Mallory's Camera

The Weirdness of Being OLD

Thu, 21 May 2026 15:34:03 GMT

Temperatures dropped back to seasonal norms last night. Thank the Lord! Because I was able to sleep, deeply, lavishly, and because the swelling in my feet went away.

That's right! Swelling in my feet.

Oh, the weirdness of being old!

For the past couple of days, in the 90°+ temperatures, my feet had mild edema! My toes felt like little sausages in casings that were a tad too tight.

And this was upsetting because pedal edema is a symptom of congestive heart failure, and I wondered, How can I have congestive heart failure? I just had a perfectly normal EKG at the cardiologist's three months ago!

As I've said many times, I don't mind dying (I think), but I do mind a long, drawn-out process in which one by one, the systems falter.

###

Anyway, because of the heat and worries that my health was collapsing in a new, completely unexpected way, I did not have a good day yesterday. All day long, I kept applying the tips of my fingers to my ankles to time the fractional discoloration. Are they gonna have to replace my mitral valve? I wondered. How long have I got?

Irrational panic is not good for productivity.

Forced myself out for retail therapy. I actually don't like to shop, so I don't know why I thought retail therapy would improve my mood—maybe because it seems to work for everyone else? Dunno.

Went to the Ulster County version of a Deep Discounter I had frequented in Dutchess County, and that, even though I don't like to shop, had surprised me pleasantly in the past with the abundance of its reasonably priced hyaluronic acid face creams and surprisingly attractive leggings.

Place is ug-lee! Hideous overhead fluorescents. Wares crammed onto warehouse shelves with no effort at making stuff pretty. The employees, chatting with one another beside their mops and pails, didn't move out of the way for customers, and I got stalked by a guy in a wheelchair!

Left in a quasi-panic. Raced back to the casa and applied a full face of makeup, even foundation, which is something I have not done in months.

Throughout most of my life, I've been one of those people who look very, very different with and without makeup. Without makeup: typical Southern Italian features, very gaunt, big nose, cranial caverns. With makeup: a veritable Sophia Loren, exotic, exquisite, lovely!

This duality stayed with me most of my life.

But it kind of petered out last year.

Now, with makeup or without makeup, I just look like an old lady.

Aging! Not easy. I mean, sure, easy, in that all you have to do to achieve it is to remain Not Dead. But all the mental adjustments involved in accepting your new limitations? Very, very difficult.

###

Still reading Elizabeth Strout. Lucy Barton picks up toward the middle, though the ending falls apart. Now I'm on to Anything Is Possible. Elizabeth Strout has written a lot of books, so my reading is set till June.

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Elizabeth Strout & Her Discontents

Wed, 20 May 2026 15:09:04 GMT

Mother Nature is supposed to be watering the garden today, thereby ushering in cooler, more seasonable temps that will allow me to finish the major plantings tomorrow.

Other than that, not much on the agenda. I will continue chipping away at the Work in Progress and making money.

###

I've been reading Elizabeth Strout, who is kinda the American Alice Munro.

(I had to stop reading the genuine Alice Munro after the news broke that she'd been complicit in her second husband's sexual abuse of her youngest daughter. The abuse started when the girl was nine years old. And I will never forgive Munro.)

I can't tell whether I like Strout or not, but up to a certain point, she is compulsively readable, her short, structurally straightforward sentences create pointilist fictional characterizations, simple detail layering on to simple detail. She uses a lot of repetition, and though her language is utterly humorless, sometimes she will position a sentence within a paragraph in an arch way.

But her characters ultimately bore me. Once I figured out (fairly early in the book) that—Spoiler! Spoiler! Spoiler!—the father sexually abused the protagonist in My Name Is Lucy Barton, I kinda lost interest in reading any further.

I guess I'm not really interested in the basic humanity of all people.

I'm only interested in the basic humanity of interesting people.

###

As a side note, I'll add that abuse is abuse and never to be tolerated.

But in general, I am more forgiving than is sanctioned by current American morality of consensual sexual relationships between underage but postpubescent teenagers and adults. Pedophilia is to 21st-century America what communism was to the U.S. in the 1950s. Wasn't too terribly long ago that Gigi and Summer of '42 were box office hits.

The scientific rationale behind the current morality is that minors' frontal lobes are undeveloped, implying that on the evening before one's 18th birthday, there's some sort of time-lapse flurry of neurological activity so that frontal lobes magically mature, thereby rendering consent legal (if still ill-advised) the following morning. Which is patently ridiculous.

And anyway, the pre-frontal cortex doesn't stop developing until some time between the ages of 25 and 30.

Philippe Aries maintained that adolescence was an invention of post-industrial society, designed to keep an entire class of people off the job market.

I'm inclined to agree.

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Playing the Old Lady Card

Tue, 19 May 2026 17:31:07 GMT

Went out at the crack of dawn to soak the garden this morning since today's Day 3 of the heatwave, and temps were projected to be 80° F by 8am. (They were actually 82°!)

Yesterday, I didn't make it out till noon when temps had already topped 90°, and the hose got hopelessly tangled. My plot is a good 20 yards or more away from the nearest water spigot, so my hose is very long. And very heavy! I would have bought something much more lightweight and flexible myself, but I didn't buy this hose, I inherited it.

Unraveling that heavy, heavy hose in that horrible, horrible heat was just fuckin' awful!
Just as I was giving myself a stern pep talk—Do not burst into tears! It will use up most of your strength and accomplish nothing—a studly young Millennial came wandering down one of the paths. I am not above playing the helpless old lady card. I threw myself at him. Fortunately, he was kind-hearted.

But depending upon the kindness of strangers is not a sustainable strategy.

I'm gonna have to research some way of dealing with the hose. I imagine there's some piece of specialized equipment that would do the trick, and it probably ain't cheap.

The community garden is right by the Wallkill River and the Nyquist-Harcourt Wildlife Sanctuary, so, you know—bee-yewwww-tee-full! But I've got a date with my air conditioner for the rest of the afternoon.

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In Defense of Transgressive Humor

Mon, 18 May 2026 15:30:44 GMT

As loopy and long as it was, the hose turned out to be manageable. I gave the baby cukes, marigolds, basil, & chili peppers a good soaking, but at 10 o'clock in the morning, it was simply too hot to do any transplanting or serious weeding. Jungle heat is serious heat, and in faux-summer, the Hudson Valley is a jungle.

Shortly, I will toddle forth to water today.

This garden is a bit more of a commitment than my Hyde Park Community Garden plot because it's 12 miles away from where I live.

Fortunately, temps are expected to sink down to a far more seasonal 70° range by the end of this week, so I can finish planting the rest of the lettuce, spinach, radishes, beans, & tomatoes without courting heat stroke.

###

Other than that, I did 1,000 more words on the Work in Progress.

The Flavia character is in no way, shape, or form a fictional projection of me, so I can't lift passages straight from my diary. I worry that the serviceable prose I'm manufacturing anew is not very interesting to read. (This assumes that my actual diary is interesting to read, which may not be the case.)

I keep telling myself: That doesn't matter. Just write something that moves the plot along and relays the necessary character info. You can edit the damn thing later once it actually exists!

###

I also fought with Icky throughout most of the day. He was being a dick about installing the window AC unit in the Patrizia-torium. So, what's new, right?

I would have installed it myself except that (a) during the winter, the AC unit lives in a closet with a door that has no doorknob and thus is impossible to open without professional lock-picking tools, and (b) the goddamn thing weighs 50 pounds, and I can't lift it.

Icky had decided to spend the day on the phone, ranting about genocide. I couldn't tell by eavesdropping whether he was for genocide or against it, or whether it was a single long conversation with one person or multiple short conversations with many people, but at a certain point, after I'd asked him nicely five times in five hours—the Patrizia-torium hoards heat when exterior temps rise much over 75° and that makes working very uncomfortable—I remarked, "You know, for someone who professes to care about world injustice, you certainly care very little about helping people inside your own orbit."

This elicited an Icky temper tantrum, but fuck it. He did install the AC unit.

###

Since there is absolutely nothing new in the entire streaming universe, I have been watching Malcolm In the Middle reruns. The BoyZ and I absolutely loved this show back in the day. Brian Cranston is right up there next to Dick Van Dyke as a brilliant physical comedian, and the satire ranges from goofy to sophisticatedly transgressive.

In the clip below, Lois decides to get rid of her horrible mother by exploiting the horrible mother's racism. To that end, Lois recruits the help of her Black neighbors. The clip incorporates every trope in the racist's toychest of fears except maybe drinking from the same water fountain:

You absolutely could not script something like this in the current climate. Humor today is tightly policed.

Thing about humor is that when you get a joke, it is a moment of absolute enlightment, a flash of intuitive awakening, a satori. And quite frankly, everyone can benefit from laughing at themselves from time to time.

This is why, even though I agree with the progressive left on the majority of issues, I have a hard time identifying as part of that pack. I hate political correctness & identity politics—I am flipping my middle finger at yew-ww-www, Robin DiAngelo and Ta-Nehisi Coates—is the prime source of political correctness.

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All's Fair in Pursuit of a Strong Narrative

Sun, 17 May 2026 12:22:20 GMT

• Water's finally on at the New Paltz Community Garden. Just in the nick of time, too, since temps are soaring: The thermometer is supposed to hit 95° on Tuesday. Shortly, I must toddle forth to crack the logistics of the hose since one figures there will be great demand for water later this afternoon when the temperatures rise & the gardeners gather.

• Fitbit sez I am sleeping "poorly"—meaning long intervals of light sleep and comparatively few intervals of REM or deep sleep. I blame the warm weather. And (of course) aging.

• Finished Flavia's forensic reconstruction of the Last Weekend She Spent With Neal, and must now proceed to the Day After Neal-Palooza. Meaningful interactions with the Sister Wives!

• In Real Life Sister Wife news, real-life Mimi was supposed to be out of Brian's old house on May 1. Real-life Flavia let Mimi stay in the house for 10 months for free! But when Flavia arrived at the house yesterday (driving all the way from the Jersey Shore), Mimi was still there, frantically loading stuff into a U-Haul, which means real-life Flavia can't do any of the things she specifically drove up to do and essentially made the 420-mile round trip for nothing.

Real-life Mimi feels entitled to infinite slack because she has bipolar disorder.

Rather than take prescribed psychiatric medications, Real-Life Mimi has elected to treat her disorder by smoking massive quantities of dope, and from where I'm sitting, it ain't working. Mimi is functional. But barely.

If I were a nicer person, I wouldn't be so judgmental, I suppose.

But I'm not a nicer person.

One of the issues that comes up with writing about people you kinda/sorta know is that your narrative always clashes with their narrative to a greater or lesser degree. Feelings get hurt.

I'd been toying with the idea of making a Mimi suicide attempt one of the sub-motifs in Part 2, but balking because if the novel actually gets finished & published, a fictional Mimi suicide attempt might really devastate real-life Mimi.

Now, I'm thinking, The hell with that. All's fair in pursuit of a strong narrative.

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Beds 2 & 3

Fri, 15 May 2026 13:09:09 GMT

Beds 2 & 3 in. (Cucumbers, basil.) There's room for some more plants in the basil bed, so I'm gonna put in a couple of heirloom tomatoes, too.

It was a cool, dank day, poised on the brink of rain but never quite spilling over. The amphibians were out full force.

In the middle of the night, I woke up with a horrendous stomach ache. I made a poki bowl for dinner, and I think the fish I used was not fresh.

I willed myself back to sleep 'cause, I mean, what the hell are you gonna do with yourself at 2:30 in the morning with a bad stomach ache? I feel somewhat better this morning, but still not 100%; if there was any way I could go back to bed and sleep for 24 hours, I would.

###

Very slowly implementing Chapter 7 of the Work in Progress—Flavia is going over the events of the last weekend she spent with Neal to figure out if there were clues to his imminent demise that she missed. I am writing very much inside the box, and that's kind of boring. But I have to trust that at this point, "boring" is an avoidance mechanism. I have to believe that I know my craft as a writer, so even if it reads (for a multitude of reasons, none of them strictly definitional) "boring" to me, it won't be to an audience.

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First Bed In

Wed, 13 May 2026 13:57:49 GMT

Yesterday was gorgeous, so I spent the afternoon in the garden.

One bed planted. (Chili peppers.)

Five to go. (Lettuce, carrots, green onions, tomatoes, tomatillos, basil, cucumbers, and I guess—even though I don't like them much—squash. Maybe even more chili peppers. And flowers, of course, though those don't have to go in upraised beds.)

The general rule of thumb for gardens is to plant veggies that aren't so easy to find in the supermarket, although, of course, in the U.S., you can find anything in the supermarket. The specific rule of thumb this year is to keep costs down—fresh tomatoes are up 25% in the past year. I am planting mostly sauce tomatoes (Romas), which is a bit ridiculous as I'm unlikely to remain in this area, and probably won't want to move with 10 jars of spaghetti sauce even if it is Grandma Fiore's recipe. I'll try to find the sauce a good home.

I spent a lot of time kneeling, so my knees are sore this morning.

Ah, the joys of aging!

I didn't believe it when I went to a doctor for the first time in a looooong while couple of years back, and they told me I was now 5'8" tall after a lifetime of being 5'10". But when I was in Ithaca, it was obvious that RTT—5'8 ½"—is now taller than me. You're like a compressed Slinky when you get old; your spinal discs compress.

###

It's supposed to rain all day today, which now that I have plants in, is a good thing—saves me from watering!

I'm gonna make money, chip away at the Work in Progress, and reread Cloud Atlas.

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Octopuses and Gardens

Tue, 12 May 2026 14:53:29 GMT

Spent much of yesterday trying to parse how Flavia will react to the news of Neal's death, since I don't want to repeat the Mimi phone call even from a Rashomon view.

Maybe she replays the events of the weekend they just spent together, wondering what she didn't see? I dunno. It irks me that I'm so removed from the creative source that these kinds of plot details aren't flowing! I blame the Schlock gig.

###

In other news, there was frost last night! You can't really plant while frost still rules the night. Hopefully, that will be the last of it.

Also, the New Paltz Community Garden Row Check Committee dinged my garden, citing "Needs general tidying of odds & ends."

What the fuck does that mean?

The garden is vast, which is why they rely on ridiculous bureaucratic measures like a Row Check Committee I suppose, but still. There are no authoritarians like left-wing progressive types who are suddenly put in charge of something.

You have to join a committee, too. I joined the Events Committee. It's filled with the Queen Bee types that 20 years ago, as the mother of a high school jock (Ichabod!), I spent my days avoiding. There's a text thread. The text thread is where these women vie with one another over which delicious treat they will be bringing to the next event—

I will bake cupcakes! 🧁 🧁🧁

I will bring hibiscus, elderberry, and mint tea so we can do an herbal tea tasting! 🍵🍵🍵

I will bring wholesome muffins! (No emoji. She lost points.)

I will not bring a goddam thing!

###

They've made a movie from Remarkably Bright Creatures, which was one of my favorite books a couple of years back, so last night I watched it.

Surprisingly good!

I mean—not a cinematic masterpiece or anything. But Sally Field and Lewis Pullman are excellent in the leading roles, the evocation of life as usual in a pretty little town in the Pacific Northwest was engaging, and the CGI octopus was awesome. It's a sentimental movie without being cloying. I cried buckets!

Octopuses have always fascinated me as the prime example of convergent evolution. For example: Their eyes have a cornea, lens, iris, and retina, the same system humans and other vertebrates use, and yet humans and octopuses diverged from their common ancestor 500 million years ago, long before the development of ocular organelles in either phylum.

They are extremely intelligent, but their neurons aren't myelinated (i.e. insulated) the way vertebrate neurons are. These neurons are able to transmit signals rapidly because they are so thick. Most of an octopus's neurons are not centralized into a brain but spread among their tentacles, which are not mere arm analogs but sophisticated sensory organs.

And despite Remarkably Bright Creatures' remarkably appealing Marcellus, octopuses are not social in the slightest. They have no equivalent to cultural learning. Both males and females die shortly after a reproduction cycle is complete, which makes for short lifespans, typically between one and five years. This is really fascinating to me because, as far as I can tell, vertebrate intelligence evolved as a tool for managing social interactions. I mean, what other function does intelligence perform? So, if they're not social, why did octopuses become intelligent?

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Mother's Day

Mon, 11 May 2026 12:11:04 GMT

Mother's Day?

Completely bogus!

A "holiday" invented by Hallmark cards and the struggling florist industry.

Did any revolution ever take place on the second Sunday in May? Did some pious prioress have her breasts hacked off so she could apotheosize to the Church's top saintly sales team?

No!

But I'm willing to cut an enormous amount of slack to any holiday that involves floral tributes and chocolates for moi. And the BoyZ came through! A magnificent bouquet, a lifetime supply of those ultra-rich Lindor chocolate truffles. And phone calls!

###

In other news, I hit three garden supply stores yesterday, and none of them had sieves, so I guess I'm gonna have to order one online. I did make it to my garden, too, where I had time to replant some of the peas I first put in a month ago (out of a whole pack of seeds, only six or so seedlings sprouted) and take out approximately 10 lbs of nettles (damn those little motherfuckers grow fast!) before it began to pour.

This has been a very, very cold spring with frosty nights well into May. But Mother's Day is the official end of the frost season, so I'm gonna start planting in earnest. I have a couple of plucky baby cucumbers ready to go and a plastic bin of tomato seedlings looking for a good home. (The woman who gave them to me told me they came from a supermarket Roma tomato that she forgot about and one day exploded into seeds—so I don't know how hardy they are. Supermarket vegetables are not bred for their propagative properties.)

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Of Elmore Leonard & Jeff Bridges

Sun, 10 May 2026 15:17:35 GMT

Elmore Leonard is one of those writers who occupies the demilitarized zone between genre writing and high literature.

I don't read him myself, but I take his Rules For Writing very seriously! Particularly #10: Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Except... How do you know which parts readers tend to skip? Different readers skip different parts, right? Plus when you reread a book, the parts you skipped the first time may be the parts you linger over the second time around! It's so confusing!

Anyway, Elmore Leonard's adage was much on my mind as I labored on the Work in Progress yesterday. Did I write three sentences? Maybe. I am describing Flavia's reaction to Neal's death, which she learns through a phone call from Mimi. The problem is that I've already described Mimi's phone call to Flavia—as imagined by Grazia. As imagined amusingly by Grazia!

Grazia is an amusing character.

Flavia is not.

But the novel's structure alternates between points of view from different characters. Flavia's POV focuses on the nitty-gritty of maintaining a poly relationship, plus what it feels like to be super-rich and embarrassed about it, so it's not without its own fascination.

Still.

I have to set up Neal dropping dead and all the busy work that entails for Flavia.

Is there new information I can include about the phone call in its second evocation? I mean, how would you feel if you got a phone call telling you the person you loved most in the world was suddenly gone?

This has never happened to me, so I'm a bit at a loss.

###

Apart from struggling and failing to get anywhere on the Work In Progress, I made money and did a mini-Taylor Hackford film festival, An Officer and a Gentleman and Against All Odds.

It was a rainy day, so I didn't have to torture myself: Really, you should go outside and do something useful.

Against All Odds stars my movie boyfriend, Jeff Bridges. We have grown old together, and I must say, my health has maintained considerably better than his! In his youth, Jeff Bridges was the kind of adorably blurry, blue-eyed blond boy I lusted after—not dumb exactly but not intellectual in the way that I (for better or worse!) am intellectual. Very physical. Our bond would be sexual! Very wholesome athletic sex, lotsa orgasms but lite on kink.

Jeff Bridges was never more adorable than he was in Against All Odds—unless it was in Starman (be still my beating heart!)

I mean, don't get me wrong! Jeff Bridges could also be louche (c.f. The Fabulous Baker Boys and the brilliant, under-rated Cutter's Way), but that was a Sydney Carton kinda thing, doncha know, the romantic who's so-oo-ooo sensitive he has to hide it behind a wall of cynicism.

And the first part of Against All Odds is actually quite good, though it falls apart into total plot incoherence at the halfway mark. I mean, Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward having hot, sweaty, naked sex in Chichén Itzá! Does it get any better? I believe they actually got permission to film in Chichén Itzá!

Of particular interest to me was the way Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward kissed, taking nibbles of each other's lips. This is not my preferred way of kissing, which involves mouth flowering into mouth deep soul kissing, but I figure in my next reincarnation, I will teach Jeff Bridges how to kiss properly—which is something I had to do with my first husband! I mean, it's ridiculous to give up on someone just because their sexual rhythms don't match yours; teach them your sexual rhythms!

Anyway, it was a fun day. Guiltless sloth!

But today, it is not raining, and moreover, temps are supposed to hit 70°, so I must harken out to my garden and figure out the soil sieve situation.

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Ithaca

Sat, 09 May 2026 15:36:05 GMT

It was great seeing RTT, but I could tell I wasn't in prime Road Trip mode in Ithaca because I kept seeing things in terms of obstacles.

Not Alynn invited us to dinner, how fabulous is that.

But Alynn invited us to dinner. Fuck! That means I'm gonna have to drive in the dark and figure out the parking situation in Collegetown in the dark, and —

I wasn't game in other words. I kept seeing everything as a dreary algorithm with onerous conditions.

In fact, I think you could legitimately call it borderline depression, a headspace that's been following me around since the end of the Schlock gig. Either borderline depression or an actual illness, because I have so little physical energy. Do I have cancer? Lyme disease? Long COVID? Anemia? I keep thinking, If only I could sleep for 12 hours, sleep and dream, it would all be okay, that nascient headache always threatening to bloom just behind my eyes would finally go away...

Brain fog seems to lift to some extent when it's sunny & warm out, which inclines me to think it's primarily psychological (though, of course, psyche and soma do not have a clear demarcation). It rained practically the entire time I was in Ithaca. And it was cold. I didn't pack for rain & cold! Maybe that's why I felt so Not Good.

I like Alynn, and I did have dinner with her one-on-one first night I was there at a not-terrible Mexican restaurant. (Good Mexican food is difficult to come by in New York state outside the City.) She is very smart, blunt, no-nonsense. When I first met her, she was the suffer-no-fools head of the farm-to-table lunch program at RTT's high school, New Roots. I was a parent, so one of the fools by default! Now she's New Roots' operational head, and since RTT dragged me over to her house on Thanksgiving, we are thick as thieves. She was really kind to me that night, and I was in baaaaaad shape, so her kindness was deeply appreciated.

We did the things that would have resulted in bonding had I been in a better headspace. Parsed romantic histories, talked about our kids, shared confidences about our favorite drugs. But I was going through the motions. Alynn was great, the food was great, but I didn't want to be there—although if you'd quizzed me, I couldn't have told you where I did want to be.

In penance for my dissociative state, I picked up the tab for dinner.

RTT is as good as I've ever seen him. The apartment looks great, which I suspect may be due to the domestic talents of new roomie Willow, whom I liked enormously. With three humans, two dogs, one cat, and one snake, it is now the Peaceable Kingdom: Always someone to cuddle! RTT continues to have lots of fun at his Personal Best day job and is taking his City Council responsibilities very seriously.

I went to his weekly City Council meeting. Issue under discussion: Cement spalling at one of the city-owned parking garages that services Ithaca's downtown. Cement has a half-life, and the garage is more than 50 years old. It's very valuable property that could be repurposed in a hundred interesting ways, but the business community wants those parking spaces. Retrofitting the garage would take $3 million, and the repair wouldn't last for more than five years. What should the City of Ithaca do?

It's amazing to me that my kid has a say in that decision.

I'm proud of him!

He's so charismatic! And he's of a generation that, for the most part, is politically disaffected, so he's an excellent role model for his cohort. All politics are local politics!

Interesting sidebar: The mayor is Justine's boyfriend...

When you're in a karass, you're in a karass.

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SIFTING? Soil?

Tue, 05 May 2026 13:18:29 GMT

Deep feeling of lassitude throughout yesterday, like my bones were made of rubber bands or something. I was tired, but there was no reason for me to be tired.

Naturally, I took this to mean I have some lethal disease. Maybe multiple myeloma—Ben had multiple myeloma, it was one of the two diagnoses that may have killed him (the other being liver cancer).

Ben's multiple myeloma announced itself in a weird way.

For months & months, he'd been limping around with sciatica, which is basically one of those wait-and-heal things. His "sciatica," though, just kept growing more & more painful until eventually he went to see a doctor for X-rays—and lo & behold, his left pelvis was fractured. But he didn't remember injuring it!

They ran a slew of tests and found the malignant plasma cells that had eaten away his bones.

Multiple myeloma is not an automatic death sentence if it's managed.

But, of course, Ben's multiple myeloma had never been managed.

Between diagnosis and death rattle, it was something like seven short weeks.

I've had that on-again, off-again ache in my right shoulder for many weeks now.

It's gotta be multiple myeloma, right?

###

Since I was dying, I decided to treat myself.

Cruised into New Paltz and had eggs Benedict at my favorite Main Street café. (Breakfast is actually my favorite meal to eat out.)

Bought books. This actually turned out to be a bust: There was an author, David Liss, whom Ben & I had both liked. He wrote serious historical novels (meaning neither Regency romances nor Forever Amber). So, I plucked his latest off the Used Books shelf, something called The Twelfth Enchantment, which turned out to be a rather clunkily written adult fantasy novel. Terrible! I guess this is something that happens to people who make their living writing; at a certain point, you run out of ideas and interest in beautifully crafted sentences and just write for word count since you have a contract to fulfill.

Spent a couple of hours weeding but did not have the stamina to climb Mt. Dirt and cart away buckets of soil. Plus I ran into Phil, and he told me, the soil was great—but you have to sift it. How the hell do you sift soil?

I guess I'll find out when I'm back from Ithaca next week.

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Spring In the Valley

Mon, 04 May 2026 12:18:46 GMT

Whatever else you can say about the Wallkill Valley, this one thing is true: It is heartstoppingly beautiful, particularly in the spring when all the greens are tender and fresh, and the breeze carries the scent of stone fruit blossoms.

This weekend was the Gardiner Art Studio tour. Gardiner is suburban New Paltz, and New Paltz is a hippie preserve, where the last hippies roam free, practicing the ancient arts of organic farming, artisanal cheese-making, and handcrafting hideous tie-dye teeshirts. Please to note that in our rapidly technologically mutating world, anything over 20 years old is "ancient," particularly, or should I say, especially moi.

The Gardiner Art Studios are not in Gardiner but scattered along the backcountry roads that crisscross the plateau just below the Shawangunk Ridge. So, the tour basically gave me an excuse to explore the countryside. It was a gorgeous day. A bit cool, so the air had a prismatic quality.

The art was nothing to write home about. But, hey! It was art. Its creators poured their hopes, dreams, & fears into it. I would have bought it all for vast sums of money if I could.

I also spent time at the New Paltz Community Garden. There was a meeting for new gardeners. Technically, I'm not a new gardener. But after joining last year, I did nothing with my half plot after weeding out the five-foot tall nettles—first, there was a hot spell for two weeks where you would basically succumb to heat stroke after five minutes if you ventured forth there even at 6 in the morning, then the person in the other half of the plot planted a bunch of her own tomatoes there. I could have raised a stink about it—That's my land!—but figured, Why?

Also, Brian was dead. Which dampened my enthusiasm for just about everything.

Anyway, they gave me another half-plot this year. I'm on probation, though.

I will wander out there for a few hours today to finish the last of the heavy weeding and transport some dirt. The New Paltz Community Garden is right next to the Wallkill River; the Wallkill River floods periodically, displacing huge amounts of rich, river-bottom soil. The Community Garden elders arrange to have that soil collected in a huge mound, free for the having. It's kind of a hassle transporting it to your own garden site, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do, etc., etc., etc.

I also need to pack & prep for my trip to Ithaca. I'm going up tomorrow to hang out with RTT for a few days, which should be the Big Fun. Haven't seen him since November! He has some political pow-wows scheduled, and he's gonna take me with him, so I'll get to see him in action.

I note that RTT seems to have adopted Zohran Mamdani as his personal style icon.

Hmmmm...

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An Interesting Discovery

Sat, 02 May 2026 13:30:54 GMT

Real reason I like gardening?

I like playing in dirt.

But it did dawn on me yesterday while I was driving past the gas station where I've been fueling up regularly for the past two years that now there's an even more compelling reason to garden. Namely, I like to eat.

Prices at this gas station, which have hovered at the $2.99/gallon mark plus or minus 20¢ for the entire time I've been using it, were up to $4.50/gallon yesterday. That's a 50% increase in six weeks. And naturally, those transportation costs are baked into every single thing you purchase.

You can defer purchasing most things, but you can't defer purchasing food.

It's fuckin' infuriating.

These people who voted for that addled clown in the White House are still not willing to admit they made a bad call. Their lives are collapsing around them, but hey! it was worth it to keep all those guys who want to be girls and girls who want to be guys from messing with the genitalia God gave them.

###

In other news, I managed to incorporate the comic bit with oversharing metamour into Section 1, though I have no idea whether it reads funny.

Also when I went down to the kitchen to make coffee this morning at 5 am—like I say, I'm an inveterate early riser—I saw a small University of Utah notebook on the kitchen island, and I opened it.

Editorial aside: You never want to leave a confidential document around me. I am Harriet the Spy, and I will read it!

I figured the notebook belonged to the oldest Spawn who left the University of Utah under mysterious circumstances.

Instead, it turned out to belong to Icky who has been using it as a kind of sporadic diary.

I do not care about clothes, Icky wrote. His handwriting is very spiky. Calligraphy on acid. I care about chemistry, connections, intellect.

I was shocked to see my own name: Patrizia oil story right over Scoring story.

Scoring?

And what possible Patrizia oil story could there be? I made Patrizia freeze for two weeks because I neglected to order heating oil?

The diary entries only occupied a handful of pages at the beginning of the notebook, but one of the last things he'd scribbled: Don't use when kids are in the house—

Oh.

OF COURSE.

Duh.

Icky has a cocaine habit.

Figures. Cocaine is the only drug he's ever admitted to enjoying—he doesn't do pot, he doesn't do alcohol—and he's signaled his enjoyment of it on several occasions by making non-sequitur eightball quips that were peculiar in context, to say the least.

As an alumnus of The Rolling Stone glam squad, he certainly has access. And he has the income to afford it.

Well, well, well.

Cocaine is only a fun drug for the first couple of snorts. It produces a very benificent high that turns you into the omniscient narrator.

That third snort—well. You do it hoping to regain that spectral perspective of that first snort. Only you get jumpy, and it doesn't.

I know! I'll do more, you think. Only those fouth, fifth, and sixth snorts don't work either, and pretty soon, you're desperate to crawl out of your skin—

I loathe cocaine.

Last time I was offered some, I rolled my eyes: "No fuckin' way."

Anyway, if Icky is a cokehead, that explains a lot.

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And Behold! Esau Thrifted

Fri, 01 May 2026 15:45:41 GMT

On a sunny morning when I've slept decently, there's no such thing as existential angst. Sure, the world is going to hell. Hasn't the world always been going to hell? It's only the versions of hell that differ.

Anyway, today is a day when the sky is blue, and the Fitbit—a minor household god—tells me I logged seven hours of "fair" rest. (I have no idea how Fitbit differentiates between "poor," "fair," and "good.")

Yesterday, however, was not: I felt fuckin' awful, like a vegetarian zombie or something: Yes, I should eat someone, but I don't feel like it!

I made the money I needed to make and then took off on errands. Got lost in the strip mall sprawl that is commercial Middletown. (Farmland just 20 years ago.) Found myself in front of a gigantic Goodwill, which I took to be a sign from God. (And behold! Esau thrifted.)

Then real-life Mimi texted me. I had helped her with her tax return, and she wanted to know where her EIC-enhanced refund was. Like how the fuck would I know, girl?

The IRS maintains a website called, conveniently enough, Where's My Refund? I directed her there, adding, If you’re listed as owing money to the IRS, though, they’ll apply any refund toward that. Do you owe? Because I'd told her she should let me do her 2024 taxes at the same time I did her 2025 taxes since, of course, she hadn't filed those. But she wouldn't let me.

Turns out she owed money, and the IRS was withholding her refund until one of its few remaining human employees could find time to do the arithmetic.

Okay so I just shouldn't count on anything then. I give up! she texted.

Thing with real-life Mimi is that one can never be quite sure whether she's just being rhetorically melodramatic or her extreme emotional volatility is steering her in the direction of self-harm (which would be a cause for alarm).

I know she was counting on that tax money to fund her move from Brian's cabin where she has been staying rent-free for the last nine months. Real-life Flavia (who owns the deed to the place) has been the soul of generosity here, but behind the scenes, Flavia's BFF Betsy & I had been agonizing over New York State's squatter laws because it's never easy to predict what real-life Mimi is going to do, just when she's going to turn hostile.

Standing in front of the Middletown Goodwill (where I fully expected to harvest an entire summer wardrobe for the low, low price of under $100), I had the crazy notion that I would just give Mimi $1,000 to finance the move. After all, this is what Brian's ghost would want me to do, right?

It's the same feeling that prompted Flavia to let Mimi stay in the cabin: Brian loved her, Brian would have wanted her to be cared for.

But if Brian loved her and wanted her to be taken care of so much, he should have left her some money in his will, right?

I must channel my inner Mick Jagger!

It's just. I make so little money right now. I'm trying my best to make this work, she texted, and if someone else had said this to me, my heart would have gone out to them—poor gallant, valiant soul! Yes, times are incredibly tough, and there but for the grace of God etc, etc, etc. Who knew then there would ever come a time when we would all be old and limited?

But the thing is I don't actually like real-life Mimi.

You could start a GoFundMe, I texted.

What the hell! I'd kick in twenty bucks!

Or I could sell some of my ceramics, she texted back.

No-oo-ooo, don't do that! I thought. Because I'd feel compelled to buy some, and I hate your bloody ceramics.

###

In garden news, I weeded out 40 pounds or so of nettles day before yesterday. It was a cloudy, cold day, which, while excellent for avoiding sunstroke, is not the kind of day I enjoy gardening. However, work that must be done is work that must be done.

Shortly, I will wander back over to finish the job. Since it's sunny today (though decidedly cool), I should enjoy the work more.

###

In Work in Progress news, I thought of a comic scene that would work well inserted into the opening section of Chapter 7: Flavia, who scrupulously avoids introductions to Neal's other poly partners, somehow gets dragooned into going out to dinner with one (plus Neal). Polly Partner starts revealing awful sexual secrets: How Neal had to teach her how to have vaginal orgasms again after her episiotomy; how after a lusty bout of anal sex, she had several days of plopping small poops—did that happen to Flavia, too?

Only yesterday, I was in the throes of sleep-&-sunshine-deprived existential despair and could not write anything—which doubtless meant that I would never be able to write anything ever again, especially not comedy, which requires a light touch.

I'll give it another whirl today.

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Solitude

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 18:30:03 GMT

Two things I'm conscientious about on a daily basis: making money and exercising.

I had to sign an ADA for the latest revenue-generating scheme, and the gig has no security: It could end tomorrow or maybe even after dinner tonight! (True of freelance writing, too, of course.)

But the work itself is so entertaining, I sometimes have a hard time pulling myself away from it. My years and years of Photoshop expertise finally paying off! And also a certain facility for what one might call imagination-casting, I suppose. I can make the nut in four hours a day—but I can also make extra. Ya gotta cut hay while the sun shines! I tell myself. True dat, but it does eat into time allocated to the Work in Progress.

###

I've increased my exercise tolerance: I'm now tromping three miles a day and will shortly return to the gym again to start working on upper-body strength. This was the year I finally started looking old to myself. No idea whether that's a real change or morbid self-consciousness. (I mean, I'm 74, of course I should look old.) I'm not talking wrinkles or crepe neck; I'm talking about the way my eyes seem to sink into their suddenly gaunt sockets: My face looks positively skull-like. Of course, I lost about 10 lbs working for Schlock, and as is always the case, I didn't lose it in my belly (where frankly I could afford to lose it); I lost it in my face and arms.

And there's also my clothes. I take an impish, almost perverse pleasure in dressing like a bag lady. (God knows why. I have an excellent eye for fashion.) But in the wake of all that weight loss, my pants are actually sagging, I have a hard time keeping them up. I look like some sort of low-rent rap star wannabe, MC Patty TaxBwana! Good grooming is a significator of mental health— as without, so within—so I really need to spruce up my image.

###

This has been a bad time for farmers and gardeners in the quaint and scenic Hudson Valley. About two weeks ago, during a brief run of 80° temps, all the fruit trees burst into blossom. Literally two days later, nighttime temperatures plummeted into the 20°s. The fruit blossoms' delicate pistils froze, which probably means that there won't be any apples, peaches, or cherries in the Hudson Valley this year. The celebratory marigolds and strawberries I planted died, too. Fortunately, I didn't plant very many of them.

It's still dropping into the 30°s at night here. Not frost, but difficult for tender seedlings. But by next week, we should be moving into night-time 40°s, and I'll plant some more. I sowed some peas along the fence two weeks ago—peas are hardy, cold-weather plants—but only a few of them sprouted. Peas and lettuce are the only things I grow from seeds. Usually, I buy baby plants from the nurseries—though this year, I scored a bunch of Roma tomato seedlings from a lady on Facebook.

In the meantime, I'm cleaning up my plot. Weeding, replacing the winter straw ground cover with wood chips. Nettles in particular seem to thrive in coolish weather, so it is a lot of work that involves much ferrying of laden wheelbarrels over long distances. (The New Paltz Community Garden is huge.) Ferrying laden wheelbarrels is hard on the back.

###

Dolores (not her real name), the lady who gifted me the seedlings, is a very nice lady struggling to maintain sobriety by posting on the New Paltz Page on Facebook 30 times a day, attempting to rally what she calls Community (with a capital C). She gives away seedlings, she gives away baked goods, she solicits donations on behalf of the battered cats who show up regularly at her door. She lives in what was once one of those old Dutch stone houses. Was there a fire? The house seems to have been extensively rebuilt, but that was a while ago. It has very low ceilings and very small rooms. I borrowed it to be Neal's house in the Work in Progress.

I could tell Dolores would be happy to hang out, but I don't want to hang out with her, I don't want to hang out with anyone. I've fully embraced my solitude; I no longer feel isolated. Talking to other people right now is an effort.

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Past Life Connections

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 14:42:19 GMT

Quiet couple of days. (One might, of course, say every day is quiet.) I dashed off 500 new words on the Work in Progress. I have no idea whether the words are any good, but they are out there, at least. They have an existence apart from my imagination.

Ichabod annoyed me slightly a few weeks back by remarking (words to the effect) that it wasn't as though I could be writing with any idea that my writing was going to go anywhere, right? I wasn't thinking of publication and an audience, was I? I was writing because it was fun!

This miffed me, but I let it pass.

But when the subject came up again in yesterday's phone call, I interrupted him: "Writing is not a pastime the same way teaching yourself how to play the guitar is. It's not particularly fun unless you're writing well. And if you're doing it well, of course, you're thinking about publication and an audience."

I mean, Ichabod knows I published a lot of nonfiction back in the day, some of it in fairly reputable venues. He's even read selected pieces. I was—well... not offended. But disappointed that all he thinks I'm doing is playing air guitar.

Although it's quite true that neither of my children have ever been deeply interested in anything I write.

I suspect they may feel threatened by it in some way.

###

Shawangunk Dems' semiannual roadside trash pickup was yesterday. Scary how many empty vodka flasks I picked up—in a relatively residential neighborhood, too. I began to think it isn't such a bad deal after all, that I ~~can't~~ won't drive after dark.

First time I'd done any Shawangunk Dems-related activities in quite a while. Adrienne reassigned the website administration. She didn't think I was updating it often enough. Well, you can't update a website if you don't have content to update it with, and despite numerous cheery email requests—Send me your photos of the St. Patrick's Day Parade!—nobody was sending me any pix. Less scut work for me is always a good thing, but Adrienne's dictatorialness was annoying, so when she sent me an email beseeching me to join her campaign for Shawanagunk legislative representative, I ignored it.

Picking up trash, though. Always a good thing. So, I showed up. I partnered with Marge, who is an awfully nice person, one of those rare people who actually listens to what other people say without interposing irrelevant asides from her own resume.

We had to make a detour to Marge's house, an honest-to-God log cabin in the middle of a dank forest. Very dark. I met her husband! Very dour. And I felt a deep wave of sympathy for Marge: Wait! You spent 40 years having to live here & having to be married to him? Maybe I'm better off than I think I am.

After trash picking up, I did a bunch of errands, and then dropped by Stephen W's garage sale. He and his wife are leaving the quaint & scenic Hudson Valley for a senior citizen facility in Cleveland.

Stephen W. was the coordinator for one of the TaxBwana sites I volunteered at last year. Nicest guy in the world. We made several long car rides together during my tenure during which we had conversations intimate enough to give me the complete 360° on his life—the little boy who grew up in Brooklyn dreaming of being an aviator, the astigmatism that prevented him from flying, the subsequent military reassignment to logistics, the subsequent career in logistics with the City of New York, the disastrous first marriage, the son who essentially committed suicide by eating himself to death, the drug-addled granddaughter who desperately wants him to save her but whom he can't save because the second wife would object—

At the time of those car rides, I distinctly remember thinking, He & I were close in some previous life.

I suppose that's why I felt compelled to say goodbye to him in this life.

And I think he felt it, too.

Because he reached out very awkwardly and hugged me.

Now, Stephen W. is not a hugging type of guy, and there was nothing in our previous interactions that might seem to warrant casual hugging.

But those past-life connections are impossible not to acknowledge.

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Mais Où Sont Les Keith Richards D'antan?

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:04:34 GMT

Didn't make it to the garden yesterday (and likely won't today either, since temps are not forecast to rise to 60°). Instead, I devoted the morning to making money, went for an abbreviated tromp, and then settled down in a lawn chair on the back forty to chaperon the chickens and read Bob Spitz's The Rolling Stones: A Biography.

I do love me some celebrity dish, except I can't really relate to many current celebrities—their faces are indistinguishable, their names unmemorable, their ostensibly flagrant behavior mere bouts of exaggerated narcissism. Mais où sont les Keith Richards d'antan?

I saw the Stones in concert a couple of times in my late teens and early twenties. In fact, I went to the infamous Altamont Concert—although that wouldn't count as "seeing the Stones," I suppose, since I was at least a mile from the concert stage and very high on LSD. At that distance, we couldn't know anything that was happening near the stage, though the vibes wafting our way were bad enough to make us decide to pack up & leave long before sundown when the Stones were scheduled to perform. I was so high, my pals had to force-feed me a quarter of a jug of Red Mountain to get me into the car. Red Mountain, the vilest of the vile! I remember thinking at the time that it tasted like every human effluvia combined, like blood and sweat and tears and sperm and gastric spit-up all mixed up into one alcoholic beverage.

But mostly, I wasn't into the Stones' music as much as I was into their bad behavior. This was back when the beauty standards of the 1950s still weren't being challenged very much. The dolly girls of Swinging London with their bangs and long, straight, center-parted hair still had faces defined by the Golden Ratio, and Paul McCartney & George Harrison were the handsome Beatles. Meanwhile, I was struggling in the modeling industry because while I photographed well, my skin was too dark and my features too exotic for anything but lingerie catalogs and the middle of the runway.

And yet, here was Jagger, with his exaggerated simian features, the biggest Lothario of them all! And there was Keith Richards, doing lots and lots of heroin! Proving that it was perfectly possible to live a productive life doing heroin if only you had the money to pay for it! (I did not, which is why I gave it up before I developed the habit.)

Spitz describes the excesses of the 60s and 70s at exhaustive length, but crams the last 40 years of the band's career into only a handful of chapters.

You have to hand it to Jagger! He is completely unfazed by those feelings of personal responsibility that so often bedevil the rest of us. Does he care that the Stones turned Altamont into a shit show? He does not! Brian Jones drowns in a pool one month after Jagger kicks him out of the band? So what! His official girlfriend, L'Wren Scott, hangs herself after he takes up with a ballet dancer 25 years younger? Well, that's really sad, but not sad enough to stop him from parading said ballet dancer on a hotel balcony a couple of days after Scott's death.

No, Mick Jagger only cares about two things: making money and physical fitness. Maybe not in that order.

I am thinking I should have been more like Mick Jagger!

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Mojo

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:44:25 GMT

Maybe I am getting my writing mojo back. Maybe.

On the drive to the upscale supermarket in Middletown late yesterday afternoon, I could feel the words clicking into place like metal filings against a magnet: I bought it so I could save it...polluting the local cripple creeks... (Why "cripple"? 'Cause I was listening to The Band.)

Driving is good for that. It often puts me into a semi-fugue state.

And beyond that, I could feel the ideas drifting across my mind, like a time-lapse animation of clouds on a windy day: The opening paragraph will include Flavia explaining why she bought the Catskills property and a brief imagined history of Riggsville, the paragraph after that will explore Neal's introversion, and the one after that will set up the tension between Flavia and Mimi when Mimi starts twisting Flavia's arm because Mimi wants to move into the cabin. Much of Flavia's section explores her guilt over being so fabulously wealthy when her friends and acquaintances are all struggling, so it's a good idea to set that up early.

I was going to make Daria Part 2. But whatever ideas and momentum I had for that Part 2 evaporated in the three months I spent toiling in the Schlock tax mines.

Flavia has a much clearer narrative arc: Rich girl/recovering Daddy's little angel doesn't know what to do with herself -> dabbles in architecture school (Pratt) -> develops a cocaine habit -> meets Neal -> gets saved from cocaine habit ->has intense physical relationship with Neal (lotsa sex scenes!) -> Neal dies -> feels obligation to take care of Mimi, the most obnoxious and helpless of the Sister Wives.

I'm still not sure what Daria's narrative arc is. Something having to do with the many languages she speaks, the linguistic pastiche inside her head. But I'm hampered in that, since really, I only speak English. How am I going to get inside the head of someone who exists in multiple linguistic dimensions? Now I won't have to for another couple of months!

###

Other than that...

For some reason, I slept poorly last night. No idea why. I did not feel anxious; I was sufficiently exercised, and I was tired. But there didn't seem to be any pathway down into unconsciousness.

So, this morning, I'm feeling clunky and vaguely headachey. Bilgy tummy, too!

I did have plans to go off to New Paltz and garden. The issue with the New Paltz community garden, though, is that it's so vast that wheelbarrowing pulled-up weeds, raked winter ground cover, and such involves transversing significant distances, and I'm not sure I'm up for physical work on just five hours sleep.

They'll be turning the water on at the beginning of May. I have to wrestle with my garden hose! Unlike the Hyde Park Community Garden, the New Paltz Community Garden makes each gardener get their own individual hose. My plot is a good 30 feet away from the spigot, so there are actual logistics to be calculated in the use of said hose.

Meanwhile, seen yesterday on my tromp through the Harried Plateau:

I wanna foster-parent a beehive!!!!

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Yesterday

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 15:39:50 GMT

Now that I think about it, Ben really is Childermass from Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell. The same archetype—what would you call it? Vagabond spellcaster? Autodidact magician? Loki? But anyway, I dreamed about him last night, and as happens every time I dream about Ben, the connection was strong enough to throw me out of my everyday life entirely. I woke up thinking, This world is an odd place to be.

In the dream, there were a lot of people and some kind of Renaissance Faire-y setup through which Ben and I were circling each other. At the very end of the dream, he made a clumsy, unexpected sexual advance—and I remember thinking, This isn't fun! No, wait—maybe it is, 'cause I could feel my body beginning to loosen and orgasm.

I haven't thought about Ben for months.

And I can't imagine why my psyche booked him a ticket to last night's dream world.

Except maybe he's still the sphinx that guards the entrance into the Temple of Writing.

He was the best writing partner I ever had—and I like having writing partners, that other voice in the inner dialogue you can bounce ideas off. We worked together very, very well in that capacity, seamlessly you might say, so that it was impossible to tell where my ideas left off, and his began. A world-class banterer, too! And very, very smart. I find myself wondering this morning what his take on artificial intelligence and diminishing human returns might be.

And, of course, I recognized the changeling streak in him from the very beginning. Did not have enough self-preservation instincts to steer clear. But on some level, I knew what I was getting. Though when I met him, I was brokering in mere verisimilitude: I didn't have a whole lot to give up. It never occurred to me that over time, I would acquire those things that would make the deal I struck with him a bad one in hindsight.

Whatever, I am thinking the karma between us is resolved, and I'll never have to encounter him again in subsequent lifetimes. I mean, I may see him from a distance. I'll smile. I'll wave. But I won't circle closer for conversation.

###

On his deathbed, he struggled out of his coma to grasp my fingers and croak, "I love you."

"I love you, too!" I chirped. But I was lying.

Whatever the thing between us was, it wasn't love.

But you don't lay ambivalence on a dying man.

###

In other news, I finished approximately half the things on my To-Do list yesterday.

The stuff that didn't get finished was all the housecleaning shit.

My bathroom is absolutely disgusting, so much as I hate housecleaning, I really must tackle that today. And vacuum!

I also have a couple of bananas that got overly ripe overly fast, so I thought I might hunt down a banana pudding recipe. I do ❤️LUV❤️ me some banana pudding!

In the late afternoon, I tromped back up Malloy Road. I wish I had a name for the old farm acreage up there! It's Harrier Ridge so maybe Harried Plateau? Right across from one of the super-deluxe five-zero-price-tag McMansions (with its own gazebo and faux corral), I saw this:

Photo doesn't allow you to read the fading paint letters, but apparently it was once a packing house for an ancient apple orchard whose ghost haunts the McMansions and whose last few gnarled trees still struggle to put out blooms (all blighted by last night's frost, no doubt). This part of upstate was once famous for its apple orchards.

A few yards to the right of the packing house sat the trashiest trailer you've ever seen. I saw movement in its window when I looked at it—somebody lived there still. I made up an elaborate fantasy: It was the great-great-grandscion of the original apple orchard owners who, for some strange reason, will not sell out to the McMansion developers. (Attachment to ancestral lands? Tax problems? Tertiary syphilis?)

When was the last time this building had been painted?

Probably, in the 1980s.

And I realized that's what's wrong with today: Everybody thinks the 1980s is "long ago," but it isn't 'cause I was young and gorgeous in the 1980s.

The 1930s were long ago!

The 1980s were yesterday.

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Real Human Girl-ing

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:15:37 GMT

This was the day I red-circled on my calendar: TODAY you will become a real human girl again!!

I made a To-Do list!

And I am checking items off my To-Do list. Ping! Ping! Ping!

But I'm seriously thinking, Being a real human girl is overrated, 'cause I can't say I actually want to do any of the things on my To-Do list, nor would the consequences be particularly severe if I blew them all off, if I did what I actually want to do, which is to sit by a window with my eyes slightly unfocused.

The garden is the only To-Do with a time stamp on it.

But I already murdered a bunch of marigolds and strawberry plants by putting them in the ground way too early, and frost is forecast for tonight. True, I could always weed and rake up mulch, but it's like 47° out there, cold, so I don't want to.

Supposed to warm up by Thursday.

I'll garden then.

###

Real-life Daria texted me yesterday to gush over Chapter 6 of the Work in Progress.

I had forgotten all about the Work in Progress!

Even though I took the Schlock job to earn enough cash to give me some time to work on it without worrying about money.

After I talked to real-life Daria, I took out the manuscript and stared at it.

The manuscript said nothing to me.

Words on a page. As if there aren't enough pages with words on them already.

So, I put it away & went for a walk.

###

Malloy Road, the road behind my house, goes up a hill that the property developers around here have named Harrier Ridge. (I see no evidence that anyone ever called it "Harrier Ridge" before the Age of McMansions.) As recently as five years ago, this was all dairy farms and the cornfields that fed the cows during the long upstate New York winters, but now there are a dozen or so of the ugliest fuckin' houses you have ever seen on that hill, all with a price tag of $799,000 according to Zillow. It's amazing to me that people will spend that kind of money to live in Wallkill in a shit-ugly house, but apparently, they will.

The newish housing on top of the hill actually made an effort to blend in with the countryside, with cunning little water features and ornamental coppices of weeping cherry. These houses were constructed 15 years ago when property developers had better taste.

There are still a number of the old farmhouses up there, too, and a handful of farms—though many of those have branched out beyond dairy cattle into other livestock. The people at the upper end of Malloy Road keep llamas!

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Spring

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 19:06:45 GMT

Willows are always the first to green up.

Then, for two weeks or so before the first leaves appear on the other trees, when you drive past those trees, the trees seem... hazy: Their branches are bare, but there's a difference in hue you can only sense with your peripheral vision.

Then, boom! The twigs have sprouted tiny flowers, and boom! again, those flowers have become leaves.

The whole process takes place very fast in maples and poplars; tree flower to tender green leaf only takes about three days. Oak trees are slower. But anyway, it's spring!

I continue to be very, very lazy.

And isolated: Communication is actually a bit of a chore. Every word that comes out of my mouth, every sentence that materializes from my keyboard, feels clumsy somehow. Stilted. The prosody is off. Or something. Whatever it is, it makes me not want to talk to anybody. Or write.

And apolitical: World War III may well be incubating, but I find I do not have the energy to care.

And inert: I force myself to tromp because it's the only way to build up physical strength. But I'm not enjoying it much. That might well be because there really aren't as many pleasant tromping paths in Ulster County as there were in Dutchess County.

###

I have been reading a lot. Just finished Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, which is am amazing novel, particularly when you contrast the simplicity, even banality, of its prose with its emotional impact. Ostensibly science fiction, it's the type of science fiction whose speculations are filled with small holes—But why didn't they just run away? But why didn't they just grow laboratory organs?—but which somehow paints a compelling portrait from the inside out of what it feels like to be the Other. It's the accretion of all those small, seemingly unimportant details, I suppose. Ishiguro did something very similar in his earlier The Remains of the Day, a novel whose subject matter could not be more unlike Never Let Me Go.

I cried for ten minutes after I turned the last page. Kathy H's solitiquy about plastic bags stuck on a fence, flapping in the wind! Of course, I am primed to cry these days.

And now I need something else to read!

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PTSD

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:43:40 GMT

For my birthday, I gave myself a fabulous gift: I called Schlock and told them I would not be finishing out the tax season.

I've spent the past four days decompressing.

Any job where you sit on your ass for eight plus hours a day without any opportunity to move is a bad job, but this was a particularly bad job, combined as it was with eye strain from computers and multiple documents that use tiny font, listless coworkers, and relentless pressure to service as many tense and anxious customers in as short a period of time as possible.

###

I came out of the experience with what I've self-diagnosed as mild PTSD. Writing is actually kind of a chore. (I'm used to nobody having the slightest interest in anything I have to say.) Walking two and a half miles winds me, and my lumbar muscles keep twinging because I've lost my core strength. It's difficult to concentrate because nothing really interests me.

I didn't burn any bridges when I resigned.

Who knows, right? I might be kidnapped by terrorists wielding cattle prods! Alhamdulillah! You MUST do our taxes—or else!

I might be yanked backward in time to a Nazi death camp, where the only thing standing between me and the showers is my ability to decode a W2 under corporate supervision.

In other words, there might be circumstances under which I would consent to work again at Schlock.

Might.

So my tone over the phone, as I was subsequently contacted by each and every one of the bureaucratic overlords, was regretful: Gosh! I love you guys! Everyone is so great! I just burned myself out!

And who knows? Maybe that's true.

Well, next year, you'll only work a few days a week, said one of the bureaucratic overlords.

Ha, ha, ha. Right.

For the most part, the clients I worked with loved me. I got all five-star reviews.

###

Talk about your dysfunctional business models: Schlock is like a Halloween Superstore dedicated to Uncle Sam's payday.

Will Schlock even be around in five years? I kinda doubt it.

There's a lot of competition for those IRS hostages. Chiefly from TurboTax (and if Schlock is Blockbuster, TurboTax is Netflix). But also from the dwindling number of other in-person tax prep services like Jackson Hewitt, multiple free online sites, high-end accountants, and, of course, my own alma mater, TaxBwana, which does 1.7 million returns a year.

TurboTax doesn't do in-person consultations, so no competition there. (Though one must wonder whether the operational costs of maintaining bricks and mortar are that much more than the revenue stream it yields.) And TurboTax is actually a bit more expensive for comparable online and downloadable products. But it's rooted in that ever-popular DIY ethos. And it's going after a more sustainable market.

Just contrast and compare the television commercials in which Schlock tax preparers, always depicted in identical green crew-neck sweaters, interact with middle-of-the-road Americans. Sure, there are such things as middle-of-the-road Americans, but that's an externally applied label; most Americans prefer to think of themselves as exceptional. Meanwhile, TurboTax preparers wear edgy black blazers and magenta button-down shirts as if they're dressing down for an elegant dinner party while catering to youthful folk with tattoos, piercings, and anime dance moves.

###

I haven't done very much since I stopped working. Talking to other people is an effort. What, after all, could I possibly have to say that other people might want to hear?

I make myself walk the two and a half miles I'm capable of walking. Who knows? Maybe someday I'll be able to walk three miles! Or, at least, two and three-quarters.

I forced myself to finish The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. If you look at the novel as a meditation on the aftermath of colonialism, it actually kinda works—particularly with its minor characters: the unlucky Mina Foi, the vain, self-involved Babita, the West-obsessed Dadaji. The status details and textures of everyday Indian life really sparkle.

But the main characters—the two lovers and Sonia's evil magus lover, Ilan—are mere paperweights used to keep pieces of the plot from flying away. Ilan's characterization, in particular, is irritating: Sonia's point of view is not established compellingly enough to determine why she would find this man the least bit attractive.

Plus, Kiran Desai uses Ilan to introduce a deeply lame magical realism arc—this despite bashing magical realism as a literary conceit in earlier pages of the book. (Sonia is a literature major and a writer, so the character is used as a conduit for many of Desai's theories on literature.) Was the author aiming for irony? If so, it was badly executed.

And the prose style felt syrupy. It never shifted rhythm. Momentum never built around important moments, so every moment was equally important and unimportant. Perhaps that was a deliberate choice on the author's part. I dunno.

###

I sit and read in a chair in the backyard, so I can let the two surviving chickens out of their dark little coop. Perhaps my human presence counts as vigilance. Maybe my presence will keep the predators off.

The chicken gurlZ come out greedy for tortilla treats. But then they take off and hide in the bushes. Do they have any specific memory of Grey Chicken's death? Who knows? Some birds (parrots) have excellent memories, so maybe they do. The chicken gurlZ sense something, and whatever that is, it's enough to make them cower. No more strutting around the acreage! Every animal would rather be safe than free, I suppose.

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Recharging

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 18:05:19 GMT

By the end of yesterday, I'd started to feel psychologically less like a worthless drone deservedly scorned by the Trump-voting Mister and Missus McGoo's of this world and more like, well, myself! Who, no doubt, is deservedly scorned by many, but for other reasons.

Physically, it's gonna take some time to snap back.

I haven't exercised in like three months.

I went out tromping yesterday and could only do two and a half miles before I tuckered out.

When you're old, you lose muscle tone very quickly. And I'm old! Turning 74 tomorrow.

Off to tromp now.

I will be attempting to return to Schlock for six more days this coming week if I can stand it.

But if I walk in and I can't stand it,, I will fly out that door.

I forget that when you're old, you don't have the resilience you once had: When the battery drains, it takes a long, long time to replete.

Best not to let it drain.

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Fox Is Gonna Fox

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:20:38 GMT

On Tuesday, my nervous system told my body, Babe you cannot do this anymore.

My hands started shaking while I was doing taxes in the Middletown office.

Shaking? That's actually an understatement: My hands thought they were conducting an invisible philharmonic orchestra.

Mister and Missus McGoo were sitting in my cubicle. My hands shook so hard, I couldn't input their driver's license numbers.

Oozing apologeticness, I ushered the McGoo's to another tax preparer, expressed remorse to Leslie, and took off.

Not sure which of the many, many straws was the one that broke the camel's back.

Was it panic over impending nuclear cataclysm? Open the fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH!

Was it watching a fox break Grey Chicken's neck in the golden hour, the afternoon before?

Or knowing I wasn't going home in any true sense of the word "home," but only to some place where I'd parked my stuff and cats (I hoped) temporarily.

###

This episode happened following about 36 hours off, which I tried to turn into quality time by going to the New Paltz Community Garden and breakfasting with real-life Flavia.

I planted peas and put some strawberries and marigolds into one of the upraised beds the previous plot tenant had conveniently left behind:

Following morning, I motored up to Ellenville for breakfast with real-life Flavia, who may have found a good home for Brian's beloved piano:

It's sad that nobody seems to want Brian's beloved piano. It's an awfully good piano, though real-life Mimi's tenancy with its wood fires, clouds of marijuana smoke, dust, and Japanese beetle infestation has been hard on it. Still. It managed to plong in tune when the head of SUNY New Paltz's music department came up to play some notes.

And real-life Mimi surprised us both—pleasantly!—by actually finding a campsite where she can live in the camper Brian helped her buy, come May. That was a relief!

"So, I'm going to spend May cleaning out the house, and then I'll put the property on the market," Flavia said. "Tim seems to think I can get a lot of money for it?"

"How much?"

Flavia hesitated for a moment. But in the nine months since Brian's death, we have become intimate friends who can talk about money. "Million or so."

"And the first thing the new owners will do is pull down Brian's house," I said.

"Probably," said Flavia.

I had a Shlock shift in Montgomery after hanging out with Flavia. I didn't want to be there, but when I got back to the casa after work, I didn't want to be there either since Icky was in residence, and my antipathy toward Icky just grows and grows and grows. Icky marches around the house talking to people on the phone or alternately haranguing and cajoling the Spawn in a loud voice, pretty much ignoring me. It's like he thinks I'm invisible, and when I'm around him, I pretty much feel invisible. Fortunately, he's only up 10 days out of the month.

Anyway, I was keeping Sonia and Sunny company in the Patrizia-torium on the glorious couch Mr. & Mrs. Neighbor Ed gifted me with when I left Dutchess County, when I heard loud squawking from the back lawn.

Looked out—

A fox had the grey chicken in its mouth.

Ran downstairs and out onto the porch.

Icky had heard the squawking, too, and had raced out onto the lawn. The fox dropped the chicken and leaped—its fur golden in the golden light of the late afternoon sun—before running into the small copse of trees that mark the property's boundaries. But either it had broken the chicken's neck, or Icky had broken it, carrying her back to the porch.

The grey chicken was the shyest of the chicken GurlZ. I liked her. I appreciated her hesitancy. So, this was very sad.

But fox is gonna fox. And I have told Icky at least 50 times: There are too many predators around here to let the chickens free-range! You have to build them a run!

He ignored me, of course. Like I say, I am completely invisible to him.

But that essentially means that Black Chicken and her sole surviving companion, an almost identical black chicken, are Dead Chickens Walking. It's a bad situation. And frustrating. Because I can't do a damn thing about it.

I didn't sleep well.

Is that why my hands started shaking so badly in the Schlock office?

I don't know.

###

Before Schlock, I did taxes for a handful of friends every year through TaxBwana. One of those friends is my good pal Tom, whom I first met on LJ back in the Jurassic. Anyway, Tom contacted me that evening: Could I...?

Yes, but Schlock won't let me do freebies, I said. So, I'd have to charge you.

He described his tax documents. They were pretty basic. But Schlock would have charged him a minimum of $250, which seemed like highway robbery to me. So, I snooped around online for a bit and found a site that lets you do and file your federal taxes for free-eee-eeee! and only charges you $20 for filing your state taxes.

"So, you'll set up the account," I said to him over the phone, "and then I'll use that account to input your tax stuff."

"Good show," he said. "But how are you? You sound down."

I described what had happened at the Schlock office that morning. How my hands started shaking, how I couldn't control them, how Mister and Missus McGoo had gawked at me in horror with their big, googly, cartoon eyes.

"Honestly, I couldn't blame them," I said. "I wouldn't have wanted me to do my taxes either at that point. But it would have been less embarrassing if I had taken a big dump and begun fingerpainting on the walls."

"God, that sounds awful," Tom said.

"It was," I said. "But working there has been awful from the start. What you won't do, you'll do for money."

"Has it been bad?" he asked.

"Really bad. And housing insecurity plays into that in a major way. You and I should be housemates! We'd have a good time and save a ton of money."

I said this in a random, joking way. But the minute the words came out of my mouth, I thought: Hmmmm... That's not a bad idea.

Tom has a house. Since his daughter moved out, he lives there alone.

Tom and I are very much in synch psychologically. We both subscribe to the Larry McMurtry ideal of friendship. We are not romantically attracted to one another. We are both more-or-less in the same financial situation.

The more we talked about it, the more appealing the arrangement sounded.

But there is one major caveat: Tom lives in Holland, Michigan. Where I have never been. Holland, Michigan, ranks high on Architectural Digest and Forbes lists of the prettiest small towns in the U.S. It's a college town. It has an arthouse cinema! But it is also Trumpy, plus it has brutal winters.

At any rate, I am probably gonna fly out for a visit sometime in the next couple of months.
If I like what I see, the plan becomes a possibility.

I'm also going to book a consultation with a neurologist. I've been assuming the hand tremors are stress-related. But who knows? Maybe I have Parkinson's disease.

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