Me: "I am going to get an oil change in morning." J: "You are a woman of intentions." A Dialogue about my Impractical Nature

I haven't written a blog posting since got back to Southern California because I have had a mysterious stomach ailment for which I will go to Med Center this morning. I have insurance but no doctor because I don't get sick , at least nothing more intricate than a cold or sinus infection. But the lines can be annoying and I will get there at 7:30AM before the 8AM opening. Just enough time to write about the solid hour of nonstop laughter last night in bed after a lovely appetizer at new restaurant, Cadiz, owned by J's friend Ray (State Street).

We just had appetizers. I had a wonderful, finely chopped Dungeness crab salad with fascinating ingredients, none of which I remember, as my stomach was not good. He has grilled baby octopus over some darkly-colored beans. Light and good. The appetizers are a real bargain for food of this sophistication and quality--9 to 12--though portions not huge and they forgot to bring us bread.  There were over ten, including a gnocci with ricotta and a tiny steak thing of some kind. It's a gorgeous space, and I do not know if there is a website up and running yet, or not.

I wanted to go to bed even earlier than usual. I am the only unemployed/underemployed person in America who voluntarily arises at 6:30, earlier when I have just returned from NYC and am on EST time. This last trip--11 days--was the longest I have spent in the East since I came back to CA in the summer of 1996, and it took a full seven days to adjust. Of course , it takes me only 2 days at most to adjust when I go the other way, which should tell you something about my preferences and proclivities.

He goes to sleep very late and usually tucks me in after whatever... But I wanted to snuggle under the giant down comforter with the flannel sheets as I am still in pain from the muscle pull in NYC, compounded by the pain of this mysterious abdominal situation--and I told him I would get oil changed tomorrow. I am bad , as I will soon explain, at just about everything practical. If I think mail is going to bring me bad news, I just don't open it (J said, "Yeah, that's good, because usually if it's bad news or a bill, the situation improves when you ignore it...."). But I am good about oil because I adore  my used Saab 9/3, 2.0T, a 2007 bought in late February, 2010 with only 26K miles.

Oh! I also must get car wash as I will be schepping Dad and  he is getting annoyed at the half a suitcase of clothing on the back seat. This is actually good, because Educated Car Wash has the cheapest gas in SB when you get full-service (interior/exterior) wash and that new car smell is always good so I don't have to spray Kardashian to cover the smell. I also must get some cough syrup as Dad becomes unpleasant when I cough , launching into lectures about smoking, lung cancer, self-destructive conduct (he hates this in anyone and everyone and feels everyone should be in analysis at least once to root out such evils), and finally, the money I will cost him , or my mother, if he is dead, when I must go to the hospital for lung cancer.

The announcement of this intention to do something practical of course gave rise to an extended discussion of the matters to which I have not attended now, almost since we began to date in early August: license plate, broken apartment heater, driver's licence (actually, lost it in November), and a few others I will remember after the doctor I am quite sure.

My mother, truth be told, is getting very annoyed about the license. But until last night, J didn't know I had a letter from the DMV, quite thick, about a month ago which I stuck in carry-on to NYC , but did not open. I said, "Maybe it's bad news." He said what I reported above and asked me about  my registration. I said, "Well, Dad paid all that when we got the car." "Yeah, sweetie, you have to pay your registration every year." I said, "Yes, I realize that of course, but the DMV stuff never goes to me, it goes straight to him, and last year there was some mix-up where he paid twice and I got a check back from them sent to him, so I just transferred the duplicate check to him."

So then he was devilish, I daresay evil, and told me that the DMV letter probably says that you must respond in 5 days or the fee goes up tenfold. I am gullible and he ought not to tease me in this manner. He said ,no, probably not tenfold, but it might have gone up. See, even when something is not expensive, there is something so laborious about mailing a bill. This is why I pay my only credit card--almost no debt, about 350 bucks--online, now that I have figured it out. I forgot to pay it in NYC. The 20th just came and went which is highly annoying but not the end of the world. But for some reason, I find the act of going to a post office to be extremely challenging, arduous even.

This is truly pathetic as my father of course has stamps and I can use his when I go to LA, as I will be doing later on today. I lost my wallet at the gas station around Thanksgiving, but nothing was stolen or charged and I canceled it immediately. I have not even attempted to replace it, as I have no incentive. The passport I got in August for the Dominican Republic works on planes and I never get pulled over for moving violations. I have never had a speeding ticket, red light or stop sign violation in my life. Of course now that it is one year and one month since I got the beautiful Saab (parchment with parchment interior, a limited edition color which is sort of a champagne), and it still says "Graham Chevrolet," I might get stopped by a cop who wants to know why I have no plates. But now that I have no license, which seems to have slipped my mother's mind (but which she knew last week because CVS would not sell me Delsym cough syrup without a license), she is adamant that I not drive without "two licenses."

This led, of course, to the heater issue. I have not had a heater in apartment in two years. Now, the reason for this is mostly that I hate my landlord, to whom I refer on FB simply as asshole. Sometimes he does something so egregious, his status bumps up to the long, ten-letter C word. (He evicted my neighbor Kimberly for having a guy over two nights in one month --non-consecutive--and he harassed her and finally she gave her notice.) I used to in the bad days of depression, though moving to this beautiful apartment in August, 2006, saved my life, have truly unfunny  nightmares about this vicious, controlling, horrible excuse for a human being. Now we have made peace, I bullshit with him and kiss his ass and all goes fairly smoothly. But I am not a neat person--Dad says "total fucking slob"--and the truth is somewhere in between but I  try earnestly to be a good girl at J's house because he is Jewish and so neat. (A new Jewish FB friend in Great Neck has explained to me that it now counts if one parent is Jewish, and it need not be the mother. So I guess I am "truly" Jewish, but I am only half, and clearly I inherited the shiksa slob gene, not the anal, clean for three hours a day for recreation, Jewish gene.) But for a long time, I didn't have the maid in,  and if there is even a speck of dust , he goes apeshit, talks to me like I am in kindergarten (surely this is because my dad pays the rent directly to him and he thinks this is license to treat me like a child), and orders me to have a maid in.

Now, the only basis upon which a landlord in CA can complain about the state of an apartment, is if the mess represents a fire hazard. My apartment was not out of an episode of Hoarders. But I do have a fairly relaxed conception of hanging up clothes when I am finished (my mother, a Shiksa, also has a sort of relaxed understanding, but she has help on a daily basis of course).

So I finally got the maid in and told him that 18 months before, the gas company had told me that this wall unit dating back to LBJ probably, was "a goner." However, in CA (the People's Republic of CA), there seems to be a new regulation which requires a note of some sort confirming the death of one's heater. So I called the gas company--it took about 3 months--and booked an appointment for a Friday at 1:30, about six weeks ago. At the time, J was moving the last of his things from the Goleta house to the Eucalyptus Hill condo (border of SB and Montecito), and I would help him every night after dinner. Well, that night, a Thursday, I left my car key on his old kitchen counter and he could not run me back to get it before the early afternoon appointment.

Well, I suppose this all seemed to me like a sign that I should not have a heater and I have made no attempts to contact the gas company again. The maid has been in twice in the last six months, before the December NYC trip and before the March one and it looks just fine in there. (Here's a tip: it's much easier to keep an apartment clean when you don't live there.... I have slept three nights in 2.5 months in my own apartment. I am either at J's, my parents' in LA, or H's in NYC.)

What's funniest, I remarked, is that these tasks have totally fallen off my list. I still did forget to send the late check for 40 to the gyn in Goleta , not because I don't have it, I just hate mailing things. And I paid them the co-pay but didn't realize the tests were going to be covered by insurance only in part. I so hope they haven't sent this bad behavior of mine along to people who get very vexed about such matters even when it's over 14 dollars...

I must go to the doctor but will finish the other part of the conversation afterward. It involves the way I managed to break his very expensive stereo--rigged so that a 12-yr-old babysitter or a person with no English--could turn on the CD player. I didn't think that you had to use a remote to turn on a CD player--I've never owned such a thing--so I sort of played around with the receiver and server and ended up, unbeknownst to me, pushing "tape monitor 2." He asked me, "How did it occur to you, when you wanted to play a CD, to push "tape monitor 2.'" Well, he sort of knew the answer. I just sort of figured, well, this isn't turning on, or at least, there is no sound coming out, and if I just keep  pressing buttons, something is bound to happen. He told me his 7-yr-old son would never, ever have done such a thing, and that he intuitively knows that you don't just start to poke expensive electronic equipment.

The best part of that story, I suppose, is that when he returned home from moving more stuff, and I told him nothing was working, including the sound for the DVD for Sports Night, he was not pleased and insisted that he figure out what I had broken on his beloved stereo. He was, to be honest, a bit more than not pleased with me , which is extremely rare. But he's anal about his stuff, like most men, just like my father, but not even in a league with Dad. Dad is in a league of his own in all matters, including control and the state of his material possessions (which includes his cherry torte from Gelson's, and in the old days, his mangoes, plums, peaches etc..)

I gently asked, "But  honey, do you want to listen to a CD tonight? I mean can't you just come to bed and fix it in the morning." That was a big no, and he said that he could never fall asleep as the only fucking thing he would think about is why his stereo worked jsut fine before he left for Goleta and didn't work upon his return. He informed me that one does not go to sleep with thousands of dollars of stereo equipment not working. I recounted the story to Dad and he said, "J is absolutely right! You just understand nothing and I don't know how he puts up with you!"

He kissed me goodnight and said that I was a "beautiful , strange creature" and that he did not wish to change anything about me (well he wants me to quit smoking, but he knows it's not happening till 40, or so--I've added an "or so").