Lunch on the Water

This weekend Tom and I took the #70 Golden Gate Transit bus over to Mill Valley, where we picked up Ann and Mac’s car and drove to San Rafael to pick them up. Then we drove to Sausalito, where they treated us to lunch at the Spinnaker, which is right on the water, in fact, over the water. I think you can actually kayak right under it, and it’s a fine place to watch people sailing and motorboating by. It was a beautiful day.

Then we stopped by their apartment in Mill Valley to drop something off, and then we went back to their assisted-living place in San Rafael and hung out. Tom and I took turns catnapping on Ann’s bed, and then I sat in the hall reading with Mac, where it’s a bit cooler, though it wasn’t overly hot in their room.

At the end of the afternoon, we drove back to Mill Valley, dropped the car off, and took the bus back to S.F. Someone had left a ziplock bag of edamame behind in the bus stop. That’s what they have in Marin, whereas we prefer barf and beer cans in our bus stops here in the city.

We went then to the Embarcadero theater and saw Herzog’s Rescue Dawn, in which Christian Bale, whom I like very much, portrays Dieter Dengler, a U.S. Navy pilot who was shot down over Laos at the beginning of the Vietnam war and eventually escaped. True story, good movie.

Then we went to Buca di Beppo on Howard St. for Italian food. That is one of two restaurants my coworkers and I often patronize for going-away lunches and the like. The other is Henry’s Hunan on Natoma. Both are chains, though Henry’s has just four locations, all in San Francisco.

In both cases, after visiting a few times, I thought—and this appears to be a common trajectory —“Boy, what a grease pit,” and would think, “Ew,” when either was proposed. But after going to each five or more times, I became a fan of both, and now it’s like, “Yeah, Buca!” and, “Yeah, Henry’s!”

Tom was wowed by Buca’s enormous platters and the very busy décor, one vintage photo next to another. It actually was the first time I ever sat upstairs. When I’m there with coworkers, they always make us sit in the basement.

On Sunday I went to Rainbow and later made bean and corn salad, and butter cookies with lemon frosting, though my oven really misbehaved and I fear the cookies are on the raw side.

I have been missing my big salads, so I decided to try to find some salad dressing that doesn’t contain vinegar or lemon juice, and was surprised to see even ranch dressing has vinegar in it. I read all the labels and found a couple of dressings in which vinegar was far down the list of ingredients and was heading to my cart when I heard my mother’s voice as sure as if she was standing behind me: “For goodness’ sake, get what you like!” Meaning, whatever looks tasty that isn’t an out-and-out vinaigrette.

So I put back what I’d chosen and got some ranch dressing instead, and found it to be quite good, and hopefully low enough on vinegar.

My mother is opposed to eating something you don’t like just because it’s good for you. She says if something is good for you and you like it, then fine, but you should eat what you like to eat.

I have stopped being vegan because my lady acupuncturist (by which I don’t mean the default acupuncturist is male, just that I have both lady and gentleman acupuncturists) convinced me that I should eat butter instead of fake butter for health reasons.

In baking, the taste is the same, or close enough, at least to me, which is why I was using the fake stuff, to spare animals, but now I’m using the real stuff, because I think the fake stuff probably really isn’t good for your health. Well, you know, whatever you do, it’s wrong.

I finished Sigrid Nunez’s unputdownable novel The Last of Her Kind and am going to request her other novels from the library, excepting the one that imagines the life of Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s pet monkey.

I gave my parents a call on Sunday afternoon and while my father was talking, I became suddenly overwhelmed with the unbearable poignance of life and started to cry, silently. It was a weepy weekend; everything made me cry when I wasn’t actively engaged in dining or viewing: Lucky the rat, Stevie Wonder lyrics. When it was my turn to talk, I was busy crying, and my father asked, “Are you still there?”

A few minutes later, I was talking to my mother, who I have lately realized I rarely let finish a sentence. I have vowed to be a much better listener, so I was listening with complete attentiveness and, when I failed to interrupt her, she asked, “Are you still there?”