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I read a study that came to the conclusion that the creative environment in a business tilts when there are more than 10 employees. That a business with more than 10 employees needs processes and policies – the type of bureaucratic layering that zaps the creativity of most human beings.

Last night, we walked down to Boulevard to get a bite to eat at the bar. I told T that Boulevard consistently is good and the bartender said to us that is because of her – she pointed to the end of the bar where Nancy Oakes was sitting. Oakes is the chef and she shows up everyday and runs her restaurant and her kitchen. We talked about John Besh in New Orleans. I just read that he is opening a restaurant in the D-Day Museum expansion. I happened to have just seen a billboard right before you get onto the Causeway to go to the Northshore for La Provence, the French restaurant Besh has taken over. I have given up on Luke after three unsuccessful visits – the restaurant he opened a few years ago.

John Besh owns Restaurant August – perhaps the top restaurant in New Orleans – where does the need to have more than one stellar successful restaurant come from? More importantly, how often does it really work out to be as good as the flagship one?

The other day winding our way down through Knight’s Valley, we were speaking about charity. How to help those less fortunate. We talked about the woman’s organizations that for $25 a year you can fund a woman’s small business around the globe. T’s response is “We have too much.” And I said, “No the answer is we don’t have too much, the answer is that we share our bounty with those less fortunate.”

At what point in a business does it tilt to greed? What is wrong with small? Where do we draw the line on how much?

I became a member of MySpace because that is where my nieces and nephews were and then everything migrated to Facebook and I went there. But I became increasingly annoyed at having to constantly log on to Facebook to answer emails that people sent me to my Facebook account that would come to my email account. I kept thinking WASTE OF FUCKING TIME. And then I just decided to quit railing against it because people who don’t have blogs who wanted to touch other people in their circle with info – like hey I rode my bike today, or hey, did you hear this great song – were sending me notes and they were basically having the same conversations with me that I used to have when I would run into someone at the K&B, when the K&B actually still existed, it’s now a Rite Aid or Walgreens – but the point is that these were drive by conversations with those people we know that we don’t speak to as often as we’d like because life intervenes but now they have this access, or this new backyard fence they can speak to you from, and your granting them access is totally controllable by you but if you are someone like me who cannot stand to have anything pending you are constantly responding and responding and responding and suddenly you realize you didn’t have time for your bath, walking the dog, or the skin care treatment you promised your face because you’ve been on Facebook trying to respond to everyone who decided they had a tidbit to share with you today.

What to do?

Unclear.

Perhaps not respond, not sign on to Facebook from hotel rooms where you have forgotten your password and the sheer fact that now you cannot respond to an acquaintance who sent you a brief summary of their walk in the park and you cannot post things like MY MOTHER IS DYING THEREFORE I CANNOT DEAL is inappropriate and causes others to have to read something that makes them not feel so good. All of this is a big no no.

So you leave off of Facebook where you can’t sign in and wonder if you should access your Twitter account wherein you’d still be leaving some banal message that would not be conveying anything because you have walked down the street with your partner and had a delicious dinner in Nancy Oake’s Boulevard and now you are trying with all your might to not talk about the day where your mother dying has been the front and center of your thoughts – not “in the back of your mind” as someone referred to it earlier – but the everything you are thinking about when you walk into the bathroom alone at last and can pee and think and reflect in peace and think – good god, my mother who I love and have been consumed by all my life because I wanted to fix her problems is dying.

And then you are in the lobby of the Harbor Court and you are printing out your ticket home and in the background the other guest has switched the television from the ballgame to some ranting fucking lunatic who is saying I WANT MY FATHER TO LIVE and I WANT A GOVERNMENT WHO IS PAYING TO KEEP MY FATHER ALIVE and I shout FUCK YOU! and Tatjana says, “Shhhhh.” And then the ticket home, to New Orleans, spits out of the printer suddenly.

If I cannot sign onto Facebook would anyone die?

My mother in law sent me a poem from a family friend – Luis Muñoz – the friend whose flat we were able to crash at in Madrid on our way to Lisbon – unfortunately I didn’t get to meet the esteemed poet, but I did get to rummage through his vast library as he was down South visiting family.

EL PRECIO DE LOS DIAS

Descubre, al mismo tiempo,
los espejos nublados de la tarde
y las sombras furtivas de sus años.

Por plazas atestados
y por pupilas grises que devolvio su vida,
ha repasado, apenas, el cauce de los cuerpos,
los halagos del frio y un sur imaginario.

Pervivem apostados
los juegos de la arena,
las primeras traiciones, que demandan silencio,
las fechas incumplidas, el azar de los patios,
las calles favorables, y un portal, un trayecto.

Lo que hasta entonces vivia en el presente
tomo, sin darse cuenta, y a sabiendas de un precio,
las formas desechadas de su inmortalidad.

I stood in line behind a tall, nice looking young boy who was awfully chatty. We were both flying to San Francisco and he said he had his suit in his bag and would not check it because it was so important that he have it tomorrow for his interview. He’s in his second round of interviews at Presidio Dental College.

He was such a sweet, cute boy and chatty enough to put all of those ingredients together to grow up to be a great dentist. I put great faith in his ability to win over the entrance committee.

Then I sat in my chair and wondered what I want to be when I grow up.

Last night, we went to the new bar on the Embarcadero, the Waterbar, to drink a toast to T’s birthday and then we walked over to the Slanted Door. We were with a friend who was in the country coincidentally at the same time we were in San Francisco, so it was a nice treat for T’s birthday.

He made the comment at one point in describing himself as saying “it’s all love and guilt” with me. And I concurred.

This morning, I got up again at the buttcrack of dawn and flew to Los Angeles for a day of meetings, but on arrival got a call that mom had gone code blue and that I should come home now. The ensuing eight hours were filled with T’s trying to find me a flight home, my putting my grief in my back pocket, and waiting for the next call from New Orleans.

The next call came several hours later and it was that mom had stabilized – again the electrical currents used to revive her also corrected the arrhythmia that escalated when her lungs failed her. Another save? Perhaps not.

When I think about what medical care is at this point in life – I wonder what the hell the Republicans could possibly know about death panels. Most of our health care costs goes into keeping elderly people “alive” – and I want no part of it.

I vow to have a poison pill by my beside and if I can’t administer it, I know that T would if I asked her.

I think about the last time I have thought about my mother in a tender moment as the past four months and days have been one long heart dredging anxiety ridden path to nowhere.

And yet here another long day’s journey has ended where I begun – consumed by love and guilt.

Today I woke up from a drug induced sleep – I took a quarter of an Ativan last night so that I could actually sleep – it worked. The sun is out and we are staying at a hotel on the Embarcadero and so we walked over to the Ferry Building and had a delicious cup of coffee and an almond croissant from Acme.

It’s T’s birthday!

I’m off to work but tonight we’ll head to the Slanted Door for some delicious food.

Nagging me in the back of my mind is this has to be done and that has to be done about my mom and I’m so used to being in control of things, I’m pulled in a thousand directions but the one thing that I can’t control that I would if I could is the fact that she is dying. Everything else is meaningless, so today, I am going to focus on letting go. And helping my sweetheart celebrate her special day. And giving thanks that I’m alive, healthy, and have the privilege of traveling to the Bay Area in October when the weather is ideal and being able to do the work I love.

A friend of mine once said he wanted “HAD A NICE DAY” printed on his tombstone. I like that.

Got to the airport at the buttcrack of dawn as my Russian friend likes to say and there was a plane change and suddenly they had 47 seats less on the new flight and we were stranded with about 47 older women with red hats. We were put on a later plane but by this time I had been up since 3:30 am and so I felt like I had completed a full day and was actually ready to come home. But I sat next to one of these red hat ladies on the plane and she was reading a mystery novel and I happen to glance at it and the dialogue went like this:

“I know her. She is a MILF.”

“MILF?”

“Mother I’d like to fuck.”

“Were you together?”

“No, I wish, but she was a nice person.”

So I’m looking at this dialogue and so thankful it is not the book I am reading and wondering how long MILF could work it’s way into the venacular of a dowager’s mystery novel all the way from American Pie, the teen movie some years ago and suddenly we hit turbulence and the plane is going this way and up and down and sideways and well, for a while there it is pretty rocky.

After it finally calms down some, the woman says to me, “I learned a long time ago to not worry about things I can’t control.”

“Hmmm,” was all I said as I closed my eyes and tried to get a cat nap in before we landed in Denver.

During the day I try to compartmentalize death, adoption, work, me, T – and then I get in bed at night and toss and turn and close my eyes to see monsters appearing out of the walls with lots of talking going on – rolling around with my mother the weighty-est subject on my mind, I slice through work and then proceed to adoption and I trespass over relationships that include T and everyone else in the world and then I find myself waking, panting, in the dark, feeling as if the next day is going to steamroll over me if I don’t get some sleep.

Just exactly how do you compartmentalize?

After finally getting to San Francisco, we were turning into the Marina and I spotted Kev – Jesus, Kev – of all people – we pulled over and jumped out of the car and greeted each other. He’s divorcing his wife after 25 years! We then made our way to the hotel right on the Embarcadero and T’s friend calls her and blows the surprise for her birthday but who cares – the surprise which was a Tomboy cake from Miette and friends on the roof deck has been morphed into Tequila and Beer at Tres Agaves because none of the original surprise was doable given my schedule and the logistics or the weather.

So after getting all settled into our hotel, we went next door to Ozumi and had delicious sushi and vodka tonics from the woman from Bulgaria – what is it about Eastern European women that is so wow?

But as we watched the sumo wrestlers on the screen, and had our hamachi with jalapeño sauce, and our Belvedere vodka tonics with two lemons squeezed, and watched all the pulchritude that surrounded us I asked T if she thought a place like this could exist in New Orleans and she said no.

We walked around the square in Healdsburg this morning and then headed to Golden Haven Spa in Calistoga for a mudbath. Slinking into hot mud has its own rewards – you think, should I be doing this? and then you are doing doing it and it feels so weird but good and Jimmy is telling you the mud is great about extracting the toxins from your body but T and I have our old underwear that we can throw away because I’m not sure about how much toxins are going out or coming in. Then we head to the jacuzzi and drink copious amounts of lemony spa water and Jimmy comes in and says it is time for our blanket wrap. So we head into this little room and have him wrap us in wool blankets and next thing you know we are in the twilight zone.

But lest you think this is bliss we head now for our one hour massage and both of the massage therapists are rather lame. Mine is barely there and T is crying that it is too firm. We both decide on the table to just give into being rubbed even though we both know what a real massage feels like and this ain’t it.

After long ramble to get our butts down to the beginning of the valley and to Roshambo, our latest wine craze, we do this all on a wing and a prayer – little food, not so great massage – and then we are sitting in this little patio off the winery and having our Oakville grocery picnic that was meant to be had five hours ago – edamame salad with shitake mushrooms, dolmas, spanakopita, and brioche and drinking a glass of Roshambo ROCK – blastoff!