How bad can it be? My hair looks fabulous dahling!

It’s 0500hrs local time and I’m awake – not by choice but my hair looks good and there is the possibility of a nap later today once I finished some nasty chores. No, the mammogram isn’t here – I found out yesterday afternoon, the bloody thing has not left MA! So once again I talked, I faxed, I entreated. If we can’t get it here in time we may well just go ahead with the MRI – depending of course of whether that will be definitive for not-cancer. Crimey. The thyroid biopsy can’t be done until 12 February, so that is a non-issue as far as Friday’s surgery, unlike the mammogram. I can have that if I have already had the plastic surgery – if needed of course they would have to operate again, but….



Did you hear this on the news? A New Zealand chap that found a top secret MP3 player in a yard sale!!!! Apparently once he opened the files they revealed the names and home addresses on file of active duty personnel, along with mission plans for the U.S. Also to be found in the street markets in Iraq! Ah yes…..

Also in the line of “Quoi?” – yesterday in Germany they had Holocaust Day – uh yes, hmmmm; and in Israel they found an 1800-year-old paperweight.
It was a big day all ‘round.

And in the catching up department – we went to see “Defiance” last week and I swear to you J. and I were the youngest ones there (except sweet S. his daughter). It looked liked someone had pulled up the buses and emptied out three or four Jewish retirement homes! Ah yes the Tribes – and –me again. A very good film I thought – of course I am a fan of both Daniel Craig
and Liev Schreiber. It is based on a true story and I thought they did an excellent job of the realism – the scholar escaped to the woods trying to get a hammer and nail to coordinate – “What did you do before?”
“I was an intellectual. I had a paper… a circular…
well more like a pamphlet.”

Gramov: How come it's so fucking hard to like Jews?
Tuvia Bielski: Try being one.

And the different paths the three brothers choose to fight the same battle – go see it, you’ll be glad I think. The humour keeps the excess tissues at bay.


I had a bad day yesterday – you know this. It didn’t get better through any circumstance other than the loving attentions of my love J. and the passing presence of two young women, both delightful in their own ways.

I think once you have done all you can do to remedy a situation, you have a nice cup of tea and go have your hair done – beats a $1200,00/hour psychiatrist for me any day!

My hairdresser at Beautique in Rice Village, is a lovely young woman Raven/aka Nicole – don’t ask, it’s that whole CIA/Interpol mess. She is the rare love that when she says cheerfully, “How’s your day?” And you point out that you have cried off most of your mascara, she asked no unwanted questions, just put me in the chair and washed, coloured, conditioned, cut, and styled my hair to perfection – all with a smile enough to get me up from my funk to cause her to say, “You are so funny.” So see? It works! Thank you Nicole, ah ummm Raven. Spooks are so testy about their monikers. And that hunk, and ladies I mean a HUNK, that she has in her pocket – whew! Just the photograph was enough to steam up the air.

Then J. came home from a long day at the hospital, as well as driving way cross town (this is Texas, think of driving across the Channel) to attend a meeting with his daughter and a college counselor. I have been trying to eat (both to get prepared for the needed fuel to heal after surgery and shut people up – oh please you know who you are!) and in doing so I ate, not the left over pizza J. had brought home from Prego’s night before last, but nibbled around the edges and ate the yummy bread – apparently that rather spoils it for the chap who was planning to have it for his dinner – bad wife-type-person!

So out to dinner we went, in search of dead cow and broccoli in an attempt to jack up my bloody hgb. It was late so choices within an acceptable distance (I tell you this place is huge! Were limited. W found ourselves at Outback and had “Helena” from Midsummer Night’s Dream as our waitress, who in this reality goes by Natalie Green.

Now J. is funny people, I mean he is as sexy and sensuous as they come, but his true power over me may well be his constant and never-ending ability to dissolve me to gales of helpless laughter to the point where I can’t breathe. Our adorable Natalie who stands tall and statuesque with lovely blonde hair found him – humorous as well. “I don’t get jokes,” she said. “People tell them and I just stand there, I don’t get it.”

I sat her down beside me, as my desire to adopt her was growing, and said, “NO, love it’s not that you don’t get the joke, it’s that THEY didn’t make it funny. You got that? Use it.”

Later… J. says, “I want to tell you a joke.”
Natalie leaned against the corner of the booth with a doubtful look but was willing to give it a go.

I’m bad at jokes all right, I’m a storyteller, and I’m not good at jokes – got that? I’ll try to relate the joke to you -

“A man goes to his priest and says, “Father I have sinned. I hid a Jew in my house during the war.”
“Oh but that was an honourable act my son.”
“Well….I charged him twenty dollars (marks) a week.”
“I’m sure you had expenses, this was not an uncalled for request.”
“All right, well Father do you think I should tell him the war is over?”

Natalie: “I got it! That’s funny, I got it.”

She returned to check on us to say, “I told the joke in the back and they laughed. I did it, and they laughed.

J.: “Bunch of anti-Semites eh?”
Natalie: “huh?”

Adorable I tell you, complete candour and without any facade or pretence she is adorable. Now get this, some “weirdo” was bothering her, trying to get her to go out with him so Natalie in order to rebuff this chap told him she raises (or races) turtles and at night paints her face! She thinks this will ward off some pervert. Tell him you cook live turtles my love, that you paint your face and then yowl at the moon… I say this with all affection, she is benignly clueless to the rancour of the world and oh gods I hope she stays that way for a long time.

J.: I suppose you want me to give her a big tip.”
“Oh baby where could you pay for such sweet entertainment – and so he did!” She made it a fun and delightful evening. Yes Natalie we will return and Outback can thank you for it!






Ciao