Lazy Sunday

It was two pm before Fuzzy was out of bed and I bothered to change out of my pajamas, but we were hungry, and neither of us wanted to cook, so finally, there was motivation.

We went to Fridays, our usual choice when neither of us can make a decision about where to go. It's not that it's a great restaurant, hardly that, but there's always something each of us is willing to eat. And their iced tea never tastes canned.

Afterwards, we went out to spend gift certificates from Christmas. At Target, funded by Chris's sister, we bought rather mundane items: New shower curtain liners and a new shower curtain for my bathroom. The old liners, left here as a courtesy by the previous owners of the house, were white, and were getting beyond the point where scrubbing bubbles would help keep them clean, or I was willing to look at them. Ugh. So now I have clear ones. I couldn't find any actual shower curtains in the shower stall size. (My tub is a jacuzzi tub, and because the shower bar follows the curve of the tub, the extra length requires that we use two 59″ long curtains, instead of one 72″ curtain.), but the liners were the right size, and, I reasoned, an couple inches on either side isn't going to look horrible for now. So the outside curtain is a translucent rice-paper white, sheer enough that light from the window filters through, but opaque enough that it offers privacy. I mean, you know, married-people privacy, which is different from single-people privacy.

The pale color is a switch for me. We'd had suns and moons in our condo, keeping a running theme with said pattern from bedroom to bathroom to office. Now, though, the blue carpet I picked is just a little off from the sun and moon stuff, and the windows don't lend themselves to such bold prints, and I'm in the mood for soft pastels in aquatic colors – pale blue, sea foam, lavender – NO PINK. I did buy a new sun and moon curtain yesterday, but I'm sending it to my mother, because she saw my old one, and wanted one, and couldn't find one in La Paz.

Our other stop was Home Depot, for another gift card purchase, this time a new shower head. I'm five feet tall. The shower in my bathroom was designed, apparently, for a basketball player, because even on a stool I could barely reach it to change the angle. And it was old, and icky. Now, though, I have a wonderful massaging showerhead with a gazillion settings (or seven), and we put in a swivelling extender on the pipe that the hose screws into, so that I can reach things, but it can be raised should anyone of basketball player stature ever need to use my bathroom. Not that this is likely, but Fuzzy insisted, and since he was the one who was going to be installing the damned thing, I let him win that battle.

He also won the battle with the various screws and pipes, and I now have a working spiffy showerhead behind my brand new shower curtains. Thanks, Fuzzy!

We stopped for coffee on the way home. I've found that I get grumpy on the weekends, and have realized that it's because during the week, my daily ritual involves some kind of uber-caffeinated beverage around ten AM, and while I claim that I'm not addicted /really/, I'm hooked enough that when I don't have coffee on weekends, I get snappy and grumpy and bitchy. And Fuzzy doesn't deserve that.

So: Fuzzy's Productive Things for the weekend, despite our lounging in bed and indulging in afternoon cuddling, were the lawn and the shower head installation. And mine were the much more pedestrian dishes and laundry. Zorro doesn't have to be productive – he's just cute – but Cleo has a new mission. She's learning to hunt mice. I was looking for something in the garage last night, you see, and one jumped at me. I'm embarrassed to admit that I screamed, but it was NOT because I'm afraid of rodents – I'm not – it was because I wasn't expecting anything grayish brown and furry to jump out of a box.

In any case, it's nearly eight, and I need to get ready for another assistantless day at work. *sigh* Only a month, and I'm dependent on having him around. I'm hopeless.

Read this book!

If you haven't already, go out *right now* and pick up a copy of Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. I read it yesterday. Well, I read the first 40 pages of it on Friday evening, and then I read the rest of it Saturday night in the bathroom, and finished it yesterday morning, but that's not really the point.

The point is: this is a great book.

While many of the events it describes are far from gentle, the overall tone is one of gentility. It's a calm book, the kind you read while sipping tea. It would be a good bath book, I think, as well.

It's presented as if it were not a novel, but the actual first-person account of a woman, Sayuri, who was a geisha in the '30's and 40's. It's about love and loss and destiny.

And it's got the period backdrop that makes it feel like an old movie.

What shocked me, though, after I read it, was not that it was fiction, because, after all, I knew that going in, but that a man – a straight man – could write a woman's POV with such quiet sensitivity. And it's just that feeling that made this book so haunting.

So…read this book.
(ISBN #0-679-78158-7)

*Edited to note that yes, there is some controversy about this story. It's presented as fiction, but the person the lead character is based on says that it's really her life story, and her own people are pretty pissed. Whether that's true, or it's just a ploy for media attention, the fact remains it's a great read. And isn't that what really matters?

Only in California…

From weather.com, as per excite.com

Frost Advisory – Urgent – weather message has been issued for Santa Clara county CA valid from Sun Feb 09 2003 03:46 PM PST until Sun Feb 09 2003 09:00 PM PST .
Napa county-santa Clara county-alameda and Contra Costa counties- Salinas valley/interior Monterey county/san benito county- Sonoma and Marin counties- 343 PM PST Sun Feb 9 2003 …A frost advisory tonight for the inland valleys of the san Francisco and Monterey bay areas… Clear skies and calm winds will Result in temperatures lowering to near or just below freezing for a Short duration by dawn Monday morning. A frost advisory has therefore been issued for the valleys of the North and East bay as well as the Santa Clara and Salinas valleys. Those with tender vegetation should cover or protect it from the cold. Also…Potted plants normally left outdoors should be covered or brought inside away from the cold. Residents in the advisory area should take precautions to protect outdoor pets.