north-north-west

My blood sugar this afternoon, four hours after lunch: 222.

Want to know what I ate?

Half a burrito.

I haven't been funny lately, for which I apologize. For the past two months now I've been de facto tech writer at work, a function I oozed into like oil in a Republican pocket. Tech writing, I've discovered, has been the enema of my creative functions; by the time I'm done at the end of the day, I've nothing left for personal expression, much less humor. Embarrassed though I am to admit it, I've taken some refuge in gaming the way I did in college when I first discovered the Internet. You know those cheeto-flavored, gelatinous geeks who used to scratch themselves in front of the computer and pretend to be knights in shining armor, bouncing on dragons to rescue the large-breasted beauty in distress?

Except for the cheeto-flavoring (which came later) and the scratching (which was solved with lotion -- Rochester was dry in the winter, that's all I'm saying --) and knight-in-shining-armor-ness, that was me. Gelatinous geek.

The Guy, who has lately been enamoured of a new surround sound stereo system he's set up for DVD player, complained this evening that he never sees me wearing anything but pajamas these days. In fact, I'm wearing them right now. Tweety bird in flannel, my spiritual sanctuary. If I wear them much longer, they'll be able to go to the bathroom by themselves.

The fact is, I've been tired of a lot of things lately. Tired of socializing. Not that I ever did much. Tired of work. Yeah, right, get over it. Tired of moving. Tired of watching my diet. Tired of checking my blood sugar. Tired of the little lancets and the little digital glucose meter I gushed over when I first saw it -- "Isn't it cute?" -- and tired of seeing the numbers on the face and realizing things aren't really going well in the health department.

The diabetes isn't under control. It's been almost three months. Am I impatient? Yes. But. It's only been three months. If I'm tired now, what'll happen in three years?

Spare me another night to feel bitter and down; they don't happen as often as they used to.

I used to check my blood sugar by sticking myself in the finger. It hurt, but I was too much the coward to try any other way. There are veins in my arms, ones that I can see, and even more that I can't. In Tahoe, Mom explained it to me, showed me the little place by the wrist bone just along that line where my watch lies. "It doesn't hurt at all there," she said.

She wasn't quite telling the truth. It does hurt there. It just doesn't hurt the same way.

I'm right-handed, but I wear my watch on my left, so it serves as cover-up. The Guy got me this watch, though I wasn't used to wearing it all that often. Now I wear it every day. When I take it off, you can see a little sprinkling of scabs, like minute freckles, tiny red dots where I've jabbed my skin to get blood for a glucose test. Twice a day. It makes me self-conscious so I wear my watch.

Sometimes there are too many freckles, and I can't find a spot anymore, no place that's not a little too tender, or a little too dotted. Then I switch to my right wrist, which is harder to do since my left hand is clumsy with the lancet. I jab, and I bleed, but never quite enough because I didn't do it right. So then I reload and jab and I bleed some more, until there are seven or eight little spots of blood welling up -- and still nothing adequate, not enough, and I've gone through a half-week's worth of test strips with nothing to show for it but ERR, ERR, on the digital meter. That means Error.

It's a complicated thing being sick, trying to control something that defies understanding -- well, my understanding anyway -- without submitting to rhyme or reason. My blood sugar should be under 150. It almost never is.

Why does my body like the salads at V----- when they're so much larger, so much cheesier, drowned in croutons and dressing and bacon bits? Why does it rebel at small green salads of half the size, sans dressing, sans taste, picked up from the deli in Mountain View? Why does exercising bring my blood sugar down, except the day before yesterday when it made it shoot up? Why do two identical menus eaten two consecutive days result one day in 142 and another day in 190?

And idiotically, I reject cakes and candies offered to me by coworkers, and feel as though someone should recognize the effort I'm making, as if it benefited someone other than myself. Isn't it enough to give something up just for me? Just so I'll have a better life, eight years down the line? But somehow it isn't. I need a starving baby in Tibet who'll get the treats I reject, someone worth the sacrifice.

Stupid. Except it kind of isn't.

In a joking moment I told a frustrated client -- a doctor in New York -- what I had. He was annoyed at the time with some small thing, an irritant in our software that set his brains to boiling.

"--and meanwhile," he was complaining at the top of his lungs, "I have a clinic full of diabetics with blood sugars of 270 wandering around, and you can't fix this for me? What're you doing over there?"

He was sort of joking, but not really. I was flustered. "Being one of your diabetics with a blood sugar of 270," I told him, which was true, but not really. (210. Was that close enough?)

He quieted down, puzzled, while I talked to some engineers. When I picked up the phone again, he demanded, "Are you serious?"

He's a good doctor. An excellent doctor. He barked at me over the phone, forgetting all about his software frustrations, and I felt immeasurably better; better than I had when I'd seen my own doctor, who'd seemed resentful I'd come down (can you 'come down'?) with diabetes.

"What are you taking?"

"Glucophage." Which I am, sort of. Except I'm really not, because though I have the pills I have no directions. 'Take once a day with food.' When? And daily? Who knows? I didn't tell him. He'd worry.

"That's a good drug," he said with approval.

A few days later he called with another problem. While I worked on it over the phone, he interrupted to ask: "What's your blood sugar?"

"Average? 170-ish."

"Too high. Get it down."

I felt like saluting.

Yesterday he called late at night, for something else. Again in mid-thought he interrupted me to ask: "What's your A1C?"

I paused. "My what?"

"A1C. Your A1C."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," I confessed.

He exploded. "Christ." He's Jewish. "You don't know what your A1C is? Get another doctor. You need your A1C. It has to be under 7."

"That sounds familiar--" I said hesitantly.

"Under 7!" he yelled.

I went home that night and checked on my bulletin board, where my first lab test and diagnosis are pinned up with the rest of my crap, things that are keepsakes or reminders. As if I needed to remember that. There it was. A1C. And this morning he called again.

"Yuhri, about your A1C. I was thinking about it last night--"

I interrupted. Sometimes I'm the one to do it, instead of the other way around. "I found it on a lab slip. 8.3."

"Too high!" he barked. "Get it down! Under 8!"

The night before, he wanted it under 7. He was giving me a closer goal to reach. He bossed me from New York as though his sheer force of will would propel me down the slope of glucose highs. I grinned while I talked to him, hearing that same note in his voice he used for his patients, something different altogether from the one he used with his technical support. He would boss the entire world if he could cure their diseases.

A stupid little story, and somehow it still makes me smile. It's good to have faith in one doctor at least, even if he isn't yours. So now I'm in a good mood, and I'm going to bed. Tomorrow I'll be funny, I swear. If the wind is southerly.

first night

The heat smothered us like the belly of a big sweaty fat person pressing down on us from above. The second we stepped off the plane, we were soaked in sweat; the air was stifling, and all my complaints about the lack of air conditioning on the plane trailed away to silence. The humidity alone slapped us like the aftermath of a shower, invisible steam soaking through our clothes. Having chosen to wear sweatpants for comfort on the plane, I was given ample opportunity to regret the choice during the short passageway between the plane and customs. Breathing was too difficult to leave any energy for whining.

"My God," I whimpered, and occupied myself with gaping like a landed fish.

Despite puffy marshmallow clouds hanging overhead, the temperature was well into the nineties, as was the humidity. We slumped our way outside the airport, where the Guy's brother and wife were waiting for us: a slim, mite-bit couple from Ireland, both relatively cheerful after two days of acclimitization but grateful enough for pockets of shade, regardless. "We need some whiskey for the banquet after the funeral," the Guy's younger brother greeted us, taking possession of our luggage cart. "Alain says that they don't really drink wine here, and it's cheaper to get it through duty free."

"This is Yuhri," the Guy introduced, and presented Younger Brother and Younger Brother Wife to me. They smiled at me in turn -- his was more of a grin, engaging, charming, and instantly heart-warming -- and reached for me; I blinked and allowed my cheeks to be kissed in the continental fashion, taken completely by surprise. This, like the hurricane business, was something the Guy had neglected to prepare me for. "She's my girlfriend," the Guy added, proudly.

The Guy and I trooped back in to purchase whiskey: Johnny Walker Red Label, at 90 rupees a bottle. I winced at the price, unsure of the conversion rate as I was; we trooped back out into the heat and instantly wilted. Younger Brother steered us to the car. We opened all four doors and backpedaled hastily, forced back by a surge of scalding heat.

"Hurricane, huh?" the Guy commented, eyeing the interior of the car.

"Two days before we got here," Younger Brother confirmed, and grinned again. "They haven't gotten electricity up everywhere yet. Veggie Tombeau," -- what? -- "has some water in its tanks, but we can't flush the toilets every time. You should be able to take a shower though, maybe."

"Welcome to a third world country," the Guy said wryly, and packaged me inside the car.

'Veggie Tombeau' turned out to be 'Baie de Tombeau,' mangled in the free-flowing, lazy-tongued fashion of Creole. We discovered in the car that the air conditioning was a fickle thing, -- it liked the cold, but only if someone else was providing the chill, and was therefore non-functional in heat, -- and rolled down the windows to circulate hot air through the compartment. I watched Younger Brother Wife scratch in a hopeless fashion at dozens of little red welts on her pale legs and wondered aloud through the roar of wind, "Got bit?"

"Mosquitoes," she confirmed, sadly, and scratched some more. Wide blue eyes turned to me. "Except I think there's something else. Mites, maybe, or fleas. I've sprayed citronella on, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. And the bites are all around my ankles, do you see?"

She displayed more wounds, but I was already lost in the heart-sinking horror of her first word.

Mosquitoes.

I, sadly, am of that blessed few, that hapless company of people who seem to excrete some intangible mosquito perfume, the pheremone of delight that seduces blood-sucking insects from miles around. Given a bare-skinned buffet line of bodies to choose from, a hungry mosquito will invariably elect to burrow through layers of heavy wool for a taste of my sweet veins. In the great menu of parasitical entrees, Japanese is the flavor of choice; Japanese Yuhri, specifically, is the entree of the true connoisseur: like wine-in-a-box for pre-law college freshmen.

I've always been particularly bitter about the fact that only female mosquitoes bite. It shows, I think, an incredible lack of sisterly solidarity that mosquitoes will choose to suck blood from me rather than any of a dozen eligible males that might be wandering about with their heads uncovered, in short sleeves and shorts. Only after I met the Guy did I find any true protection from this incomprehensible allure I seem to have for my mosquito sisters; of the two of us, they prefer him. In the car, I planned my strategy for the coming two weeks, all revolving around the Guy's close proximity. Despite the fact that I was wearing sweatpants, a high-collar shirt, and was leaking more moisture out my pores than the Titanic before Celene Dion started to sing, I felt a definite chill up my back. It's not the bite that gets you. It's the anticipation of the bite.

"Dammit," I muttered, and for the first time noticed that we were driving on the wrong side of the road. I also noticed for the first time that driving in Mauritius is a contact sport, and that traffic laws -- not to mention sidewalks -- are optional. I spent the rest of the trip clinging desperately to various parts of the car.

There was a bewildering array of the Guy's relatives waiting for us at the family house in Baie de Tombeau, cousins to the Nth degree and assembled aunts and uncles, all trooped by me in a confusing assortment of names and relationships. The heat was stifling; the cousin who lived there the most, Marie, announced that the electricity hadn't come back on yet, before launching into a joyous argument in Creole with another relative. The four of us -- the Guy, his brother, his brother's wife, and me -- wandered into the living room and slouched into chairs, panting with the same unenthusiasm displayed by the household dogs.

Creole cousins bounded in to greet us, all in various stages of undress. "Hot," they all said in turn. Not a one of them was perspiring. They regarded us with warm pity. "Hot?"

"So hot," they said, for variation, and bounded away to start other, agitated arguments.

Creole is a language created for arguments: a biting, loud, rambunctions language that demands raised voices and waving arms. I listened to Marie wage a pitched battle with one of her nephews, both shouting at the top of their lungs and loving every minute of it. The Guy's mother popped up out of nowhere and joined in the fray, gleefully waving her own arms after her plump young cousin. ". . . Bloody hell!" she shouted after the boy, who carped something back before bouncing into the living room to strike up a new argument with the Guy's younger brother.

Sweat trickled off my nose and dribbled down my chin in a steady stream. The very air was too hot to breathe. One hand after another pressed water bottles and glasses of cola at us; I inhaled every one of them, only to bleed all the same fluid out my pores a few seconds later. Who needed running water and toilets?

The news that the Guy had come back into town after fifteen years was making its way around the island, and one by one, his relatives came to call. Two of them, a short, cheerful couple, came to report that they had electricity back on their side of the island. The husband of the pair sat the Guy down and talked at him loudly, recalling the Guy of yesteryear.

The Guy wasn't visibly enthused.

"You take after your father, heh?" he was congratulated. His cousin patted himself on the stomach, then on the head, and grinned. "Pretty soon you'll be bare on top, like him. Naked." His palm slapped against his scalp.

The Guy glazed over. "We'll see," he said, wearily.

The electricity, despite promises, failed to come back on that night. The Guy's younger brother told us that we would be staying there tonight. "It's too hot up at Grand Baie," he explained apologetically. "We tried it without the air conditioning, but it was impossible. We'll stay here, and hopefully by tomorrow they'll get the electricity up and we'll be able to head up to Mom's house. . ."

No great work of fiction ever spends time worrying about the toilet facilities; perhaps this is why most adventure books involve men rather than women, who are less biologically inclined to be selective about their waste recycling and placement. If I ever write a book, I promised myself, there would be some mention of toilets and bathing facilities, too long ignored in the annals of literature.

We stared at the ceiling for the night, watching heat make waves of the walls.

"Are you sorry you came?" the Guy asked at one point.

I slapped at my arm, where I thought I felt something touch down.

"Urgh," I said.

about that wallet

So, my wallet.

Gone. Poof. Nothing. Losing your wallet is sort of like losing your virginity. You either have it or you don't.

It was, if you will, a lesson in stupidity. I was convinced that I had it when we returned from the Opera; I distinctly remember having taken it out of my jacket pocket when we drove through the Carl's Jr. drive-through. The next day when I discovered it was gone, I distinctly remembered taking it out of my pocket to get change for laundry at some point during the morning. Except, when I sat down to really think about it, I wasn't sure if I'd actually taken my wallet out to check the coin-purse or only intended to take it out to check the coin-purse.

According to the Guy, for the majority of the people out there in the world, thinking something is different from doing something, and the two don't necessarily march hand in hand. This is, to my opinion, an incredible waste of time. Sadly, I lack the ability to make distinction between the two. If I think and don't do it, I must have done it. If I do it and don't think it, I must have thought it. Cause and effect have about as much impact on me as they might to a potato bug; deep philosophical questions, as my one failed attempt in college proved, are as wasted on me as a manicure on a rattlesnake.

"What do you see?"

"A glass."

"Where is it?"

"Right there."

"On a table?"

"Yes."

"How do you know it's a glass on a table?"

"Because it is."

"Yes, but why is it?"

"You put it there a second ago."

"No, I mean, how do you know that the glass is really on the table?"

"Because you put it there."

"But how do you know it's really a glass? How do you know it's really a table? How do you know they're really there?"

CRASH.

"You broke my glass!"

"Yes, but how do you know it's really a glass?"

"I can't believe you did that!"

"How do you know I did?"

"YOU BROKE IT! THAT WAS EXPENSIVE!"

Philosophers have no philosophy when it comes to crystal. Should have used a Raiders mug, that's what I say.

What was the point of this all, again?

Oh, right. The wallet.

We searched my apartment from top to bottom, and then from bottom to top for the rest of the day. My business trip had me leaving on Monday morning, driving down to V------ to reach there by noon, living in a hotel until Thursday, then driving back up on Thursday night. Of course, since my wallet contained my license, my credit card, my ATM card, my medical ID, and my driver's insurance card, and every other piece of identification I happened to own, this was going to prove a problem.

We searched until midnight. The next morning we searched some more. Sans wallet, sans ID, sans anything but the Guy's ATM card, I hopped in my car at 8 A.M. and drove south for three and a half hours, paranoid as a hamster. Any car that looked like it held a brace of lights, I slowed down for. For ten minutes I plodded at 30 miles an hour, neck and neck with a California Highway Patrol car with a vicious sense of humor.

I wrote an email to my coworkers back at the main office. "I don't know if they'll let me check in at the hotel without any ID or credit card. If they don't, I'm planning on crying at them. I'm short, female, and have really fat cheeks, so that might work."

There was no trouble with the hotel. I was a little bit disappointed.

Losing a wallet always demands prompt action; after all, there are credit card numbers to think of, and ID theft. Knowing that, I waited four days until I called to cancel my cards and request new ones from my bank and credit card company. To punish me for losing my license, the DMV made me wait two hours in line to fill out a thirty-second form and pay a $12 check.

"I thought I had to give a thumbprint and stuff," I protested.

"No, just the form and the money."

"But the web site said--"

"You could have mailed it in," the DMV man said unhelpfully.

Two little, two late. (sic.)

I haven't given up hope that my wallet will show up in some inconvenient place some day, probably after I've finished replacing every crucial piece of ID I own. I leave in another week to go to V----- again; the DMV promises I might get my new license before then, or the week after if I'm unlucky. In the meantime, I'm zooming around town on a temporary license, a little dot-matrix printout that Costco won't accept as substitute identification because it doesn't have a picture. I can accept that. Costco has to have its standards, after all.

On the other hand, it's about time for us to buy toilet paper, and lots of it. And what do you say to your guest when he's banging on the inside of the bathroom door, wanting to be rescued with a brand new in-the-wrapper roll of soft papery freshness? Sorry, man, they wouldn't take my word of honor at Costco?

a single run-on sentence

I came back early from my business trip, a full day earned by spending the previous one not blinking, transfixed, typing like a fiend and sending curt, idiotic emails to the main office only to retract them a minute later. Three days down in V------, wallowing in the smell of cow manure that, for a change, had the consolation of being from an actual source that I had seen, driving down into the town during the day and realizing the black hills were in fact black-and-white spotted hills covered with pen after pen of depressed-looking bovines (and what was that commercial about happy Californian cows? Bullshit, I say) each doing its own little bit to contribute to global warming, just like me in my SUV.

Not an olfactory comfort but a spiritual one, to see the cows with my own eyes instead of simply hearing passing references to them in conversation: "Farm days coming up." "Did you see So-and-so ranch is selling dairy cows? Think they're going out of business?" "Mrs. This-and-that gave me a cow for working on her son. I put it in the garage." (I made up that last.) Cows given mythical status by their invisibility might have a long-standing tradition in the East, but I found it an oddly unsettling thing to my Western sensibilities, which prefers its abnormalities be on television or neatly packaged in fast food wrappers.

I called ahead to warn the Guy I was coming back, despite my original intentions to show up unexpectedly at the door and delight him with my little surprise. An hour into the long road back home from the clinic I discovered I wasn't very good at keeping secrets, hardly a revelation to me or to the Guy. Having wrung an hour's worth of enjoyment over imagining the look on his face when he opened the door and found me waiting -- driving is a dull thing, and my car still smelled ominously of cows -- I gave in to temptation and simply called him at his office, just like any besotted teenager. "Hi! Guess what!"

I called another two times on the road, timing our arrival together with a haphazard enthusiasm; he arrived late, despite me, and I let him in to a doorbell even though he had the key for the week. Habit on his part. I hugged him, I called him an idiot, I kissed him, and that was that (close curtain) while I went to check my email and he went back to his car to fetch a new set of speaker racks delivered just that morning.

When I came out to the living room a little while later, that was what he was doing, assembling metal feet to metal poles and attaching metal speakers to the tops of them. I curled up on the floor with my head in his lap and watched for a little while, and then, lacking anything better to do, claimed his forearm and gnawed on it pensively.

He accepted the abuse with philosophical resignation, apparently chalking it up to one of those inconsequential Yuhri-things that never seem to make any sense to anybody else. This is how he accepts much of what I do, with a shrug and a kiss and a little bemusement, and if somewhere in the back of his head he's trying to remember if women are supposed to behave this way, he's kind enough not to say a word.

Two years ago I wouldn't have imagined that the most comfortable place in the world would be on the floor of my living room, with my teeth around a man's arm.

***

Two nights before I left on my trip the Guy and I went to the opera, a production of Hansel and Gretel that was notable for its overtones of rigid Aryan respectability and equally awful Teutonic sensuality. The roles of Hansel and Gretel, filled by two singers woefully inadequate to fill such small shoes, served as a rather depressing reminder that you simply can't go back again and revisit your youth, at least not until you're old enough not to give a damn.

The Guy was charmed by the transvestite tenor playing the witch, a creative bit of casting that stole the show, not so much because it was gender-bending San Francisco but because the singer exhibited a flair for acting to top the best efforts of the cast.

It was late when we got home, far later than I'd originally anticipated although I hadn't been too far off in my estimation of the opera's length. Our dinner was Carl's, Jr., which is a fast food in every sense of the word except in that the food wasn't fast and almost qualified as food. We ate, we drank, we felt revolting, which guaranteed that Carl's, Jr. did in fact fulfill the primary requirements of the junk food category. We complained. We went to bed.

The next day at around four in the afternoon, I suddenly discovered that my wallet had disappeared.

Don't you hate it when a story has no ending?

fishy thoughts

Before I do any real writing, I submit to you this:

An Open Letter to Dr. Laura: Why can't I own Canadians?

And now that that's done, on with the show.

***

I'm in a mood to rant a little today, partly because I'm starving and partly because I have a dentist appointment tomorrow to clean my teeth. The starvation is the more pressing of the two, since my stomach acid has already eaten through my stomach lining and is getting to work on my spine. On the other hand, the dentist visit is something that can't be solved except with time and is therefore more irritating, like pain that hasn't quite graduated to full-blown agony yet but is only one credit short.

That said, I have very little in my life to rant about. As a few random encounters last night reminded me: all in all, I'm doing pretty well. I have a job that pays well -- 15% less well than it was when I started, but still better than my old job -- and treats me with, if not respect, at least an impartial, impersonal malice. I have an apartment with heat, a roof that doesn't leak, quiet neighbors, an outstanding landlord/building manager, and more toys for my entertainment than Walt Disney World. I have a roommate I like, who is never there and therefore gives me fairly free rein. I have a boyfriend I wouldn't kick out of bed unless he were eating crackers (in my own defense, crackers on flannel sheets are a bitch) who makes me laugh.

I have teeth that would be perfect if my sister hadn't nailed me in the face one day with a baseball. Or a rock. I have my eyesight. I have, relatively speaking, my health; I'm in no pain or discomfort that isn't of my own making. I have all five limbs -- I count my head because I can use it to bang on things -- and all my fingers. I have all my internal organs, love my family, and have friends I love and respect. I have no grudges against any person, always excepting Dubya (though that's another story altogether). I am not oppressed, repressed, controlled, or abused in any way. I have no mental illnesses, and as many people will tell you, am a ludicrously happy person.

All in all, I'm one of the most fortunate people in the world.

Believe me, I know it.

***

In the abstract, I do not have any particular objections to fish. It has been, traditionally, one of the primary sources of protein for the Japanese people, who have never had the ostentatious amount of acreage more fortunate people have had for breeding cattle. Tracing back through the genetic line, I probably owe my ultimate well-being and existence to the fact that the waters around Japan were bountiful and generous. The Japanese, I think it's safe to say, have made a virtue out of necessity when it comes to a primarily piscatorian diet. There are few things involving fish that have not been explored in depth and with fanatical vigor by Japanese artists, chefs, and craftsmen; we are a tenacious race after all, and given the limited entertainments of a small island -- sex, war, and suicide -- eventually one starts to go a little bit mad.

What baffles me therefore, is why people (and I don't exclude the Japanese themselves in this) seem to assume that simply because one is Japanese, one will therefore like fish. My parents were under the delusion that I should like fish because I have Japanese blood in me; I remind my mom from time to time that I don't like fish, and she's consistently surprised, baffled, and I think almost hurt.

"You don't like trout?" she says, surprised. "Why don't you like trout?"

"I don't like fish, Mom."

"Just try a little," she'll encourage, and wave a baked fish under my nose. As per Japanese tradition, the head will still be attached, and viscous white eyes will stare reproachfully at me from under my chin. "You'll like it."

"You don't like halibut?" she says, baffled. "Why don't you like halibut?"

"I don't like fish, Mom."

"Just try a little," she'll encourage, and again a gaping, blind-eyed fish will be waved under my nose. "You'll like it."

"You don't like smelt?" she says, hurt. "Why don't you like smelt?"

In my own defense, there are very few foods that I don't like. The majority of the foods that I've found I don't like have been things the College Boy bade me try back when I was working at Excite@Home. These were strange, unidentifiable objects that he'd picked out of bins in San Francisco's Chinatown, curious tubs covered with flies placed next to buckets of gloomy frogs and squirming turtles. I felt both justified and righteous in not liking those things.

Fish, on the other hand, is not so much an issue of principle as it is of overexposure. One night when I was pretty young, 8 or 9 years old, my parents jolted both me and my sister out of sleep, bundled us up in warm winter clothes, and hauled us to the car. In the back of the car were giant fishnets, several buckets, and garbage bags.

I don't remember the drive; I don't remember where we went, although my notoriously flaky memory thinks it was Turtle Lake. My parents were extraordinarily excited. Apparently, the smelt were in the lake doing some smelty thing, and my parents wanted to eat them.

For the next half hour or so, my parents waded into the lake, scooped haphazardly with their nets, and came up with pound after pound of wriggling, irritated smelt. By the time they were done, the back of the car was full; my disconcerted sister and I watched, occasionally poking a squirmy, slimy fish, only to run away shrieking when it squirmed and slimed.

The end result of this was smelt every day in every way for the next three years. We had pickled smelt, broiled smelt, baked smelt, fried smelt, marinated smelt, sauteed smelt, boiled smelt, braised smelt. We had smelt with lemons, smelt with vinegar, smelt with sauce, smelt in sauce, smelt with rice, smelt with soup, smelt with tofu, smelt with vegetables. We had smelt sandwiches, smelt dinners, smelt for breakfast, smelt for snacks. For three years, almost every meal included smelt, until the very sight or whiff of a fish would make me vomit.

My mother, who has a forgiving memory, has reduced those entire three years to one meal. "That was good smelt," she says dreamily.

"You don't like fish?" She's always taken aback by this, as though every time I tell her is the first time she's heard it. "Why don't you like fish?"

I don't like fish.

the feet do thanksgiving

Picture: Clockwise from top, Mommy Feet, Little Feet, Big Feet, Sister Feet.

Little Feet and Big Feet went to Seattle for Thanksgiving vacation. Little Feet made the arrangements a long long time ago, (which was also when Thanksgiving was) and they were going to stay for oh, so many days. Four of them, in fact. Little Feet's Mommy Feet and Big Little Sister Feet were going to be there.

"Do I have to go?" asked Big Feet.

"Yes," said Little Feet, whose Mommy Feet had once told her one should be gentle about persuading one's friends to do things they don't want to do, but hadn't really been paying attention.

"How does Big Feet feel about spending four days in a house with your mother?" wondered Friend Feet, when they called Little Feet.

"I think Big Feet is shedding," said Little Feet.

"I am not shedding!" yelled Big Feet. "You take that back!"

But Little Feet didn't.

Seattle was very cold. Mommy Feet and Big Little Sister Feet picked them up at the airport. Mommy Feet decided they would spend the entire day in the car doing errands, but she wanted Big Feet to feel welcome, so she put Big Feet in the passenger seat next to her. Mommy Feet was driving a big blue Toyota Previa, and kept pointing out sights to Big Feet so he'd feel special.

Unfortunately, Mommy Feet kept doing it in Japanese, which Big Feet didn't understand. Also, there weren't really any sights to point out, so Mommy Feet pointed out factory buildings and pollution instead. "This is where Rainier Beer used to be made," Mommy Feet told Big Feet.

"Okay?" said Big Feet, because the Big Feet are from Britain and don't know anything about bad beer.

Little Feet and Big Little Sister Feet sat in the back seat and yelled a lot. Mommy Feet was a very bad driver. Every time Mommy Feet pointed, the big blue Toyota Previa started checking to see if the concrete was really greyer on the other side of the line.

"What?" wondered Mommy Feet, when she finally started noticing how loudly Little Feet and Big Little Sister Feet were yelling in the back of the car.

"I think your daughters want you to keep your eyes on the road," said Big Feet, who was clinging to the 'Oh SHIT' handle on the passenger side of the road.

Mommy Feet was a little hurt by this, and craned her head over her shoulder to look reproachfully at her daughter Feets. "I drive good," she told them.

The big blue Toyota Previa drifted into the other lane. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!" shrieked the daughter Feets.

***

Mommy Feet wanted to show the Big Feet Pike Place Market. "Have you ever been there?" Mommy Feet asked the Big Feet, but nobody listened to what the Big Feet had to say in answer because all the other Feet in the car knew they were going to Pike Place Market anyway.

It was cold in Pike Place Market. Big Feet noticed.

"It's cold," Big Feet said to Little Feet. "And I bet it's raining, too."

Big Feet thought that was very funny. Big Feet liked to make fun of Seattle. Little Feet didn't think it was funny at all.

"It doesn't rain all the time in Seattle," Little Feet huffed.

"Nine months of the year!" Big Feet snickered.

"IT DOES NOT RAIN NINE MONTHS OF THE YEAR!" Little Feet yelled. "WE HAVE DROUGHT HERE! Crap. It is raining."

Sister Feet was very excited by the digital camera. Big Feet showed Sister Feet how to use it, and Sister Feet ran around the market taking pictures.

Pictures of fish,

pictures of fruit...

"Take a picture of the pig," said Little Feet. So Big Feet took a picture of a big metal pig.

"Weirdo," Little Feet said.

"What?" said Big Feet. "It's a tourist attraction."

***

After the Market, Mommy Feet dragged all the other Feets to the wharf. Little Feet complained all the way to the pier. Mommy Feet lectured. Little Feet shut up because it was easier than listening to Mommy Feet lecturing.

At the pier, Mommy Feet and Big Feet and Little Feet leaned over the railing that was put there to keep stupid Feet from falling into the water. "Look," said Mommy Feet. "Fishes."

"Big fishes!" said Big Feet, and tried to take a picture.

"I wonder what kind of fish they are?" wondered Little Feet.

"They look yummy," said Mommy Feet.

Can you see the fish in the picture? I can.

***

When the Feets finally made their way home, it was getting late and Big Feet and Little Feet were tired. Sister Feet was still very excited about the digital camera, and kept trying to take pictures of the Seattle skyline from the car. In the back seat, Big Feet and Little Feet tried to give advice.

"Take it now. No, now. No, not now. Now! Now!"

"You were too late," said Little Feet and Big Feet, and they snickered over the picture.

Sister Feet wanted to try again.

"Now!" Little Feet and Big Feet yelled.

"Close enough," Little Feet said.

***

For Thanksgiving, Mommy Feet made a turkey.

Little Feet named it Bob.

"Isn't Bob your landlord?"

"Yes."

"You really want to name the turkey after your landlord?"

"Bob's a good name. I like my landlord. Shut up. Shhhhh."

It was a very nice turkey.

***

Mommy Feet had the rest of the visit all planned out, down to where and what the Feets would eat. One day, the Feet walked down to the mall nearby and had dim sum.

"Yum yum dim sum!" yelled Little Feet.

When they walked back, Little Feet flopped down on the sofa and said, "Oof. Full. Very very full." Little Feet patted her belly.

The Mommy Feet came bounding into the living room, where Little Feet were meditating on their big belly. "Give me your feet!" Mommy Feet ordered.

Little Feet was suspicious, but put one of her feet up onto the coffee table. "Why?" Little Feet asked.

Mommy Feet pulled off Little Feet's sock and pulled out some medical tape. "I'm going to tape your big toe and your second toe together," she announced, and started going around and around with the tape.

Little Feet giggled. "That tickles. That really -- wait. Why are you taping my toes together?"

Little Feet was confused. Mommy Feet explained. "I saw it on a show on NHK Japan. They took these people from the audience and taped their two first toes together, and when they had walked around for twenty minutes with their toes taped together, they measured their waists and their waists had gotten smaller."

"Oh my God. You're mad," said Little Feet, firmly. "All of you people. All the Japanese. You're all mad."

Mommy Feet gave Little Feet the tape and puttered away. Little Feet tried to walk around with her toes taped together. It was very strange. Mommy Feet was very strange. Everything in the world was very strange.

Big Feet laughed at Little Feet.

"Mommy Feet's a lunatic," said Little Feet, sadly. The doorbell rang. Little Feet went to open it.

"Hi!" said Friend Feet. Friend Feet had brought Boyfriend Feet. Nobody had ever met Boyfriend Feet before.

"Look at what Mommy Feet did to me," said Little Feet morosely, and wiggled her untaped toes at Friend Feet.

"Uh," said Boyfriend Feet. "Hi." He looked more confused than frightened. Something is obviously wrong with him. Why didn't he look frightened?

Friend Feet laughed.

***

Little Feet and Big Feet flew home.

"Did you have a good time?" asked Little Feet.

Big Feet opened his mouth to answer. Little Feet interrupted.

"The correct answer is 'Yes,'" she told him.

Big Feet closed his mouth. "Yes," he said politely.

The End.

resolutions

Irony of ironies, the original post I put up here was somehow deleted. Not only was it deleted, it was wiped out of existence, not only on my web site but also on my own computers. In the cosmic scheme of things, this is as though I never made the New Years Resolutions that I'd originally posted. Theoretically, this could mean that I have an entire year to goof off with as I will. If I wanted to, I could change my New Years Resolutions if the ones I originally made are too hard for me to handle now.

On the other hand, this would require effort.

I don't remember exactly what it was that I originally wrote up in this space, but be assured it was fascinating, inspiring, and a full to bursting with witty humor. As I can't seem to replicate any of that at the moment, having come straight from eight hours of work where I alternated between reading heinous technical documentation and writing heinous technical documentation, you'll just have to take it as given that you all really, really missed out.

Yuhri's New Year's Resolutions - 2003

1. Lose 12 pounds.

I cheat, of course. The day I originally went to a doctor's office to get checked up on for a possible infection -- the day the doctor first suspected I had diabetes -- I weighed in at 150 pounds.

"I weigh what?" I said blankly, when the nurse read out the scale number.

"Hm?" She was used to hearing that, obviously.

"There must be some mistake."

"Hm." Was definitely used to hearing that.

At the time, I was wearing a heavy sweatshirt, a t-shirt, heavy sweat-pants, hiking boots, wool socks, and carrying my keys, my cell phone, my four pound wallet, two books, and a notepad.

Every woman right now is shaking her head, clucking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. There's an widely understood rule among women that one isn't properly weighed unless it's less than an hour after one has woken up. Before one's shower. Naked. Obviously, it was impossible to impose these conditions on my weighing, considering it was done in the middle of the afternoon in a public corridor in a co-ed clinic.

But 150? Please.

Two weeks later, I came back in for my gyno appointment. This time, anticipating, I wore exercise shorts made of some kind of lighter-than-air nylon stuff, a linen blouse that a sneeze could have disintegrated, and sandals. I weighed 142.

"HAH!" I yelled at the nurse in triumph. She started nervously and dropped her pencil.

I consider that I have already lost 8 pounds. 4 pounds to go.

2. Join a gym.

I've changed my mind about this one. This particular resolution, I think, is pathetic and not particularly useful. I mean, join a gym, sure, and then what? Did I put in anything about exercise? No. Will I? At the gym? No. Will I be in hock to the gym for the rest of my life? Yes.

Waste of time. Taking it out. Moving on...

3. Write the outlines for a book.

I've had the idea for a story bouncing around in my head for a while, and yet I've never gotten to the point where I'd write it down. Part of me is worried that once I do write the outlines of it down, my imagination will lock into it, pick up certain phrases I choose arbitrarily and refuse to groom it any further.

It's not really full enough to be a book; it's more a sketch, or a short story. We'll see. If it does turn out to be a short story, then I'll write it up and try to put it online. And then all of you can laugh.

4. Write 8 journal entries a month.

This is doable, isn't it? And it's all for you. My love for you. All me. All you. You you you you.

5. Read 7 technical manuals this year.

Boring. The Guy thinks I should do this. Guys are weird.

Now he's shoving me. Pooh.

"Tell them why," he ordered. Shove. Shove. Shove. "Come on. Tell them why I'm shoving you." Shove.

He shoves like a girl. Nerts to you, boyo.

Actually, it's a good, practical resolution for someone who intends to keep working in the technical field. I should keep up to date, and in touch with the skills that I already have. Technical manuals may be dull, but they'll do something to keep me in gear, and I'll learn a lot in the bargain.

I wonder if the user manual for my television counts?

6. Learn 50 kanji characters.

I've had some variation of this goal almost every year since I was old enough to realize I was illiterate. Out here, out in the real world, this irritates the heck out of me. In prior years I've been overly ambitious, and determined to learn several hundred characters. In this new, improved, realistic me, I've realized that this has about as much chance of happening as the Democrats winning the 2004 election.

To keep myself focused on achieving something attainable, I've cut my learning requirement considerably. Out of the 50 characters I've decided to learn, 15 of them are already learned. Now, all I have to do is remember them until next January 1st.

7. Save $3,000 in savings account.

Yes, just $3,000. And no, I'm not talking about another $3,000 on top of what's already there. I'm talking about $3,000, period. I'm poor. Ludicrously poor.

8. Pay off Citibank credit card.

...and this is why.

9. Finish first Latin workbook.

I've finished the first chapter. Now it's on to chapter 2. "Scintilla in casa laborat; cenam parat. Horatia casam intrat; Scintillam salutat. Horatia Scintillam iuvat; aquam in casam portat. Argus casam intrat et Horatium salutat."

Eat your heart out, Detroit. Rap may be your game now, but the Romans had it first.

10. Learn to control blood sugar.

Duh. This is one of those items on the list that is completely superfluous. It's like starting out the day with "Things I will do today" and then writing down: "4. Breathe in and out."

On the other hand, it has to be done. And it serves as a reminder to me; if I never want to have to put 'Breathe in and out' down as a New Year's Resolution sometime in my future, best to get this one done right.