happy birthday guy

It was the Guy's 32nd birthday yesterday, a fact I'd almost forgotten until the night before last.

I walked into the hallway, staring suspiciously at my watch. The watch, an earlier gift from the Guy, has a quixotic habit of lapsing into French, perhaps some allergic response to having been purchased by a Brit. That night, the date was displayed in English: Tue 22.

"There's something coming up on the 25th," I thought fuzzily. "That's right, Halloween." And it occurred to me that there was something significant about Halloween.

Of course. The Guy's birthday is two days before Halloween, and 25 minus 2 is 23. I bugled my discovery to the group in my living room -- we were holding a dinner party of sorts -- and they fell over the Guy in congratulations. He shrugged them off with discomfort. There's some itch of modesty in him, however small, that recoils at the attention that gets paid when birthdays come around. The celebration of an event in which one was only a marginal participant can make the most arrogant narcissist mildly selfconscious.

At any rate, it was his birthday last night, and I cooked him and my roomie an artichoke mushroom lasagna, clams oreganata, and spinach souffle with shallots and smoked gouda. Then we served him a massive key lime pie. Later, he opened my gift: a Playstation 2 network module. What it lacked in romance, it more than made up for in circuitry.

Happy Birthday, Scruffy Boy. I love you.

I haven't the intellectual discipline today to formulate a single thought and flow with it to the end. (Who do I kid? I've never had that.) I wrote earlier that I write -- and talk -- like a starving chipmunk after a long winter, dropped in the middle of a Star Trek convention: surrounded by nuts, none of them edible. Where, oh where, is the damned exit? At this point, I've ceased to care.

The earlier despondency is still hanging grimly on, clinging to the nape of my sweaters so it can catch me if I turn around too fast. Smack! Right in the face. It's climatic, I suspeect; out of all the days of good weather, Mountain View gets a grand total of nine days when the sun takes advantage of its accumulated PTO. (That's Paid Time Off for those out there unlettered in corporate speak.) In a cosmic sense, Mountain View is the anti-Seattle. When the sun isn't here, it's catching waves back in my hometown, seeing the scenery made special by my birth.

The last week or so has been full of peculiar, nostalgic epiphanies. At work, I was dragged out of my preoccupation with a project into a telephone conference that promised abject boredom. I dragged my feet to the conference room, trailing my boss, when it occurred to me that I saw an awful lot of the floor. My great-aunt, an avid birdwatcher in Chicago, spent most of her time looking up. This made her a chancy driver at best, and an erratic pedestrian.

On the other end of the spectrum, I always caught sight of the stray penny or the lost pencil. Not once had I spotted the diarrhetic pigeon sailing by overhead. Why, then, stare down?

"I got it," I blurted out as I walked into the conference room. My boss and coworker stared at me, blankly. "It was the slugs."

My boss has what I've begun to suspect is the 'Yuhri' look, a mixture of bewilderment, tolerence, and pity that always seems to show up on his face when I open my mouth. "Okay," he said pacifically.

Feeling that my outburst required some sort of explanation, I blundered on. "The reason I look down. It's because where I grew up, there were always slugs on the ground, and you had to keep an eye on the ground or else you stepped on them."

An odd expression slid over my boss' face. He had gone to his happy place. He's been doing that more since he started working here. My colleague, busily sorting papers in preparation for our conference call, expressed the sentiments for them both. "Eeeeeeeeeew. That's disgusting."

Crushed, I bumbled to my chair and sulked through the meeting.

A story from one of the few people at work I have any respect for:

He was driving with his wife somewhere; driving in the sense that he was actually a passenger in a car that was being driven, and therefore shared in the responsibility of the driving, if only by proxy. The driver was actually a friend of his, a male friend of the homosexual persuasion. This is relevent to the story, which is the only reason I remember it.

My friend was giving directions, and at one point, pointed ahead. "Go straight," he said.

The driver stopped the car and turned to frown at them. "Don't ever say that," he reproached. "Say ... 'gaily forward.'"

Well, I thought it was funny.

I received several baffled inquiries about female gonads after my last post, to wit: "Gonads?" Moved to show my superior knowledge, acquired after a sudden burst of energy expended on dictionary.com, I was able to educate my less biologically knowledgeable friends on the matter.

go*nad, n. - An organ in animals that produces gametes, especially a testis or ovary.

I have ovaries. I have lots of ovaries.

Go ahead, girls. Share the knowledge. Shock your friends. Titillate your neighbors. Tell 'em all about your home-grown, 100% pure gonads.

Side note: I've signed up again for nanowrimo, National Novel Writing Month. 50,000 words by November 30. Last year, as you'll all recall, I failed miserably. 20% of the way there, I crumbled under the strain and caved.

This time, motivated by the encouragement of Flamingo and a general lack of interest from the rest of my friends, I expect to do much better. I have reviewed the remains of my last attempt, and discovered pearls amongst the putrid droppings of pigs. This time, I shall endeavor produce more droppings, and proportionally more pearls.

Wish me luck. Or at least ... a little encouragement wouldn't come amiss, would it?

lavender

Lately, I've been suffering from despondency, (de-spon-den-cy, n. Depression of spirits from loss of hope, confidence, or courage; dejection.) with no immediately apparent cause. Well, no, I do know what's causing it, but I promised I wouldn't talk much about my work (la-bor, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B) so for the purposes of this post we'll politely avert our eyes and pretend it's something hormonal.

It's a great comfort to me, being a woman. To be able to blame the most outrageous acts and irresponsible behavior on hormones -- "Out of my control! My gonads did it!" -- may set back civil rights for women by about a hundred years, but it satisfies my wounded dignity when I'm caught slowly flushing the toilet paper rolls down the company toilets.

(I learned the trick from my Calvin and Hobbes book, a cornucopia of joy that has already returned on my investment with many splendid ideas for killing time. One end of the toilet paper in the, yes, clean bowl; one hand on the flusher; dizzying hours of fun ensue, interrupted only when the toilet paper runs out or the colleagues start to wonder exactly what kind of bowel movement Yuhri's having the warrants this much celebration. Have you ever yelled "Wheee!!!" while watching a bog roll unwind itself down the toilet, only to look up and discover a solemn-faced array of round Asian faces staring at you from around the stall door?

Nope, neither have I.)

As I was saying, I have been despondent of late.

There's something mildly pleasant about a nice fit of the lavenders, that noncommittal, pastel chromatic just one key up from the blues. You mope a little, you sigh, you feel gently sorrowful about something, it doesn't matter what. Lavenders makes you a little drowsy, so you droop a bit; when you're by yourself you curl up with a nice plump pillow, cradle something hot and yummy in a chipped mug with cartoon cats on it, and think vague, meditative thoughts about the curtains.

I could tell I had the lavenders because I started thinking about killing people. Not in the nasty, pain-woe-death-Alcatraz sense, but in the mystery sense, the good old-fashioned, get-the-bad-guy tradition that requires little from readers beyond a suspension of belief. Poison in the tea, blackmail letter in the desk; I began to ponder a bit, just how and why would I kill one of my neighbors?

And here, you see, this is where I knew I was despondent: I couldn't think of anything. This is not normal to me, pacifist though I may be. Death, in that titillating, Who Dunnit? fashion is something of a hobby to me and mine, an abstract exercise of our most flexible cultural memories.

When we were younger, my sister and I were Japanese in the unconscious, unavoidable way owed to upbringing and nature. We lacked choice in the matter. As children we never really gave thought to what might be different about our household as opposed to those of our blue-eyed, yellow-haired friends. In our house, there was a picture of the Emperor on the mantle. Well, wasn't there one in every house? In our family, we ate rice with every meal and eel for special occasions. Well, didn't every family?

When it finally occurred to us that to be Japanese was to be something special -- or at least weird -- the differences were no more baffling than the fact that there were differences at all. Determined to make it official, Masako and I painstakingly reviewed what cultural uniqueness we possessed against the assumption of our classmates.

As it happened, our parents were fans of Japanese historical dramas, samurai adventures that influenced my Japanese in the most archaic and comical way. People dropped like flies in Japanese historical dramas. After a lifetime of watching the enthusiastic, graceful violence and listening to homilies on the satisfaction of honor, Masako and I decided that our Japanese heritage meant we were homicidal, suicidal lunatics. Quite well pleased with ourselves -- what eight year old wouldn't be, having based the meaning of life off of a television show? -- we therefore gave it no further thought.

Discovering race memory was one matter. Exercising these budding instincts was quite another. Our parents would take us to dinner with grown-up friends of theirs, beautiful meals where we'd sit seiza¹ on flat pillows, smelling straw mats and warm soy sauce. Bored out of our minds, dressed in starchy dresses and full to bursting with good manners, we'd make a game out of murdering people with bits and pieces confiscated from the restaurant table.

"How would you use this?" I'd whisper to her, waving a cloth linen napkin shaped like a swan.

"You could suffocate someone," my sister would whisper back, gravely.

"Or put poison on it so when they wiped their lips--"

"--Put a pin with poison on it at the corners, so when they open up the swan--"

"--or stuff it down someone's throat--"

"That's suffocating."

"Isn't."

"Is."

"Isn't."

"Is!"

--and all the while the grown-ups seated next to us would talk brightly to their neighbors about politics, or gossip, carry on glittering, laughing conversation ("Did you hear last night's symphony concert with Martha Argerich?") and maybe shift just a little in their seats to move away from the scary Hirata children.

"And their parents are so nice, too. It's such a shame."

We lost the habit as we got older, abandoning it in favor of other games. There were Barbie dolls to melt, plants to kill, and boys to attract or scar emotionally, as the whim moved us. Still, it continued to serve as a fairly good indicator of mood.

As I say, I was feeling mellow, and tried to think up a murder mystery. And failed. And this is how I knew I was despondent. Take a note, folks. Nothing kills a nice fit of despondency like a boyfriend can.

"Whining about it isn't going to do any good," the Guy told me rather brutally in the car.

Bastard. "I whine?" I asked in a small voice.

"Yes. A little."

I sulked in my seat and gave him the silent treatment. He didn't notice. Double-bastard. After a moment, I picked up the conversation again. "So," I said pensively, eyeing him in a significant way that failed to make an impression . "How would you go about killing someone?"

1. seiza - Japanese word. To sit with legs folded underneath the thighs, cutting off circulation to anything below the knees. It's a graceful pose, but an agonizingly uncomfortable one, since your entire body weight is basically squashing shut any blood vessels unlucky enough to wander below the thigh. My mother can sustain it for hours and then walk away, spry as a goat. Then again, she's made out of paper mache. I could balance her entire weight on my pituitary gland, for all the good it'd do me. [back up]

a short outtake

"I got your birthday present today," I told the Guy the other night. It had been delivered at work that morning, and I'd left early to rush home before him and wrap it in shiny silver paper. No card.

"What is it?"

"A thing," I said, vaguely.

The Guy's curiosity is rabid to the point of being incapacitating. The prospect of receiving a gift he didn't know the nature of was enough to drive him around the bend and down insanity's Lombardi Street.

"What is it? What is it? What is it?" He grabbed my arm and began jiggling in place. His eyes grew huge. This is how one can tell that Asians are excited: one suddenly discovers that they have pupils. "What is it? What is it?"

"It's a thing," I repeated more firmly, and added as an afterthought, "I don't understand why you need to know. Your birthday isn't until the 25th anyway."

"What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it?"

I eyed him sourly. I had the sneaking suspicion this was presaging a trend.

He discovered the open Amazon.com box I'd used to carry home some stuff from work, and peered into it hopefully. "Is it from Amazon? Is it in here? What is it?"

"No." I wandered down the hallway towards my bedroom, leaving behind a glimpse of the Guy pawing through my belongings.

"It is," the Guy cried craftily. "I bet it is. Aha! If it isn't, what was in here?"

"Chicago Manual of Style and Strunk-and-White. Are we going out to dinner or not?"

The Guy discovered the receipt -- 'Strunk and White,' it said. 'Chicago Manual of Style,' it said -- and reluctantly tore himself away from the box, thwarted. He prowled after me.

"What is it?" was the new Guy theme song. He wailed it through the living room, out the door, down the steps, across the street, and into his car. He chanted it without pause for breath down the road, across Jefferson, and down Veteran's Way. It tumbled trippingly off his tongue while we pulled into a strip mall, took a commercial break long enough for him to quiz me about a dissolute Chinese eatery ambitiously named "King Chopstick," then rattled into play again across the parking lot to our goal. Two-year olds probably had more pitch, but he compensated with tenacity.

"You know, there's probably some streak of sadism in me that takes pleasure in this sort of thing," I remarked thoughtfully, interrupting his high-pitched mantra in front of Sizzler's.

That night, falling off the precipice into sleep, I heard him muttering to himself while he ripped the apartment to shreds. "Did she hide it in the kitchen?" Cabinets banged, the refrigerator hummed, and his voice bobbed back into earshot once more. "...not edible, it's not in the kitchen. Maybe it's in the bathroom." More cabinets banged. "--Or maybe it's in your roommate's room. That's the sort of thing you'd do, hide it in your roommate's room...."

He tip-toed ponderously off in stockinged feet.

what ho!

"Joliet? Why the hell are you going to Joliet? I thought you were going to Chicago? Where's Joliet?"

"It's some sort of, um, suburb, I think." I waved a hand, weakly. "Of Chicago, I mean. We fly into Chicago."

"Midway airport." One of my friends shook his head with disapproval and pinched his lips firmly together. There were not, he seemed to be saying, Good Things to come of flying into Midway airport. Funny. One of my coworkers had done the same thing earlier.

"Isn't there some sort of prison in Joliet?"

"Oooh. Blues Brothers."

"Huh."

I called my mother later.

"Joliet?" she said, blankly. "Why is your work sending you to Joliet? What's in Joliet? If you were going to Chicago, you could visit your great-aunt Kanae."

I groped through the questions and picked the wrong one to answer. "There's a prison there," I offered.

Small silence on the phone while my mother digested the information.

"Blues Brothers," I ventured hopefully. Ignore the fact that my mother hasn't understood an American Pop Culture reference since the original debut of bellbottoms.

Like my coworker, Mom was deeply disappointed. "I don't think your work should be sending you to prison. It doesn't seem nice."

So yes, I spent Monday through Wednesday in Joliet, with a brief one-day stop in Chicago proper. Two hours time difference. The last time I suffered jetlag that bad, I was flying back from Mauritius with a hostile air crew and a cranky boyfriend.

...which reminds me a funny thing that happened in Heathrow airport on the way back from Mauritius.

We were standing around the luggage carousel, waiting for our bags to make the mobius loop. A pair of security personnel came wandering down the big hall with a pair of dogs. One of them was a big German Shepherd type, thrilled at the whole idea of revolving carousels; he attempted to hump each one he passed, nose a-twitching.

He, the dog, was a British-born case of enthusiastic brawn, little brain, and bonhomie in the finest Wodehousian tradition. One rather gathered the impression that his training had passed in somewhat of a blur. Training may have been thorough, but it hadn't been in any way jolly, don't you know. Certainly there'd been a lot of rather tip-top sniffing of bags and canine asses, and once good old Bungo had gotten a whiff of something that had inspired something really rocking in the way of chicken-laying-the-egg impersonations, but when all was said and done, all one had really gotten out of the whole rummy thing was that riding carousels was something of a bang, and that one occasionally got some scrummy doggy treats for landing on a bag that didn't look quite pukka, what?

His handler struggled with the lead, dragged behind every hearty, lusty leap that stranded the shaggy lover half-on, half-off a suitcase. The dog passed us with wagging tail and eyes shiny with the splendiferousness of it all: what ho, I say, what? I mean to say, what? What?

Meanwhile, his colleague, some sort of spaniel-y creature, trotted about the floor with the depressed mien of an accountant convinced his mother-in-law's connections would shortly land him a promotion to the humorless halls of the British Internal Revenue Service, when all he'd really wanted out of life was to become king of the ice cream truck drivers. He gloomed his way around several travellers and approached us, and the expression of abject misery he directed at me after sniffing my shoe was enough to bring tears of pity to the sympathetic eye.

A few feet away, he paused to cock a leg and express his opinion of his career and his mother-in-law, both. His handler, a blond-haired woman, gave a wail at the yellow pool. "Not again!"

The dog stared at his spreading pond of urine and sighed.

Fuzzy-headed with exhaustion and the prospect of an eleven-hour flight ahead of us, the Guy and I wagged our heads.

"I thought they were supposed to bark when they found drugs?"

There's an interesting battle going on in the courts, which I'm not going to detail fully here since I don't want to get sued. No, it's not related to me whatsoever, but it is related to a person who appears to have gone a little lawsuit-mad.

The story broke in April, and was updated just recently with a fourth docket suing, among others, Google. Why? Apparently, for making available via search information available on the Internet relating to the original case. More information here.

Not that I cram my opinions down anybody's throat. But hey. Just guess which way my sympathies lean.