Shiral's Open Salon Blog

Welcome to the Neighborhood

Sat, 26 May 2012 02:05:31 -0400

Before the show: Photo Credit Mark Gottlieb

“Honey I’ve got a great idea!” my mother told me over the phone one evening in late March. “What if we had a show of all your little houses at my place this spring?”

On Sunday May 20^th, we did. Welcome to Papyrus Acres! And yes, this was one of my Mom’s best ideas ever.

And so, for three hours last Sunday at my mother’s house, Papyrus Acres became more than a virtual playground for me. Five days later I’m still on an emotional high from having a roomful of people all staring at and exclaiming over my work of the last nine years. On Sunday Night I was still completely wired at nine pm while sitting in my comfy TV chair with my cat Francesca in my lap. My body knew it was tired, especially my feet, but there was no slowing down my brain. It was the first evening in about three weeks that I hadn’t spent painting, cutting or gluing some little paper structure at my art table.

The party and show get started.

Photo Credit: Mark Gottlieb

The party had a bittersweet quality for me and Mom, as my mother’s house in Palo Alto, the place I lived while growing up from age 8 until I moved out at age 23, is destined to go on the market in the fall. Now that all four of her offspring are far-flung adults with established homes of our own, the house and garden have become too much house for Mom and a constant responsibility when she’d rather be writing poetry and attending plays and San Francisco Symphony concerts. But for Sunday, the kitchen and dining room made an excellent staging ground for yet another of our many family parties; a tea party and art show, complete with cucumber sandwiches. I saw a great many people, relatives and long-time friends I don’t seen on a regular basis, and received many lavish compliments. It’s a wonder my head wasn’t the size of a mylar balloon after all that adulation. Of course, like helium balloons, the effects of heady praise gradually wear off, and I’ve slowly returned to Earth, this week. One of the reasons I haven’t been on Open Salon very much these last two months is that a great deal of my creative time and energy for getting ready for the show went into building this:

Russian Church

Photo Credit: Mark Gottlieb

Why a cathedral for an agnostic, secular person like me with no plans to join the Russian Orthodox faith? It was pretty much a purely aesthetic exercise. I just love Russian Churches with all their curves, swirls towers and domes. Especially the onion domes. The inspiration was a left-over paper Christmas ornament, so I built a church to set it off. Francesca, my Senior Building Advisor gives it her inspection:

And then this, which I literally finished the night before the show :

Spanish Style House

Photo Credit: Mark Gottlieb

I also repaired, re-roofed and re-glued a number of the other houses I’ve built in the past nine years.

This is the first house I ever made; a little Tuscan villa which is essentially a paper cube r with a roof. I made it in thanks for my mother’s birthday gift to me that year; a two-week painting trip to Italy. I’m sure I got the better end of that deal. A pretty simple structure, but the fun I had in planning and making it was enough to start a magnificent obsession.

Pale Blue Villa:

Photo Credit: Mark Gottlieb

This is another early cube villa (my "Cubist phase?"), definitely inspired by my Italian trip, and the 18^th century buildings I saw in Spoleto. My father delivered it unglued and in flat sections—but one of the reasons I stopped using rubber cement as my glue of choice years ago. I’ve also learned a lot about roofing since 2003; and this one is a great improvement on the old, poorly fitted roof.

Italian Farmhouse

Photo Credit: Mark Gottlieb

This house is a little stone Italian farm house of the sort I saw dotting the countryside all over Umbria. They’re definitely not villas, but even the ones that are not in the best repair manage to look homey and hospitable.

Green Queen Anne Victorian

And then there are my Victorians.This green one is the most elaborate one I've made, as I branched out beyond the cube and shoe box footprints, and added the wraparound porch and the tower. It’s no accident that several of my projects have been Victorian houses. Besides being a part of California’s architectural vernacular since Gold Rush days, there’s a lot of visual interest inherent in Victorians. They have pretty color schemes, lots of decorative work, ornate windows and doors, wrap-around porches with elaborate wooden gingerbread trim, and towers. I could build twenty Victorians, and make them all unique. They also afford me many chances to teach myself how to do something new with each new project I undertake.

Spanish House

Photo Credit: Mark Gottlieb

Another style of house I love that can be seen often in California is the Spanish style. They have a very different appeal than the Victorians. I like the simplicity of their walls with the red tile roofs, and the intricate iron window grilles and tile trim.

If my trip to Italy inspired me nine years ago, my trip to France last summer did the same thing.

Chateau de Papier

Photo Credit: Mark Gottlieb

The larger chateau was inspired by a chateau turned hotel in the Loire Valley where we stayed near the end of our trip. The place was so beautiful and peaceful that once we were there, we couldn’t tear ourselves away. Not even to see Clos de Luce, the house where Leonardo Da Vinci lived at the end of his life. The big structural breakthrough I made with the large chateau was using mailing tubes to create the big towers at the gable ends of the chateau.

For this smaller chateau inspired by Chateau Azay-le-Rideau in Normandy, I used four toilet paper tubes for the corner towers. Who says the grand life can’t include repurposed and recycled materials?

Interested parties can find out more about my artistic process by visiting my Google Docs presentation Here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1eW_68QCugESXvnh-dXX4RKy1rjx2pbSGFq4Y7JxlNX8/edit#slide=id.p

NB, the link should work, now. I changed the setting in Googledocs to allow viewing for those who had the link. Apologies to those who tried to view it earlier and couldn't get in!

After the official party ended at 5, the diehards kept having fun out on the deck.

An almost perfect illusion...

Photo Credit: Steve Siegelman

But Martin is not your average householder…

Photo Credit: Mark Gottlieb

Oh no! Bro-zilla attacks!

Photo Credit: Steve Siegelman

The hand in this picture belongs to my brother Alan.

As to what the next project will be I have a commission to fulfill already. The next logical next step is to create a webpage somewhere. While the show was huge success on emotional terms, I’m much newer to selling my art than I am at creating it. When it comes to setting a price on them that acknowledges the effort I put into them without being outrageous, I have all the anxious guilt of a child worrying about overcharging at a garage sale.

But I got over it: after all, these are unique, and handmade works of art. And I haven’t seen anything else quite like them anywhere else. (If I tell myself that over and over, I might believe it in this art-unfriendly economy.) I had my price list on my iPad (which really came into its own last weekend) , but I did not post it, and perhaps lost a sale or two that way. It’s true I get very attached to my little houses, but by selling them, I can make space for the next wave of new projects. And for me, the fun of these houses is all in the making. My enthusiasm is boundless but my storage space is finite. When I open my bedroom closet, I’m always careful lest I set off an avalanche of little pastel Victorians. Perhaps my next project after the webpage should be some new display shelves….

Listen Carefully

Fri, 4 May 2012 14:05:16 -0400

“Listen carefully,” he said. “This won’t be easy for you to hear. But Julie is still alive. She’s working as a Safeway checker over in Capitola.”

“Oh Ben, just stop.” Jillian sighed. “There is no possible way Julie can still be alive. We all loved her and we all miss her terribly, but you’ve got to stop imagining that you see her wherever you go. It’s been six years.”

“You never saw her body,” Ben replied. He took a sip of his capuccino and stared back at her in triumph.

“Nobody saw any bodies,” Jillian said, meeting his eyes. “Because her plane went down in the middle of the Pacific Ocean halfway to Japan. Julie was a confirmed passenger on that flight. There were no survivors, and you know it.” Jillian took an angry swallow of her cooling latte and scowled into the white china mug, her shining dark hair framing her honey-tanned face.

“So you won’t go to Capitola to investigate? I’m telling you, she recognized me.”

“No.” Jillian slapped the table in frustration. “I’m tired of your fantasies, Ben and I’m not going to indulge you, anymore. If Julie were still alive, she’d have found a way to let me, Mom and Dad know. I know my own sister—she wouldn’t have let us grieve all this time without sending word. If she were living and working in Capitola, she would have come to see us long ago and kept in touch. I don’t know who you saw there last week, but I’m positive it wasn’t her.”

“So why do you still talk about Julie in the present tense?”

Jillian cursed herself for the momentary slip of saying know rather than knew. “I meant knew. Ben, no matter how much you loved her, Julie’s gone and she’ll never be back. Your insisting you see her everywhere between Santa Cruz and Monterey is giving me the creeps. Mom and Dad and I have accepted we’ll never see her again, and that’s been hard enough. Why do you keep refusing to face reality?”

Jillian pushed her chair back and stood, wanting to just be away from Ben. He was no relation of hers—and she was relieved that Julie would never marry him. He was thin-skinned and self-centered and hadn’t worn well. He was such a black hole of emotional need, even her twin’s patience and compassion would have been worn out if she’d lived long enough to go through with the marriage. Her parents had refused to see or speak to Ben for the past year, and it was time she severed the tie as well.

“Julie’s dead, Ben. Stop tormenting me if you won’t stop tormenting yourself. I don’t want any more of these false alarms, understand? I know my sister is dead. You need to accept it, too. At first I thought it was touching that you were so devoted to her. Now you just seem self-delusional.”

He stared up at her like a reproachful basset hound. “So you’re just going to forget she ever lived?”

Jillian took a deep breath, remembering they were in a public place and spoke in a temperate voice rather than screaming at him as she felt like doing. “Of course we’re not going to forget Julie, or pretend she never lived. But there’s a big difference between remembering her with love and living in total denial the way you are. Good bye, Ben. Don’t call me, anymore.”

***

Jillian took the Capitola exit off southbound Highway 1on Monday evening after work, cursing herself. Damn Ben, and his stupid obsession, but she had to go to that Safeway and satisfy the tiny, nagging curiosity and hope he had planted in her mind. She had to quell that restlessness had kept her from sleeping for the past two nights. She hated doing anything that would give Ben this satisfaction if he could know about it especially after the way she’d parted from him on Saturday afternoon. Even as she’d walked out on him, she’d known she would eventually go look. Usually, she could hold out for a week.

Jillian wasn’t sure what was driving her, this time. It wasn’t as if she believed Julie was still alive. Planes downed in the ocean with no survivors were notably final. She had got used to living alone with Julie’s cat, Mephisto, for company, although there were a few articles of Julie’s clothing and jewelry she’d kept and wore out of pure sentiment. She sat in her car for a few minutes, breathing deeply the engine off, but the keys still in the ignition, her fingers ready to start it right back up. With a deep breath, she pulled the key out of the ignition, and stepped out, her purse clutched firmly against her side and locked the car with care.

As Safeway stores went, this one looked pretty sorry for itself. There was hardly a new, undented or undinged car in the poorly lit parking lot. Safewa the red neon sign announced, the y being dark. One of the soft drink machines had a crooked, hand-lettered Out of Order sign taped to its front. Jillian wrestled a cart out of the rank by the door and went in, noting the scuffed, unswept linoleum floor and the sparse, crooked display of Cheerio boxes set up at the end of the nearest aisle. Julie would hardly have picked up emergency supplies of cat litter or flour here, let alone stocked their refrigerator with the food. The thought of her working here was absurd. Not in a store where it was clear too few employees gave a damn. Setting her lips in a grim line, Jillian headed for the paper supply aisle. It should be safe enough to buy toilet paper and non-perishables, here. She wasn’t about to trust the dairy case. The end of the packaged food aisle led her to the produce section and a small floral island. On pure impulse, Jillian grabbed a bouquet of red roses that were passably fresh—Julie had loved them more than any other flower.

A glance at the quality of the produce convinced her she wanted none of it, so, with her heart pounding, Jillian headed for the cash registers. Two were open, and she wheeled past the first staffed with a yawning, pimply young man, and turned in at the second and stopped short.

“Ju—“ she mouthed.

Like a young Joan Baez in a Safeway apron, her own and her twin’s doppelganger was checking out an older man’s grocery order as if her mother had given up a third daughter. Jillian gave up all pretense and stared while as she placed her sparse items on the rubber belt. For once, she understood Ben. This girl looked exactly like Julie; and sounded so like Julie that Jillian even doubted the six year-old truth she’d coped with. The checker had Julie and Jillian’s own glossy but wispy coffee brown hair falling just past her shoulders in a layered cut; the same sparkling, dark brown eyes set in her tanned face like tilted almonds, the strong cheekbones and chin and aquiline nose. It wasn’t hard to imagine this woman plunging into the Santa Cruz surf in a wet suit with a surf board under her arm. This girl was even flirting with her customer as Julie would have, making a shy, lonely man feel flattered and happy if only for as long as it took to ring up his grocery order.

“Bye, Mr. Taylor, see you next week!” she caroled to her customer who was now shuffling out with a pair of laden plastic grocery bags in his hands.

“Bye, Angie!” He smiled and gave her a three finger wave, as if he were still some young surfing god.

The illusion of Julie was broken the next moment when Angie turned to face Jillian and her sweet, flirty manner changed to a deadpan indifference.

“Hi” she muttered as she began ringing up Jillian’s order. If she’d even noticed the remarkable resemblance between herself and Jillian, her manner suggested she wasn’t interested enough to actually mention the matter.

“Hi.” Jillian paid for her order and murmured her thanks before she gratefully returned to her car.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid! There was no need to go in there,” Jillian muttered, setting the roses on the passenger seat before climbing in and slamming the driver’s door shut. “There was never a possibility it was Julie. Why do I let him set me up this way?”

Back in Santa Cruz, she did not return to her apartment, right away. Instead, she drove out on West Cliff Drive and parked in the lot she and Julie always used on their surfing Saturdays. For someone who had loved beaches and the ocean as Julie had, Jillian had always taken what comfort she could at the thought of her sister’s final resting place being in the ocean. She took the red roses with her, as she veered off the asphalt bicycle path and down a hard-packed sand trail that would take her closer to the cliff edges and the surf. It was just past sunset, and the tide was low, the surf reduced to calm swells, although there was enough of a breeze to tug at Jillian’s hair. Jillian folded back the cellophane wrapper around the roses and one by one, she tossed them over the cliff edge down into the ocean, watching in the dimness as the small dark flower heads drifted further and further from land on the receding tide.

Late, Again

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 15:04:02 -0400

Vince and Meredith were old close friends despite their chronological incompatibility. They both enjoyed the same things, enjoyed restaurant dinners and a movie out, or a trip to a symphony or the ballet or an art gallery. The chief problem with their friendship was their mutual inability to synchronize their moods. Vince always seemed to be in the mood to bar hop across the city until dawn whenever Meredith had had a particularly difficult, overscheduled day and wished for nothing more active than an evening sitting on her sofa in her bathrobe watching a favorite movie before she turned in early.

Meredith always bought a costly, alarmingly organized day planning guide at the end of each December, and by the end of the first week of January, she had at least penciled in her appointments through the end of April, and had cross-referenced them to the appointment schedule she kept on her iPhone. She disliked surprises, last minute changes or upheaval of any sort and particularly hated being kept waiting on account of other people’s disorganization or discourtesy.

Vince scribbled hasty notes on the backs of crumpled bar napkins or utility bill envelopes; despite this haphazard arrangement, he managed to make it to most of his professional obligations although he was habitually an hour or two late to all his social engagements. Time meant little to him, and promptness meant almost nothing unless it was absolutely critical for remaining employed. Meredith considered Vince disorganized and immature; Vince considered Meredith overscheduled and uptight, far too easily ruled by the clock and calendar.

“I’m not against spontaneity! I just want it scheduled!” Meredith had burst out during a phone fight when they’d each been frustrated by the other’s attitude and said so. The fight had ended thirty seconds later when they’d both cracked up.

Vince always knew when it was Meredith on the phone; especially at times when she was angry with him. All her frustration made the “brrrrriing!” of the phone sound especially imperious. He guiltily looked at his watch, then sprang for the phone, knowing he was in for it. He’d asked Meredith to take him over to the Citroën dealership at three pm. to pick up his car after servicing, but now it was four-thirty. The Citroen was an old, beloved, cranky vehicle that he'd inherited from his father. He could not bring himself to get rid of it despite the astronomical running costs, as no other car came close to having it's personality. Given that the dealership was the only one in town and they’d have to drive with the worst of the Friday afternoon rush hour traffic to get there, he knew Meredith was going to have some choice things to say.

“Where are you?” she growled into the phone, ignoring his cheery hello.

“I’m at home, writing thank you notes to my hosts in France,” Vince admitted.

“Writing thank you notes to France ?”

Vince winced; why had he chosen right now as a moment for truth telling?

“Those people you stayed with two years ago?”

“Uh…yeah—“

“Vince, if you ask someone for a favor, it’s rude to then make them wait around for you for an hour and a half! I had things I needed to do today too, you know!”

“I know,” he tried to soothe her. “But after procrastinating about this for two years, I just wanted to get those thank you notes written—

“Right! So what’s another twenty-four hours after two years?” Meredith spat back. “Being abducted by aliens is an acceptable excuse for being late, Vince. Having that old wreck of a car leave you stranded on a bridge in the middle of rush hour is a decent excuse. Letter writing to people you haven’t seen in two years is not!”

“What if I had my long lost mother in my living room?” Vince doubted jokes would help right now, but the barely suppressed fury in Meredith’s voice made him nervous enough to babble any attempt to make her laugh and defuse the situation at least a little.

“I wouldn’t care if you had Queen Elizabeth II sipping tea on your sofa this second! Just get over to my place in twenty-minutes or I won’t be here in thirty!”

Vince hung up, and seized his jacket from the hook beside the door and bolted. The number 5 bus pulled up to the curb just as soon as he scurried out the lobby door of his apartment complex and he managed to board through the closing rear doors by a balletic leap. Heart pounding, he’d thanked the mercy that the bus had arrived right then that he’d make it to Meredith’s apartment within her twenty-minute window. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that she would make good on her threat if he didn’t arrive on time. He’d pushed her just a bit too far, this time. He’d be without a car all weekend unless he walked, or found a more amenable friend to take him to the dealership tomorrow. The Citroen garage was not near any convenient bus stops at that end of town.

He didn’t even have time to knock on her front door; she’d seen him jog down the concrete path leading from the street to her door, and was waiting for him on the threshold, her purse over her right shoulder. As he had known she would be, she looked to be loaded for bear.

“Let’s go,” she barked, pulling her front door closed behind her, making sure it was locked.

Uneasily, Vince sat in the passenger seat of Meredith’s tidy silver Corolla. He tried to remember if he’d locked his front door. He was just thankful his electric kettle shut off automatically. The interior of Meredith’s car was immaculate, even the floor mats were vacuumed. It was reliable and clean, but Vince didn’t think Meredith’s car had any personality Not a food wrapper or elderly bit of mail to be found anywhere. They were hardly out of her driveway before she started her frustrated litany of the times he’d kept her waiting, and how she wouldn’t be able to pick up her dry cleaning, do her grocery shopping, or get to the home consignment store today because of the time she’d wasted waiting for him to get his shit together and arrive when he said he would, for once! Then they could have got to the Citroën garage before the afternoon traffic instead of creeping along Palisades Parkway at four in the afternoon which shaved off even more of the time she had to do her errands today. She managed to keep it going even as they inched their way along the Parkway with frustrating slowness, every traffic light turning yellow at their approach

Vince sat pinned in the passenger seat, and made contrite sounds whenever Meredith paused to breathe—which wasn’t often. He accepted the verbal artillery barrage of her frustration because she was doing him this favor, despite everything. He couldn’t honestly deny the truth of anything she said, either. It was his just penance for his lack of consideration. All the while, he worried about his possibly unlocked front door—odds were nothing would happen—not in a building that had rents that high, but it was a nagging worry. Especially if he’d left his wallet out on the diningroom table in plain sight .

In a panic, Vince shifted in the seat, his hand going to his right hip pocket, hoping against hope to feel the familiar bump that would tell him he had his debit card and cash—he’d paid the bus fare from his pocket change. And he felt nothing but gabardine under his questing fingers.

Oh, dear God.

Meredith sat in the driver’s seat, impatiently drumming her fingers while they waited for the driver in front of them to pluck up to make the tricky left turn against the traffic flow onto the narrow little industrial street where his garage was located. The she made her own left turn with perhaps five feet of clearance ahead of oncoming cross traffic, earning her a furious horn blare from an SUV.

“I don’t know why you keep driving that old wreck anyway,” Meredith grumbled pulling into the muddy gravel parking lot at Guy’s Citroën Workshop. “Seems like you have to repair something major every other week. Donate it to charity, and buy yourself something that runs reliably!”

Vince took a deep breath to gather courage for his confession. She was really going to go ballistic about this on top of everything else, today.

“Well come on, Vince. I need to get going before the Consignment store closes,” Meredith gave him a playful push. “Go get your car.”

“I can’t.” Vince’s voice was a guilty peep.

“What’s the matter now? You said you needed a ride to pick it up today!”

“I did, but we have to go back to my place,” Vince said in a rush. “I forgot my wallet.”

Fiction Weekend: Triple Crown

Sun, 1 Apr 2012 17:04:28 -0400

This time, I decided to combine all three of the last Fiction Weekend Prompts all in ONE story. Read the results below.

Dee Dee Parker was a fury; she only looked like a calm, middle aged woman finishing her breakfast coffee in her elegant dining room overlooking San Francisco Bay. Her empty porridge bowl sat on the polished wooden dining room table near one of the silver candelabras. On the other side of the table, Neil Parker was shuffling through a stack of papers from his briefcase sitting open on the table, his phone tucked between his shoulder and his ear while talking to his secretary about mergers, liability another corporate jargon in preparation for a major meeting this morning at nine.

DeeDee’s anger was not at Neil; or not only with Neil. But it was the morning of their 25^th anniversary, and she’d hardly been able to say a complete sentence to him this morning without being interrupted by yet another phone call from his office. It wasn’t even eight am, and she’d hardly seen him all week. She deeply resented the intrusion of his work week into their lives so early in the day. She loved Neil; he was smart and kind and she was proud of his success. But today he looked exhausted and old and he was only 55. He had always been generous to a fault, too trusting and easy to take advantage of, and too inexpert at setting boundaries, but this morning was one time too many. He was avoiding her eyes; he knew how much she hated their meals being interrupted by phone calls when it was almost the only time they saw one another these days.

He’d made millions for his stupid employers, but all they ever seemed to do was criticize his decisions and demand justification for everything he did, and then keep calling endless meetings the purpose of which were obscure to the participants. All of which forced him to bring work home and have his evenings swallowed up by work he was unable to do during the actual work week. She had hauled Neil to Hawaii over New Year’s, but both of their brief vacations had been spoiled by frequent business phone calls, too. She wished she could whisk them both off to some remote, lovely tropical island with primitive telecommunications. Neil needed to relax on a beach somewhere where he could neither be found by his office or make any attempt to telecommute.

“DeeDee, I’m sorry about all these phone calls, I have to go, now,” Neil said, pocketing his cell phone. I’ll see you tonight at Modesto Lanzoni’s.”

“All right, I hope the meeting goes well, dear.” She stood up and gave him a hug and kiss to fortify him for the onslaught of nonsense she knew he could expect from Pete McAdam, the company owner and CEO as soon as he arrived in the office.

“I have to make sure it does,” Neil admitted. “Pete could let the whole deal fall through with one idiotic statement. But we’ll see you tonight and have a proper anniversary celebration.”

A mental klaxon went off in DeeDee’s brain. “What do you mean ‘we’ Neil?”

“Er… Pete and Heather will be joining us, tonight,” Neil admitted, pulling on his coat. “Modesto Lanzoni’s is her favorite restaurant, so Pete invited himself and Heather.”

DeeDee planted both fists on her hips, feeling as if her blood had turned to molten lava. “Oh no, they won’t! Neil Parker, I’m damned if I’ll share my husband with your idiot boss and his ditzy trophy wife on our only twenty-fifth anniversary!”

“He put me on the spot and I couldn’t say no, DeeDee—“

“Oh yes you could have!”

Neil’s phone rang and out of sheer reflex he reached into his pocket, still avoiding her eyes.

“If you answer that, call I’ll throw your damn phone into the Bay. You’ve got to learn how to set boundaries, Neil. Those two jerks horned in on my birthday party last October. I’m damned if I’ll spend our anniversary with them, too. We’ll go somewhere else for dinner tonight and let Pete and Heather wonder where we are!”

“That…won’t be possible, DeeDee. See, I’ll be driving over to the restaurant with them after work. I was trying to tell you to meet us there when Janet called about the meeting.”

“What!?”

“I’m sorry about all this, DeeDee, really. But I do have to go. We can go out to lunch tomorrow just the two of us to make up.” He reached again for his phone which had continued to ring, but DeeDee grabbed his wrist.

“Oh no, you’re not fobbing me off with that, Neil. We’re having a proper anniversary dinner tonight alone. I don’t care who has to die to make it happen.”

“You could get me fired!” Neil edged out of the diningroom and into the foyer, only pausing to snatch his brief case on his way out.

DeeDee followed him in a stiff-legged stalk of pure outrage. “Good. Pete takes merciless advantage of you as it is. Start your own business and hire all Pete’s best people. They’ll greet you as a liberator. And Pete might learn to appreciate you even if it is too late. ”

“Look DeeDee I really do have to go, now. I’ll try to explain things to Pete about tonight.”

DeeDee leaned against the closed front door, listening to Neil’s car start and the engine sound growing fainter as he drove down the street. It was clearly up to her to get rid of Pete and Heather tonight. She went into Neil's office, planting herself in his desk chair before pulling the phone close and dialing.

“Modesto Lanzoni’s, this is Gualtiero. How may I help you?”

“Hello Gualtiero, this is Mrs. Parker speaking. Listen, I need a reservation for two for dinner at eight tonight.”

“But Mrs. Parker, you already made a reservation for tonight weeks ago.” Gualtiero sounded bewildered. I’m so sorry, I’m not sure if another table can be found—Friday evening is always so busy—“

“I realize that Gualtierro, but it’s important,” DeeDee cut him off and explained the situation.

“So you do understand if I’m to get a private dinner with my husband, and teach that awful man a lesson into the bargain, I have to get a second table for two as far away as we can get from our original reservation? There’s a hundred dollars in it for you.”

“What a coincidence, Mrs. Parker,” Gualtiero purred in the phone. “A nice little table for two just opened up on the other end of the diningroom. We’ll look forward to serving you tonight.”

“You’re a genius, Gualtiero. Thank you so much.”

Calmer, and feeling a grim satisfaction at the successful implementation of the first part of her plan, DeeDee hung up. She went upstairs to dress for her hair appointment, wondering if she had time to pick up her dinner dress from the dry cleaner beforehand. From the neck down, she meant to look flawless, tonight. And from the neck up, she had the hat.

***

“Hey Neil wake up, you wanna drink?” Pete jabbed him painfully in the ribs. “He’s waiting on your order.”

“Sorry, sorry. I’ll have a double sapphire martini with two olives please, Gualtiero.” Neil was relatively sure he saw sympathy, and something else in Gualtiero’s distinguished face as he nodded and wrote down Neil’s order. After the exhaustion of the week, the frustration of the overlong and fruitless meeting and being stuck with this pair at what should be his private anniversary dinner with DeeDee, Neil figured a little alcohol was very much in order to dull the pain of trying to make conversation with Heather at Pete.

Heather had a three minute attention span that shrank to about a minute when she wasn’t the topic of conversation. With violet eyes, caramel hair and the figure of a ballerina after serious breast augmentation, she was a physical prize yes. But how was it that Pete could spend time with her without going batty? But then, maybe when they weren’t in bed, they just watched one another’s mouths move until it was their turn to talk again in a way that passed for communication between two extremely self-centered people. Neil thought Heather’s voice sounded just the way a stoned and hyper white poodle would sound if it could talk. It was bad enough that she spoke an unbroken stream of vapid and rapid new age jargon, but she kept talking in fast circles, repeating herself with infuriating predictability. Her whinnying laugh gave him a headache. Although whenever Neil tried to answer one of her questions, she would interrupt his response with a new question that completely changed the subject. He took a discreet but thankful pull at his martini when the waiter set it down on the table beside his plate of spinach salad.

“Hey Neil, are you okay?” Heather blurted all at eyeing him over the rim of her margarita which looked like a particularly toxic 7-11 slurpee. “You seem really out of it, tonight. Your aura is like, pond scum green.”

“Probably because he let that deal slip through our fingers at the meeting this morning,” Pete accused, sounding jocular although his brown eyes were cold.

Tonight can’t get any worse, it just can’t Neil though in desperation. To be blamed for the failure of the merger deal because of Pete’s own big mouth and absolute failure to do any of the preparation work necessary to make the deal pushed close to saying the words that had been on his tongue all day; “I quit.” He dug his fork into the salad, drawing a deep breath to gather his courage before saying them.

“There you are, dear! I’ve been looking all over the restaurant for you!” he heard DeeDee’s voice carol off to his right. Neil turned and looked, then painfully dug the tines of his salad fork into his left cheek at what he saw. She meant to be seen and heard tonight; otherwise there was no possible explanation as to why she was walking as slowly as Queen Elizabeth greeting the populace, and speaking loud enough to be heard by everyone at the surrounding tables. Or, although she wore an elegant little black dress and a strand of pearls, all the diners were watching her pass with faces that reflected the full human spectrum of shock and hilarity.

For once, even Heather had stopped talking, her perfect mouth hanging open in shock; Pete was gawping, eyes popping as DeeDee stopped to stand between Neil and Heather’s places.

“So kind of you to invite Neil for a drink while he waited for me, Pete,” DeeDee continued in that unnaturally carrying voice. DeeDee, who hated to call any sort of attention to herself in public, now had the eyes and ears of this half of Modesto Lanzoni’s main dining room. How could they help staring at a woman wearing an impossibly large, but very life-like crab on her head? A hat that looked as if it could have been the prop for a 1950’s B-grade science fiction horror movie?

“ Neil will have told you, we make a tradition of having all our anniversary dinner at Modesto Lanzoni’s, so I’m sure you’ll both excuse him. “Neil, come along dear, and bring your martini, the waiter can bring your salad,” DeeDee ordered him with a smile. “Gualtiero has our table ready. Enjoy the rest of your dinner, Pete and Heather.”

Neil followed her away, martini glass in hand, concealinghis grin until he was positive Pete couldn’t see his face. He hadn’t felt this grateful for a rescue since his mother’s timely appearance while Brad Kravitz, the school bully, was talking about giving him a black eye back in second grade.

“That’s that,” DeeDee declare with satisfaction, removing the crab from her head, and stowing it under the spare chair.

“Where did you find that thing?” Neil asked, leaning back to let the waiter set down his salad plate.

“At a garage sale just before Halloween one year,” DeeDee answered, studying her menu. “It certainly did the job, tonight. But I can’t help but wonder if a lobster might have been even more effective.”

An Open Letter to Rick Santorum

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 13:03:57 -0400

So, Rick…Yesterday I watched this Youtube clip of your televised interview with Piers Morgan:

Then I had to watch it again, because I couldn’t believe what I heard you say in response to Piers Morgan’s hypothetical question about whether you’d make an exception if your own daughter had been unlucky enough to conceive a child through rape. I can only hope for your daughter’s sake that if that situation were ever real rather than hypothetical, you could find some grains of humanity in your shriveled little soul and put HER first, although I doubt it. “Counsel your daughter to ‘do the right thing?” In your eyes, the ‘right’ thing for her to do after being subjected to one of the worst experiences a girl or woman can have is to postpone her own hopes and plans for her future and self-sacrificially accept the considerable burdens of parenthood when her choice in the matter was brutally taken away from her? Then on top of it all, you expect her to think she’s been given some kind of “gift”?!

You glib, smiling, smug ASSHOLE!! As a rape survivor, let me make something EXTREMELY clear:

When this same daughter was born, wasn’t she a ‘gift of life?’ to you? Where is your righteous anger on HER behalf? You’re really going to look her in the eyes and prattle pious platitudes at her when the very act of her asking for your help means her forcible pregnancy is already a terrible burden? When it was thrust upon her by the last man on Earth she’d ever CHOOSE to share her DNA with? But you’d tell her she’s stuck with it and should just 'make the best of a bad situation'? Demonstrably lacking in compassion or empathy as you are, you’re certainly demanding a high degree of compassion and self-sacrifice from her! If you could even hypothetically do this to her when she’s frightened and in a state of emotional anguish already, you’re unfit to be a father, and you’re a damned poor excuse for a man. You chose fatherhood; yet you’d refuse to allow your daughter the same benefit concerning the very important circumstances of becoming a parent, herself.

How is your daugher supposed to develop a loving, healthy relationship with an unwanted child who will constantly remind her of having been raped? It wouldn't be any bed of roses for the baby, either. Personally, I’d hope your daughter would take matters into her own hands if you refused to help her. I’m sure she’d get more kindness and support from Planned Parenthood than she’d ever get from you. If you can’t find it in your heart to put your daughter’s needs first when she most needs your help, I’m sure all other American women of child-bearing age could expect even LESS from you.

Yes, I stand with Planned Parenthood. Both the organization AND the basic concept, because it really beats the un-planned variety. I believe something as lasting and life-changing as parenthood SHOULD be planned, for the good of both parents and the child. For your information, women are NOT just two-legged incubators. We have plans, dreams and feelings of our own which include but are not limited to motherhood. I believe family planning should be left to families and they do not owe you anything in terms of explanation or justification concerning how many children they want and when they want to have them. Or not to have any at all, if they are childless by choice.

If you don’t like abortion, taking reliable contraception away from women is a totally illogical, counter-productive and yes, STUPID way to go about it. Fact-based and age-appropriate sex education and honesty along with access to affordable, reliable contraception are the way to make abortion numbers go down and prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place. I believe that Republicans keep getting information confused with “permission.”

You indignantly fulminate at the thought of President Obama “imposing” his views on America, but aren’t YOU eager to do exactly the same thing, and far more intrusively? American adults are not going to give up sexual intimacy on your say so, Pope Ricky. If you think you can take autonomy, contraception and reproductive rights away from women who have had them for a generation, stop now, because you’ve picked a fight way too big for you.

Right now, you’re riding high, flinging raw red meat at the radical fringe while preaching to the converted. In the general election when you have to try to broaden your base of support among non-crazy voters while running against an intelligent, articulate president whose views on most important subjects are far closer to those of most mainstream voters than your own, I think you’ll find it harder going. The words “sinking like a turd in a well” come to mind, in your case. The rattlesnakes are going to bite you in the ass, and you’ll deserve all the pain and poison.

Presidents can get elected without the “Crazy Vote.” But you’ll find it very hard to get elected without the support of thinking, modern women. Despite your obvious contempt for us, women represent a little over half the electorate. Alienating us is not a winning strategy. Right now, I can’t see you getting much support from any woman who values her rights and autonomy. In fact if you do get the nomination, I think you’re going to drive a lot of moderate Republican women straight into the arms of the Independent and Democratic Parties this year. Especially when you’re interviewed on camera stating views millions of voters would find just as appalling as I do. Don’t believe me? Then watch THIS video:

A real woman gave birth to you, changed your diapers, fed you and taught you how to walk and talk, cooked your meals and kept you clothed. Another real woman married you and bore you seven children. Yet if that interview is to be believed, you’d promote the needs of a zygote above those of your own daughter when she’s in a tremendously vulnerable state. You’re unfit to be president and I wouldn’t let you take care of a dog I liked. In fact, I’m sure the only ‘leadership’ position you’re fit to hold is of a Catholic men’s prayer group. You guys can all weep on one another’s shoulders for the “good old days” and know they’re gone forever.

Promote a zygote and you’ve lost MY vote. I’ve definitely achieved “personhood” already. I’m Pro-Choice, and Pro-woman and I’m angry. And you’d better believe

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An Open Letter to Rick Santorum

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