Remember when year-end just meant that you had to find a loud place to go and you had to devise a drinking plan, because drinking without a plan is a plan to end up spinning drunk inside your head, and you also had to think about which unergonomic shoes would hurt you the least and if you had a jacket to go with a dress? But now year-end means invoices and booking all of the revenues and performance reviews and that annual report that you’ve been doing since 2004 and just two glass of wine, please, and which ergonomic shoes will I wear and of course I have several jackets now.

Yesterday afternoon I met up with Erin and we went to the wine bar that we always go to and we had wine yes we did. With cheeses. She told me that she and her man set a wedding date and therefore we are going to Kauai in September fuckyeah snorkling.

After the wine bar I went to the grocery store. Not the economical megastore, but rather the little, overpriced, family-owned store that smells like dead fish. I walked in and I saw a guy double-take me. So it goes. In the produce section I was picking a pepper when the same guy says, from behind me, “excuse me!”. I spun around and the stranger was holding out a bumpy and black avocado and he said, “is this ripe?!” My first impulse was to check the avocado for ripeness. My second impulse was to retort, “dude, you’re in your 40s, if you don’t know how to pick out a ripe avocado by now, there ain’t nothin’ I can do to help ya.” That was also my third impulse. I went with my fourth impulse, which was to shrug my shoulders and say, “I don’t know!” and then I turned back around to the wall of mushrooms. I do not touch stranger’s avocados.

1. my health
2. my sister
3. my mother
4. my niece
5. Ken, for all of his love and his honesty and his ability to see me for really me.
6. The two boys in my life. I am thankful for their curiosity and their willfulness (which we will someday call perseverance) and for the sparkle in their eyes and their silliness.
7. indoor plumbing
8. the luck of being Californian
9. public spaces
10. all those global ancestors who did crazy things like put garlic and fermented soybeans in their mouths and lived to tell about it.
11. the interwebs
12. all of you and the friendships we have
13. Vegetable, fruit, legume, and grain farmers, who every season gamble against the rain and the sun and the market, so that we may have enough to eat.
14. The boys’ mom, who makes it easy for me to be in their lives. And for her boyfriend, who has shown time and again that the boys are an important part of the lives of him and his children.
15. coffee
16. my career and my coworkers who are really amazing, talented, and hardworking people
17. clean water, clean air
18. people who stand up for justice
19. music, sweet music
20. all those little passing moments that make life sweet

peony by monday’s child

–

For nearly two months now, my best friend and I have tried to juggle after-work schedules to meet up for a glass of wine on Laurel Street, but for reasons both hers and mine we have had no luck. We finally this week had two nights to choose from and last night was the night. As I was leaving the office, weary once again from the too-early darkness of winter, I called her while I walked past the art college down New Montgomery, mostly intending to flake. But then I heard her voice and right away I knew that I would be driving down the Peninsula to meet up. As almost always, I was glad we got to spend some time together, sipping wine and talk talking like we do.

–

It turns out that I am not the best at talking about my feelings all of the times. I have been turning this reality over in my head, like a rough pebble that I pass from hand to hand, trying to know its nooks and crannies, maybe making it smooth so that it becomes another reality, one more comfortable and cherished. What I think I have figured out is that it is not so much that I am holding back (though sometimes I am), it’s at least partly that I don’t push past the initial feeling – discomfort, dissatisfaction, all in the context of linearity – to get to the place where I can ever ask myself the right questions, to take the time to sit with feelings, dig into the earth, find the roots of those weeds. The dysfunction, it is strong in this one. No one taught me anything better; I am learning all the right ways as I go. I am getting better at taking the time and finding the words, at least I hope so.

–

I am watching Top Chef and Padma is wearing a humongous, pink peony in her hair and I am coveting it. I am daydreaming a lot about gardens these days. It must be winter. I’m imagining dinosaur-like hostas and lavender and prolific sungold tomatoes and the white blossoms of snowpeas running up a string trellis. My plannery impulses are so strong that I plan to plan.

–

Last week I was in a kick-off meeting of sorts. There were a dozen of us, all suited up in our suity suits. At the outset we were going around the room (and a lovely room it is), introducing ourselves in a manner that proved our basis for being invited. I rattled off a few things, the this and that, and concluded. My boss, though, interjected, adding another five things, making me take credit for some Big Deal Things that were really of my doing. He finished and I think I smirked and muttered, “yes, those things too”. As the next person, Joe, began to speak, I wondered quite loudly (to myself, of course) why it was that I took credit for only half the things that I do rather than all of them. I am still kind of wondering.

–

The holiday plans seem to have been confirmed, more or less. I am all lists and intents and too many ideas that need to be culled. But at least I know that the people I love will all be together at the same time. The rest of it will of course fall into place.

Tonight I met up with Ken at a place called Burma Cafe. We’ve never been there even though I read a good review of it in the Chronicle over a year ago. Ever since then, it’s been in the back of my mind, an intent collecting cobwebs and nagging at me in the ways almost-forgotten things do. (My mind, sometimes, it’s like a yappy puppy, jumping up and down, “do this, do that, remember this, remember that.” Shhh, little mind.) Of course the restaurant is very close, just one exit away from my apartment (an exit I’ve never taken), tucked back behind the main streets that I travel, in a neighborhood full of rowhouses painted shades of white.

Burma Cafe sits at the edge of an old Safeway stripmall. The stripmall is a typical one, a suburban hallmark, designed in the shape of an L, built in the 70s. The Safeway, though, is now an Asian market. Many of the signs are old and sad. The Burma cafe sign is bright and red. In the bend of the L there’s a Filipino bakery, and the owners were nice enough to give it a gringo name like Tropical Bakery. The bakery was filled with tall, wire racks that were stacked with little sacks of things mostly unfamiliar. Luckily the ingredients were written in English and none of them listed cow or pig parts so I picked up a box of macaroon cupcakes and some sweet rolls stuffed with sweet bean paste. I repeat: macaroon cupcakes. Tonight I already stuffed two cupcakes down my gullet and they are each the size of six cookies so I basically ate twelve cookies and therefore the bean paste will have to wait until tomorrow.

I walk two City blocks from the SFMOMA parking garage to my so-tall office building, the sky-rise located across from the Palace Hotel. I mark the walk by the smells of food, most of them emanating from restaurants prepping for a busy lunchtime. They are consistent smells that balance the everyday chaos of the people and traffic that rush past the Art College, crowd into crosswalks, and stop haphazardly for purposes that must make sense to them. For reasons I cannot ascertain, the first steps away from the garage, into a one-way alley called Minna, always are filled with air that smells like frying eggs. Around the corner, the falafel joint takes over my nose: cumin and cucumber and vinegar coated parsley. There’s a hidden deli in one shop and sandwiches must be made of piles of peppercinis. Finally there’s Sentinel, a gem the size of a closet, turning out butter and sugar in the shape of coffee cake and blueberry bushes tucked into face-sized muffins, sending wafts of sweetness into the sky. Four more steps and I turn into my building, the one with the lobby that smells like stale milk. My nose works too well.