Dear Almost-Birthday-Sister,

I’ve meant to send you a disc and card but have fallen into a pattern of work, sleep, work, sleep, with brief interludes of eating very quickly, in the hopes that doing so will neither take too much time from work, or boost my energy so much that sleep becomes impossible. It’s not a healthy way to live, but it’s only two more weeks. I think I can hold out that long.

I’ve thought about you all day, wishing for one of our late night IM chats, counting the moments of enlightenment and clarity you’ve helped me find, the smiles, the new experiences that are somehow related to knowing you, and the calmness wrapped in a spark of creativity that I associate with you in the chaotic place that is my mind.

Somehow, I think YOUR mind is much less chaotic. Or is chaotic in a different sense.

But differences are good, no? If we were all the same the world would be quite dreary, and there would be far less reason for art and music and words, ink and pictures and long rambling conversations that mosey along different tangents like a stream that meanders through a lush wood, along a village green, and finally bisects a beach on its way to merge with the ocean.

I hope that your day was spent surrounded by people and things who are meaningful to you, and that you smiled a lot, and enjoyed a balance of laughter and quiet reflection.

And if there was cake, that’s even better.

My almost-birthday-sister, today I salute you.
Thank you for being my friend.

– Birthday was good. Now own spiffy lime green ZEN VISION M thanks to Fuzzy aka Best Husband in the World.

– I have a horrible cold. And I have to work today. And tomorrow.

– Comments should work now. I managed to make them all unworky. But I think they’re fixed. Thanks to Janet for pointing out the exact error.

My birthday’s on Thursday, and I think Fuzzy’s agreed that upgrading my mp3 player would be a good idea, as I’m constantly complaining about the limited space on my Creative Zen Micro (5 GB).

I’m considering either the 30GB Creative Zen Vision M OR a 30 GB iPod (I know, I know, perish the thought), but I’m honestly torn.

Do weigh in with your opinion?

I enjoyed workshop today, mostly, but came away from it feeling like everything I attempt I completely suck at. I’ve never claimed to be funny. Sometimes I’m good with words. Sunday is tainted by the dread of Monday and work, and I’m already bone-weary, and feeling like I never get rest.

Sometimes, even the best of us whine.
And I’m so NOT the best.

We all have special places, restaurants, pubs, bookstores, that we frequent so often that we begin to assert over them a sort of emotional ownership, even as we realize intellectually that we are mere visitors. Sometimes these places are our college hangouts (I have a special fondness for the Mel’s Drive-In at Geary and Arguello in SFO, for example, because it was the place of many late-night milk-shake and Ms. Pac-Man extravaganzas). Sometimes we adopt them later in life – there’s a Japanese restaurant in Irving that Fuzzy and I visit almost often enough to have ‘our’ table.

And then there are the places where there really is a connection, a sense of history. For me, as for much of my family, that place is The Diner. My mother pointed out in a forum post on the diner’s website (White Crystal Diner.dot com), that most of us never referred to it by name, because we never had to, and in fact, I think I was at least thirteen before I realized it even had a name. It was simply The Diner, and everyone in town knew what that meant.

It was the ultimate family business, operated in part by family I barely knew, loved and hated at once by other family who will ever see me as a nine-year-old girl with strawberry-blonde braids and thick glasses, the little girl who got yelled at for spinning on the bar stools until she was sick, who was greeted every year on her birthday, by a fake candle poked through the tin-foil covering of her very special bowl of rice pudding, who associates the place with innocence and childhood and endless balmy summers at the Jersey shore.

I remember bringing my cousin Ginny, 31 years older than me, who called me her birthday girl because I was born on HER birthday, a bouquet of black balloons the day I turned nine and she turned 40. She pretended outrage, but we all knew she loved the attention, and the tips. “Forty is Sporty,” we told her, and the balloons echoed our words.

I remember, several years later, no longer sporting braids arguing with Moose (Anthony) about what a California burger should really include. “Sprouts,” I teased, having lived in the golden state for all of three years by then. “Californians put sprouts on EVERYTHING.” In the end, we compromised with bacon and avocado. It probably wasn’t the first time I ever ate real food there (as in NOT rice pudding) but it’s the one time I remember doing so. That burger was perfect.

I remember my cousins, Cathy and KJ, Ginny’s kids, complaining that they were asked to help out when things got busy. I wasn’t old enough to be asked, but I’d have volunteered in a heartbeat, and even though I KNOW how hard Moose and Ginny worked, and how tired and greasy they were at the end of the day, I’m still a little jealous I never got to have that experience.

I remember Aunt Molly’s red-red lipstick, and how her ever present Chanel No. 5 perfume has combined with the deepest of sense memory so much that it now smells like rice pudding to me. I remember her air kisses, and perfect hair, and how even when she was tired her eyes were always laughing.

I hear their voices in my head, and the rhythms and cadences of their speech, and I use them in character work, when I can, either in text or, sometimes, on stage.

Today, four days before I turn 36, I remember most the total magic of walking through the door at The Diner, and sitting on one of the aquamarine-upholstered stools, and having rice pudding placed in front of me without me ever having to ask.

* * * * *

The White Crystal was sold several years ago, and is currently being refurbished, and will be shipped to its new location in Springfield, MA. Long may she live.

I quit my job.

With no small amount of trepidation, I entered the dentist’s office this morning not for any drilling or pulling, but for a cleaning, and general exam. Mai, the hygienist, was sweet and gentle, even giving me a neck rest without having to be asked, and her touch was sure and deft.

After, Dr. F. went over my X-rays, and we plotted a treatment solution (that sounds so Hunt for Red October doesn’t it?) involving no root canals, two crowns, and more fillings than I care to tally.

Sometimes, trips to the dentist aren’t horrifying at all.

Really.

Clouds growing ever thicker each time I glanced upwards hovered in the sky all day, finally darkening to ominous bruised masses just as we left home to drive to Dallas for workshop. In Starbucks, one of the places we stopped on the way, a baristo tried to wager $100 that it would not actually rain.

I should have taken the bet, because the skies opened up three minutes into our journey. While I tracked flashes of lightning, Fuzzy turned up the radio, and focused on driving. In my head, though, I was in a boat chasing sharks on choppy seas.

A friend wrote about making chef for a specific kind of bread, and I find myself wistful for the time when had time to putter in my kitchen and experiment with bread crafting. Now I see my kitchen as a vast wasteland of sky blue tile and cobalt blue appliances, the former marred only by doggie footprints, the latter dust free only because the maids make certain of it.

I remember baking with my grandfather, whose sourdough chef bubbled and grew on the counter over the dishwasher, and think he would be disappointed that I’m not keeping his legacy alive.

With the changing of the calendar page we step from July into August. My month. It was a less than positive beginning – having to backtrack home from a point almost half-way to work because I forgot my access badge.

The argiope is back in hiding, but she’s left behind a renewed NEED to write. I am entertaining the notion of being a virtual assistant. The need to earn be happy should not be outweighed by the need to earn a living wage.

Work still makes me cry, but the possibility of change brings a smile to dry the tears.