Small domestic bulletin...

For anyone who has ever been a guest at my house: We now have a light switch in the downstairs bathroom. Oh, yes! A switch on the WALL that turns on a real light fixture over the sink. Plus a new plug, in case you need to dry your hair.

For anyone who hasn't been a guest at my house: You used to have to step into a dark bathroom and grope behind the door for a light fixture on the wall that had a tiny switch at its base. For a long time, this item was affixed to the wall with the help of a wire coathanger cunningly employed by Jerry, who thinks anything can be repaired with duct tape, cardboard, and/or a coathanger.

Two friends have admitted to me, now that they've heard the news, that they used to pee in the dark due to complications re the light fixture.

So, is this a step forward or what?

Cruise?

We're going on a cruise in April, our first. Jerry resisted the idea for about 30 years, but I finally prevailed, largely due to bad traffic in Seattle last summer. A cruise brochure arrived in the mail while we were gone--A Sign!-- full of enticing photos of people lounging with cocktails while somebody else was in charge. We were so fried by navigating freeways, so overheated and disoriented, that the idea of a boat being driven around the Mediterranean by someone who knew where they were going seemed like paradise. Why drive IN Italy, which we'd been thinking of doing, when you could float AROUND it?

So I signed us up. To be on the safe side, I booked a cabin with a veranda and made sure there was room service and a mini-bar in case we wanted to escape the other 1258 people. We're going on a brand-new ship with a "Lalique Grand Staircase." Also, a "Bon Appetit Culinary Center," with hands-on cooking classes, my idea of hell. But no assigned restaurant seating and no formal nights.

Yesterday, I found a website called "Cruise Critic," which is very helpful about ports and shore excursions and exactly what kind of jeans aren't allowed at dinner. It turns out there are "roll calls" for every cruise. You sign up with a chat group for your particular cruise so you can meet people before you meet them. Our cruise has people bonding like mad, arranging shore excursions with perfect strangers, and trying to get a jump-start on the cruise by meeting for drinks in the U.S. ahead of time. I recoiled. Doubt Has Set In.

The ship is coming to San Francisco on February 25-26, and we plan to drive over and gaze at it (can't go on due to security). Will there be any passengers coming and going who look like introverted curmudgeons?

Stay tuned.

Laundered money...

He's done it. Jerry washed his wallet, flang it right into the Maytag, due to it being in the back pocket of a pair of pants. He discovered this pre-dryer. I heard him muttering as he trudged up the back stairs, "so this is what a clean wallet looks like." He seemed bemused.

The wallet, a three-section fold-over number with the imprint of a tiny golfer, mid-swing, on the front, now looks like road-kill, thrashed to hell, and still damp. But all the stuff in it, including his driver's license, health insurance and credit cards, a blank check, and a $10 bill are fine. I would be frantic, can't stand even a Kleenex overlooked in a pocket pre-washer. It's a guy/gal thing.

Happy Valentine's Day to all. I got a dozen pink tulips, Jerry got two dozen homemade cookies, and we exchanged cards. Tonight we eat Mexican lasagne (don't ask) at home. End of Valentine's Day.

Yarn bombing Snooki

Bloggers can see the stats on how many hits they get and from where. My post about Snooki has by far the most hits, from as far away as Slovenia and Greece.

This has led me to think I could dramatically increase my web traffic by including "Snooki" in the title of every post. From there, it's just a matter of figuring out how to work her into the story.

I could yarn bomb Snooki, cover her with a giant tea cozy, including a special compartment for her pouf. I saw a wonderful show of knitted pieces at the Renwick Gallery a couple years ago showing towering figures completely covered in what looked like mega onesies, including a drop-seat compartment for convenience (will not take this further re Snooks, leave it at that).

I could go real estate hunting with Snooki. I know what New Jersey Italian housewives want based on careful study of Carmela's house on The Sopranos: an open floor plan so you can yell at your kids and freeze out your husband. Also, indoor pillars.

I could take her to the endodontist. She could sit in the waiting room and read stories about herself in People magazine while I have a root canal, which she would not find interesting at all, or as she has been known to say about anything that doesn't involve drinking or sex, "it's a waste of time."

And the Queen Mum and Snooki! They are practically one and the same: getting drunk, ignoring their stoutness, loving off-color jokes. The Queen Mum, though, opened a lot of hospitals and wore HER high heels to the East End of London during WWII to comfort people who'd been bombed out of their houses. This wouldn't work for Snooks.

Anyway, you see my thinking. Don't be surprised if you see Snooki in the title line.

The Queen Mum and the Big Red Bus

Just finished a 943-page biography of the Queen Mum, mother of Queen Elizabeth II. My favorite part is on p. 922, her theory of the Big Red Bus. It goes like this, as the QM explained it to a friend:

"Wouldn't it be terrible if you'd spent all your life doing everything you were supposed to do, didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't eat things, took lots of exercise, all the things you don't want to do, and suddenly one day you were run over by a big red bus, and as the wheels were crunching into you you'd say 'Oh, my God, I could have got so drunk last night!' That's the way you should live your life, as if tomorrow you'll be run over by a big red bus."

What I love is "I could have got SO drunk." A hedonist in draped chiffon, high heels, handbag on bent arm held close to her body because she thought it made her look less stout. She adored gin martinis, French champagne, and off-color witticisms from Noel Coward, and she danced well into her nineties. She lived to be almost 102, when the big red bus came to pick her up.

You gotta love the girl.

Follow-ups...

Several people have asked if I really worried about an earthquake while having a root canal. Yes, I did. I've had the same worry while having fillings. I wish a dentist could be stashed in a "secure, undisclosed location," like Cheney, just in case.

Judy Hanlon says someone has knitted a cover for a SmartCar.

I got an infection after my root canal and am now taking giant blue pills every six hours, four times a day. It's getting better.

Suzanne has come up with a price, chosen a realtor, and is going to list her house for sale. Watch this space for a link to the website. House B that we viewed is now in contract to someone. I am envious.

Flying Blind

Root canals have a very bad rep. People are truly pitying when you tell them you have to have one. Yesterday afternoon I had my first. I went to an endodontist (in Greek, "endo" means inside, and "odont" means "tooth"). Something had gone wrong inside one of my teeth.

I will not go into details--I can't because I didn't see what went on and felt very little--but it was a weird experience. I was anxious as I drove to my appointment, telling myself to breathe deeply. When I opened the door to the waiting room, I was deeply reassured: all was new and plush, color-coordinated in deep forest green and burgundy with a blush of red. A suave parabola of granite for the reception counter, a pair of blase receptionists (implication: nothing ever goes wrong). This was the Business Class of endodontists.

My treatment room had a floor-to-ceiling window and a second-floor view of trees and houses. I had fantastically comfortable chair that went flat and much leg room. Then the endodonist appeared, and we got down to the matter of my tooth. He demonstrated that the nerve was dead. I felt a (psychological) pang and signed papers agreeing to the procedure, which was very efficiently carried out, the drilling, x-rays, more drilling, a computer that measured the roots of my tooth, the doctor telling me each step of the way what he was doing. This was a bit like a pilot telling you every button/lever/switch he's manipulating in the cockpit, and really, I preferred not to know. I kept my eyes shut, tended by him and his deft assistant.

It all went smoothly, but pinned down in that chair, mouth clamped open, with a blue plastic "napkin"shielding the rest of my mouth from whatever was going on, I had a certain amount of worry about a) being trapped, and b) the possibility of an earthquake, The Big One, happening just when the deep recesses of my gum were exposed. What would I do with no one to put it all back together? (Jerry thinks I am the only person in the world to worry about an earthquake during a root canal.)

The trust we put in these people! The first thing I said after they removed the clamp and the blue plastic napkin was "How long does it take to learn how to do one of those?" The doctor said, "Three years beyond dental school." I asked what would happen if I hadn't had the root canal done, and he said eventually the nearby bone would deteriorate and the tooth would fall out. I thought of a quilting book I have about pioneers who were quilters, women who all seemed to have caved-in mouths.

So it's done. Wasn't I brave?