This is a photo I snapped on a recent trip to New York.  I was staying a few blocks away from the venerable Chelsea Hotel.  At the time it seemed too cliché to photograph the Dylan Thomas plaque, but now I wish I had.  Coincidentally, I was also reading Just Kids by Patti Smith, which takes place in part at the Chelsea Hotel circa 1970.

Patti Smith’s book is not the kind of memoir narrative I’m used to.  It’s elegiac and oblique, dense and literary, pure in tone with moments of the sublime.  And yet I can practically feel the grime of true artistic poverty of the 1960s and 1970s.  For example, no other modern nonfiction book about the United States comes to mind that includes lice, bedbugs, and trench mouth.  The book tells the story of Patti Smith’s long, loving friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe.  The two young artists came into the Chelsea scene while Salvador Dali and William Burroughs still roamed New York bohemia.  Jim Carroll, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, the Rolling Stones, the Doors, Sam Shepard, and even Bruce Springsteen figure into the story.  There were other names that I didn’t recognize, and for once I wished for an e-book with hyperlinks to Wikipedia entries, just so I could try to put the nearly forgotten avant-garde pieces together.  That’s one of the great values of this book — as a literary history of the vanished artistic scene when Andy Warhol set the tone and the Velvet Underground were ascendant.

There was a time when I loved the Velvet Underground.  I liked the way they sounded.  But in the late 1980s digging the Velvet Underground was also an excellent way to distinguish yourself in artistic, liberal arts scenes as someone too cool to listen to bubble gum pop.  My first experience with their music was buying an LP at the Electric Fetus in Minneapolis in 1986.  My cool friend Yvonne, acting as a human iTunes Genius before we’d ever dreamed of such a thing, was advising me to buy something by the Velvet Underground for my high school boyfriend (who loved Echo and the Bunnymen).  The boyfriend didn’t last that much longer, in the scheme of things, but pegging myself as a girl who knew from the Velvet Underground helped me win the respect (and sometimes the temporary love) of other boys as I moved into college.

All of the artsy kids at college knew a little about the Warhol scene.  Between the little bits we knew about Lou Reed or John Cale or having seen the Andy Warhol Campbell’s Soup Cans or the Marilyn Monroe prints gave just enough information to know who Billy Name was when he visited our college to give a talk.

Years later I had the opportunity to meet someone from Warhol’s Factory — and I had no idea who she was.  It was 2002 and I was living in Santa Monica.  The artsy girl who went to Vassar in the late 1980s had been nearly replaced by a suburban, pregnant 30-something earning a PhD at UCLA in public health.  My neatly bobbed head was full of risk ratios and research opportunities.  And one day, walking my dog around the corner from my home, I met an older woman who seemed to really groove on my pregnancy.  She was a total anomaly for the neighborhood — hippy-ish yet patrician, no plastic surgery and a yipping terrier (civilized and docile labradors were becoming the norm).  She introduced herself as Viva, then quickly corrected herself and said she was also Janet, which only reinforced my first impression that she was a crazy person and now I’d have to alter my usual dog walk to avoid her.

But I didn’t.  She was different from the mellow, athletic folk I was used to meeting in my neighborhood, much more ragged around the edges but compelling in a way that the doe-eyed decaf drinkers were not.  As I ran into her on other dog walks, she offered advice (and physical demonstrations) about how women in other cultures birth babies (in tents, relieving labor pain by hanging from their arms off a tree).  She also began to tell me about all of the people she knew in New York, and that she was known as Viva Superstar.  Andy Warhol had named her that and put her in his movies.  And she had lived for many years at the Chelsea Hotel in New York.

At first I didn’t believe her.  I grew up with a mentally ill man for a father, and I am used to humoring people who seem off their rocker.  But one day I Googled her and found that Viva Superstar really did exist, and that she was indeed my neighbor Janet.

Viva Superstar YouTube

There’s more to the story that I hope to tell in the future – a story of gentrification and turning an already vanilla neighborhood into more of one.  The last time I saw Viva/Janet, she was at the Beverly Hills courthouse trying to avoid getting evicted by her nasty troll of a landlord.  I and several other people from the neighborhood were witnesses on her behalf.  This week, reading the Patti Smith book, I was just happy to see her name again and catch the faint incense whiff of her glory days as a Factory girl and avant-garde icon.

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Last month I learned how to ski in Canada, at the same place where 12 years earlier I learned to snowboard.  In those days, at 30, I suspected I was too old to learn how to do something like ski or snowboard.  Still, I put on my helmet and hoped no one would guess my age.  I hated how hard it was.  Early on, I likened my hard falls to “cement enemas,” but I was committed to learning.  Snowboarding was a welcome change from my graduate school work: it allowed me to be worked over by a snow-covered mountain rather than an academic committee.

A year later my father died, and snowboarding became a “Fight Club” of one that was more solace to me than all of the kind sentiments offered by my friends and acquaintances.

This is a version of something I wrote for a writing class in 2004.  Enjoy.

Fall is here, and my thoughts turn to strengthening my abs.  While many think of spring as a time to seek the elusive six-pack for swimsuit season, a chill in the air reminds me that I’m about to reacquaint myself with my boots and snowboard, the nonexistent six-pack nowhere to be seen under layers of fleece and waterproof Gore-Tex.

I don’t come from an athletic family.  It’s more than a little sadomasochistic that, with my non-jock history, I’m embarking on snowboarding at this late date.  The “sado” part is that I’ve coerced my husband along for the painful, expensive ride.  His family, more cerebral and even more sedentary than mine, has an unofficial motto: “Why stand when you can sit?  Why sit when you can lie down?”  He has taken up the more dignified sport of skiing, and he’s none too happy with pain and the black toenails that tell him that he’s rented the wrong boots.

Our parents disapprove when we tell them the weekends we’ll be away skiing.  Just as when we adopted our first dog several years ago, they act as though we might not be licensed operators of our own lives.  They rattle off stories of broken limbs, fruitless search teams, decomposed bodies, and amputated feet.  After we tell them we’ve already booked our flights, my mother or his father will say, “Oh well, then.  Have a good time.”

Flying from LAX to Reno/Tahoe should be easy enough.  But ever since I’ve had a baby, the schlep with the snowboard, suitcase, stroller, and toddler supplies, has become an almost prohibitive hassle.  Lugging it all reminds me of the discomforts to come: my back leg cramping with the hop-slide movements forward in the lift line; the packed and overpriced cafeteria selling prefab cocoa and greasy chili; and the labor of hobbling off the slopes, parking the board, and removing layers, just to go to  the bathroom.

Last winter my trials began right off the bat, when I drove in a blizzard through Donner Pass at night in a rented minivan with my laughing baby, our babysitter, and her preteen child.  They gritted their teeth as we skidded along the highway despite my slow speed and the chains on the tires.  I put on a show of bravado to reassure them and myself that we would not die in this stupid manner.  Many hours later, past midnight, we arrived at the rented cabin.  The babysitter and I spent the next two hours digging out the driveway and hauling our bags and the sleeping children into the house.

The hoards of Californians rushing the gondola at 8 am are another challenge.  And then, after traveling up the lift with total strangers, I actually have to ride the mountain.  Writing all of this down, it’s hard to believe that I do this voluntarily, when a part of me has more in common with the spouses and friends who spend the day at the lodge, drinking beer and shooting the breeze with anyone who happens to sit on the next bar stool.

What I actually enjoy about snowboarding takes a few runs to experience: the flow and enforced in-the-moment feeling.  If I allow myself to begin thinking about messy and complicated things, say, my doctoral dissertation, I fall.  I have to use my reptilian brain: eyes on the snow and on the boarders and skiers around me; and my mind on the immediate challenge of whether to go over or around the small mogul a few feet in front of me, whether to take the green run or try that blue one that peels off at the bottom of this hill.

During my second year, just after my father died, snowboarding became my own “Fight Club” of one.  My dad and I had not been close; his severe mental illness had been the unwelcome third parent in my upbringing.  After a week at his funeral in Taiwan, mourning him and the happy relationship we would never have, I returned to school in and the relentless, incongruous sun of January in Los Angeles.

Soon after I went snowboarding, hoping that, for one weekend, external pain and icy solace could displace sorrow.  At the top of each black diamond run I dared, I saw the expanse of frosted, ancient fir trees and the deep, pure lake below, surrounded by mountains.

There’s no place on earth like this, I thought.

I glided down, falling-leaf style, the mark of a beginner.  In my mind, there was no past and no future, only riding down the mountain.

Those of you who read this blog have probably noticed that I try to keep it apolitical.  Those of you who know me personally probably know that I’m a Democrat.  If it were any ordinary presidential election year, I would be somewhat fired up.  I enjoy politics during election years the way a casual fan with a busy nonpolitical life enjoys watching the World Cup every few years.  But lately the assault on women’s fundamental health rights, through the passage of mandatory transvaginal ultrasound exams for women before terminating a pregnancy; the attempts to defund Planned Parenthood and attempts to stop insurance from covering women’s birth control; plus the Rush Limbaugh “slut” and “whore” brouhaha and plenty of other awful examples in addition to the women’s issues, make this election year open season on too many things I believe in.

I recently hosted an event to raise money in support of Democratic members of Congress, and in introducing the event, which featured the talented duo of comedian Suzanne Whang and her partner, singer Eric Schwartz, and our friend, the wonderful comedian Wendy Hammers, I wish that I would have included the following story about how I became a Democrat:

In 1985, smack dab in the middle of the Reagan administration, I was a sophomore in high school.  I’d had a mad crush on a guy since middle school, and I WAS FINALLY GOING OUT WITH HIM.  He was a year older than me and had a drivers license.  I believed that he had finally picked up on the intense Jedi-mind-trick vibes I’d been sending him for two years and was taking me out because I was the cutest thing he’d ever seen.  I didn’t understand that we were probably now dating because he knew that I’d been lusting after him and thought I would be a sure thing.

On one of our first dates, we ended up in his station wagon out in the middle of nowhere after a movie.  I was thrilled.  We were making out – a dream come true!  We were playing the cat-and-mouse game of a guy trying to (literally) get into a younger girl’s pants.  I was flattered, but I probably wasn’t going to put out (at least that night).  Yet we kept on kissing.  And then politics came up.  He said something smart yet hipsterishly subversive about President Reagan.  I told him that I was a Republican.  <SCREECH>

“Wait a minute,” he said.  ”Why are you a Republican?”

“Well…” I had to stall for time.

I had no idea why.  All that flashed through my head was my mother proudly telling me that her first vote cast was for Richard Nixon, my grandfather shouting at the television to Jimmy Carter that we can’t give in the the A-rabs, and (to a variety of Democrats over the years) that they were no Jack Kennedy.*

Finally I said, “It’s just the right way to be.  I just think they’re right.”

He laughed.  ”Okay, let me get this straight.  Your mom is a single parent.  You guys don’t have much money.  And you’re a minority in a little town in Wisconsin.  And you’re a girl.  So, why are you a Republican?”

He was a smart guy, used to debating issues in smart-kid classes.  I was a smart kid, but not used to hearing anyone except for a handful of teachers talk about any genuine issues.

I don’t remember how our political exchange ended, but the little come-to-Jesus talk killed the romantic vibe that night.  And our entire “relationship” only lasted two weeks, if that.  But I give the guy credit for being my “first time” (although not in the way he would have liked) — the first person who encouraged me to think for myself about politics and ally myself with those who represented my true interests and beliefs.

* “You’re no Jack Kennedy!” was a quote from the 1988 Vice Presidential debates, said by Lloyd Bentsen to Dan Quayle.  My grandfather definitely said this in later years, for example when shouting at the television to Michael Dukakis, but he also made similar remarks before then.

Last week I was lucky enough to tell a story at The Moth ”Marriage” show in Santa Monica.  I’m not someone who moved to Los Angeles to be an actor, although I love my actor and comedian friends and go to as many of their shows as I can.  I don’t really want to be on stage at all, but I don’t want to be afraid of it either — which is why I recently took a great stage class called The Comedian’s Way, taught by the talented team that produces Los Angeles’ Un-Cabaret.  When friends asked if I was an aspiring stand-up comic or actress/actor (depending on how PC they were; maybe we should just agree to call them actrons), I kept having to say no.

What I finally figured out was that it was like being a runner and deciding to take a yoga or strength class to improve my game.  Provided I finish, I will have to read aloud from the book at bookstores and other events.  I just wanted to try something new, ostensibly to help prevent me from “choking” onstage.  In the writers/spoken word stage shows that I’ve participated in so far, Expressing Motherhood and Spark Off Rose, I had step outside my comfort zone to craft a compelling version of true events that happened in my life.  I also had to work at mastering my nerves and LEARN TO PROJECT!  Or at least not mumble and speed up.  People in the audience have reacted with kindness and interest to the parts of the story that I told onstage, and like a treat thrown at a dog to reward training, the praise encouraged me to continue the work.

As a writer working on a book, I am throwing the long pass.  I’m not really shy, but the way that I “choke” onstage is to wax boring — to suck the drama out of the story and flatten it out into the most linear, “normal-sounding” story I can.  It’s one by-product of many years of working on being the opposite of my parents, both hysteric types in their own way (one schizophrenic, the other just a crier).  And, as I discussed with my ex-actor husband, once one has succeeded in drumming the dramatic impulse out, it’s very hard to summon again when you need it.

I love listening to shows like The Moth, This American Life, KCRW’s Unfictional, and any of the new independent producer projects that air on public radio these days.  I also love going to Los Angeles nonfiction/spoken work shows like Tasty Words, Don’t Tell My Mother, and the many others that have sprung up all over Los Angeles in recent years.  While there are plenty of actors and writers telling interesting stories, there are other types of people too.  I am convinced that the impulse to tell a story in front of a room full of strangers is a force for good.  At worst it’s a modern-day prayer meeting of narcissistic truth addicts and seekers.  At best it’s something like learning cursive or how to build a fire from scratch or mastering foreplay, a long-form art that slows us down and humanizes us as we connect with another human being and occasionally feel less alone as a result.

I chose a story to tell for The Moth about the longest two weeks of my life, in the spring 15 years ago, a few months before I was married, when my father dropped in on my boyfriend and me and brought many trash bags full of his belongings into my apartment.  When I was selected out of the pile of names at the show, I was prepared but still very shaky about telling it to a room of what looked to be 200 strangers.

The story began as a tale of a mentally ill anti-Semitic Chinese man, who happened to be my father, coming to live with my Jewish boyfriend and me.  It ended up focusing on the caution of people my age when settling down to marry, waiting to find out all about the would-be spouse, only to find that there’s more “baggage” to discover.

Once I finished, I was relieved that my scores were respectable and that I’d done it.  (In the week leading up to it, my husband kept referring to it as “The Goblet of Fire” – a nerdy but apt Harry Potter reference.  Another friend and mentor referred to it as “popping the cherry,” another apt comparison.)

What I’ve come to realize is that the athletic cross-training raison d’être for learning to tell a story onstage is pretty right-on.  In honing my story for the possibility of being selected at the Moth, I learned to edit in a new way.  I pared down the plot that needed to be told within the time limits, while still trying to throw in enough detail to establish character and introduce stakes.  I didn’t tell a “perfect” story by any means.  But I did it, and I’m a lot less intimidated than I was before I subjected myself to it.

I read an article on “mindful eating” the other day in the New York Times.  It’s about applying the principles of mindfulness and meditation, being in the moment while eating.

I couldn’t figure out whether to laugh or cry, since I practice the exact opposite of mindful eating.  This practice of mine is not for any weird LA anorexic/dietetic reason; it hardly feels like a choice at all.  My children’s school is five miles away, through one of the densest parts of Los Angeles.  Between the school commute and after school activities, household errands, and traveling back and forth across one small swath of my area code for personal and work errands (the gym, a writing class), I drive hours each day.  I actually drove less when I worked 35 miles away from home, since my kids pretty much stayed in one place (home or preschool) during those years.

This was not how my life in Los Angeles began.  I moved here in 1994, several months after the Northridge earthquake.  Traffic was not the epic force of nature that I’d been led to expect, perhaps because there had been a significant exodus after the earthquake.  But the biggest reason my husband and I didn’t have any sense of traffic was because we lived about a mile from our jobs and graduate programs at UCLA.

Many days we’d drive anyway, laughing ruefully about how much we were becoming like the Steve Martin character in “LA Story,” who drives next door to his friend’s house.  Sometimes my husband would be home early, shop at Trader Joe’s, and whip up an overly complicated meal by the time I arrived home from work.  When acquaintances would tell us how horrible their commutes were, how hard it was to juggle work, school pickup, karate practice, and some sad semblance of a family life, we would try to muster some sympathy.  But we had no idea.  In one corner of our minds, we were often thinking that the poor whining jerk should just move somewhere more practical, or stop trying to have it all.

Oh, how the young and cocky have fallen.

My husband now drives 50 to 60 miles away to his two job sites (in different counties), and I zigzag around a tiny corner of Los Angeles doing the daily Rubic’s cube of our family life and my writing, such as it is.  There’s a ball of hair on the floor of my car, and I realize that I now have a nervous tic of pulling out my own hair as I sit in interminable traffic.  Yes, it’s come to that: I now exhibit caged animal behavior in my own car, as if this life isn’t a product of our own choices.  (I hope that by outing myself this way, I will redirect my nervous energy back into swearing-as-an-art-form instead of plucking myself.)

I know that if we went “full Unibomber” (i.e., lived “off the grid” — which is to say anywhere other than Los Angeles, New York, or a handful of other cities), as we sometimes threaten to do, that life would be simpler.  When I visit family members in quieter parts of America, I am in awe that in one afternoon, a person can do several errands, make dinner, and still read part of a book.

But after all these years in Los Angeles, and the friends we have here, and how accustomed we are to the relative diversity and the precarious beauty of it all, it would be very hard to leave.  I have come to view Los Angeles as a huge, beautiful but garish tattoo that I got when I was young.  I sometimes regret it, but I have it, and that’s that.

And as I rounded the corner too fast, one piece of four-day-old pizza hanging out of my mouth, the other piece between my legs on crumpled aluminum foil, the Don Henley song “Sunset Grill” came on the air, and I listened to the words as I inhaled the food:

Let’s go down to the Sunset Grill

Watch the working girls go by

Watch the basket people walk around and mumble

Gaze out at the auburn sky

Maybe we’ll leave come springtime

Meanwhile, have another beer

What would we do without all these jerks anyway?

And besides, all our friends are here.

Here are the ghosts of Valentines Days past:

1. My first Valentines Day when I had a real boyfriend, circa 1987, Eau Claire, Wisconsin: Dreamy boy, great friend, fun.  He presented me with a small box of candy and five wilted maroon roses he picked up at the grocery store (the last ones in stock) on the way over to my house.  I think he took me to one of the hotel restaurants in town, where I’m sure he was ripped off for two “special Valentines Day” meals of shrimp scampi.

2. Valentines Day parties 1988-1992 (they all blur into one, and I’m kind of making this up), Poughkeepsie, New York: a college dorm common room; house music; bowls full of colored/flavored condoms; drinking flat, skunky keg beer; and grinding to Madonna with gay male friends.  At least one of those years I was seeing someone, which means I spent that night in his dirty tube-sock scented dorm room.

3. Valentines Day 1993. St. Paul, Minnesota: Living with the guy I wouldn’t call my boyfriend.  Going out to a nice dinner and trying to act all cool about it, like we were just poking fun at romance.  Almost surely drinking too much and getting mad at him, probably making out with him anyway.

4. Valentines Day 1994, St. Paul, Minnesota: Now officially dating the roommate-friend, but still kind of mad at him for not pursuing me like mad the year before.  We try to have a “perfect” evening anyway.  The evening begins with a rich, decadent meal that includes foie gras and wine pairings at the best restaurant in our neighborhood.  We bicker.  The fatty meal and booze sits poorly in our stomachs.  Then we rush off to a Kronos Quartet concert where we sit in the middle of the row at a crowded auditorium.  One of us gets violently ill and has to beat a path to the bathroom mid-concert.  The other one doesn’t feel so great either.  (We’re married now, so I’m supposed to be sweet and discreet about who got sick.)

5. 1995-2011*, Los Angeles, California: a series of uneventful Valentines Days with the boyfriend who is now my husband.  Most years we go out to a special dinner, with a very special price tag.  But as the years go on we try to go a day or so before Valentines Day.  On the best Valentines Days, when the kids are in bed, we open a good bottle of wine, possibly eat a home-cooked yet grownup dinner.  Sometimes we watch a movie.  In the early years it was “When Harry Met Sally.”  But lately, if we watch a movie, it’s probably “Kissing Jessica Stein,” a sweet movie even if you’re not a lesbian or bi-curious.

* the exception was 1998, when we returned to the beautiful, historic Los Angeles restaurant where we had been married.  We had the Valentines Day special: three courses and a single glass of champagne for something like $120 each.  The courses were minuscule, like parodies of “nouvelle cuisine.” We seriously considered ordering a pizza afterwards.

Valentines Day is to romance as reality television is to reality.  I think I always knew that but was compelled to go through the motions of celebrating it as if it had real meaning.  How commemorating a martyred saint is connected to a day supposedly dedicated to love, I don’t pretend to know.  But I’m glad not to spend a lot of time or money on it anymore.

This week I am starting a class and working on a deadline.  So far in 2012 I’ve been meeting all my deadlines, but I don’t want to gloat lest I start missing them!  Instead of a new post, I am re-posting the following entry from June 3, 2011.  Thank you for reading, friends.

A New Yorker article by Rachel Aviv (“God Knows Where I Am”) came out in the last week that has affected me deeply.

It’s an account of a woman who was diagnosed with bipolar and schizoaffective disorder. Part of the nature of her illness was that she didn’t accept the diagnosis. She didn’t take her prescribed medications unless she was in an institution where she was compelled to. She had committed a number of petty crimes and bizarre behaviors that landed her in jail and a mental institution. But she was described as otherwise likable and often lucid.

I would have found the article fascinating (and depressing) even if I didn’t have a personal interest in this subject. It’s a circular situation, a true conundrum, when an illness manifests as a refusal to accept that you are ill. These were the types of questions that kept me from really understanding my college courses in philosophy, hanging just at the edge of my reasoning abilities. But the real reason that this is such a difficult topic is that my father’s story was similar.

My father was out of touch with reality for most of my memory. He only went to a psychiatrist once, forced by a court order during my parents’ divorce. On that brief visit, he received a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. His symptoms included delusions of grandeur, auditory hallucinations, and paranoia. He had these symptoms for the rest of his life and never took medication or (to my knowledge) ever saw a physician.

My father’s story did not play out as tragically as the mentally ill woman from the New Yorker article. He lived a marginal existence in Chicago for over 20 years and then rejoined his family in Taiwan for the last few years of his life. But the fact that he refused treatment made dealing with him a constant exercise in frustration, and in effect, his illness steered our family history during my brother’s and my childhood and young adulthood.

The article brings up difficult legal and ethical questions about how to treat the mentally ill. During my father’s lifetime, I was not willing or able to take drastic measures to curtail his freedom. Because he was able to hold down a series of jobs, he maintained financial independence. He died ten years ago, around the age of 60. And since he’s been gone for a while, I’m able to see the trajectory of his life and try to put it into some kind of narrative framework to understand, past tense. But I have no idea what I would do if he was still a force to be reckoned with in my life.

These were my two dogs, Genji (left) and Saki (right), in 2004.  Genji was five years old, and Saki was two months old.  It wasn’t the best time in my life for a new puppy.  Although I was in my 30s, I had an 18-month-old baby and was remodeling our kitchen and bathroom.

For three years pre-baby, Genji was my only “child.”  He sounded the alarm against baseball hats and people who wore them.  Like a canine Ewok, he grew as fierce as a ninja when he spotted a fly or a spider that he could catch and eat.  Genji had always been lively, smart, and more affectionate than most Shiba Inus.  He was an ideal companion while I studied and wrote at home during graduate school — except that for his first two years he was like a destructive energizer bunny, wrecking carpets, shoes, and the occasional pair of underwear.  So it was just another symptom of being a chaos junkie that I thought it was time for another dog.

Since dogs are pack animals, I thought that it would be a mitzvah to give Genji a playmate and companion of his own species.  Our new puppy happened to be his niece, so that seemed like a blessed thing too.  It’s true that part of my plan was for Genji to be less of a needy boy who followed me from room to room while I changed diapers, tried to get a toddler to nap, and made some haphazard attempts at writing my book.  But I really did imagine that he’d be happier with another dog around.

Life rarely turns out the way it’s planned.  Saki was impossible to housebreak while the construction was going on in our house.  For three months, we ate out for every meal.  So I left both dogs in crates while my daughter and I did the daily urban forage to the corner deli.  I walked the dogs on two leashes twice a day and tried to keep my daughter from bolting.  Sometimes I still crammed her into the baby carrier, even though she was so large that it was almost a form of child abuse.  That seemed interminable.

When Saki turned two years old, she transformed into the alpha bitch she was born to be and began attacking Genji.  Suddenly there truly was chaos in our house, but not the kind I secretly enjoyed.  Now we had a new baby, a toddler, a young but mellow alpha boy dog, and an even younger über-bitch.  I mean “bitch” in all senses of the word.  She was a good dog if you were her human but not trustworthy if you were a fellow dog.  We weren’t even sure she was safe with our kids.  After a lot of hand-wringing, we did our version of a dog intervention: we doubled down on our dog training efforts (hiring our local dog whisperer to help) and separated them whenever possible (lots of fun in a small home with no yard).  We decided that if the training didn’t work, we would find her a new home.

The story was not all tea and crumpets after that.  She did become more reliable, but Genji was never really secure.  Just when we would relax, Saki would decide that he had sinned and would send him shrieking (mostly shaken up rather than injured), usually into a sleeping child’s room.  And then, when we were all used to the way our odd, overly-pet-centric family worked, Saki grew sick and eventually died.  That story is here, in an earlier post.

In the year since her death, we’ve made the questionable (some would say idiotic) decisions to adopt a bird and hamsters.  There are long stories involving bribery, guilt, and serendipity behind each pet, but I’ll save those for another time.

It’s probably a symptom of my grief over Saki that I expected that this year I would see Genji’s decline.  Twelve to 15 years has been the gloomy mantra that I repeat to remind myself to give him extra love even though my human children act needier.

On Wednesday Genji, my “firstborn,” will be 13 years old.  Rather than feeling like he’s slipping away from me, I appreciate him more than I’ve had time to in many years.  He spends much of his day sleeping in the sun and snores like an old man.  He doesn’t see or hear as well as he used to, and he has a mysterious ear ailment that veterinarians can’t detect but will charge $100 or more to misdiagnose.  But he still takes long walks, and now he finds his way into my kids’ rooms at night and sleeps at their feet.  And I’m grateful that he’s still in good health and able to summon his inner dog ninja when I toss him some chicken or a piece of popcorn.

Happy birthday, Hikaru Genji Katsu Satoru!

I must be honest: I haven’t done a thing yet to celebrate the Dragon Year.  But our dear friend and Chinese teacher has given my kids hong bao (red envelopes), so at least that’s something.  And just as soon as my mom — the Caucasian who’s more Asian than me — is back in town, we’ll celebrate (read: eat great Chinese food in Monterey Park or Arcadia).

I hope 2012 is auspicious for you and yours.