Confessions of a One-Track Mind

It was cold last night. I didn't turn on the space heater, although I woke shivering before dawn and wished I had---but was too cold to get out from under the covers to do it. Dreamed about Susie...we had been to some scrapbooking sale, and she'd gotten a bunch of "theme" pages and she was talking about what pictures she was going to use them with. Bizarre, since that really wasn't the kind of crafting she was into.

Woke up cold and depressed. Added a long-sleeved pullover, which helped with the cold, but was freaking out about the house. My mom used to say, "A place for everything, and everything in its place", and I was looking around going, "Where? Where do I put that? Or that? All this STUFF, I don't even---!"

I did what any sensible person would do: I went back to bed and slept for another three hours.

I did not magically feel better when I woke up. More weird dreams...I had been given or rescued a little brown dachsund, and I was panic-stricken, because I knew I couldn't afford a dog. Also, he needed to be housebroken. Life or death, because I was staying with Mags Bennett (from Justified), and she was threatening to turn him into sausage if he crapped on her rug one more time. We were in an old house, recently inherited, that was all paneled in knotty-pine and the rooms ran together like a labyrinth.

Shifted some stuff around in the dining room---I swear, it never ends, I just DID the dining room, but of course, things come in from other areas while you work on them, or you set something down "just for a minute"---and pretty soon there's a fresh patch of clutter. Arrrgh!

Went back and forth, working out there, coming back here for a quick game of Staries...what snapped me out of my funk was looking at a slideshow of the quake/tsunami devastation in Japan. That prompted me to give myself a mental bitchslap. I'm worried about a few boxes and some piles of laundry? Pfft, that's nothing.

It's raining fish right now. I'm really glad I don't have to GO anywhere tonight. This afternoon was difficult enough.

Thank God/dess for J's neighbor, who took in hand the wretched job the funeral home did and helped Susie to look...better. All the funeral home did was foundation; her hair was awful---almost anything would've been an inprovement, but neighbor C did a good job with her eye shadow and some lipstick, and arranged her hair. (It was Susan's own make-up from her purse.)

J stayed out front until C was done; I was in there the whole time, advising how Susan liked her make-up. C did the best she could, but the expression on Susie's face...or lack thereof. It was NOT her.

Honestly, when I die, I'll haunt anyone who instigates such foolishness. I don't want to be a painted waxwork displayed in a big oak box. I want a no-frills cremation and a party for my friends. I want them to sit around and shoot the shit and tell jokes and stories about the good times we had.

Afterward, I trudged over to Publix and the Dollar Tree. Two pots of calla lilies came from Publix; I'm going to repot them into a container that was going to be Susie's Christmas gift, a pot with playing card suites on the sides. The Dollar Tree yielded some spanish moss to garnish the dirt in the pot with, and some playing cards, which I'm debating tucking in with her. I tend toward the Viking method of burying the dead with things they may need in their afterlife, and Susie's grandmoth, mother and sister are all waiting for her, and that's quite a canasta foursome.

I'm short on sleep, thanks to the dogs next door, so I'd better go set some timers just in case....

.

I've spent the last couple days in a daze, trying to come to grips with Susie's passing. A chunk of Saturday was taken up with helping T and J write an obituary. As I found out with Kat's death, they charge for those by the line, but T uttered the three most dangerous words in the English language: "I don't care." So I smoothed out his rough draft and added a few adjectives to help convey her personality, and included the sentence, "She was an excellent canasta player.". Because I can picture her cocky grin as we sat down to play; when she was sober, she was.

We got acquainted in 1982, when BC rented a room from her. March would've been 29 years since we first met. We had our differences over the years, but always made up eventually. That's a long time, and there are so many things I'll always associate with Susie. Her favorite writers were Piers Anthony, Stephen King and Jack London. Her favorite musicians were Elton John, Jimmy Buffett and James Taylor. She loved George Carlin, Eddie Izzard and Bette Midler.

Her feelings about green peppers was like mine about peas, as in, she'd pitch a fit if they were in a dish she was served. She used scented laundry detergent and a double dose of fabric softener, so her clothes were always highly perfumed, and woe to you if you used one of her towels (even the oldest, rattiest ones) to dry to wipe the morning dew from your windshield. The build-up left an evil greasy film on the glass.

She thought it was acceptable to "bake" potatoes in the microwave. I could never convince her otherwise. On the other hand, I couldn't even reheat leftovers to her satisfaction, so why am I surprised? She was one of those people who, if you did things differently from the way they did, told you you were doing it wrong. Not a lot of flexability there; "good enough" was never good enough, to the point where she'd refuse to fire a piece of ceramic because she didn't approve of how well I'd cleaned it.

When her mom died, Susie was upset by the lack of make-up the funeral home did. Said she didn't look natural without a ton of blue eye shadow and crooked pink lipstick. She made me promise that I'd do her funerary make-up if she predeceased me. I'm willing to do it; I promised, after all. But J has a friend who's a professional cosmetologist, and tomorrow the three of us are going to go take care of her. I doubt I'll actually wield an eyeliner, but I'll be there for her.

I know, this is a downer, but that's life...and death.

.

1955 - 2011


After 36 hours without internet, I learned late last night that my friend Susie, the oft-mentioned "S" of Schnauzerland, has passed. She went peacefully in her sleep at home, and her loved ones are saddened, but not overly surprised, as her conditon (both mental and physical) was precarious for some time.

I find myself distracted and remembering incidents and factoids...the time we changed a flat tire on her convertible in eleven minutes flat because she had a term paper that HAD to be turned in within an hour. How she always got patty melts at Dennys and Eggs Benedict at Perkins. Her wedding (She was 20 minutes late, which was totally par for the course) and the reception afterward, where her dog Grover attended wearing a cumberbund. How she'd usually forget to mention something during a phone call and would ring right back, beginning without salutation, "And another thing---" Garage sailing together---it was truly amazing how much stuff she could pack into a two-door Camaro!---ceramic shows, and the jaunt we took to West Palm Beach for molds.

In the interests of not speaking ill of the dead, we will not discuss the disasterous time I tried to vacation with her, or all the times she'd chew me out over things that happened weeks before. My memory was always better than hers; I remember a fair amount of acrimony, mostly over trivia, but it's all meaningless now. Better to remember the canasta games where we laughed til it hurt, the cuddly puppies, the companionable hours spent doing ceramics, soaks in her jacuzzi and the way she included me in her holiday plans as a matter of course. She helped fund my trip to Brooklyn when my brother died unexpectedly, for which I'm grateful.

Susie, I'm going to miss you.

.

What does one do with a long-time friend who demands one drop everything and do inconvenient things for them---and doesn't comprend NO? (Actually, FUCK NO, but I'm saving that for later.) S---yes, she of the excessive lifestyle---has made travel plans, and is certain that I have nothing better to do than drop everything and keep the schnauzers company for a week. As I've already attempted to explain to her, I already face a 45 mile a day commute. Going back to her place will add another 20 miles to that. It is NOT a question of me needing gas money, as I've tried to make clear. It's the additional 30-60 minutes it will suck from my already full day, not to mention the wear and tear on my car (the one with 240K miles on it).

I'm trying to be nice. I have NOT fired back a reply to her less-than-coherent email telling her to get her shit together, although that's my basic thought on the subject. She has a daughter, a cousin, in-laws out the wazoo---I'm supposed to feel honored that she trusts me best, but damn it!---it's a huge pain-in-the-ass. When I was out of work, or only working a few miles from home, that was one thing, but by complying with that, I seem to have set myself up as dog-sitter ad infinitum ad nauseum. And now, that's not an option I'm entertaining.

Since S doesn't seem to be getting the message, I'm going to bypass her and call her hubby tomorrow. (Because I know that if I try talking to her about it, it'll get loud and nasty and may drive a permanent wedge between us...in the sense that there have been times, during the last two-and-a-half decades when we were snarked enough not to talk for a year or so. And in the condition she's in, that could be forever---although I'm not going to be guilted into it, either.) Knowing him, he'll shrug and say okay, he'll get one of his brothers to do it. Which she won't like, because I do, in fact, get along better with the dogs, but too bad. It's only for a week, they'll get over it.

Other than that, today we had our first clear day for over a week. I was starting to think about a course in boat-building....
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ADDENDUM: I just read my horoscope. Somewhere, the Universe is laughing its ass off---
You cannot be everyone's best friend -- in fact, you can't even expect everyone to like you. So today stop putting so much effort into pleasing someone who clearly cannot be pleased (at least by you). You two are just not compatible, and there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes, two people just aren't meant to be friends. If everyone liked everyone, the world would be a very boring place, so be grateful that you do have the friends you have, and stop worrying about the ones you don't have.

Today was an interesting day. Kat showed up on my doorstep about five minutes after I got off the phone with T (S's husband), said they'd been trying to get ahold of me---she and GK and S were all hanging out at the McDonalds up the road so GK's kids could play for a bit before they headed over to Orlando (They're flying out very early tomorrow, so they were going to stay at a hotel and catch a shuttle to the airport rather than have to deal with turning in their rental car at 3 AM).

After GK left with the kids and Kat went to the restroom, S wanted to know if I would do her a favor. Without going into details, my answer was no, no, no, hell no. *sigh* She insisted that "nothing" was wrong with her, that her episode over the weekend was merely a severe hangover (Urm, they call that withdrawl, dear...), and she just needed me to do this one little favor. And she'd give me $$$! No, no, no, hell no.

One useful thing about this job of mine: I apparently have learned to sound a lot more convincing, because S only tried to talk me out of it for about five minutes before she realized I was sincere. Let's hope none of her other friends caves in to pressure.