Saturday. December 22, 2001

visions of sugar plums at the Four Seasons bar

not something you see every day

"The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our nothingness."

André Malraux, La Condition Humaine

Mom's going to have tests this morning. I need exercise. So I decide to sneak in a walk. I call SuRu a little before eight. FFP elects to go to the club. The eXtreme team finally gets it together and we are off. We first go to Bark 'N Purr. It isn't the Pet place we usually patronize. But Zoey is in desperate need of a new choke collar or, rather, SuRu is in need of it to control our prissy squirrel chaser. (She has a pom-pom tail and a ribbon in her hair and what her mother calls a velveteen cut and I can't believe that I don't get her picture.)

Next stop is Upper Crust. I get a refill for the coffee I'm sipping and SuRu gets the Texas Croissant (filled with mozzarella and jalapenos) to carry along. We walk down to the 38th, skirt it on a path along some infill and walk back. It feels like a longer walk than that.

Dad has called to say Mom is off for one round of tests. I clean up and go out to the hospital. The parking lot seems pretty empty. Maybe people are succeeding in getting themselves dismissed for Christmas.

Mom is sitting up in bed eating a late breakfast, early lunch. Inexplicably they have given her two sacks of Fritos. Also a sandwich and a muffin. Just what they could throw together to feed her off schedule. And prune juice, although I think Dad may have brought it from home. And milk. They want her to eat a lot before some more tests. She does her best. Dad goes home to grab some food. Mom goes off for 'thirty minutes plus ?' tests and I find the tiny cafeteria. I get a chicken Philly sandwich and some overcooked vegetables and coffee. It's all awful. When I get back up there, Mom arrives back from tests and Dad gets back, too. I'm settling in for a long wait, keeping her company and reading some old papers. They bring her actual lunch which is an unappetizing piece of mystery meat in brown gravy with overcooked yellow squash. There is some sherbet, though, and Mom eats it.

A tech arrives to give a sonogram on her heart. Her heart gurgles and perks.

The cardiologist comes in and assures her that she does not now and never has had a heart attack. However, there is a mystery place in her lung that he attributes her pain to (even though he's not a pulmonary specialist nor a radiologist, not for nothing twenty-five years of schooling). So, yeah, he's nice and realizes she hurts, thinks a bronchoscopy is in order but thinks Darvoset will take her through Christmas. The day after Christmas she is to call the pulmonary specialist he is referring her to.

And, after a few more minutes, they dismiss her! And they let her walk downstairs. I can imagine she is plotting to drug up and go to a party they are invited to tonight.

And so. I go home and think that it is time that FFP and I spent some quality time together.

He has been doing errands, going to bank and cleaners, paying bills. I update the movie data base which shows the DVDs, LDs and (a few) commercial VHS movies we have.

We head off for the 5PM showing of Amelie. We buy our tickets and wander aimlessly around Barnes and Noble. FFP ends up buying a marketing book and a magazine. I mostly wander looking for snippets of conversation.

Poised between Self-Help and Recovery and Addiction (which are for some reason near the art books where I'm looking) a man says to his female companion, "You have to quit taking me so seriously."

A man and his daughter are catching up to the wife/mother (apparently on the relationships, of course) who is walking briskly to calendars. I'm thumbing through the featured nerd books.

"I have bacteria in my mouth," says the child.

"Well, yes, probably, there are bacteria everywhere," says the dad.

"Roses. We like roses. Do we want a calendar with roses?" says the mom who, I think, missed the prior exchange.

The movie starts off on a bad note with an awful, static-laden cracking in the sound system. It's in one of those back rooms at the Arbor. Several people leave and come back, obviously to complain. It finally clears up. I enjoy everything about this movie. The Paris scenes, the way the camera lovingly records details of French existence. The wonderful characters. Even its trite excesses (the yard gnome goes 'round the world, for example) and Ally McBeal moments are forgiven. I love it and wonder if FFP is enjoying it. He declares that he did as we walk out and I know that we should go to Paris next year. I want to see this movie again, I want to own the DVD when it comes out. FFP and I keep coming up with descriptions for it that are funny to us. Like Delicatessen without the post-apocalyptic and cannibalistic parts. (Except there is the mention of eating human flesh, now that I think of it.) This movie's ambition is to be reductive of everything while sticking with a theme of chaos and risk and randomness. Overly ambitious? Probably. But it works. Wow. Of course, I'm the last person to see the movie so you, my reader, probably already have you own opinion.

We decide to dine out. FFP calls Jean-Luc's and they are happy to hear it. We haven't tried this place since the new management.

I give FFP the banquette seat the better to see the room but I have a great, secret view in the mirror.

My onion tart is nice and the rabbit, too. Simple, country French. Jaime, the waiter, is from Colombia but speaks English with a French accent. He doesn't know much about the wine and the wine list looks OK but lacks vintages. An Iron Horse Pinot (1998 as it happens) turns out to be a good, if expensive, choice. Jaime helps FFP eliminate cream from his choices (a mushroom broth and a veal 'tasting' with a small filet and a sweetbread with baby vegetables instead of the prepared-with-cream risotto). When we valet park FFP is often separated from the Lactaid on his key chain, alas.

We go to Four Seasons and listen to Rebecca and visit with two different pairs of women out on the town and also with our friend Steve. The bar is briefly visited by a bunch of holiday-attired transvestites.

A nice day, all in all, with Mom escaping the hospital and some time with Forrest doing fun things.

For those of you who haven't noticed, Google is now allowing searching of twenty years of Usenet archives in its 'groups' search.

As some of you may know, I have a friend who lives in Cape Town, grew up in Edinburgh, spent her late teens, early twenties in Canada. I met this woman because she posted a note in the rec.travel.europe group and I decided to send her an e-mail. Thanks to this archive, I'm able to display the actual note! Because of this chance encounter and the e-mail that ensued, I've visited Cape Town, my friend has visited Austin, I've met up with her in Edinburgh, I've met her brothers, sister, and many of her friends. It's amazing, I think.

JUST TYPING
Hospital.
Food.
Nutrition should be a basis for health.
But hospital food defies this.
Red wine, onion tart, rabbit. Ahhhh.
Stay away.
From the hospital.