I Left My Heart in San Francisco

I was doing okay through the first half hour of the service, I really was. I'd gone to Zellers that morning, and bought my own handkerchiefs, since I'd just recently returned all of Jack's (Oh, cruel irony!).

I was crying quietly, and barely shaking at all, but I kept expecting him to put his arm around me and comfort me, because that's what he did at times like this, so how could it be that he wasn't there for me now, when I needed him more than I'd ever needed him?

Peter, Jack's best friend since forever, delivered the eulogy, of course he did, and Peter is a writer, so it was a marvellous speech. Shot through with Star Trek and Monty Python references. We all laughed, then cried, and I continued to be impressed with my waterproof mascara.

Next, Jack's father gave a short speech, opening with a Jack Benny impression, and I cried all the harder because there was the man that Jack should have had another thirty years to become.

But I was doing okay, all things considered, I really was, until the music accompanying the slide show changed to I Left My Heart in San Francisco, and then it was too much to be borne, and the great heaving sobs won control.

A few years ago, when I was still living in Toronto, a courier package arrived before my birthday, and inside were a number of small bundles, each wrapped in a sheet of paper and labelled in Jack's exquisite handwriting, "Open me first," "Open me second," and so on. Inside the first was a plane ticket to San Francisco, first class on the upper deck of a 747. Inside the next was a postcard of the very grand Mark Hopkins hotel, on the top of Nob Hill. The next held a brochure from the Starlight Room, with a note from Jack saying, "Bring a dress. Everything else is taken care of."

The bundle that read "Open me last" was the smallest of the set. Inside was a tiny card reading San Francisco, with a little envelope that held a charm of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Inside, he had written, "Leave your heart."

We Belong Together

I can't figure out how to pull a YouTube video in here, so as I'm running out the door to head up to San Francisco for the day, I'll leave you this link. It's a video Sparky made two years ago of the gang at Kickass Karaoke at The Rivoli in Toronto. You may recognize a certain go-go-dress singing the B-52s. And a certain Viking in a hockey jersey.

Money don't get everything, it's true

You know what comes after that: What it don't get, I can't use, which isn't entirely true, in my estimation, because there's one very important thing that money do get. The most important thing, even: peace of mind.

I tried to explain my sudden, nail-biting stress to my colleague, Karen, over a pint at The Loft the other night. She was great — she listened, and she sympathized, but then she had to leave. So I called first Nadine, then Sparky, to see if they wanted to join me.

The Loft is my local, now, like The Banknote used to be. I've ordered another Stella Artois, a beer that in Canada is my despised last resort, but that here in California is often the only non-American, non-British beer available on draught, and until (and unless) either (or both) Nadine or Sparky arrive, I'll tell you about what happened, Gentle Reader.

You should know that last week I got an email from my agent in Toronto telling me she'd found a tenant for my condo. Not just any old short term tenant, mind you, but someone who, god bless them, wanted to take it for a year A WHOLE YEAR, beginning July 1, and who was willing to pay the full price, which means this: it's enough to cover the agent's monthly percentage; it's enough to cover all the utilities, even if they crank the A/C and open the windows in the middle of July; it's enough to cover the increase in my mortage payments that I'm going to be hit with next month; it's even enough to provide a few hundred dollars extra at the end of the year, in case I need to buy a new microwave, say, or get someone in to fix a loose curtain rod.

What it means, simply put, is peace of mind for a year.

So you can understand, I hope, why I was so relieved. Why I was positively celebratory. Why I had started to MAKE PLANS for the summer.

(For the last two months, every time someone asked me, "So, what are your plans for the summer?" I wanted to scream, I HAVE NO PLANS BECAUSE PLANS INVOLVE SPENDING MONEY AND I CAN'T SPEND ANY MONEY UNTIL I KNOW I DON'T NEED TO SAVE EVERY PENNY IN CASE I NEED TO CARRY MY CONDO FOR THE SUMMER SO FUCK OFF AND DON'T ASK ME THAT QUESTION!)

I planned to go home for the last week of June.

I planned to see my dad.

I planned to go to Kickass Karaoke.

I planned to plant flowers in the bare pots on my rooftop patio.

I planned to spend a week IN MY HOME, sleeping IN MY BED, for the last time for a year.

I planned to enjoy every minute of my time in the place I think of as Home, capital H. It would be the best vacation ever, and it would make having to spend the next twelve months in a foreign country, living with foreigners, where everything from the rules of the road to the peanut butter is, well, foreign, bearable.

So I booked my plane ticket, then switched to my email to collect my confirmation, and there it was, a message from my agent saying that the tenant had changed his mind and he wouldn't be taking my condo after all.

* * *
There's no happy ending to this story, at least not yet, so I'll give it a day or two before I tell you the rest.

In an octopus's garden, in the shade

It was my Daddy's birthday the other day, and so I called him, and the Wife answered the phone and told me, "He's taking a squirrel out."

"Taking a squirrel out?" I asked. "You mean, like, on a date, or with a shovel?"

"You're so funny!"

Yes, I know, but that hardly answers the question, woman.

My father's garden is an intricate web of flowers and vegetables; fruit trees and evergreen shrubs; bird feeders and waterers and houses; golf balled terrariums; assorted planks and hubcaps; and complex irrigation systems.




There are hidden traps for some animals, sanctuaries for others, and his reasons for granting asylum to chipmunks while having no compunctions about mercilessly ending the lives of moles are perfectly logical, at least to him.

He hand-picks, then crushes, the beetles that eat his grape leaves.



But there's a mourning dove that comes when he calls, and eats out of his hand.


(If you can't see the dove, click on the picture to make it larger.)

I have witnessed my father hurl baby birds against a tree trunk, and I went rabbit hunting with him once. Just once. He can be cruel, but sometimes cruelty is necessary. Like when I shot, but only wounded, that rabbit, and he made me track it and kill it.

I wasn't sure what his position on squirrels was, so I called back half an hour later to ask, and he explained: "I set traps for them in the garden. They go into the box to get the nuts, then VAM!, the door slams behind them."

"And then you take them away somewhere?"

"Vell, yes, about two kilometres avay, there's a nice woods where they can live. They dig up my bulbs."

"Don't they have babies this time of year, though? You shouldn't take them away from their babies."

"No, no, not now, in May. Right now they're... vat do you call it; they're starting only to make babies." He laughs to himself — ho-ho! — then tells me how, exactly, they are doing this. "The female runs up and down the trees, I vatched them just this morning, and seven males are chasing her. Und she runs and runs, up and down — it's so funny to vatch. Vichever vun lasts the longest, gets to catch her."

It is in exactly this manner that, many years ago, I learned about the birds and the bees. Through squirrels, and the tetras in our fish tank.

I told my father about the racoons: "I had neighbours, when I lived in High Park, who did that with racoons, trapped them, then took them into the park to let them go. There are so many racoons in that neighbourhood, because of all the big, old, trees. I never saw the point, you might as well vacuum the beach for all the good it will do, taking them out in onesies and twosies."

"Ja, racoons are a pain in the neck. I vould just kill them."

"In Toronto, you're not allowed to do that. Did I tell you about the skunk that was living in my building last summer?"

"No..."

"It was becoming quite a nuisance. It lived in the bushes at the front of the building, and every day at dusk it would start wandering around, and people were, naturally, concerned about it, especially the people who have dogs. So our property manager called animal control, and was told that they could send someone to trap it, but we couldn't kill it, and if it was trapped, it had to be released within one kilometre."

"Nah. That's just stupid."

"Of course it is, especially when you're talking about downtown Toronto."

My father was quiet for a minute, and then he said, "Vell, the lake is within one kilometre, isn't it?"


Next, Postmodern Sass gets a phone call from her crazy neighbour, Nadine.