Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Sunday, Dec. 29, 2002 - 11:47 p.m.

Excellent Quote(s) of the Day:
"christmas bagles, yes. ham and cheese sandwich, no." --Goodlovin, Diaryland diarist, on the weirdness of Christmas bagels at her local kosher deli.

Best Poem I've Read in a While:
By Lunaadored. I'd love to reprint it here, but it's hers, so go read. Given the Christmas I had and the blues I'm still wrestling, I bless her for the writing of it.

Still down in SD, yo. Today, I took the horticulture tour down here with my uncle, the Keeper of All Plant Knowledge, with a Specialty in Cycads. He's not actually the keeper of *all* plant knowledge, but he knows a lot, so we'll let him slide just now. Since he noodles around with landscape design, today's tour was the Design 101 tour, as opposed to the Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Natives tour, or Intro to Cycads, or Successful Transplants from Africa to Zanzibar. It was pretty interesting, and I picked up some good tips. Darn cold, though. For SD, anyway. Breezy and overcast. I have learned the value of mulching, though, and it isn't moisture retention, important as that is in SoCal. No, my friends, it's erosion control and free plants. Seeding. I want to buy mulch from him and take it home with me, because I saw the results of it today, and it was pretty cool. But anyway.

My uncle and the rest of the fam live on top of a mountain down here and have quite a bit of "lawn" - what we of the uncouth like to call buku acreage - and it's all been fabulously and meticulously planted, groomed, and manicured into a massive riot of natives mixed in with plants from such exotic places as Madagascar, Morocco, and like places in Spain and Africa where you have to air lift plants out or something. More protea(s) than you can shake a stick at, and I love those, and you can't freakin' buy 'em up in LA, so I am hoping to get some of those to take home one day in the near future. He always gives me at least one plant to take home, and the selection from this trip is a huge freakin' kalanchoe leaf that I was ooing and ahing over. In fact, he just planted it today, having newly acquired it, himself. The leaf on this thing is seriously at least 8" across and 10" long. Maybe 10 across too. It's hecka huge. I had never seen a kalanchoe (the flowering kind) with leaves that damn big. Texas big. Alaska big. Wider than freakin MONtana, people. Great big honkin leaves, this thing had. So now I'll take it home and stick the leaf in some dirt, and voila - it'll grow me a whole new plant of my own.

See, the weird thing about kalanchoes is the obsessive secrecy in which they're cultivated. They're all like hybrids, so if you see a really pretty one, it's usually one that someone came up with in some freakish Dr. Frankenstein experiment under ground and cover of night, during the biggest storm in history, and if the person with the plant happens to actually know what it is, they won't actually *tell* you, because that would violate some big kalanchoe secrecy pact, so you have to buy the plant, and you are not supposed to EVER grow one by cutting, which frankly is pretty stupid, but there you have it. Who knew there was an honor system for plants? But apparently, the guy who hybridized this particular plant is all about the sharing, so he gave one to a member of the horticultural society my uncle belongs to, and that person gave one to someone else, who passed one to another member of the group, and apparently it's now tradition that if a member of the group likes the plant, you give them a cutting of it, so since I have the big nepotismal in, I got one too. And they say it doesn't do you any good to have a plant freak in the family. Shuh.

Little Shop of Horrors
Today I put film in the shiny new confusing Minolta Mom gave me and took pictures of some of the plants in the atrium inside the house here. They have this big atrium in the foyer (to the left, really), with this big boulder and a mini waterfall and the dirt the house is built on right there. Like, when they laid the foundation, they left this big honkin' place in it where the natural ground and a big boulder were left undisturbed, and my uncle has plants growing in it. And some in pots, etc. There are bromeliads galore, orchids, ferns, all kinds of weird and exotic stuff, some of which looks like it would eat you if you touched it. Seriously. I sleep with my door locked so when the creepy little things go roving in the dark of night, they can not slip into the study here and secrete some kind of digestive enzyme on me and devour me whole as I lie paralyzed (sp?) and unable to scream. Oh yes. I do. He has these leopard orchid things that really creep me out. They're kinda subdued right now, so I don't shudder every time I walk by 'em, but I still don't turn my back on 'em, dude. No way, no how. I took a picture of them even though they're all stealthed-out right now, so when I develop the film, I'll post a pic. Tomorrow I'm taking pictures OUTside. Oo. Ah. Think of the adventure.

How Much for the Pad Thai?
That's about it. My other uncle and his girlfriend came for dinner, which was nice, coz I haven't seen them in ages, and they also gave me cool presents. I got a landscape book and a shawl thingie that I think will make a stellar table runner for the coffee table, that they got in Thailand. The shawl thing, not the coffee table. We bought that, the boyfriend and I. You probably figured that out. Anyway. Both of them are cool. And a little clean-smelling candle in a coconut or some kind of husk that is also neat. Very cool presents. I felt bad again, because I couldn't afford to buy them anything. :( After dinner I looked at pictures of their Thailand trip, and it was pretty neat. And apparently quite inexpensive, if you bought Thai crafts and stuff. You can get a handmade, personally tailored silk shirt for 70 bucks there. Can you imagine??? In LA, that'd be a couple hundred bucks at least. My uncle apparently likes to bargain though, so much of the stories accompanying the photos had to do with how much stuff cost and the bargaining process. I had no idea...

Is that a C or an SE?
So tomorrow, I will take many photos that I really can't afford to develop - except that I did realize midway thru the tour that since I am taking photos and the tour and all that, this trip has been tax-deductible...woohoo! (My uncle was less enthused, but he's a biochemist with plenty of cashflow, so I guess I can't expect him to be psyched I get to deduct the 275 miles I drove down here...to the tune of like 31 cents a mile. I wonder if that bottle of wine I brought counts?) The photos are tax deductible too. :)

What, me get verklempt?
The boyfriend is still on the road trip. I miss him. When we are separated for "long periods" like this, I worry about him. I've always been a bit of a worrier, because let's face it, good luck has not always been my companion, while nasty little surprises abound in my life. But I never used to get freaked out until last September 11. All those damn stories about the people who died really got to me. So since he's all driving in rain and snow and all that, on long stretches of road, in places where rednecks drive very fast and pass in no pass zones on hills, at night, I'm a little freaked out that something could happen to him. I am not enjoying. :(

This is how superstitious I am, ever since my friend Marya died: I never watch someone until they disappear when they or I am leaving. I never watch the car disappear around the bend or the person get on the plane. I never even watch the car get to the end of the driveway, or my gramma go back in the house when I leave her house. When I leave my boyfriend's office, and he's seen me to the door, I do not watch him close the door again. I don't even watch him turn to go back in. I am afraid that if I do, that image will be the last one I ever have of them. Because when Marya left, I watched the door close behind her, and that was the last time I ever saw her, the image I perpetually see when I remember her: her leg disappearing thru the door, the door slamming closed, and the aluminum blinds bouncing against the door, away from it, and back against it again, the cord swinging.

Isn't that lovely?

It sucks, folks.

So I don't look any more. I smile, I wave, and I look away, while they still have that happy friend look on their face.

I'm a little freaked out that I waved too long when the boyfriend left, because he was looking back as the truck backed down the drive, and by the time he looked back to wave, I couldn't really see him anymore. My last memory would be a hand waving back at me from the darkened cab of a truck in the twilight. All very poetic, but sucking in the way of the most extreme suckage, in reality. Let's hope he makes it home safe and sound New Year's Eve, 'kay? Cross your fingers.

Okay, gotta go. I'm all worried again. It bites when you love someone so much. It's great, but it also bites.

Peace out,
Katie

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And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve.
I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your
life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

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Yesterday's News - Next Stop

In which Katie shares sad news - Wednesday, Apr. 01, 2015
In which Katie returns after a very long absence - Monday, Jun. 25, 2012
In which Katie pokes her head in and brushes some of the cobwebs away - Thursday, May. 06, 2010
In which Katie asks you to write your congressman again. - Monday, Jun. 02, 2008
In which Katie asks you to please click the link and send the message to protect the rights of artists - Wednesday, May. 21, 2008