birthday

It seems like everybody is having birthdays this month, the most significant amongst them being my sister and Flamingo. Cameron's birthday is past, but Masako's is today, and she'll be ___ years old.

Should it worry me that I don't know how old my sister is? In my own defense, she doesn't know either. For that matter, she's rather dubious of the date that's listed on my driver's certificate. "Did you lie?" she asked me once, suspiciously. I rely on the Guy and Tara to give me accurate assessments about my tally in years. The Guy goes one step further and provides me with what I can only guess are reasonable numbers for my sister's age as well.

My sister and I once utterly infuriated some friends she'd made in a summer camp in Indiana. I was in Aspen at the time, enrolled in the very expensive (and musically useless) high school summer camp attached to the yearly Aspen Music Festival.

She called me, a pre-scheduled connection that took place on pay phones in our respective dormitories. Before we'd left home, my mother was very earnest about pressing phone cards into our hands, completely oblivious to the temptation for abuse that it would present to normal, proto-typical American teenagers. Since neither of us were normal or proto-typical, -- me with my paranoid fear of all handsets, my sister with her not-unreasonable conviction that the government might be listening -- we managed to resist the urge to exploit her financial generosity.

Most summers we spent travelling, because of my parents' work. They were -- my mother still is -- violin teachers, and they would get invited to teach at workshops all over the US, Canada, and Japan. Once in a while, I would spend my summers somewhere else, in a music festival where I wouldn't be an irritating faculty daughter.

Anyway, Masako and I hooked up on the phone and chatted for a while. Nothing exciting, because I was a teenager, and she was just barely one herself, so there wasn't all that much conversation to be held. We were both too cool to be excited about talking to a mere sister. The interesting point of this story took place after we had most of our main conversation.

"Here," she told me. "My friend wants to talk to you."

She passed the telephone over to some boy she had made friends with in Indiana. I don't remember his name. In fact, the only reason he's important is because he's part of the story and there's a point to all this.

So, anyway, he got on the phone.

"Hi," he said. No introductions. "Is this Masako's sister?"

"Yes," said I.

"How old is she?"

There was a moment of blank silence. Out of all personal questions that a body can be asked, "How old is so-and-so" is the top on our family's all-time least favorite questions, in any permutation. "How old is so-and-so" is equal, in our minds, to "how old are you?" Both questions are unanswerable, because we honestly never know. What's even worse is that they inevitably lead to the follow-up, which is usually, "What do you mean, you don't know? When was so-and-so born? How can you not know?"

"I don't know," I said.

There was a momentary pause. Then he started yelling at me. "What do you mean, you don't know? When was she born? How can you not know?"

"Sometime in September," I said, vaguely. "Or maybe February. Or August. One of those three."

"What kind of a sister are you?" he demanded.

My feelings were hurt. "I don't see why I should know her age if she doesn't know mine," I sulked. "No, I think her birthday really is in February. I'm almost positive."

"Masako!" he called. "How old's your sister?"

And I heard her answer distinctly: "I don't know."

"You're kidding, right? I mean, this is a joke, right? How old is she?"

At that point, my sister attempted to regain control over the telephone; I heard her remonstrating with her friend, then some thumping, and then I was speaking to my sister again.

He was yelling in the background.

"I think your friend is upset," I said, perceptive as ever.

"Weird," she sighed. "He's all mad at us now. He says you're a terrible sister."

"For not knowing how old you are?" I asked, incredulous.

"Men."

***

Okay, so maybe there wasn't a point to the story. However, it was a sister story, and it was about age, and that's really all there is to it.

Happy birthday, Masako!

old friends

NPR makes me feel smart. I might have mentioned this before, back when I first got unemployed; listening to NPR makes me feel like I'm in touch with what's going on in the world. It makes me think deep thoughts while I'm in the car, thoughts that would otherwise be completely wasted on: "Oooh, birdie", (and before you raise your voices to defend my keen intellect from such obviously unfair criticism, let me assure you that "Oooh, birdie," and "Shiny thing!" are in fact the top two thoughts I tend to have in any given moment). Not only does NPR make me feel like I'm smart, it also gives me smart things to parrot back to people during social situations. It's particularly satisfying to impress complete strangers with the sort of hard-core, political analysis that NPR tends to offer when all the conversation you might have had to date has led them to the conviction that you're quite possibly a bit of a goober.

Him: "So, what exactly do you do for a living?"

Me: "You know, it's quite possible that the removal of FCC regulations against any broadcaster reaching more than 35% of the population at any given moment could lead to massive media consolidations of the type that will, in the end, eliminate the diversity that has protected the consumer until now and create monopolistic hand-in-glove blind spots insofar as news is concerned."

Her: "Um, right."

Him: "Huh?"

Me: "Were you aware that, for all the vaunted diversity of the web and its alleged immunity to such monopolistic tendencies, that thirty percent of all internet activity took place under and within the umbrella of AOL-Time Warner last year?"

Her: "Let's go, Bob."

Unlike PBS, NPR has yet to do anything to tick me off. Let it never be said that a Japanese person couldn't hold a grudge. I have a racial stereotype to live up to. I would be perfectly willing to give NPR my money, if I had any to spare at the moment. I encourage all of you to do the same.

In fact, I demand all of you to do the same. Send NPR your money. I'm sick of funding drives. There're only so many times that an unemployed person can listen to pleas for funding before said person -- if said person isn't made of stone, and this person is definitely made of some sort of gelatinous substance -- caves in. If there are those out there who don't want me to end up completely penniless and without Internet access, the best way to prevent that is to eliminate all NPR funding drives forever by giving them all the money you own.

Okay. Wait. This isn't the direction I was going to go when I first started writing.

Back up a bit.

In fact, back up a whole bit. Because, crud, I don't remember where I was going to go with this whole thing.

Start over.

***

This whole past week has been a sort of "oh, hi" sort of week.

"Oh, hi" basically means that I've been coming across (or meeting up with) friends that I haven't talked to in several months. The sad thing is that liking or disliking has nothing to do with my not having any contact with these people in months; it has more to do with my incredible social inadequacies, my pathetic inability to remember exactly what day or month it is, and a chronic fear of the telephone that hasn't been alleviated by my acquisition of a cellular telephone several months ago.

I delivered a belated Christmas present to Cathy's place, -- my personal Dragon Lady; everybody needs at least one -- who I haven't seen in well over six months; I then went on to have dinner with the Eye, who told me that Cathy was currently away on college auditions with her son, Whitney. "College?" I said, blankly. "Whitney?"

Then on Saturday, my old manager got married, and at the wedding, I ran across Michelle and Greg. We clung to each other, strangers in a strange land as we were; I knew only a few people there, and those only by distant encounters. I was entertained to discover that Michelle is one of those rare and endearing people who cry at weddings. Every time a glimmer of bridal white moved into view, I'd discover tears in Michelle's eyes.

"We have to do sushi again," she told me, sternly.

Well, yes, we do.

I'm a bad friend, not least because I'll allow ridiculously long periods of time to go by before it occurs to me that I haven't seen a person in a while. "How weird," I'll think, and then try to look them up, only to be told when I finally make contact that so-and-so heard through the grapevine that I'd died two years ago in a car accident and gosh, how are you? This is obviously not the material from which close friends are made.

On the other hand, this is the sort of material from which eccentric aunts and godmothers are made. I have therefore decided that I will create a new career for myself serving as story fodder for families with young children. Henceforth, when I encounter a family with children still young enough to believe pretty much anything you tell them, I will lie creatively and excitingly, without any recourse to truth whatsoever beyond the inarguable facts of gender. All else: name, age, career, history, scars, invisible tattoos, will be up to the whim of the storyteller. Every child should have a fascinating, slightly unbelievable character who shows up now and again during one's youth. This is something that I can excel in. I will be that person.

Back in the old days, my career goal included being that little woman who gets interviewed on news shows saying, "Gosh, he always seemed like such a nice young man. Who would have known?"

All in all, don't you think my new goal is a little better?

funding

So, a long time back -- back when I was in college, in fact -- a group of us undergraduate (or maybe even graduate; I can't remember) music students were sitting around in the television lounge waiting for it to be eight o'clock so that the weekend movies would start. Every Saturday, the Resident Advisor who was on-call for the day would go out and get two movies, which they would show downstairs for anybody who wanted to watch.

Oh, side story here. I was a Resident Advisor for a couple of years, and showing movies was one of my favorite parts of the Resident Advisor responsibility list. Being cheap myself, I took full advantage of the money they allocated to us for movies and went out on Saturday mornings to get whatever big-budget blockbusters happened to come out on video that weekend. When Independence Day came out, I walked the two miles to Blockbuster and waited there for four or five hours until a copy came in; as a result, the movie nights that I put on usually ended up as standing room capacity, with people jammed into every available inch of space.

The taste of each Resident Advisor was pretty indicative of the audience that would show up for the movie nights. Binky, as I recall, was very much into alternative films, international films, and thought-provoking films that did well in independent theaters. Julie, another Resident Advisor friend of mine, was very much into period pieces and romances.

My movie nights were the most popular. And I'm not just saying that.

One day while I was standing behind the front desk making up a sign, a student came around the corner to ask the front desk worker what the movies were going to be for that evening.

The front desk worker didn't know.

"Well then, who's on-call?" the student wanted to know.

The front desk worker leaned back to quiz me with an eyebrow. I acknowledged my responsibility by flashing him with the pager.

"Yuhri," the desk worker told the student, who promptly yelled, "Score!" and dashed off to tell his assembled buddies.

Anyway, we were waiting for eight o'clock to roll around so that I could start the movie. I was idly chatting with some of many students who had already gathered; the television was on, but turned to PBS:  that's Public Broadcasting Station for those non-Americans out there, government-run cultural television, the US version of the BBC.

PBS, which doesn't normally do commercials, was promoting a forthcoming program that they were planning on airing later on in the week. "Yanni, at the Acropolis." Yanni himself, curly-haired, mustached, robed in flowing white linen things, was shown at the piano, tossing his head back in a dramatic fashion under mood lighting of a peculiar blue color.

". . . surrounded by the magnificant ruins of Greece," the female announcer was saying in a beautifully rounded British accent.

Mind you, classical musicians aren't too fond of Yanni. Classical musicians aren't too fond of any men who grow their hair in very long ringlets, perform under pastel lights that gently change hue with the music, toss their heads dramatically, and play music that eventually gets recorded onto CDs and distributed to Macys for performance in their elevators. We feel the same way towards Yanni that the British would feel about Britney Spears becoming the next Princess of Wales.

"Why the hell is PBS doing a special on Yanni?" somebody wanted to know.

And then it happened.

". . . Yanni," said the announcer, "the future of classical music."

The room went dead silent for a moment.

Then, as one voice, we, the students of Eastman School of Music, the future of classical music in America, yelled, "WHAT THE FUCK?!"

And this is why I'll never donate money to PBS.

***

On the other hand, I'd be happy to donate money to NPR, if I ever had any.

find the finger

Ah. So, yes, we haven't finished with Valentine's Day yet.

Later, the same evening, the doorbell rang. Despite all these countless interruptions by evangelists, I've never yet been able to remember to peer through the I-see-you hole in the door -- I know it has a real name, but hole-in-the-door pretty much conveys my meaning to everybody -- to find out who's on the other side. Part of the reason I don't is because I'm too damn short, and anything that requires me to get onto my tip-toes to operate is just not going to get operated.

Anyway, as I said, I answered the door. The Guy was on the other side, dressed in the bright yellow Danger-Large-Chicken-Passing-Through jumpsuit he uses for motorcycle riding. In one hand he had his helmet. In his other hand, he proudly bore a halfway decapitated bouquet that he had brought me, on his motorcycle, from the store.

Motorcycles are good for a great many things. Carrying flowers isn't one of them.

It was the thought that counted, however, and really it's quite sweet if you think of all the trouble that he went to to actually get any of those stems to me with the flower head still attached. I popped what was left of them into a vase, (I hadn't the heart to throw out the stems that still had some of the petals attached), gave him the kisses he deserved, and giggled helplessly in private so as not to hurt his feelings.

Least anybody think less of him, I should add that a couple of days later, he bought half the local Safeway's inventory of post-Valentine flowers, which we brought home.

In a car.

These are now flooding my dinner table in a massive display of disorganized color. If anybody wants to see them, come on by.

***

I'm hungry.

I only mention this because I've been to Costco three times during the weekend, not including President's Day, and during those three trips I've gotten enough supplies to provide me with peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches from now until July.

It's one of those sad facts about being unemployed that you lose a lot of interaction during your day. You end up writing about your visits to Costco and your boyfriend and, oh, hey, finally unpacking those boxes that you brought home from your old job -- did I really put those office supplies in there? Whatever was I thinking? Who the hell is going to end up using fourteen red dry-erase markers? -- and peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches, and the fact that you used up a two-point-five pound bag of spinach last night, (wow! roughage!) and are feeling incredibly smug because, darn, you've never managed to do that before so it's kind of a hallmark deal for you.

The kind of accomplishments I mark down in my Book o' Life these days aren't anywhere near as flattering to my self-discipline as the ones I managed when I was employed. Back when I was employed it was things like: fixed so-and-so application which will save the company $100,000 next month. Now that I'm unemployed it's: showered.

Not-so-secret news to my friends who've encountered me during my unemployment period. Bathing is for people who leave the apartment and encounter other people. No, not post-office people and supermarket people. Real people.

(Hah! Just kidding. I took a shower just yesterday. Even shaved and used soap.)

I am a shame to generations of sweet-smelling, clean Japanese. Even back when the Europeans were doing things like stealing Chinese inventions and spreading (optional "like a" inserted here) disease across the face of the earth, the Japanese were taking full advantage of hot water and bathing facilities.

In fact, that's the real reason why they wouldn't let the Europeans into Japan back in the seventeen and eighteen-hundreds.

Important Japanese Personage One: "I don't trust them. Their eyes are round and strangely colored. Also, they have large, protruding noses that make their faces disturbingly three-dimensional. It's all quite vulgar."

Important Japanese Personage Two: "I find their smell is quite distasteful. I believe that I saw insects moving about in their hair. I do not believe they bathe regularly. If they enter our clean country, they will make the entire place smell bad."

Important Japanese Personage One: "That settles it, then. Go kill them all."

Japanese Personages En Masse: "Hurrah!"

I'm sure they bathed after the whole Slaughter The Europeans thing.

***

Oh. About that spinach.

We've started a book club. And when I say "we" I mean "she," because my roommate started a book club, but I live with her and nodded agreeably when she presented me with the idea, so I feel I played some motivational part in the entire book club venture.

Tonight was our first meeting, held at our increasingly dingy apartment. "I'll cook," I offered when my roommate told me our plans: dinner, dessert, and movie. "I mean, I'm unemployed. It's not like I have a whole lot of other things to do."

"Great!" she said. Two days later, she surprised me with, "Oh, gosh, I just found out that my friend and her friend who're coming are vegetarian. Is that a problem?"

Hence the 2.5 pounds of spinach. Being the mad chef, I managed to cook up a completely vegetarian meal, in which the 2.5 pounds of spinach played a significant and fiberactive role. Appetizer consisted of half a sourdough baguette, hollowed out and toasted, with quartered white-cap mushrooms that had been cooked in two tablespoons of skim milk, two tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, and two tablespoons of lemon juice, all covered over with parmesan cheese to glue the mushrooms onto the toast.

Okay, normally I wouldn't go into all that detail with the food, but I'm pushing this recipe at y'all. It's good. I mean, yum.

(I want to know how to pronounce Worcestershire. Crap. I'm dating a Brit. I could just ask him, couldn't I?)

Dinner consisted of spanakopita, (2.5 pounds of spinach!), stuffed bell pepper/tomato surprise -- it didn't taste right when I was cooking it, so I started throwing in everything I could find laying around in the kitchen and voila! No post-dinner stomachache, which is what I consider a success, -- and roasted portabella mushrooms.

Five women, including Tara, sat down and had dinner and chatted briefly about the book -- The Red Tent, which I think I've mentioned before -- and then ended up by gradual degrees talking about menstruation and The Pill. It made sense in the context of the book. We made plans to read some other thing, the title of which currently escapes me, and then broke up around ten o'clock.

What I'm wondering is how the conversation would have went if it was four women and a man. Menstruation and Viagra?

***

A quick note before I close off this entry: ever since Dan Quayle had that little problem with the plural for 'potato,' I've had increasing amounts of difficulty remembering what the plurals for 'potato' and 'tomato' are. Which one has an 'e'? Which one doesn't? Until he'd made that very public gaffe, I was just fine with the words. Now I have to depend on dictionary.com to carry me through.

It was just like that with the whole right-hand left-hand capital 'L' thing. I used to have no problem with telling apart my right and left hands. No pianist -- no pianist with an IQ over single digits -- would. However, one day my sister told me that the way that she keeps them sorted is to hold her hands out in front of her with the thumbs at right degree angles to her palms.

"The one that's shaped like a capital L," quoth she, "is my left hand."

Well, all very well and good. But.

No, I haven't started having problems telling my right and left apart.

However, I have started having problems figuring out which direction the stem in the capital 'L' faces.

If anybody out there has a neat trick for remembering how to walk, please don't share it. With my luck I'll end up confused and be wheelchair bound for the rest of my life.

(Although I will accept any suggestions on how to remember to get fatter...?)

valentine

Er, Valentine's Day?

Did I get a memo for that?

***

It wasn't until I'd fully recovered from the jetlag and then some that I realized that my calendar was set to January, and not February. "There's some sort of holiday coming up, isn't there?" I speculated in a parking lot to the Guy, puzzled. "Something on the 25th."

"The 14th," the Guy said patiently as we plodded to the store. "It's on the 14th."

"What holiday is--oh," I said, as Safeway opened its doors for me, disgorging a panoramic view of fat red helium balloon hearts and round-eyed, round-bellied teddy bears in pastel hues. "Valentine's Day. On the 25th."

"Valentine's Day is on the 14th."

I stared blankly after the Guy while he went to get a grocery cart. "No it's not. All holidays are on the 25th."

. . . which is why I didn't realize that it was Valentine's Day today. It was only a few days ago that I finally registered the fact that my calendar was still turned to January, which had been confusing me on astronomical timelines, not to mention skewing my future planning. "I guess Thida's getting married on Wednesday," I told the Guy at one point, puzzled. "What an odd day to pick."

Turning the calendar brought all sorts of things into perspective for me. Thida was getting married on a Saturday, the new moon was yesterday, and Valentine's Day was, yes, today. Which just brings me back to the fact that I didn't realize it was Valentine's Day, despite the fact that I'd just had a conversation about it with the Guy the night before.

At the grocery store, normally populated by women and babies and the occasional man, I discovered that several generations worth of males had moved in to take ownership, all bearing bouquets of flowers and competing in front of the candy and card displays. I paused in front of the same display with vague, indecisive thoughts; they watched me like a hawk, assuming my preferences as proxies for their girlfriends' (or wives') tastes. Every time I picked up a card and put it down again, a stealthy male hand would appear out of nowhere to steal it away.

It's always nice to know that I'm not alone in the world.

***

One of the side effects of having turned the calendar is that a sudden onrush of social obligations suddenly overpowered me. Most important among them, or at least most immediate, was a luncheon today with some of my old coworkers from Excite@Home. Tomorrow is the last day for the Manager, who leaves Excite without any visible injuries to either her feelings or the old cynicism.

"Good," said College Boy, when news of the get-together reached him. "I can tell you all my news."

The last time College Boy had told us all his news, it was to reveal that he'd agreed to take a five year stint with the Army. When I'd told my coworkers all about the Sims based on them, he was delighted to find out that his had gone into a military career track. "I've always wanted to be in the military," he confessed. "A Green Beret..."

"So what's your big news?" we demanded, when we were all gathered.

"Are you still going into the Army?" I wanted to know.

He looked slightly embarrassed. "I'm going to be a satellite communications. One year, and I'm training in Atlanta--"

"That's good!" we congratulated him. He comes from Atlanta; his parents are there.

"--and I got married."

There was dead silence for a minute.

"What?"

And this was the point where he became quite agitated. "Register," he explained in fits and starts, "Redwood City, and my father--" Also, I think he said the word "Vegas."

"Congratulations!" we enthused at last, when he was finished explaining, heated and flushed. "That's great! She's nice! So, do your parents know?"

jetlag

LOST: ONE WEEK.

Misplaced somewhere between 3rd & 10th of Feb. Last seen over Africa. If found, please call YKH in Cali. Reward if found.

I fell asleep at 6 p.m. on Sunday the 3rd, sprawled on the sofa while the boyfriend oozed his way across the floor. I remember saying something about Tara's Superbowl party.

It came out, "Doyuwunguh?" He gave it the response it deserved, saying something about danger, and the next thing I remember is waking up on Sunday the 10th thinking that the sun was up and how did that happen, exactly?

It took me days to piece together the week before, most of which was done by jabbing the Guy in the ribs at inopportune moments to demand, "Hey, when did we do this? And this other thing?" as flashbacks and random memories came back to me, piecemeal. This must be what happens to peyote afficionados after a day of high desert hog. My life since the 10th has been a series of cut scenes from the movie Memento, without Guy Pierce starring.

Significant in the real world that I woke up to is the fact that, when I first got back to the States, 107 messages awaited me in the free queue supplied by yahoo, with an additional 97 hovering in the wings of my own, personal account. On Sunday, mysteriously, this number had decreased. I shudder to think that I might have actually attempted rational correspondence with anybody during my fugue state; if in fact I did exchange emails with one of my readers during that time, please take anything that I might have said with a grain of salt, and give me the benefit of the doubt while I procure myself a lawyer.

I haven't seen my roommate since mid January. Dear God. I wonder if she's still living here?

***

The Mauritius tales are forthcoming still, but have been relegated to the back burner until the digital pictures can be removed from the obdurate laptop they call home. I'll get to them later.

In the meantime, I've taken to looking for work.

No, no, hold the applause, please. I've only applied to one job to date. I don't get credit for even looking until I've applied to at least three.

Or maybe two. We'll have to wait and see.

The chief motivation in the job search comes from the visit to the grocery store the other day, wherein I took advantage of the Wells Fargo ATM to check out my bank balance.

"Oh," I said, after realizing that the decimal place in the balance was, in fact, not a piece of grit on the screen. "Crap."

. . . and this is why Yuhri is finally looking for, yes, Employment.

It's discouraging, so far, and I've only been looking for employment a grand total of -- what day is this, Wednesday? -- two days. I've established the beginnings of a pattern to my day, because days need patterns and without actual work I could just stay in bed all day, eat soy beans, and eventually have a bright future as one of the floats in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, stapled on top of a Chevy station wagon.

Insofar as patterns go, this isn't a very good one. I wake up at 8:00 (ideally, since usually I still wake up at 6:00 am; I would like to point out that I wake up earlier now that I'm unemployed than I ever did when I was employed). I play Sims until twelve. I eat lunch and breakfast, and then I spend the afternoon doing job search things until approximately four or five. Then I do something else.

So far, in the two days that I've tried this schedule, it's working out okay. Except for the fact that it's only been two days, and during both days I've gotten discouraged with the whole job hunt by twelve-thirty and take a break to play in the refrigerator. These are only minor setbacks, however. I'm confident that we'll eventually settle on a mutually agreeable schedule that pleases everybody.

Unemployment and me, we're buds. We're tight. I don't bother Unemployment, and Unemployment doesn't bother me. In fact, Unemployment pays me to be mellow and fine with the world, and I'm down with that; my only objection is that Unemployment only pays my rent, and not all the other things that I need money for. My growing DVD collection, for instance. This whole new kick I have for clothes. Oh, and the maid. Unemployment won't pay me to get a maid.

Okay. Maybe I don't "need" money for the DVD collection. Or the clothes, which I have plenty of. Or the maid, which I've never had before anyway.

But crap. I mean, crap. The student loan gods are pointing their arrows at me. Is it my fault I went and got an education?

***

My roommate showed up at my door at around eight, looking puzzled.

"Yuhri? What happened to the toilet paper? Is it my imagination or has the toilet paper gotten -- smaller?"

In Mauritius, it turned out that paper towels weren't widely in use. Nor were facial tissues. The most practical form of paper around was the toilet paper roll, what the British affectionately call the "bog roll." Wherever I went, people were carrying little rolls of toilet paper with them. This was their catch-all, essential to pick up spills, wipe faces, blow noses, wrap candies, and go to do one's business in the bushes when the running water wasn't running.

"I think the Guy's relatives packed it in our suitcase for us," I explained to my roommate, apologetically, "so when I unpacked I found it there and I thought, better not to waste it, so I rotated it into the toilet rolls--"

My roommate laughed and wandered away before I could get to my afterthought. I addressed that to the empty doorway.

"--or else we packed it ourselves, accidentally. Although now that I think about it, I probably shouldn't have rotated it in, because, oh damn, I got that whole intestinal bacteria, explosive diarrhea thing in Mauritius, and what if I got it from the toilet paper? I mean, there could be scads of bacterial things living on toilet paper, couldn't there?"

It was just as well she'd left.