Fear of commitment

On Saturday I bought a kentia palm for my home.  I know it's a kentia palm because I just looked at the label on the side of the pot.  I bought it because it is an indoor plant; because it fit my image of what should go in that spot; and because OSH has a plant guarantee, and since I kill plants I'm going to need that.

Owning this plant is freaking me out.  I don't own plants.  I buy kitty grass for Sophie, she chews it, it dies, and I throw it out.  I buy cut flowers.  I don't remember the last plant I owned.

A plant is a live thing I need to care for.  But it's not like having a cat.  Most people would think that it would be harder to take care of a mammal because the stakes are higher.  But it's easier when the thing interacts with you.  I have no problem feeding a cat regularly and keeping the litter box clean and taking her to the vet when necessary.  If I forget to feed Sophie, she sits on my lap and makes sure I don't do anything without thinking of her first.

It's not like having a person.  With dating and relationships, you know when date night is.  There's a routine.  And if needs aren't being met, you can talk about it and sort it out.  (Or not.  But at least you can interact.)

A plant just sits there.  It has fragility and needs to be maintained.  It needs to be kept alive, but it doesn't tell you what it needs.  How am I supposed to make this work?

I think I'm supposed to buy it a new pot.  Something pretty.  And I'm supposed to water it.  It gets sunlight -- I'm pretty sure it's grown since I brought it home.

It might help to name it.  I'm stuck on a name, though.  I don't want to gender the plant: do I want a male plant or a female plant?  I am not particularly enamored of having to water Bob.

And maybe I should have date night with it.  Meaning, on Saturday nights I make sure it is watered.

I look at it and think, "So pretty."  And then I think, "What am I supposed to do now?"

Turning over a new leaf

I seem to be dealing with my breakup by eating a lot of pizza, toast, peanut butter, and ice cream.  So today I went to Berkeley Bowl determined to turn my eating habits around.  Here is the inventory:

• Zucchini
• Crookneck squash
• Tofu
• Tomatoes
• Corn on the cob (midwestern comfort food -- just husking it makes me happy)

• Bananas
• Strawberries
• Blueberries
• Mango

• Orange juice (for the screwdrivers)

I'm promising myself greens, salad fixings, and peaches in the future.

Not that I'm going to stop with the ice cream; I'll just have some healthy stuff in me first.

Chasing a buck

As I was walking up the hill behind the stadium to my car today, I saw some burly college boys by the side of the road.  Were they messing with my car?  No.  They'd noticed the deer that live on the steep hill above the road, and one of them was climbing the hill with a big pointy stick.  They were goading each other on.  I've seen a beautiful buck there (tried to take a picture, but with just an iPhone it's impossible -- they are camouflaged, you know?), and they'd seen it.

"That one has four points!" one said.  It was like watching them become cave men: stick, animal, grunt.

I felt protective of the deer, my special buck whom I'd watched for several minutes the other day in a moment of peacefulness.  Although at the same time I thought, "Steep hill, clumsy oafs -- that deer is going to vanish so fast they won't know what happened."

And yet the boys thought they could do this.  Stick, animal, grunt.

As I came up the hill toward them, I glared.  The presence of a woman?  The presence of a mother figure?  It was funny to watch them turn on each other now that the Other had arrived.  One of them picked up his bag, and as he drifted away from the others he said to them, "Man, you came all the way up here just to chase a deer?"

The other two put on their helmets and together hopped on a single teeny tiny scooter and rode away.

Boys and their toys.

Green figs and wood

I went on a bit of a shopping spree at Nordstrom tonight.  I had a fairly unusual experience for Nordstrom lately: everyone wanted to help me.  Not always the Nordstrom experience; perhaps they were grateful for a customer on a Tuesday night?  And it's quite different from my experience at Saks a while back, when, on a Saturday, I was the only person in the store and all the salespeople still ignored me.

I went to the fragrance section to buy a new bottle of Un Jardin en Mediterrannee.  (Has it really been two years since I found it?  I never thought I'd finish a whole bottle.)  The young saleswoman was moving very briskly, approaching me immediately to help me, not schmoozing me at all (it turns out that she was getting off of work in 10 minutes).  She seemed to appreciate that I knew exactly what I wanted and snatched it for me from the locked cabinet.  Then I said, "Is there anything else I should try since I like this one so much?"  She thought quickly and said, "Annick Goutal's new fig fragrance."  Perfect.  Annick Goutal is always a good bet.  She sprayed it on paper, I smelled it, I asked for a sample, she gave me a sample, I sprayed it on my arm, and I was out of there.

... high as a kite on this scent!  It's called Ninfeo Mio, and I couldn't remove my wrist from my nose.  It starts figgy, citrusy, green; the middle notes intrigued me, and all I could think of was some sort of exotic tropical citrus, like etrog or persimmon (?), plus perhaps some orange blossom; it ended powdery and yet somehow a little sour, figgy, citrusy, hint of floral, complex.  So obviously far superior to the fragrances I'd explored at Sephora.

I read reviews of it as soon as I got home.  It is indeed considered a spectacular fragrance.  And I got the name of the perfumer: Isabelle Doyen.  It's so good, I want to follow her career.

Other reviewers mention the floral, and they describe the fig as milky, which does begin to nail down this ineffable smell.  The sourness I was perceiving comes from boxwood.  And some of that citrus was actually mango!  They also mention a lavender note, which I consciously missed but which must be why I found it so immediately appealing.  My favorite review compares it directly to Un Jardin en Mediterrannee as well as to the sibling of my orange fragrance, Acqua di Parma's Fico di Amalfi fragrance.  She says:

Both of those I would describe as fig fragrances with woody citrus, whereas Ninféo Mio I would describe as a woody citrus with fig, in case that makes any sense to anybody.

Makes perfect sense to me.

I'm glad I have a sample.  I don't think I could wear this fragrance regularly, but the way it excites and intrigues the olfactory parts of my brain makes me want to take this journey again.

A dayenu day

I am in Mendocino with my boyfriend.

On the way home from walking around town (which took very little time, and even the shops that said they would open at 11:00 had not opened yet), we decided to stop into the Stevenswood Resort and Spa.

I'd heard of Stevenswood while listening to KQED.  A station I choose to avoid in favor of KALW, but it was pledge drive time and I was navigating through it.  KQED said, "If you donate $120, or $10 per month, we'll give you a $100 gift certificate to the Stevenswood Spa in Mendocino."  Since B. and I had already decided to go to Mendocino, I reached for my laptop to look it up.

Whoa.  The rooms cost $399 to $895 depending on demand.  It's gorgeous.  A bit too over the top for this stage of my relationship.  I sent it to B. with a note saying, "Something to aspire to."

I considered the gift certificate.  It would hardly make a dent.

Then KQED went to a "listener perspective."  Reason #2 that I don't listen to KQED.  (Reason #1 is either that their announcers sound like drunk old men or that their "news" is not news; it's prerecorded narratives that don't tell me anything I want to know when I listen to the radio in the morning.)  The listener perspective was from an Silicon Valley engineer who went on about how MBAs are useless and ruining Silicon Valley, and he told a story about a young woman with whom he didn't work well.  He generalized over this experience.

My reactions:

1. They've hit a new low.
2. I will not donate money.
3. They just alienated people who have money, which during a pledge drive, immediately after they asked for money, is even more stupid than I thought they were.

I went online and told them so.

Back to Mendocino.  B. and I stopped into Stevenswood to check out the spa products and maybe the spa.  We were met by Connie, who is the nicest, most wonderful person in the world.  She gave us brochures, and when I commented that they even have a bar in the spa, she said, "Oh, we are having a free wine and olive oil tasting."  So we joined in -- great wine, yummy olive oil on terrific bread.

If we had just had the wine and olive oil tasting, it would have been enough.  Dayenu.

B. decided we should see a room (for future visits), and Connie gave us a tour.  The rooms are great.  Tempur-pedic beds.  The tasting and the tour would have been enough.  Dayenu.

We asked her if we could have massages immediately, and she said yes.  Dayenu.

But before we have our massages, would we like to go sit in the hot tub?  For as long as we'd like?  She provided a set of bathrobes and flip flops, towels, and showed to the outdoor private hot tub, open to the sky and the trees, totally gorgeous.  It drizzled in a beautiful way.  Dayenu.

We sat in that hot tub saying, "Holy cow, what just happened?"

Prior to the massage, we rested in the waiting area on incredibly comfy chaise lounges with our heads supported by Tempur-pedic pillows.  It would have been enough just to do that.  Dayenu.

Hot stone deep tissue massage in the couples room.  Dayenu.

"By the way," Connie said, "we have champagne and chocolate-dipped strawberries for after you are done."  Dayenu.

As we returned to the chaise lounges to have our champagne and chocolate-dipped strawberries, they put down comforters over us so we could keep warm.

When we returned to our room, the sun had come out (contrary to all predictions), and it was warm.  We sat on the deck in the sun and looked out at the ocean and said, "Dayenu."

One of those lists

I'm home, sick today.  Therefore, I think I'll find myself working through this.  I know it's a good list because it has the sneezing panda cub on it.

The joy of women's hockey

I am watching the women's hockey Olympic gold medal game.

After a few years of not watching hockey because I wasn't playing, I am starting up again.  I went to a Sharks vs. Blackhawks game and couldn't believe how great it was to be back.  And now in the Olympics I am watching not just great hockey and great hockey players (Hayley Wickenheiser is still playing!) but a different kind of women's hockey.

There are different rules for men and women, and they can be very obviously sexist.  Women must wear full face protection (cage or full shield) to protect our faces.  We could say that full facial protection is really smart, citing men who have lost their teeth or their eyesight, but if it's that smart, why do only women have to protect their faces?  Men can wear full cages, too, but it's their option.

Men can check; women can't.  It's against the rules for a woman to bodycheck another woman player.  Because we're so delicate; because it's not ladylike.  There can be no other reason.  There is nothing about the differences between men's and women's anatomy that would cause checking to be unsafe for women but safe for men.  The result is that women are denied a tool of the game.  It's like saying women who play softball aren't allowed to tag a player to get an out.

In this game, however, the refs are letting the players be physical.  They aren't calling checks.  I'm seeing bodychecks, and the announcers are seeing them.  In the second period, Caihow just checked a player ... and got a high sticking penalty.  The game may get out of hand, as it does with men, if the physical play goes beyond what is safe (and to hockey players and viewers it is possible to see that point), and the refs do risk this if they don't start calling bodychecking, but please let these women play all-out.

I played in a game once where we started checking and the refs let it go.  The game did not get out of hand.  The experience was remarkable, having that extra tool.  Not to mention that the endorphin high gets even higher.

Third period: The American defense looks sloppy; the Canadians are playing superbly.  It's slightly less physical (I wonder if the teams were warned the teams during the intermission).  The American offense is sloppy, too.  They are losing too many faceoffs.  And why aren't they cycling?  They need to keep the puck moving in the offensive zone, keep the Canadian defense on their toes, keep the goalie moving.  Instead they just pass it to an open person for a shot, but the entire Canadian team is in position and ready for it.

I'm rooting for a good game, and right now the score is apparently close -- only 2-0 Canada -- but the game seems tilted toward the Canadians.  They seem to be comfortably in the lead.  The nice thing about the US winning would be the boost to women's hockey's status in the US.  I don't see the US coming back from 2-0, though.

The American defense is falling apart, chasing the puck.  The American goalie is the only reason this game is close right now, and she is playing with incredibly cool poise.  Both goalies are incredibly impressive.

The intensity of the final minute and Canadian win in the Vancouver arena is incredible.  The body language of the defeated Americans reminds me of the Russians after the Miracle on Ice.  I wish more people could appreciate this amazing sport.  I wish I had more opportunities to watch women play at this level of skill.

A shot of adrenaline

I got the cortisone shot!  Now I lay low for two days, letting my hip heal, and then my mobility will return to normal.

It was like smelling the ice: old memories.  I have seen so many orthopedists and have had so much physical therapy that I know the drill about how these exams work.  The number of times I have had someone bend my knee and rotate my hip to see where the pain is is probably in the hundreds.

And I like my orthopedist.  He showed me my x-rays, showed me some calcification on my hip joint that might at some point cause me discomfort.  Calcification is normal and can happen any time.  I bet I've had it forever: I calcify slowly.  I know this because I had to be in a sling for 11 weeks after I broke my collarbone.  It healed so slowly that I was scheduled for surgery.

And then he said that I needed a cortisone shot for my trochanteric bursitis.  Music to my ears.

That he is competent and intelligent and has a decent personality and respects that I ask technical questions about physiology means that, after 10 years in the wilderness, I finally have found a good orthopedist.

My first orthopedist was Arthur Ting -- orthopedist to, among others, Barry Bonds.  I went to him with my first hip injury because he was the Sharks' doctor, and I knew he wouldn't tell me I was crazy to be playing hockey.  He was aggressive with treatment and had a relationship with the best physical therapists.  Back then, he took insurance.

Then he switched to taking only cash, and I was adrift in orthopedic land.  I lost the name of the doctor who gave me my first cortisone shot for trochanteric bursitis, but I had a crush on him.  I had an evil doctor, Jeffrey Mann, when I blew out my knee.  He was a bad physician (over-immobilized me, didn't let me start physical therapy early enough, didn't give me anything for the pain -- and didn't realize that the pain was coming from the fact that I was over-immobilized) as well as an asshole.  As I sat in the waiting room listening to him berate either a patient or a member of his staff, I asked the receptionist if he was like that with everyone, and she gave me a terrified nod.

So now I have a doctor whom I trust, someone who will put me back together when I injure myself again.  It's a sign.  It's time to be an athlete again.  I emailed a student from the doctor's office to say I might be late for a meeting because I was being seen for a skiing injury.  Her response: "I just saw the doctor for a snowboarding injury."  Athletic injuries give you instant credibility.

Two days of rest, and then I'm going to get a plan in place.  Not hockey yet, but soon.