Call Me at 4, Please! No Trip to Norway Necessary

On Friday, my friend Barbara, just back from a trip to Scandinavia, sent an e-mail suggesting we get together around 4 pm for wine or coffee so she could tell me about her trip.

A destination at 4 pm!

I was so eager to get out of the house, I could have listened to her describe the lettuce her crisper.

Yes, yes, I wrote back.  Where?

She suggested a place a short drive from our houses. She brought her iPad and showed me pictures from her trip, and I told her about goings-on at the Berkeley Food Pantry, where we both volunteer.  I was home by 5:30.

Out in the world talking about the world!  I felt practically cosmopolitan.

I don't know if this is the Plague of Retirees or what, but if I've been home all day, I start to get depressed at 4 pm.  I'm here alone, the day's winding down, and I have a tendency to look back on the day and decide that I haven't done all that much, and then I extrapolate to Life, and how much have I done,  the hour is late, and blah, blah, blah.  Not good.

But meeting up with a pal for one-on-one time, even if it's just an hour, is a sure antidote.

So, if you're at loose ends around 4 pm on a weekday,  give me a call.  I may be out getting an allergy shot, or a glaucoma check--medical-maintenance stuff that's the other plague of retirees--but we could go the next day or the day after that.  Your choice where we meet.  Recent travel not required.

* * * * *

Some highlights from Barbara's trip--and keep in mind that she's very much a roll-with-the-punches, it's- all-an-adventure optimist.

She and her husband left Amsterdam on a cruise ship with 1600 people, 900 of whom were Dutch.  It turns out the Dutch like to smoke, and they were disinclined to stick to the smoking areas of the ship.  Also, if they discovered that you didn't speak Dutch, they turned away, done.

Barbara saw this as culturally interesting and funny, although she didn't like the smoke, but I thought how maddening it would be and  how I'd get cranky and might  be compelled to pitch my shoes across the room by the last day.  (In our cabin of course; nothing publicly violent.)

Norway has "one of the most undulatory coastlines in the world, measuring an astonishing 63,000 miles long," per the New York Times.  "By comparison, the entire coast of the United States is 95,471..."

They cruised three fjords, sometimes five hours one-way up a fjord, and found it to be as beautiful as we've heard.  Gorgeous.  Then the ship would stop, and Barbara and her husband would hike in the hills about whatever town.  They could see the ship below and use that as a landmark, so they could just wander.

The village of Reine, in the Lofoten Islands (New York Times photo)

They flew on Norwegian Air, a budget airline now flying out of Oakland Airport.  There were a few peculiarities:  passengers had to order their meal when they bought the tickets or they had to pay for the food onboard.  Not even water was complimentary.  You used the touchscreen on the back of the seat in front of you to order food and drinks, and then the flight attendants, all of whom were Thai, brought whatever you ordered.  For a price.

Did anyone see the article on Norway in Sunday's New York Times travel section?  Informative and well-written, I thought.  The author thought reindeer meat was delicious, but even Barbara declined to try it; ditto, creamed herring at breakfast (or any time).  But she put up with a baby in the seat in front of her for 10-1/2 hours and was sympathetic with the parents, more than I could have done.

Old Bags and Their Bags

My sister came today to talk about the bathroom remodel, and we got seriously sidetracked by troubleshooting the problem she's having with her handbag.

She carries the heaviest handbag on the planet.  It's a classic old Coach bag of the feedbag style, a giant bucket that she throws everything she owns into, plus an iPad.  It used to be black, but now it looks brown.  It's in the foreground of this picture:

This bag is heavy with nothing in it; full, it's giving her a backache.  Plus, she's sixty, as she reminded me.

I told her my new handbag strategy:  really small cross-body bags, no swallet, no make-up bag, just keys, lipstick, a handful of cards and a little cash.  Oh, and a angel medallion a friend gave me that I'm afraid to go without.

It's seen me through many plane rides

For the past month, I've used only tiny bags, and my rotator-cuff problem is GONE.  I can do up my bra with no pain.  I'm back to doing full arm strokes in the pool.  The secret seems to be a very small cross-body bag with almost nothing in it.  Any bigger and with more stuff, and my opposite shoulder hurts.

Here's the one I'm using the most:

 A mere 6" x 7-1/2"

It's a Marc Jacobs bag (I know, I know) that I bought a few years ago when I was grief-stricken after lunch with my friend Rob, who was dying.  The salesgirl told me my "fashionista friends" would love it.  I wondered what in hell I'd do with it because it held nothing.  I bought it, but I hardly ever used it, and every time I looked at it, I thought of Rob and then felt reproached by my extravagance.  Now it's come in handy.

Sometimes I switch to other small bags, which is easy to do, because there's almost nothing to move.

Here's a dress-up bag I bought on sale at Macy's a few weeks ago.  It's nylon and very lightweight.  Also, it was on an unbelievable reduction:  I gave $5 to the March of Dimes, and they let me have the purse for 50 cents or something.  (Not quite, but almost).

5" x 10"

The last bag, slightly bigger but very lightweight, is canvas with a bit of leather.  I bought this because my English friend Val told me about Cath Kidson bags, which are sold in England.  She showed me one she'd ordered, and right away my English genes screamed, "You have to get one!"  I went online and bought it (all the way from England for only $8 shipping).

 8" x 10"

My sister can't cope with such tiny bags, so we brainstormed, and I remembered that I had a larger black nylon bag that's seen better days.  I rummaged around in my closet and showed her.  Her iPad fit in it.  She relieved her wallet of change so it'd be lighter, and it fit, too.  Plus keys, cell phone, the bare essentials. The whole package was significantly lighter than the Big Crippler.

Here it is, next to her big bucket bag:

That settled, we got back to choosing light fixtures.

Have you given up on regular-sized leather handbags?  What's your solution? My next one might be to carry my cards/cash in a Ziploc bag and just stuff it in my pocket.

Bathroom Destruction: The Visual

Reigning over the front yard

This was the view of the garden yesterday afternoon.  The toilet was one of the first things to go (it will be installed later in its new location, where you can't see it from the hall.  Can't emphasize that enough).

When he arrived, the contractor gazed around the bathroom and said, "You don't want anything in here, right?"

"Just the bathtub and the toilet," I said.

"Right."

The shower door came off right away:

Archaic, right?  Frosted, c. 1965

 The mailman skirted the stuff and delivered the mail.

This is how the bathroom looked at the beginning of the day:

The toilet to be moved to where the lower cabinet is, behind a pony wall (outlined on the floor in blue tape).

All that tile to be jackhammered out

And by the end of the day:

The bathtub encased in "protection,"

The rut alongside the bathtub--tile drilled out. 

The shower is now an equipment closet

Not much happening on the storage side of the bathroom

The hall floor protected...

...and down the stairs

The audio:  It sounds as though someone's wrestling with the house. Crashes and loud thumps.   I keep expecting Geoff, the contractor, to appear and tell me that something's been destroyed, but that's what he's supposed to be doing.

By the way--when you remove a toilet, there's the problem of the hole in the floor, from which wafts the smell of:--olives.  Not sewage.   It's bearable.

And so construction begins...

The contractor for the bathroom remodel arrived at 7:30 this morning, and I was up, dressed, and WEARING MAKE-UP.  (I have no idea why--to mark the day?  No one noticed but me, I'm sure.  I  did look slightly less haggish.  I think.).


Jerry had his dead-with-resignation-what-fresh-hell look on his face.  I managed to get him out of his study to move some heavy pots away from the front door, but he retreated as fast as he could.  As for me, I'm sort of enjoying the novelty of it--on Day One, not that hard.


I did have to abandon my studio due to noise and commotion and all kinds of furniture crammed in there.  (But by December--new drawers for fabric carved out of bathroom space!).


Tomorrow:  Before and so-far pictures.

* * * * *

Yesterday I was distracted all day by what Jerry found out on the phone when he called for results of his recent cardiac stress test.  The receptionist relayed the information that the doctor wants him to undergo cardiac catheterization. 

Why?  She didn't know.

And the doctor's on vacation for two weeks.

I immediately went into Nightmare Scenario: more bypass surgery?  Or something even scarier? (What?)
Another doctor called back with slightly more info.  Nothing new on the test, but the first doc has training in a technique to remove plaque from arteries and thinks Jerry's a candidate.  Think cardiac Roto-rooter.

We're dubious.  I'm mentally lining up second (Stanford) and third (UCSF) opinions.  It's going to be a hard sell.  The guy walked 18 holes of golf carrying his bag on Monday.  He's asymptomatic.

Anyway, relief. 

* * * * *

More tomorrow when I can find my camera.



But Can You Play the Saxophone and Pee at the Same Time?

Claudia M.'s nephew, Rylan, a/k/a Mr. Adorable, visited last weekend.

Here's what I learned:

1.  Current top joke among four-year-old boys:

Him:  Guess what?
Me (unsuspecting):  What?
Him:  Chicken butt!

Over and over and over again.

(Is it only little boys who are obsessed with butts and poop?  I taught him to spell "tedious," which I don't think he understood, but that quickly became part of the game.)

Not as angelic as he looks (well, some of the time)

2.  If you're a four-year-old boy and you have to pee, do not bother looking for a bathroom--way too much trouble.  Go over by a bush, as directed by your auntie, drop your pants, and pee.  If someone walks by while you're doing this, wave.

3.  If you can get away with it, restrict your diet to orange soda pop, canned peaches, and mint Oreos, lots of  'em.

4.  You need a saxophone.

If you can, play it upside down:



Now That Roosevelt's Dead, What Do You Do After Dinner?

Berkeley, 2014

Three months ago, I realized that every night after dinner,we sat on our bums, fired up the TV, and watched whatever we could find on Roku or PBS.

Every night.  This meant that 3-4 hours a day were about sitting, semi-vegged, doing not much, watching the tube.  It bugged me.

"What did people do before TV?" I said to Jerry.

He shrugged.  He was actually alive at that time, in elementary school.  Why couldn't he remember?


"Listen to Roosevelt on the radio?" he suggested. 

Yes, but they were doing things with their hands.  Knitting, building ship models, whatever.  So, I decided we'd devote and hour or so to "projects" every night after dinner.  We cleared off the dining table, made numerous trips upstairs to find paper, pencils, scissors, glue sticks, blah, blah, and set up shop.

A mess for two:  Notebooks and cards for Jerry, trip journals for me

Gathering up what we needed was so much trouble that we weren't going to put it all away each night, which meant we had to find another place to eat dinner.  What to do?  Eventually,  I set up a small table in the nice-but-useless nook we have off the dining room, and we eat there now.  It's sort of romantic. 

Dinner for two

We commenced.  We've been doing the kinds of things we thought we'd never get around to doing:  labeling trip photos, sticking random photos in albums, etc.  Last week I did some review and updating of trip journals/scrapbooks I've put together since we began traveling a lot in 2006, and glued my trip blogs into their respective journals. At that point, I moved into the living room and did a lot of cutting:

A blizzard

As I went through my trip journals, I was amazed at how many leaves I found.  We don't always travel in the fall, but you wouldn't know it:

New York City, 2008

Middle Temple Courtyard, London, 2009

Memphis, 2008

 Switzerland, 2013

Rome, 2011

Boston, 2009

Corfu, 2011

 England, 2011

Spokane, 2012

Castle Howard, England, 2011

 Paris, 2008

England, 2009

Chicago, 2012

Kew Gardens, England, 2008

Hyde Park, New York, 2007

Washington, DC, 2006

 England, 2009

 And one of my favorites:

New England, 2007--amazingly well-preserved!

I never set out to collect leaves and didn't look for them in key places.  One would catch my eye, and I'd carry it around and paste it in my journal.  Here's one that didn't work out so well:

Rome, 2013

 * * * * *

This week Jerry had a cardiac stress test, which he has every year.  I went with him, and it was a long haul, because they gave him shots of something-or-other so they could track the blood flow through his heart before and after exercise.  But he did really well, working up to a run on the treadmill.  Just watching him made me tired:

He was running uphill at the end.

 He gets the results next week.  In the meantime, no more shirking hills on walks, I told him.