since this blog is called in and out of this world, and my blogging has been out of this world, the story takes place in the world
6:33 am Saturday 10/6/07
“I go to Maria's house for my facial”
Maria had offered to give me a free facial last year, and the year before I had taken her up on her offer. And yesterday morning I went to her house for my second free facial from her.
Bill’s friend Jim drove me. Maria chose 10 am as the time for the facial, altho I had asked for noon. I knew it would be much better for Jim. It is when he goes to the club. Maria lives around the corner from the club, so Jim could drop me off at Maria’s, and pick me up when he finished at the club. But Maria has busy days, 10 am was the right time for her, and since she was giving me free facial, I wanted to do it at her time.
Jim was a saint to drive me when it was worst time for him. His morning schedule is locked in. He drives to pick up his nephew. Then his nephew helps him get his mother out of bed and dressed and bathed. Then Jim drives his nephew to work.
Jim lives near me and we were nearly at Maria’s house all the way downtown, when I said “where does your nephew live?” since Jim was headed over there after dropping me off at Maria’s. “At Pantano and Old Spanish Trail.” I happen to know where that is because it is so close to where Jan and Harry live, and it is very far east and south of my house. Jim had driven me very far west and north. I said “so taking me to Maria’s is way out of your way.” “Way out of my way” he said.
The plan that Jim would drive to Maria’s for facial instead of Bill, was concocted during the period when Jim’s car was breaking down all the time, and Bill was driving him everywhere. Finally Jim’s car was fixed and Bill drove him to pick it up. And later that afternoon Jim called and said “it’s not fixed right.” It was so hard for him to ask Bill to meet him at garage and drive him home again. But I said “come on Jim, what are friends for.” And then I said how Bill doesn’t want to drive me to Maria for the facial, and hang around for an hour while she does it, and will Jim drop me off on way to club. He was so happy to offer the favor to take away the feeling he was imposing too much.
That was actually last month. So I called Maria and asked her is she still willing to give me free facial, and she said she is happy to do it, and I said “Jim from the club will drive me” and she said “fine.” She and Jim are good friends. She said she is way too busy to do it now, because she is sending her query letters to all the publishers, but she will call me. And we left it at that.
Every week Jim called and said “when is your facial?” and every time I said “Maria is still too busy, she will call.” But on Wednesday she called and said “I can do it on Friday, what time would you like to come?” I said “noon” thinking about Jim. She said “what about 10 am?” and I said “fine,” knowing it was probably awful time for Jim and it was.
But I must have still hoped that by 10 am he already had his mother up and bathed and dressed, and would be heading for the club, because Maria said “you can call him on his cellphone when it is over,” and I thought he won’t have his cell phone with him in swim pool and steam room.
It was only when he was actually driving me there that I found out what Jim had done for me. He was on such tight schedule. But I still decided not to feel guilty about it, because I knew if Jim had car trouble again, no way would he feel comfortable calling Bill unless he had done some big favor in return.
And by a miracle it did all work out. Altho it was a lot of extra driving for Jim. By the time he had finished everything, and he came to pick me up, he was ready to have his wonderful steam and swim. And he said “I sure wish you were still going to the club Annie, so we could both just go there now.” He didn’t want to drive all the way back to my house, and then all the way back to around-the-corner from Maria, where the club is.
But I said “I only get a facial once every two years,” when he said “next time schedule it for 11:30.”
He was very excited about my facial, far more excited than I was. He didn’t know what a facial was, he assumed it makes you beautiful. He said “I am driving you to your facial as Annie, and I will pick you up as Britney Spears.” He thought I would come out looking like a movie star.
Naturally with visions of glamour dancing in his head, I didn’t tell him I am going to have a facial because Maria has observed blackheads on the side of my eyes, and said it would be much prettier to take them out.
So the whole drive there was spent with Jim expressing teasing happy jokes about which movie star I would like when I got out. Even when I said “I only go once every two years,” his response was “You look like Britney Spears for two years after a facial!” I began to wish I were going to a beauty parlor, and would come out transformed into a ravishing redhead when it was over, with lustrous well-done make-up, that I would emerge the glamour puss Jim was expecting, instead of just having my blackheads removed. I wanted to emerge a knock-out.
I had forgotten how incredibly sweet Seema, Maria’s dog is. She is the sweetheart of the western world. It was very nice to see her, and she licked my hand. Maria was already dressed and dressed very nicely as she always is. In tight white skirt and baby blue jersey, those are the colors she favors. And her pretty trim figure. She looks good in a tight skirt. And lovely white patent leather sling-backs.
She had me take off my necklace, and when she struggled to open the top buttons of my blouse, I realized I had put it on backwards. She has a room in her house for doing facials. I guess after she left Elizabeth Arden at the fancy resort La Paloma, she had planned to do it herself at home. All the equipment is there. I climbed up on her table, altho it was a cushioned concave thing, especially designed for doing facials. And she turned on some lamp, special lamp, very near my face and got to work.
All of it was painful. It was my 3rd facial altogether. First from Carey at the club when she said I needed it. Second, when Maria said I needed it, and this was the third. Everything I had read in novels about "a facial is how you pamper yourself" is not true. There was only one second when it felt good, when she put hot wet towel on my face. I liked that. Maria apologized for torturing me and when it hurt very bad Seema came over and licked my hand.
Then she put the hot wet towel on my face for an instant and that felt really good. Then she rubbed some cream into my face and it was over..
I actually felt very good. It was just what Maria had promised. “Your face needs to be cleansed” she said, and it was cleansed. My face felt smooth and refreshed.
After my facial I really wanted a cup of coffee. For first time I knew why beauty parlors serve coffee. It is just the right thing to drink when it is over, it is exactly what you want. So Maria made instant coffee for me, with milk and sugar, and it was good, it hit the spot. She showed me a photo of herself from when she was 20 years old and said “wasn’t I beautiful!” But she looked exactly the same then as she does now, except now she is more glamorous. She didn’t look like a starlet in her young photo but more like a young Ingrid Bergman, a lovely natural wholesome-looking face.
But Maria informed me as she was making my coffee that two men had died because they couldn’t have her. One put his head in the oven and was rescued at last minute and the other died. I guess this was back in Poland, before her American husband came over and met her and married her and brought her back to America.
He went to Heaven 4 years ago, and there was a man she was in love with two years ago. But now she is boyfriend hunting. Which is causing some unhappy dramas for Maria at the pool. Actually the two men she had unhappy dramas with, I am not sure she wanted as boyfriends. She is attracted to very handsome, very cosmopolitan, very sophisticated men. But she is a single woman and she would like companionship.
There was a man who had just moved here from NYC, from the television field. And she thought they could go for coffee together, to movies together, and art openings. That she would have a friend. Even tho he is much older than Maria, when she said “let’s go for coffee,” he said “I am not interested in any woman over 45 years old.” And her feelings were very hurt.
I have no idea what happened with Dave, who is my age, and who I like a lot. Maria’s good friend from Europe had given her fancy computer, fancy printer, and software for writing her movie scripts. Somehow she got on email with Dave and he came over to copy her movie script program. What happened I don’t know, but Dave told her not to email him anymore, “my girlfriend doesn’t like it.” And since we all know Dave does not have a girlfriend, Maria’s feelings got very very hurt.
But it is hard to be at a club where women are looking for men and men are looking for women. I wasn’t aware of this whole aspect of it. But sometimes when I was being very friendly to a guy in the jacuzzi I would see a wary look come into his eyes, and instantly I would mention “my husband,” and then he would relax and go back to talking to me in open friendly way.
It’s funny, Maria has such a beautiful friendship with Jim, they adore each other and totally enjoy each others company and think so highly of each other. Which is why it is not Maria’s fault that she has problems with some men at the club. Jim never misconstrued her friendliness as anything but friendliness. The more I get to know Jim, the higher I think of him. He is always smoking his cigars, plus enjoying his recreational drugs so much, and all he does is take care of his mom and watch tv action shows or old vampire movies on tv. And football. He is not the image of an exemplary human being, but he happens to be one. He is the one who helps me when I need help, he is the one who helps everyone when they need help. He is a living angel! Altho when I try to tell him this, he thinks I am out of my mind. His image of an angel is not someone who loves his recreational drugs, and whose dream is to marry Meg Ryan and have a red jaguar.
Maria called Jim on her cellphone and said “we are finished you can pick her up now” and Maria and I and Seema went to her patio to have coffee and look at the mountains. I sat in the sun, she sat in the shade, she doesn’t want the sun to ever get on her face. She swims in a black floppy hat and never puts her face in the water, or lets the sun touch it.
It turned out all the publishers who were so eager to take her novel and offered her a contract, were vanity presses who wanted a lot of money from her to do it. She had not known that when she sent them query letter, synopsis, and first 3 chapters. I had been a little suspicious at first when Maria was so excited and said how they offered her a book contract. But then I thought “maybe Maria lucked out.” After all her son is a lawyer, I was sure he would have picked up on it.
But Penny who runs our Southwest Authors Association is the one who picked up on it and explained it all to Maria. So now she and her son Jerry are sending the book to an agent, but haven’t heard back yet.
“Getting published is not so easy” Maria said. “I know” I said, “I am going to take my book to Wheatmark, pay them $800 and have them publish it.” And I tried to explain to Maria what print-on-demand means. For first time Maria got interested when I told her about Wheatmark. Before this she was sure a big publisher would grab her book. I used to try to explain to Maria about publishing but she never wanted to hear it. So it’s best it worked out the way it did, she learned the whole story for herself, she learned the way I did. It’s much better.
I said “Wheatmark is only a few blocks from your house.” “Where?” she kept asking “where?” “Somewhere on 1st Street” I said. “We’ll go down together” she said, “then I can talk to the guy and you can explain to me what it is, maybe I will do it too, we'll publish our books together.”
I got so excited. I said “YES! we will publish our books together.”
I had just started to explain to Maria how publishing works. “There is vanity press where you pay them $5000 to publish your book, or a real publisher, where they give you a check for $1000, or print-on-demand like Wheatmark, where you pay them $800 to publish it.”
For the first time she was willing to listen to me and to learn. But just then Jim pulled up, so she said “you can explain it to me later.”
She came out to see Jim at the car, first putting on her floppy hat, she wasn’t going to stand in sunshine for even one minute. And Jim kibitzed her and teased her a lot, they love each other. And Jim called out to Seema too, he loves Maria’s dog, called out caresses and sweet words, and friendly words.
And then Jim drove and pointed out all the yard signs for Ron Paul on the way home, and that got me so excited and happy.
And then Jim turned around to go to the club, he was so looking forward to his steam bath and swim. And Bill put down his drawing pad, he had been drawing the dogs outside all morning. And we closed up the house and went to Fort Lowell for our swim.
And boy it felt good...
And I came home in very happy spirits. I had had a great morning.
Love, Annie
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