Mallory's Camera

Yesterday was not a good mental health day.

Icky, in residence till Tuesday, has not said one word about Black Chicken's death. In fact, has barely said four words to me. It's very hard to share physical space in a house with someone who acts like you're invisible, even when said someone is a complete dick. I keep scampering off to the mirror to check: Do I exist? If I cast a reflection, I must exist, right?

Fortunately, I am spending today and tomorrow with People Who Love Me. And driving up to Ithaca some time this week to drop off Brian's enormous collection of camping gear with RTT.

###

Bad mental health for me always comes down to that small still voice within suddenly turning shrill and chanting, Failure, failure, failure! The small still voice may not be entirely wrong on that one: I have failed utterly in being happy, can't think of a single time in my life when I was simply, uncompromisingly happy.

That's on my upbringing.

But that is not what the small still voice is talking about.

No, the small still voice means I am low income, I have not published a novel (have published a lot of other stuff! I feel compelled to note here), have a broken dental veneer, am living in an awful place where I barely know a soul, and am generally not someone Elon Musk would want to impregnate.

It's a lot.

###

On the plus side:

Ten days or so of hot temperatures that kept me more or less housebound and immobile means my injured knee has all but recovered.

And I have finally found a book I enjoy: A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book, about an eccentric E. Nesbit-like writer of magic tales for children in the early 20th century and her Bloomsbury-like coterie.

I have never been a big Byatt fan. There is an icy feeling to her perfect prose that has always put me off. I much prefer the gurgly chick-lit effusions of her sister, Margaret Drabble. But I am enjoying this book.

###

Funny. Yesterday, I kept thinking I would feel so much better if there was even one person I could call up and say, "Black Chicken died, and my heart is broken," who would understand—

And the only two people I could think of were Brian and (ulp) Ben. Who are both dead themselves.

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.

I'm lucky to have a sense of humor and an obsessive creative project that functions as a background process. Otherwise, life would seem pret-ty grim and absolutely meaningless just about now.

At least, it's warmer! Temps have been above freezing for the past few days and are forecast to be in the 40°s all next week.

On Monday, when it was -4° overnight, I woke up to a freezing cold house because Icky, once again, had neglected to order heating oil, and the furnace had run out of fuel.



Yes, again.

Icky, in NYC, was not answering his phone, so I called the Ulster County Sheriff's Dept to come and do a welfare check—hey! A 73-year-old woman, alone in a 36° house during sub‑zero weather??? Not safe!!!

I mean, I had a space heater, struggling to keep the ambient temps in ny bedroom in the 50°s, so with a coat and a hat, I wasn't gonna expire imminently of hypothermia, but c'mon.

The Ulster County Sheriff's Dept dispatched two officers who were very nice but could do nothing.

"You could try seeing if an oil company will do an emergency one-time delivery," one of the officers suggested.

"And call social services," suggested the other.

I sighed and said, "I didn't think you would be able to do anything. I just wanted this on record in case I die of hypothermia and you need to find the perp to accuse of negligent homicide."

"I will personally pull the electric chair switch on that one," said the first officer. "What a prick your landlord is. The rent market around here is horrifying."

I was due to go into Schlock, but of course, going into Schlock would have meant turning off the space heater because you cannot leave a space heater untended; the risk of house fires is just too great. And turning off the space heater would have meant returning to a bedroom that was 37°.

So, instead, I spent the morning calling around to 10 different heating oil companies and every Ulster County social services department that seemed vaguely relevant to my needs. Interspersed with calls & texts to Icky.

The heating oil companies were downright hostile. Heating oil deliveries? Get on line, be-yatch! And put down a $1,000 deposit! The Ulster County social services departments were bored, dismissive, & condescending. They too wanted me to get on line.

Finally, Icky called back. Wonder of wonders! He was even vaguely apologetic. And arranged a delivery with his regular provider. By mid-afternoon, the house was back up to a chilly but habitable 60°—which is where I keep the thermostat because heating oil is expensive but sweaters and sweatshirts are cheap.

###

The experience took its toll emotionally.

'Cause this is the third time it's happened, and fool me twice... So, I felt like a moron: I should have moved, right? Except if I had moved, I would not have had access to the Schlock revenue stream, which is coming in useful.

But more, I felt brutalized because I was old, scared, and met with a tone that said, You’re just one more annoyance. I grokked the bureaucratic flatness was more about their overload than my worth or legitimacy. Still. I felt very marginalized & hopeless & as if I was of no importance to anyone.

Didn't help that I had to trudge out 100 yards through the snow twice to bring the chickens water. Icky still hasn't dealt with that. No, the chickens are not my responsibility, but I'm not gonna have innocent animals suffering on my watch.

Did absolutely nothing yesterday through a combination of lassitude, political despair, distracting phone calls, & Icky on the premises. Waiting for a Major Weather Event shares a lot in common with standing on line at the DMV; you see that processing is gonna take a lonnnnnng time, and you know you'd be better off doing something useful during the wait, but you can't because your skitterish mind won't let go of the countdown.

###

Alex Pretti's murder hit me hard.

An ICU nurse who worked with wounded veterans, his last action on this planet was to try and help a woman border patrol agents had tear-gassed. He was trying to record the incident with a phone in one hand. He also had a gun on his person that he had a permit to carry, and Minnesota is a permit-to-carry state. He was pushed to the ground, the gun was taken, and then he was shot 11 times through the back. Execution style.

###

Later on the phone with a friend, I said, "It's a civil war, isn't it?"

"Pretty much," my friend said.

"I wish I knew about some communication method that couldn't be spied on," I said. "Because the time has come for an organized response."

"There isn't anything that's 100% reliable. The closest thing is Signal. Open source & encrypted on both the sending and receiving end."

"You know, I almost wish I had a terminal cancer diagnosis," I said. "I would go full-on Charlotte Corday and take out Marat—"

"Careful, careful, careful," said my friend. "This is not a protected communication channel."

"Oh, my good buddy at the Department of Homeland Security knows I was just kidding about that," I said. "Don't you, Ice Barbie?"

###

Icky was up here for two full weeks, the longest amount of time he's ever spent in Wallkill since I began my tenancy. He finally left last night.

Part of his prolonged stay was due to the fact that he wanted to exercise his custody rights over the oldest Spawn. Dante dropped out of the University of Utah (I called it!) and had to be reenrolled at SUNY New Palz. New Paltz didn't start classes till the middle of last week.

Dante is not a bad kid. He's friendly, cheerful, & polite. Engaging, even. He's been diagnosed with ADHD and takes Adderall. But I often find myself wondering whether he has a neurodevelopmental disorder at all, or whether his lack of attention to the world around him isn't the psychological consequence of having a father who is so toxic that Dante's had to invest vast quantities of psychic energy into blocking that father out. There is no such thing as selective obliviousness at that age; kids can't compartmentalize. So Dante is oblivious to things he shouldn't be oblivious to.

Like he took out a good portion of the property's fence the other day by making an ill-considered turn onto the driveway, wreaking considerable & expensive damage to Icky's leased Chevy Equinox. Icky stayed past the start of New Paltz classes to argue with the Chevy dealer about that.

###

Speaking of driveways...

The storm is living up to its hype. Snow is coming down fast and furious. Before Icky left, I'd asked him to make arrangements with Brandi, the neighbor across the street, to plow the driveway once the storm was through (which I figured would be Monday around noon). I didn't get a straight answer about whether he had done so.

Icky texted me this morning: I would strongly suggest that you not wait for Brandi to try driving your car in and out of the driveway. I would try driving back and forth and clearing a path with the car before it gets too deep.

The snow on the driveway was already five inches deep at this point. I didn't see much point in trying to drive a path. It would be filled faster than I could drive it. But I am a marshmallow, so I figured, What the hell, and actually followed his suggestion—not once but twice.

The second time, the driveway snow was eight inches high, and I got stuck in it. It took me half an hour of frantic shoveling in 12° temperatures to inch my way back to the quasi-protection of the house.

Were u able to drive a path? Icky texted.

Kind of, I texted back. But I won't be able to do it again.

If you keep up with it you will be fine.

I don't think so. It's a 24 hour event. I'm not going to be driving my car up & down that hill in the dark.

Don’t rely on getting dug out if you can take proactive steps, Icky texted primly.

Excuse me? I AM relying on the driveway being plowed tomorrow, I texted. Can Brandi plow the driveway tomorrow after the snow is predicted to stop? If she can’t, let me know & I’ll find someone else. But the driveway WILL need to be plowed.

Whereupon Icky went beserk. Called me up and screamed at me over the phone! Called me vituperative names. Hung up on me.

WT-living-FUCK???

I stared at the phone for a second and then immediately called Christine, the Spawns' mother: "Christine, I need a reality check—"

She couldn't have been nicer.

"Oh, no, no, no, no, no," she said when I reported Icky's driveway-clearing plan. "You can't do that unless you have four-wheel drive. He's delusional."

About Icky's bizarre phone call: "It's not you. It's him. He's mentally ill. Borderline or bipolar or something. My advice? Make your own arrangements for getting plowed, do not depend on him. You don't have to answer his texts, you don't have to pick up the phone when he calls."

"I mean, I figured I wouldn't be able to get out of the house till tomorrow," I said. "Or maybe even Tuesday, so I don't get why..."

"Listen," Christine said. "You are a lovely person, and I am sorry you had to deal with that."

"It's like he's toxic character in a Stephen King novel!"

"I will be your lifeline," Christine said. "I have four-wheel drive. If you have to get out of the house for any reason, just give me a call. I will be right over."

Icky is even more insane than I realized.

My virtual tax instructor lists his hobbies as "horror movies" and "video games." So, I guess I'm in the right tax class.

I was surprised by how many of the other students had thick accents and names most mainstream Americans would find difficult to pronounce. I guess H&R Schlock employment is a well-known step on the ladder that leads to the dizzying heights of the American dream.

The class wasn't as bad as I feared it might be. Spying on those differently accented students was actually quite interesting. And Microsoft Teams turns out to be an efficient tool.

###

Afterwards, I met up with Belinda whom I mostly avoided all summer because she voted for Trump, and after Brian died, my tolerance in general went wayyyyyy down.

I informed Belinda that I would not be TaxBwana-ing this coming year.

And she said, "Well, then, I'll go to H&R Schlock and tell them I want you to do my taxes. I trust you."

Which I guess is flattering.

We had lunch at the falafel shop in Rhinebeck where all the movies stars go when they come to Rhinebeck. (A surprising number of movie stars come to Rhinebeck.)

And then we drove up to an apple stand just north of Valatie.

I'm not sure from whence comes Belinda's fixation on this particular apple stand; it is not remarkable in any way. But the drive through rural Dutchess & Columbia Counties, past fields of sunflowers and corn, and patches of scrub woods, was lovely. It was a crisp, sunny day, distinctly autumn. The leaves on the trees in those woods have not yet begun to turn—I guess because there was so much rain this year? The color changes of leaves is more related to tree hydration than to temperature changes.

There was a cunning little distillery in the corner of the apple stand, so multiple opportunities for ArtPhotos™!!!













That last photo is not an apple stand ArtPhoto™, but a photo from Italy sent me by the real-life Daria with the note, On our walks, four of ‘em, every time we saw a cat Brian would stop and snap a pic, “for Patrizia.”

It made me sad...

Though I must say, I am simply filled with admiration & awe for the real-life Daria for staying her mountain course, keeping to the adventure!

Under similar circumstances, I probably would have hopped the next train to London, spent my remaining days abroad huddling inside the British Museum, ruminating on what a hideous failure I am.

###

Speaking of cats, the kiskas brought me the corpse of a very large mouse this morning.

They were very proud!

I showed the corpse to Icky who stared at me like, What do you expect me to do about it?

Well, you're the fucking landlord, Icky. Figure it out!

Finally, he mumbled, "I guess I should start setting traps in the basement again."

I guess you should!

Went out canvassing with Adrienne yesterday.

Up the porch steps & down the porch steps. Up the porch steps & down the porch steps. I must have done the equivalent of half an hour on the Stairmaster.

It was a gorgeous day, & we found plenty of people who would talk to us, listen to Adrienne's spiel. Some people took her seriously, some people thought she was an endearing but batty grandmother, but the overall reaction was positive. Her stump speech includes medical scarcity, food deserts, a farmer's market.

The question is: How can we translate these benign reactions into votes?

People don't take local elections very seriously. The extra half hour it takes to drive to the firehouse in a non-Presidential year is just not a priority.

I was pleased to see, though, that Adrienne is taking my advice and downplaying the Democrat affiliation. "Don't wear blue!" she told me.

A Democrat is not going to win an election in Wallkill.

A friendly, civic-minded lady who schmoozes well & just happens to belong to the Democratic party might win an election in Wallkill.

###

Came home. Baked tomato pies.

Once again was foiled by Icky's malfunctioning oven:



Oh, well. They actually taste okay. But no blue ribbon from the county fair for me!

###

Icky was out while I was baking, but came home while the pies were cooling. "Well, obviously, you are leaving them in too long or you have the oven temperature turned up too high," he told me.

If you say so, Icky. Of course, I have only made this particular recipe eight billion times before, and it has always come out perfectly except in your fucking oven. But hey! What do I know?

Icky was dressed to the nines. "I just took Gus out to dinner," he told me. "To a really good restaurant. It's his birthday."

I hadn't asked.

"Now, I'm going over to his mom's house. For cake."

###

When I woke up this morning, Icky had packed up and gone.

He left two days early.

No complaints from me!

I figure something must have gone down at Christine's house. Probably nothing more than Gus allowing himself to be doted upon by Christine in a way he doesn't allow himself to be doted upon by Icky. Icky is easily aggrieved.

Get used to that outsider feeling, Icky! Your kids love you. Hey! I loved my mother. Even though by any definition that doesn't include juvenile corpses shoved into dumpsters, she was a terrible mother. But they don't like you. And as teenagers mature into young adults, like becomes more important than love.

###

On the Work in Progress front: I am about a third of the way into the memorial scene. I just have to think of a few more rousing speeches from Neal's eclectic assortment of pals.

Plus status detail—I'm setting the memorial in Newburgh (Must QUASH impulse to include 5,000 words on the history of Newburgh, which is actually very interesting because Newburgh went from being the playground of the very rich to Amerika's murder capital in the space of about 100 years, and has some very beautiful architecture).

It can't be at a bar—Neal-cum-Brian doesn't drink; he smokes massive quantities of dope.

So... a hookah shop? A VFW canteen? What?

We'll still have Vinnie listening to the speeches, obviously moved.

And Grazia will put together a photo montage, leading to a disproportionate number of photos of her & Neal being inserted into the montage, so there can be some comic business where Neal's professional colleagues who didn't know about the polyamory can ignore the other sister wives & tell Grazi, I'm so sorry for your loss.

From there, we segue into a brief section about Neal-cum-Brian's ocular migraines. And reveal he died of a brain aneurism. (In real life, Brian had a heart attack. But that's not gonna fly now that I've downshifted everyone's ages 30 years.)

And then we're back out on the porch for some more obnoxious Mimi business, and the chapter ends!

Chapter 2 should be easier to write since I can crib more from my diary.

I was asleep when the phone rang.

The Spawn's mother.

Apparently, she'd called multiple times. Third time is the charm.

She was trying to get into the house & the extra key was not in its hiding place.

I doddered down the stairs. "What's up, Christine?"

Christine was raised a Mormon, so even her hysteria has a pleasant, friendly, upbeat edge. "Oh, the boys just got back from the City. They were staying with Rahav"—Icky's birth certificate name—"and Gus is in bad shape, just very, very bad." She took a deep breath. "Rahav hasn't been giving him his medication!"

Gus is on some heavy-duty antidepressants.

"Wow," I said. "Did he forget?"

"Who knows? But for four days, Gus didn't get his antidepressants! Dante didn't get his ADHD meds either, but that's not as much of an issue. But Gus's antidepressants—" She shook her head involuntarily.

"Wow," I said. "That could be dangerous. I mean, with most antidepressants, you're supposed to taper when you go off them."

"He's in such bad shape," she said. But she didn't cry. Because she used to be a Mormon! Instead, she began rifling around in one of the kitchen drawers where Icky keeps vials & vials of his children's meds.

"What are you going to do?"

"What can I do? All I can do is try to counteract the damage he does to them—"

We chatted for 20 minutes. She wanted to get back to her semi-suicidal teenage son but she also wanted to decompress. Icky, she told me, is a complete narcissist (no news there!) and bipolar—

"Wow!" I said once more. "Diagnosed?"

No, not diagnosed, but it was so obvious. The boys had called her at 2 in the morning the night before, both completely drunk: They were out, wandering around Manhattan—

"Wait!" I said. "Rahav let two underage kids get drunk?"

"Oh, he wasn't with them. Who knows where he was? They were completely unsupervised. And he didn't send their medications back with them! Thank God you were home! I knew he had some meds in this house. Look at this!" The vials she pulled from the drawer were filled with pills & pills.

"Are you sure he gives the boys their medication when they're here?" I asked.

"No, I'm not sure. I'm not sure of anything when it comes to him—"

"Wait here for a sec," I said. I dashed upstairs to the Patrizia-torium and fished out the key I'd had made for my pet sitters. Ran back downstairs & presented it to Christine. "Here. Now you can get into the house whenever you need to."

###

I was wide awake by the time she left. There wouldn't be any falling back to sleep for hours & hours. And I was too wired to settle in comfortably to the Thomas Jefferson bio I've been reading.

So instead, I watched a couple of episodes of something called Sharp Objects. Contemporary Southern Gothic! I admired the art direction. Though I found the characters mystifyingly unrelatable. I mean, I get functional alcoholism! But none of the functional alcoholics I've ever run across have had hair quite so luxuriant as Amy Adams'.

My interview with the beautiful history professor's collective household in T-burg is tentatively scheduled for August 16th.

I am crossing fingers, legs, eyes, and ancient enemies as tightly as I can.

I ignored the mystery stomach ache & did errands. You're just being a slacker! I told myself.

Got back to the casa & began Remunerating. But in addition to the stomach ache, I felt... off.

Now, I never know when I feel off whether I really feel off or I'm just malingering. I'm incredibly lazy, & will seize every opportunity to do absolutely nothing—

But, no. I had a throbbing headache (& I don't usually get headaches), and I felt weak, and my insides were churning—and then I broke out in a fearful sweat just before my insides did what insides do when they churn—and I felt as though I could barely crawl back to my bed.

Food poisoning or norovirus?

Spent the rest of the day and the following night in bed in a semi-delerium, listening to a bizarre Netflix show called Ginny & Georgia, which is simultaneously good & baaaaaad. (I have a thing for teenage dramas.) I had to guess what the characters looked like 'cause I couldn't open my eyes.

Woke up this morning feeling more or less normal, so I guess it was food poisoning?

Still. I'm going to be sedentary today.

###

Drama this morning: The water in the house turned off!

Icky has this ancient Orbit digital timer on his irrigation hose. It keeps not timing, so the watering hose keeps not going on—and his little tomatoes were all parched & dying. I fiddled with the Orbit settings to give the the tomatoes a soak—and in doing so, somehow managed to fuck with the water pressure inside the house.

Icky berated me soundly for this over the phone, and, of course, he was not wrong—one really shouldn't fuck with machinery unless one knows what one is doing.

Still, I felt aggrieved—I thought I was doing a good thing! Shouldn't I get credit for that?

If it's not Icky being a dick, it's the U.S. starting World War III!

Always fuckin' something.

The smoke from the fires in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and northwestern Ontario has hit upstate New York.

The rising full moon last night was blood red.

And the sky this morning looks like a diffractionless opal, a whitish translucent wash with the barest undercoat of blue through which the sun just glowers. I'd planned on taking it easy today anyway, because I kinda knocked myself out weeding the New Paltz plot yesterday.

Before:



After:



Doesn't look like I did a lot, does it? But it was four full wheelbarrows of brambles and other assorted weeds.

Harder work than I thought it would be, & I was kinda achey from all that squatting & pulling. So I figured I'd go easy on myself today. Resume weeding tomorrow, but get there while it's still cool out.

And that turns out to be a good decision because today I'm feeling a kind of generalized air hunger, some shortness of breath with exertion. Though whether that's from the smoky air or generalized anxiety I can't quite tell.

###

Said anxiety is due to Icky being even more of a dick than usual.

Last fall, after I closed down my garden in Hyde Park, I brought all my gardening stuff back here & stashed it in the shed because I thought I'd be gardening here this summer.

Then, six weeks or so ago, Icky announced that he didn't want to garden with me. Was it my breath? My ineffective underarm deodorant? My generally displeasing personality? No! It was that Icky does not like to work or play with others.

Fortunately, the good folk at the Hyde Park garden had just written me a love note: We miss you!

So, I decided to go back & garden there again. (And, of course, the New Paltz Community Garden just found some open spots, so now I'm juggling two gardens!) And I transported all my gardening stuff back to Hyde Park.

###

Then yesterday, Icky went on a tear because he decided all the gardening stuff in the shed belonged to him.

All day long, he fusillaged me with text: Those tomato cages are mine. I’ve had them since before I moved here. I put them all back there after the season

I texted back, As I said, I brought the 10 cages I used in my garden last year to your shed in October last year because I thought I was going to be gardening here this year. After you told me you’d prefer to garden alone, I took those same 10 cages—they were stacked on the left side of the shed—back to Hyde Park. That’s all I know, Iggy.

He texted: Where are my cages then? I put all the cages I used all of last summer in that shed. There are no cages now. I never saw yours in there.

###

This is the kind of petty hammering he does relentlessly & he is so fucking relentless that he usually gets his own way—because who in their right mind wants to spend hours texting about fucking tomato cages?

Finally, he called.

"Look," I said. "We're at an impasse. And I'm at a disadvantage in all my transactions with you since you own the house, so you have the power. Are you interested in some kind of compromise or should we just keep up the text chain till I move out?"

This was said with more bravado than I actually have, of course.

Moving out would be difficult at this point.

I'm an elderly cat lady and the rental situation hereabouts is not exactly clamoring for elderly cat ladies.

On the other hand, I'm an excellent tenant, and Icky doesn't want the house sitting empty for the 20 days of each month he's not on the premises.

And I suppose it's possible that I did grab some of Icky's tomato cages without thinking about it—though I'm certainly not going to admit that to him.

The compromise?

I'll bring back any extra tomato cages and check the slag heap at the Hyde Park garden where old tomato cages go to die. Bring him those.

###

The situation is highly anxiety-provoking because it reminds me how little control I have over my life.

Of course, because of the way I was brought up, it never occurred to me that one could control one's life simply by making wise choices. I was a waif bufffeted about by forces I couldn't control! And then as an adult, I kind of mythologized that choicelessness! Turned it into a philosophy. Became fatalistic.

I don't know what the answer is.

I do know many people who have organized their lives around making wise choices, and for many of those people life has worked out well, but for just as many, life hasn't.

The random factor is very, very powerful.

The garden has been a bone of contention twixt me & Icky.

Six weeks or so ago, he informed me he did not want to share the garden in back of the house.

"I know myself," he told me. "I want to do things the way I want to do things—not that I couldn't learn from you," he added in a gratuitous attempt to sound gracious. (Gratuitous because nothing can make Icky sound gracious.)

He offered to put in a kind of annex garden where I could putter & grow.

I made inconclusive murmuring noises.

The whole thing was extremely weird, I thought: There's such a lot of work involved in planting and tending a garden, why wouldn't you want to share that with someone?

Then the Hyde Park Community Garden folk emailed me asking me to come back, & I thought, Providence has solved my dilemma!

###

A couple of weeks ago, he was gonna get one of the neighbors over to tractor the garden (much more efficient than rototilling) and asked me how much square footage I would like.

"That won't be necessary," I beamed. "I found another place to garden."

Weirdly, this seemed to upset him!

Where was this place, he wanted to know. He asked four times; I ignored him. But clearly, he was put out.

The day the neighbor was supposed to come over, it rained. And then she didn't come over on any of the subsequent days (Probably because you didn't pay her last year & made no noises about paying her this year either, I thought. I wouldn't think Icky is close enough with the neighbors to get friendship favors.) This put him in a glowery mood, too.

###

Then last night, I got a text from him: Go ahead and plant what you want on the side of the house or the garden fyi. I’m going to be coming up there a lot less I think.

Did something happen? I texted back.

I am not happy coming up there to sit around all week with Gus’ door closed on me. He won’t do anything around the house or with me. I don’t want to be up there under those conditions.

Little Susie Sunshine that I am, I texted back, It’s a difficult situation, yes. But I HAVE seen the two of you bond. I know it’s none of my business but even if he is pushing you away, if you LET yourself be pushed, it’s going to feel like abandonment to him.

I need to protect my mental health, he replied.

What mental health? I wondered.

Of course, I also knew that he was acting out, having the 63-year-old-man version of a temper tantrum, informing as many people as he can about his grievances. I'm 90% certain that he will be back up again next week on the usual date, and it will be as though this text conversation had never happened.

Still. The whole thing made me nervous.

Like am I gonna have to start thinking about filling the propane cannisters, mowing the acreage, making sure Black Chicken is fed & watered? That's a lot more work than I signed up for.

###

He does have a really dreadful relationship with the Spawn, but then I had a dreadful relationship with RTT when he was Gus's age, and today, we are besties, so go figure.

As a parent of teenage children, consistency is the most important thing—consistency & a commitment to far-sightedness, goals in the long term: Gus is incapable of seeing three years ahead because Gus is 15, and three years is one-fifth of his lifespan—figuratively the equivalent of 15 years to me. I can't see 15 years ahead!

Also, Icky has this ridiculous notion that being a parent is kinda like being a super-friend. If I didn't dislike him, I'd almost be touched by the way he begs the Spawn to let him play video games with him—video games? you think that's what fathers do? are you mad?

And then there are all those mornings when Gus refuses to budge from his bed, literally pulls the covers up over his head, while Icky screams, "This is ridiculous! Get the fuck up! You have to go to school!"

Only Gus doesn't get up.

One imagines him beneath his covers with a small, sly grin on his face. Punishing Daddy by punishing himself.

A toxic situation.

But honestly?

The Patrizia-torium (which I like quite well) is sheltered from the rest of the house, the kiskas are happy, and it's none of my business.

###

Anyway, I did get over to the Community Garden on Thursday and weeded happily for an hour before it began to pour. (Not in the forecast.) Got the strawberry patch weeded. Will go back tomorrow to do the rest of the weeding and put in lettuce & beans.

This year, I have the space to attempt germinating my own seedlings, so I have various heirloom tomato varieties percolating in tiny peat pots.

Today, I am running the bounce house at Vision of Wallkill's Duck Derby.

The fun part of the day, the actual race of the rubber duckies down the Wallkill River, has been canceled due to safety issues: The Wallkill River is at flood stage.

And I can't say I am looking forward to chaperoning a bunch of brutish Trumpie tadpoles—'cause that's what the citizenry of Wallkill hamlet are, brutish Trumpies.

But I committed to it and must follow through.

Sigh...

Protective mimicry, I remind myself.