6:52 p.m. - 2002-12-01
Thanksgiving and Happy Birthday, Gregg
Ah, the end of the Thanksgiving weekend. It's not my favorite holiday. It never has been. Even before I was a politically correct young punkette with Concerns About Native Americans I didn't like it for the simple reason that it seemed even more devoid of meaning to the average person than Christmas. A holiday which came about because of people being grateful just for being alive and having some food to eat which has been turned into a stuff-yourself-silly-and-then-lay-on-the-sofa-groaning fest.

Oh dear. I promised myself I wouldn't rant....

It also reminds me that winter is imminent. It's the last hurrah before the freezing cold sets in. When I was growing up in New Hampshire the freezing cold would have already set in. Sometimes there would be a few inches of snow.

Bruce and I were together a lot over the last few days which was the nice part of it. It seems like an age since we've had a chance to actually have a normal conversation instead of something along the lines of "Hey, can you help me get Athena out from behind the gas heater?" We spent Thanksgiving day raking leaves (we now have a six foot high leaf pile in the back yard) and waving to our neighbors driving by. They obviously felt sorry for us that we didn't have any relatives we could go and bother, but we had a nice dinner by ourselves later on. Black-eyed peas, green beans, stuffing with seasoned tofu, mashed potatoes and a vegetarian gravy that is so bad I can never figure out why I bother to make it.

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Tomorrow is Miss Gregg's birthday! Happy Birthday, Miss Gregg! Gregg and I have had our problems over the years but I can also credit her with some of the most fun times I've ever had.

This morning I inexplicably woke up thinking about one of my favorite days of my life, which involved jumping the check in a North End (Boston) restaurant. Yeah, guess who was my literal partner in crime?! Now, before you jump to conclusions about ever going out to dinner with either one of us again, just listen! There were extenuating circumstances!

I can't remember how we wound up in the North End but for some reason it seemed like a good idea to go there and have calimari at one of those cute-and-probably-mafia-run restaurants, even though we had barely enough money between us. The waiter made the mistake of seating us right next to the door. After bringing us our dinners and a couple of large glasses of wine, he became remarkably inattentive. At first we didn't care, we were having a grand old gab fest and the wine was...er...quite relaxing. Finally, though, we started getting restless. We waved to the waiter, and he smiled and nodded, only to wander into the kitchen for half an hour. When he finally emerged, we waved again. This time he nodded grumpily and sat down at the other end of the restaurant, ignoring us. We waited and waved and waited. And waited. After I think after really about an hour the idea slowly dawned.

I can't remember which one of us voiced it, but I think we both had the realisation at the same moment. We were being deliberately ignored. We could just get up and leave.

We waited until the waiter was looking away, and then calmly got up. Nonchalantly we put a couple of one dollar bills on the table to make it look like perhaps we had just left the bill. Breathing deeply and trying not to giggle, we went outside...

And hit the pavement running. Screaming like Mimi's we booked it down the street. I swear we were knocking people aside as we barreled down the sidewalk. Keep in mind that this was in 1984 and we were in full punk regalia. Needless to say we did not exactly blend into the scenery!

We finally collapsed into a doorway, chittering like the fruitbats we were. After a few deep breaths we managed to start off again, hanging onto each other and in complete hysterics, headed for Copley Square. The night didn't end then - I have vague and garbled memories of a screeching fortune teller and I think Bruce finally had to come and save us from ourselves at the end of the night.

For years after I didn't dare go to the North End. I was convinced that the North End restaurant associations kept records of people like Gregg and I and that the minute I set foot on Hanover Street I'd be thrown in the trunk of a car and put into the Mystic River with concrete boots on.

Anyway, I hope Gregg will forgive me for exposing our young adult crime spree. Happy Birthday, Gregg, and I hope you have as much fun tomorrow as we had all those years ago.

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And speaking of fun, Simon called this morning.

She sounded awfully chipper for someone who's just spent the better part of the last two months ripping apart and reassembling her house.

She says they have finished the bathroom and the floors. The kitchen will wait till they move in. They have removed two dumpsters full of trash from the house and the yard, and she was going out to build a retaining wall after she talked to me.

Good God, I feel like such a wimp. I cannot imagine in my wildest dreams tearing out a bathroom and reassembling it myself. Actually the thought of Bruce and I even attempting such a feat strikes terror into my soul. But Simon and Theo are fearless about this, and good at it, too, I'm sure.

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And now, the Burma update:

Miss Burma will actually let me hold her for about ten minutes at a stretch before she starts getting wiggly, and she's now gotten to the point where she doesn't spend the whole time with her head jammed into my armpit trying to hide. She still reacts toward Bruce like he's Godzilla and she's Faye Wray, but really, I think she's gotten much better as far as I'm concerned.

She's also getting ever so slightly fatter. When we got her she was the size of a squirrel. Not a normal squirrel, but the emaciated squirrels you see in Boston Common in the wintertime. Bear in mind that this cat is about 15 months old. Pathetic, eh? Anyway, after a week with us she's looking more like those overfed and overly friendly squirrels in Harvard Yard. Definately an improvement!

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