhibition together, sitting next to Konishiki, with a DJ playing great music, and we were being projected on...it was sick.

Konishiki was a doll. Could not have been nicer. I asked him if the selection of late 70s soul music they were playing was his playlist, cause he (and I) were singing along to all of it. He's younger than I am, but I believe he has ten older siblings, so I can see how this music would be in his personal memory banks. He told us that the DJ who was working with him is a guy who is famous in Japan for having introduced Japan to hip hop. So cool! Also cool was my buddy, who would lean over and ask "Was that an uwatenage?" and he'd pick up his microphone and add that detail. We had the best time.

After the show we got a photo op with the wrestlers but not Konishiki. Good thing we took selfies during the show. And then we walked over to a night market which was really interesting but the vendors seemed to specialize in goat dishes. We ended up eating a late dinner in the hotel restaurant.

The next morning we woke up early to watch World Cup soccer. 

Back to the airport, where I bought the most LA snacks ever seen.

Shortly after returning home, I took to my bed and my baby cat comforted me in between my dozens of trips to the bathroom over the next few days. Was it the lukewarm and awful sushi at sumo and sushi? White lady snacks? Hotel food? I have no idea but that final coda made the experience EXTRA memorable.

This ends my catch-up posts from 2022. I'll be in real time unless I notify you otherwise.

Surgery Time

Mrguy's ladies have hammajang faces. 

Our faces are all buss.

Tuesday was a big day over here. Mrguy took our girl kitty to the eye doctor to have her eye removed. This was after half a year of trying to get that eye to perk up, including several 2-hour round trips to the eye specialist a month (each one of them including a stop by the side of the road to clean up her stress poo). He's been giving her eye drops 4x a day for months -- every option was tried. Then the eye gave up. Tuesday the eye was removed and she seems really happy. Kittenish, even.

Me? Not so much. While those guys were on their enucleation journey, I was on my way to have another basal cell removed. In the middle of my upper lip. My usual Mohs surgeon did the removal, and I really liked the anaesthetic. First they did a topical lidocaine around the area, then they did one shot that was less stingy than the usual lidocaine. Then they followed with lidocaine into the area which was now pretty numb. So that's the deal now? Much less painful than any other time I've had a shot in my lip.

They put a pressure bandage on me, and I came back two days later for the plastic surgeon to sew me up. They laid me down on the table and scrubbed the area and before I knew it the nurse was harpooning me like a whale. OLD SCHOOL. She just shoved that needle into the meat of my lip without so much as a howdy-do and let fly with the lidocaine which, as I mentioned, stings like a bitch. I think she even went through my lip at one point, as the anaesthetic was sprinking all over my face. Do I remember yelling "Fuck Meeeeee!!"? I mean I pride myself on handling injections pretty well, but I was out of control with pain.

It was at this point that I realized that my new phone had not slurped up any of the recordings that I have made myself or gotten from others. Things that I own but have dubbed (or mrguy has, tbr). I went back to my audiobook, but it's the part where Prince Harry is talking about meeting his wife, and not really good for surgery. I settled on Trevor Noah's audiobook. Not great for surgery, either. So I was listening to him describing how he and a friend made bootleg CDs for clientele in the ghetto -- not really restful.

I finally gave up on distraction when the nurse (call her Ishmael) started talking about her new niece and she and the surgeon were puzzling over the name, Freya. Neither was familiar with the name.

"It's the name of a Norse god," I lisped, from under my drape.

The ride home was long and painful and necessitated a stop at the gas station (but they have good prices out there!). Surgery #1 was only painful for a few hours. Surgery #2 had me weeping and begging for a gin and tonic, because Tylenol was really not cutting into it. I was decidedly less kittenish than the girl cat when I woke up today. I'm getting a good demonstration of how the lymphatic system works, which is interesting, and I guess the lip drains through the cheeks. My one cheek is outrageously fat. And now it's sore, too. However, after I took a bath I swear that my facial swelling diminished by 1/3. This is the after.

This weekend I will rest, and Monday I will go back to work. Sunday is Superb Owl. Maybe I'll watch that episode of What We Do In The Shadows where Nandor and Laszlo go next door and do Superb Owl with Sean, just for fun.

Hawaii 2022 Day 7

Our last day of vacation was super. We went swimming at Sea Bear Beach, then went to breakfast next door at Hau Tree. 

The benedict was fantastic and it was super chill (until babies arrived).

They have these really cool concrete benches out front that remind me of how we used to make lacy homemade candles using melted candle wax, crushed ice, a wick and a milk carton as the form.

I have no recollection of what we did for the rest of the day but our big finish was dinner with our friend. Her loco moco was vast (notebook for size comparison). Behind her were crates of super smelly pineapples that were dizzyingly fragrant. Hoo! 

We walked back to our hotel, past the Honolulu Aquarium. She asked us if it was any good, and mentioned that the last time she went to the aquarium she spent most of her time rating the fish for tastiness. "Ooh! You're ono. I use the purple ones as bait..." She and her dad do a lot of fishing together. Somehow he, raised in Hawaii, is a die-hard Cowboys fan, as is she. And that is everything I know about my friend's dad. 

Better luck next year, Pops!

And so ends Hawaii 2022! Sorry it took so long, but we came home, did Thanksgiving, Mom fell, went out of town to see sumo, Christmas, depression, now. It's past Groundhog Day and I still haven't taken down the Covid tree.

Hawaii 2022 Day 6

Monday is a great day for misanthropes visiting Hawaii. Fewer people (i.e. children) at the beach. Fewer people on the road. We headed out to Hungry Ear records, stopping first for lunch at Highway Inn. We put our name on the list and sat outside, as the signs instruct you to do. It was a beautiful day. Or I at least think it was. When our table was ready, the nice man who seated us thanked us profusely for following instructions. 

One of the many great things about Highway Inn is that poi is on the menu every day, just there for you whenever you want it. So I had an ahi salad and poi. Fantastic lunch, and we didn't feel out of place. 

At Hungry Ear, mrguy and I retreated to our corners. He is more omnivorous in his musical appreciation and taste. Me? I go straight for local music and International music. This is vinyl, by the way. I sometimes traffic in the odd cassette tape, but not often.

Record shopping in Hawaii has changed so much since we first started visiting in 2006. Usedtawas that there were a number of stores. Jelly's had several locations, and they had lots of used books, to boot. There were records to be found at the thrift stores. And Hungry Ear was in Kailua. The record stores had listening stations! But that was before we all had smartphones and could look up music on youtube and see if we like it before buying. These days I find that impolite and I just buy stuff. I will use my phone to remind myself of the name of the arranger that I like, because I will buy anything he has worked on (that's Benny Sax, by the way).

Anyhoo, this was a very special day, because I looked through every record, starting with the As, and when I got to the Ps, I found my holy grail: Pacific Musicale, by The Coconuts.

In 1993, when we visited New Zealand, we went on holiday with our friends who lived in Auckland. Somehow we managed to have two flat tires before even leaving town, which gave me hours in which to review in detail the contents of a gas station mini mart. I learned that corned lambs tongues in a can were a thing that you could at least find in two city gas stations. Anyhoo, our amazing friends took us to the Coromandel, and specifically to Thames, where two amazing things happened:

1) Mrguy bought his first pair of shorts. We went to New Zealand at the end of their summer and *someone* staunchly refused to buy short pants. Levis 505s and Converse or Docs it was. Until we got to Thames and it was sweltering and he bought some shorts. 

2) Our friends bought Pacific Musicale at a thrift store. When we got home a few days later they put it on the stereo and we were all amazed. That was really a catch. Mrguy made a cassette of it while we were there, and decades later made me a set of digital tracks of it. Still, we always wished we could find our own copy and maybe learn more about the artists. All we knew, years later, was that they were from the Cook Islands. Recently, before we went to Hawaii this time, I had found a copy of the record listed on Discogs, but it wasn't for sale. Years before that, I remember asking which of our friends got the Coconuts record in the record tribunal at the end of their relationship. It went to the man, and on one of his visits here, when I asked if he still had it and could he please take a photo of the cover he said that the record sleeved had turned to mush when his basement flooded.

So we're at Hungry Ear and I find it. I am gobsmacked. I put it behind my back. I walked over to mrguy and asked for his attention. 

Me: I found it.

Him: You FOUND it? You mean you found the single of Alan Akaka singing "At the Coco Palms"?

Me: No. I found IT.

Him: You found IT? The Coconuts record?

So happy. There was information aplenty on the record sleeve. The rhythm of the drumming is so unusual and sometimes unfollowable, but fantastic. We figured they were all drinking kava while playing. Maybe, maybe not, but I howled when I found out that these folks are of Norwegian (and Cook Island) descent. Jonassen is the name. Their ancestor was a Norwegian sailor (natch) who was shipwrecked off Tahiti and then made his way to the Cook Islands.

Our copy of the record is really clean, and it feels really great to find something that you have literally looked for assiduously for 30 years. Whoa.