Title, We Don't Need No Steenkin' Titles......

Well, at least tonight we don't, as I cannot think of one. Funny, I notice that as always I did too long a 'title' for my blog, so that it shows up on my dashboard page as "Through a Tall Wind" -- not a bad title for SF at least. The wind is often so bad in our wind-tunnel of a driveway that small people have a problem getting into the yard. At any rate, neither the rather long title I did for my blog, nor the above 'lack of' is as long as one I did for a poem recently, it was around 8-10 lines long...about a silly woman who said she was switching her vote to McCain (from Hillary) because he was a 'feminist' -- she could tell because after all, he had chosen a 'woman' as his VP! (or perhaps because he dropped a wife who was no longer beautiful and married a pretty young one with money?) That's even worse than the Russian woman who told me she was voting for McCain because "THEY (ye gods, I thought that kind of talk had gone out of our country looong ago) are all stoopid." So, I said in return, "Gee, did you graduate Harvard with a magna cum laude? If not, don't bother talking to me again." Be that as it may (a favorite expression of Jessie's):

For me it is still Tuesday ("Tuuesday, dear, NOT Toosday"), so, let me see, day before yesterday (Sunday, as I could simply have said) I had a great day. Went with Pat Jones (no relation to Uncle Collie, kids, but she's from England, and with a name like Jones, obviously another Welsh type) to the Yerba Buena Gardens Theatre/Music Festival, which was a day of fun out in the sun, dominated by big time acts like Beach Blanket Babylon, but also had room for some very interesting little theatre groups and solo acts, some of whom will be seen at the Fringe Festival, which I do plan to try to attend.

Actually, I may even work up an act myself for next year's Fringe. That should shut some of the people who keep asking when I am going to 'be in something' up for a bit at least. If I do, I will have Pat and Elvira appearing with me...they have said they would love to, and I must ask Collie if he would like to dance in as the waiter in what I plan to call, "My Dinner With Peggy" (or should I call it "My Dinner With Pat?") We, Elvira and I, got hysterical talking about it...well, we also had a few laughs about her calling the jello she had made and then hidden behind a bunch of stuff, so that I had neglected to eat it, 'yello' and then saying gelatin quite properly. Interesting, I wonder if all Hispanic people say 'y' for 'j'.....but can say the 'j' sound when it is spelled with "g' as in 'gelatin?' Pat was after me on what accents I can do as we walked the MILES it takes to get through the Metreon to the outside doors. "Can you do Cockney?" (I can even do the rhyming Cockney, 'so oi tikes the apples 'n pears to 'er sea shore...') "Can you do French? ('Ah, mais oui, ah am gooing to 'eight street to z' baak-ary...'), etc. See, I can even write in accents. I have lots of people to study...my darling little El-vee-ra (NOT El-vi-ra, please!) for S.&Central America (they do NOT have 'Spanish' accents, as they do NOT lispe), my Parisian friend Michele (NEVER Michelle for a woman, she says), and of course, I can do Russians beautifully.....my building is full of them. I do the little martinet who lives on the second floor best....the one who prances into our manager's office and says, "Yuuh, I need mon come my a-pat-munt, NOW!" Isabelle: "I am busy talking to someone else at the moment...and I don't have 'mon' here today. What do you need?" Martinet: "I need shen-da-leerr poot up NOW, bot rrooms!" Isabelle: Well, sorry, but as I said, I am busy talking to someone else, and my MAN won't be back until tomorrow. I'll write up a request and he'll get up to see you when he has finished all the other jobs written up for him. Martinet stomps out and she turns to me and says, "He may get the damned chandeliers put up some time after next Christmas if he's lucky!!" I love having him come down to see her, as I am often there to hear all the dialogue, which I will use in an act someday. Friends who have heard my stories about him and another Russian I see often have begged me to go to a comedy club and do them....I'm considering it. As I have said often, everything is grist for my mill, particularly lovely accents. I even have a native SF one that always ends with, "Thank you for sharing that with me....." The 'native' S.F. person doesn't really have an accent, but most are so sweet and kind...I love them.

Now I got off track again, where was I? Ah, yes, the perfect Sunday....Pat and I walked through ALL of the Metreon building and out onto Mission, where she went over to Market St and I went across Fourth to the Mission bus stop and sat down next to a charming Russian lady who told me we had JUST missed the bus, so we sat and chatted a bit, and a very attractive lady sat down on my left. She was just coming from the Theatre Festival also, and was from Bombay...she had wanted to stay to see the rest of the performances her daughter, who lives here, didn't want to see, so she sent them off and said she'd take the bus home. Now the three of us chatted about SF, about the Festival, about ourselves and had a jolly time waiting for the Mission bus. We all were going to almost the same spot, so I pulled out my card (and lost my change purse...damn!) and gave it to her, so she would have my email address. She went me one better, and seeing how close to her daughter I lived, said she would call me when her husband goes back to India and come and see me. She is staying on for a month after he leaves.....he has to get back to work. So now I have a lovely friend from Bombay, and will undoubtedly meet her daughter and family, who live a couple of blocks from me.

I LOVE San Francisco -- where else does everyone talk to everyone else.....at theatres during the intermission, at the symphony before a performance, on the bus....and the cab drivers are the most fascinating characters anywhere. They are from all over the world and darling. I've gotten recipes from Brazilian drivers, been sung to by an Italian one, and the Venezuealan (sp?) driver who drove me to the Sunday Festival loved one of my poems I read to him, and when I told him I have three or four novels in my desk drawer, wanted to be my agent....I had a hard time getting out of the cab, he wanted to finish our conversation. I told him I'd see him at the cab barn, as I have an idea for a book about cab drivers in SF, and he insisted that the next time I called for a cab to ask for him. What a day.....and what a great city I have come 'home' to, for this has been my Spiritual Home ever since Ned started telling me about it when I was around sixteen years old. I never could understand why my kids don't feel exactly as I do about it, particularly when Whitney spent her fifth birthday here, and even got to 'help the drivers turn a cable car around.' She walked between two of them, pushing the car at the turn-around, yelling, "Look at me, mommy -- I'm helping," while they chuckled at her pleasure. Such a funny, darling child! And Mark spent part of his fifth year here, running into the water with Joe Bullock at Ocean Beach, and riding on his shoulders in the park during the 'summer of love.' Mark didn't want to leave -- he had Jenny and Joe to entertain him -- and neither did I. I should have stayed, sent for my money and bought a house, as I wanted to. Shoulda, coulda, woulda means nothing..... perhaps that is the weird break in the life-line of my LEFT hand. The lifeline on my right hand goes on forever up around my thumb--God! I am another 'Mama' without the miserable temper. She'd have lived forever had it not been for that blod clot they didn't catch in time which killed her at 100. I have a better doctor (the best dr. in SF, Liz is!) so who knows!!! However, I find I am suddenly getting the stigmata on right hand that I used to get when I was a kid and the left hand itches miserably in the same spot...terrible! If anyone thinks this will get me back to church....think again!! Oh, well, maybe a short visit to Father Mickey in the old Mission across the street will help. Naw, he'd just laugh at me and tell me about how the graveyard our building was built on was for the pagan Indians and the Episcopalians. (I love that man, he reminds me of the dear priest we had at school, Father Pauley who was a nut like Mickey.)

So, fun and weirdness aside.....life is pretty great! And it is definitely TIME for BED! 'Nite all, it is way, way past tomorrow.....Ah, well................