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In the middle of the night, I dreamed that Ben had come back to tie up loose ends, shut down an apartment where (presumably) we'd lived together. He was cold, sardonic, demonic; I couldn't quite understand what was going on. RTT was a very young child, not present, but an issue between us.

Then I was in a bar with M____ S_______ (in real life, Ben's very pleasant cousin, the one who told me many years after: We all knew what Ben was. But what could we say to you? You'd made up your mind.)

M____ was very sympathetic: Let me buy you a drink.

And then I remembered the pets, our animals: the two dogs, Milo & Xena, and a cat of whom I was very, very fond—only I couldn't remember the cat's name or even what the cat looked like—

I've got to go back for them, I told M____. Someone's got to walk those dogs. I imagined the abandoned house filling slowly up with shit.

He didn't tell you? M____ asked. And then she described how Ben had poisoned the dogs. With a specially formulated dog food, evidently manufactured for the sole purpose of getting rid of no-longer-loved pets.

I believed her, but still I wanted to get back to the house—my cat would still be there. So, I started wandering through the streets of a city. (I think I've dreamed about this city before, though of course, dream cities always come packaged with extra echoes & deja vu.) The streets were wide and unfamiliar. I thought I saw the building—very grand, made of limestone with imposing pillars—and then I thought, No, that's where Rik lives—

###

Was that a nightmare? I wondered when I awoke. It lacked the grand guignol imagery, the horror movie ambiance.

But it had certainly been disturbing enough so that I never fell totally back to sleep. Instead, I grazed on sleep, a little casual brain nourishment, so my Fitbit would register eight hours this morning.

###

And musing about the dream now, I'm thinking that of all the awful things Ben did—their names are legion, though to counterbalance that, he was the world's best banterer, & I love banter above all things—the absolute worst was reneging upon his offer to take Milo when I left Ithaca.

I absolutely knew the moment I left Ithaca, I would be perfectly fine.

But I also knew there was no way I was going to find a place to live closer to New York City with two cats (Rutger & the Meezer) and a dog.

So I begged Ben: Please, please, please take Milo.

And at first, Ben said he would.

But then he wouldn't.

And I didn't know what to do.

Except then I had to take Milo for a vet visit, & the vet told me, He has a very virulent form of cancer.

And I had to have Milo put to sleep shortly thereafter.

I knew Milo died to let me live.

###

I have a history of pets dying at critical turns in my life.

Like in 1993, a week before I left for Clarion, Dennis Hopper and Hedda Hopper—my two angora rabbits, whom I used to let run around all day long in my wild tangle of backyard—leapt so high, they broke their spines.

Me being me, of course, I entertained a fantasy: I would cancel Clarion! I would find a carpenter who would construct the bunnies little platforms on wheels that they could propel around on; I would pilfer tiny catheters from the NICU and once a day drain their urine. I would live out the rest of my life as the caretaker of my paraplegic rabbits!

Before the rabbits jumped and broke their spines, I had been agonizing: Who will take care of my bunnies while I'm gone???

And then I realized: The rabbits had broken their spines, so that I could get away.

###

Morbid morning thoughts!

Anyway.

Yesterday's Adrienne meet-and-greet was great fun, chiefly because it was held in a historic house built in 1750 by one of the minor Dutch patroons in these parts who threw in his lot with the rebel army.





The house is owned by a billion-year-old psychoanalyst who led multiple tours through its sumptuously appointed interior, regularly stopping at the little nook where he used to see patients & waving airily at the reclining couch: "If you squint hard enough, you can still see all their dark thoughts swirling towards the ceiling!"

All those rewatches of The West Wing have not been in vain! Pretending to be a staffer, I was a fuckin' rockstar!

Even the decidedly ungracious Adrienne texted afterwards, You were a gracious host and an awesome presence as so many people remarked!

Well. Not so many people, I'm thinking. The turnout was small. But the longest journey begins with but a single step, the winning campaign starts with but two people in a room, blah, blah, blah.

Here I am in my newly purchased, high-waisted, floral Pride & Prejudice garb looking suitably triumphant:

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Hilary Mantel is a bit rich for bedtime consumption. All those unfamiliar vocabulary words! "Persiflage," anybody? I mean, it's a great word, a perfect word, but who wants to read in bed with a book and a dictionary?

So, I've been putting myself to sleep with an old favorite: Pride & Prejudice.

And in the spirit of Pride & Prejudice, I scampered off to Marshall's yesterday to buy some long, flowery dresses that no self-respecting Regency heroine would ever be caught dead in, but hey! they were cheap.

I say "scampered." I really mean "limped." Because once in Marshall's, I felt as though I was going to faint.

Maybe I have COVID, I thought.

I never did catch COVID back when everybody else was catching it. Or maybe I did catch COVID but I was one of those asymptomatic COVIDers the CDC warned us about, out there insidiously infecting everybody else.

I'm not running a fever. But all those other symptoms—shortness of breath, hacking cough, traveling body aches, headache, extreme fatigue—were a check.

So, I bought the first three things I shoved into my shopping cart—fortunately, they all fit—and raced back home to do a COVID test.

Nope! Not COVID.

Maybe it is the the mysterious malaise that leveled BB & Flavia for three weeks. They actually went to a doctor. Verdict: a rhinovirus. A nasty rhinovirus.

Since the three of us were inhaling each other's carbon dioxide in a car not too terribly long ago, I'm gonna assume I have what they had.

###

As a sidebar, I'll note that I do hate shopping for clothes, and I don't understand at all how anybody can possibly like it. I see loads of clothes I like, usually on actors on the various streaming entertainments I indulge myself with. But none of those clothes are ever for sale at the stores I can afford. The stores I can afford are filled with the most awful dreck in the most hideous colors and patterns, and the stores are lit up with migraine-inducing fluorescents, and the other shoppers are extras out of some colorized B-roll from Night of the Living Dead.

###

I went to bed early and slept nine hours, and feel maybe 85% this morning, but I expect that to fade.

The only going-out-of-the-house thing I have to do today is Adrienne's meet-and-greet, which I volunteered to help her with.

I wish I hadn't!

Adrienne has delusions of being Nancy Pelosi.

The other day, she was introducing me to someone: "And here's Patrizia who does... uh... social media—"

"I designed your website," I reminded her tartly.

She never even thanked me for designing her website!

And then yesterday, she emailed me some statistics about food stamp cutbacks in Ulster County (severe) with the note: Lets look into this.

You look into it, be-yatch! I thought. I am not your fuckin' staffer.

I remind myself that this is a networking opportunity. Networking has never been something I'm particularly good at, subscribing as I do to the naive notion that human connections should be sincere & spring from the heart.

But it's never too late to learn.

###

And speaking of learning...

Here's Today's Exciting AI Video!



Sora would not touch the medieval cats marginalia at all! I wonder if that's some weird kind of copyright hypervigilance?

So, it was back to NightCafe with some prompt tweaks. This prompt worked a bit more successfully than yesterday's, except that that the black cat is no longer turning pages and the strange hulking cat on the lower right keeps sprouting disturbing phantom limbs.
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Mother's Day!

I'm a hater. Hallmark Holiday, I sneer.

Though I do understand every holiday is the result of some sort of marketing campaign. It's not as though when God made the Universe, He equipped it with sparkly plastic slots for Christmas & Thanksgiving.

And, of course, if my own offspring fail to acknowledge Mother's Day, I cycle into the most terrible snit—which must be why Ichabod called me at six o'clock this morning California time to acknowledge my superiority to every single mammal that has ever given birth.

Way to go, Ichabod!

"And something from me & RTT should be delivered later today," he added.

Ohhhhhh! A large floral arrangement.

I ❤️LUV❤️ me some large floral arrangements.

The kids & I are getting on extraordinarily well these days. I must say, I am a lucky person indeed to have such fabulous offspring.



When I got up this morning, I went searching for a photo to illustrate my annual "My Poor Tragic Deluded Mother" essay.

Is my Apple photo archive magic? 'Cause I swear the photos in it metamorphose & change on a daily basis. Like this morning, the only photograph of my mother I could find was the one above, which I don't ever remember seeing before.

The nicest thing Rik ever said to me was, You are nothing like your mother.

Except in this photograph, my mother looks disturbingly like me. (Yes, I know, in truth I look like her, but precedents get very garbled when you're looking at old photographs.) The same exact face shape. It's... defining.

Giving full vent to her narcissism, my mother is staring poutily into a small compact mirror and raising one hand to caress her carefully premeditated flip coif. The photo is carefully posed, and she is pretending it's not posed.

Happy Mother's Day, Lynn, wherever you now may be! From the bottom of my heart, I hope you are having more fun in your present lifetime than you had in the lifetime before.



In other news, I actually ended up having the Big Fun herding children through the bounce house yesterday. Go figure.

A lot of that was because the high school senior volunteer who was assigned to assist me turned out to be lovely, intelligent & poised, and we actually had a real conversation about her life, her hopes, & her dreams, which restored my faith in teenagers—they're not all like the Icky Spawn!

Sadly, the actual Duck Derby event itself had to be canceled because the river was up too high:









Still, amazingly beautiful, no? Extremely pleasant way to loll away an afternoon.

###

Afterwards, I traipsed off to the monthly meeting of the Shawangunk Dems. I have volunteered to take over administering their website—which hasn't been updated in two years and needs a complete redesign.

"Democrat" is a dirty word in this part of Trumplandia, right up there with "cunt" and "Hilary Clinton."

So, I told the group that if they wanted maximum return on our Internet presence, we really need to deemphasize the Dem part of Shawangunk Dems. (And we'll need to do other social media outreach too, because down the line, if we want younger members—and we do: Nobody in our group is younger than 60—they care about Instagram & TikTok, not websites.)

The Shawangunk Dems run an outreach initiative called Neighbor to Neighbor, which consists of knocking on people's doors & giving them home-baked chocolate chip cookies as well as a newsletter chock full of curated local news & sponsored activities—Bingo! Board game nights! Drama classes! Art classes!

"Neighbor to Neighbor is a much stronger pitch than Shawangunk Dems," I argued. "It gives the illusion of non-partisanship. Win their hearts & minds, and then you'll win their votes!"

"But we're the Shawangunk Dems," one of the greybeards gasped, appalled.

"Sure, that's the umbrella organization," I argued cheerfully. "Think of the business analogy. Does Kraft Foods advertise itself? No! It advertises Jell-O and Heinz Ketchup and Kool-Aid!"

Alas, I got voted down.

And sadly—even though I know I'm right—I believe in majority rule when it comes to stuff like this.

These people know nothing about marketing!
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It was a very grey day yesterday, so I was in a very grey mood.

Either I have become so susceptible to meteorologically induced mood changes that they've jumped the calendar, and depression is no longer just seasonal. Or my body is no longer capable of being a battery that stores up sunshine for cloudy days. Or the world right now is such an awful place that it is nearly impossible to revel in the joy of being alive. Take your pick!

###

Near the beginning of yesterday's TaxBwana debriefing, the head honchos announced that we are no longer being funded for new Chromebooks.

Which means that we can no longer give out equipment to new volunteer TaxBwanas. Not that there are very many of those.

The ranks of existing TaxBwanas are constantly thinning as TaxBwanas move to independent living communities in South Carolina, or undergo joint replacements that leave them immobile, or throw up their hands & say, Fuck this shit. (For whatever reason, there are no youthful TaxBwanas.)

But I don't think attrition is gonna shut down the program.

No, I think Trump's goons are gonna shut off the funding faucet.

We tax preparers all work for free-eee-eeee, but those Chromebooks cost money, and our modems & printers cost money, & in some places where no community agency will donate space to set up shop, we rent space. And all this money comes from a grant from the IRS. My guess is that the grant will be one of the "unnecessary" expenses the goons decide to toss.

Which is a pity. One of the New Paltz team leaders did the math, and assuming the clients we tax-prepared for free-eee-eeee this season had gone to paid tax preparers, we saved our clients about $250,000.

###

I carpooled with the extremely pleasant Steve W whose Parkinson's has gotten noticeably worse since January, the last time I carpooled with him.

For someone I barely know, I'm privy to a lot of details about Steve W's life. The professional trajectory that defied parental expectations. The problematic first marriage. The son who committed suicide. The son's children—Steve's grandchildren—now living abject, impoverished lives in the afore-mentioned South Carolina and other Red states.

"But that's awful!" I said when he finished describing one granddaughter's life. "Can't you bring her up here?"

"No," Steve said. "No. Even if I wanted to. She's got so many problems, and she's so..." He left the sentence unfinished. "My wife couldn't handle it. Jane's almost 80, you know."

Since I'm in the middle of that Larry McMurtry reading binge, Steve's family members reminded me a bit of the Greenway diaspora post-Aurora, which is a modern take on the old Tess of the D'Urbervilles scenario: a downward trajectory. Over the course of a century, very few families stay in the same economic/cultural stratum, but it's only in fiction or The Daily Mail that you get to view the contrails in living color.

Anyway, I was seized with an intense sadness for Steve W. Fundamentally, such a smart, decent guy. Drives people without cars to their medical appointments. Teaches drivers' safety for free-eee-eeee! TaxBwanas! Heavily involved in liberal politics (in the liberal enclave of Gardiner!)

And his personal life is just one long heartache.

This is ridiculous, I thought to myself as he dropped me off at my car. My eyes were actually filled with tears.

So I got in my car and I drove to the ganja store!

I had thought of putting myself on Saint John's Wort, but it turns out Saint John's Wort interferes with Synthroid metabolism.

But I gotta do something.

I'm sick of feeling other people's pain.

Ganja's great! I pop one gummy at night, and not only do I sleep like a hibernating bear, I wake up feeling jolly & utterly impervious!
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Dreamed my friend Erin had fallen in love with Ben.

She was incredibly apolgetic about it and kept assuring me that she understood all the nuances, having been a Faithful Mallory's Camera reader lo, these many years. In fact, she was really glad she'd been reading my diary because otherwise it would have been impossible for her to imagine how somebody (for which read Ben) could simultaneously be so appealing and so awful.

Throughout our conversation, Ben himself was strewn across a sofa in a nearby room and being incredibly whiney, trying to get Erin all to himself.



Busy day yesterday.

In the morning, I sold Duck Derby tickets with Ellen at a folding table in front of the Wallkill hamlet post office.

The Duck Derby is one of innumerable civic activities my dinky little community group, Vision of Wallkill, sponsors. On May 10, we will float a bunch of rubber ducks in the Wallkill River. There is no appreciable current in the portion of the Wallkill River that runs through the hamlet, so the rubber ducks mostly just sit there. But eventually—entropy!—one of the rubber ducks breaks loose & is declared the winner.

The lucky duck's sponsor wins some kind of cash prize, which protocol demands they donate back to the hamlet, so you know: The whole thing is a rip-off.

Funds raised this project go to the Wallkill High School to provide a "safe space" for the Wallkill High School senior class to enjoy prom night.

The Wallkill High School senior class is mostly the spawn of bug-eyed, drooling, rabid Trump supporters, so personally, I'd like to see them all die in fiery car explosions or by chugging methyl-alcohol-infused keggers on prom night.

But you can't always get what you want, and anyway, it's important to maintain Protective Camouflage.

While we were sitting at our table, a fleet of buses drove by and turned down River Road.

"Sightseerers in Wallkill?" I asked Ellen.

"Oh, they're on their way to the Sherpa festival," Ellen told me.

A convoy of cars followed. Expensive cars.

"The Sherpas bought that big field on the other side of Merrie's property," Ellen explained. "They wanted to build a temple or something. But, of course, the town wouldn't let them."

Sherpas!

That must mean... Himalayans!

I resolved to check it out!



Maybe five thousand people? In a field! Right up the usually deserted road from the transfer station. Hundreds of cars parked in a makeshift parking lot.

I ditched my car by the side of the road & hiked in.



"How much are tickets?" I asked the people at the gate.

Tickets were a hundred bucks!

I prepared to hike out.

But then the ticket sellers looked at each other & one of them asked me, "You live here?"

"Yes, I do," I babbled. And next year, I can sell Lhapso Fest tickets along with Duck Derby tickets! I thought, beaming in what I hoped was an appealing fashion.

They let me in for free-eee-eeee!

There wasn't a lot to do. No cultural performances. I think it was mainly a networking meet-and-greet for the Himalayan community of New York State who are mostly Nepalese. I didn't see any other Caucasians.

Most of them were in native garb, and the native garb is stunning although, of course, it is very rude to stalk people for photos just because you like their clothes. I tried to be discreet.

A lot of the men were wearing what I can only describe as modified gaucho costumes. It's so interesting how men in high-country cultures always end up going for those wide-brimmed hats, serapes and ornamental boots. The universal herder swag!






A huge, multi-course feast was in progress that looked and smelled delicious, but I decided it would be rude to partake. So after wandering around for an hour, I left.

I know this culture a little bit because of all the English As a Second Language tutoring I did in Ithaca where I was not only the English Language Tutor of Choice among the surprisingly large Tibetan population there, but also the Tax Preparer of choice.

What surprised me most about the Tibetans in Ithaca was how very materialistic they are. They live for Black Friday! And yet they are very religious Buddhists. What I took away from that is that they understood impermanence without having to practice detachment.



After the Sherpa Fest, I scampered over to the monthly meeting of the Shawangunk Dems where I volunteered to take over their website. This will be good because not only will it help me become more proficient in Squarespace—a potential revenue-generating skill—but it will also help me tailor the Shawangunk Dems' message a little more subtly so as not to alienate potential supporters.

Remember, boys & girls: Imperfect allies are not the enemy.



I am contemplating scampering across the bridge this morning to begin prepping this year's garden, having accepted the Hyde Park Community Garden's invitation to garden with them again this year, since gardening is kind of intimate, thus not something I want to do with Icky.

The symbolism of Easter is not entirely lost on me.

After all, when all is said & done, Jesus is a harvest god.
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All day long on social media yesterday, everybody was talking about the Insurrection Act.

Perfectly sane people—my old editor at Entertainment Weekly, a cheerful Canadian life coach, the Internet genius who abruptly moved from Palo Alto back to his family farm in Missouri.

• Expect “terrorist” bombings, targeted assassinations, or high-profile acts of violence, either staged or exploited, to justify the crackdown.

• There may even be an extremely high profile assassination of a leading right-wing leader that changes everything in a moment… and the “woke radicals” will be blamed, and the country will rally around more extreme measures to bring back order and control.

• Trump has already invoked the Insurrection Act — so now he now declares even more extensive and repressive martial law, and orders troops into major US cities where most oppose him, branding protesters and opponents as “seditionists,” “traitors,” and the “woke mob”.

• He will call on “good Americans” to grab their guns, like the patriots of 1776, and join the militias forming to “restore order” and “take back control” from the leftist threat. Using militias also gets him around resistance from military leaders who might oppose his orders.


It scared the shit out of me.

Why is this crazy stuff going viral? Did something happen that I don't know about that I should know about (even though knowing about it won't do a damn thing because what the fuck can I do about anything?)

Isn't it better if this scenario is inevitable not to know about it? It certainly didn't improve Colonel Aureliano Buendía's quality of life to know that at precisely 9:15 a.m. Columbian time, he was gonna be facing that firing squad, however much his vivid flashbacks may have entertained the rest of us.

###

It was the last day of TaxBwana for the season.

My first clients were a couple in their late 70s who somehow managed to exist on $15,000 a year in social security payments.

My second client was a Methodist minister whose husband (whom she'd brought along for signatures) had Alzheimer's. She had one somewhat complicated issue in that she hadn't entirely spent the housing allowance the church gave her, so I made an executive decision that the cash left over was taxable.

At the very end of our session, her Alzheimer's-addled husband rose unsteadily, unzipped his fly, and began gently urinating on his chair.

My third client was a very lovely woman about my own age who had recently quit her job to care for her 95-year old mother.

We liked each other, so at a certain point in tax calculations, she began complimenting me on my purple hair.

I countered my complimenting her on her fabulous smoky eye makeup which, honest to God, if I could still see well enough to put on eye makeup well, or if I had a stylist, is exactly the way I would do my own eyes! A soft pencil, she told me, a super-soft pencil.

My final client of the day—four clients is a lot! more than any of the other TaxBwanas did—was a guy whose type I knew very well back in the day, when the type was young & attractive. In his sixties, now, Phil Ferragamo (not his real name) was still a swaggerer and a self-styled artiste, but scrawny with unfortunate teeth and mostly bald except for a corona of straggley hair that he defiantly continued to wear long.

Phil Ferragamo was all about putting it to The Man, which he had decided to do by refusing to pay any of the amounts he owed the Internal Revenue Service. To be fair, he was squeaking along on minute salaries from not one but two scut kitchen jobs, so it wasn't as though he had much money.

But as I tried to explain to him over & over & over again, any money he did have—above the $18,000 or so that constituted his standard deduction—would be taxed at a rate of approximately 10%. And it didn't really matter what his thoughts were on the matter; he had to pay that.

"They can't get blood from a stone!" he chirped.

"Well, in fact," I said, "they can. They can slap a lien on your earnings. Trust me: You don't want them to do that. However hard you think your life is now, it's gonna be exponentially worse with a lien. The IRS is generally pretty good about installment agreements. Tell them you can pay $25 a month—"

###

Phil Ferragamo was the very last client there, and it was way past 4 p.m. The other TaxBwanas were virtuously folding up tables. I really dislike the other TaxBwanas. One of them sidled up to me as I was counseling Phil Ferragamo and made a remark about how I should hurry up—

"Well, no one's forcing you to stay, are they?" I said. "So leave."

The TaxBwana looked shocked and muttered something about a joke.

"Well, it's not funny," I said. "And since you have not said two words to me the entire 10 weeks we've been doing this, I don't know what gives you the idea that you can come up to me now and make passive-aggressive remarks."

Ohhhhh! The TaxBwana did not like that. I saw her sidling up to the other TaxBwanas for comfort and support.

Fuck all of you, I thought. I will not work with you assholes again.

But was I upset over the TaxBwana pecking order—I was the new volunteer in the flock this year and did not do the sucking up expected of me, I suppose—or was I upset about the Insurrection Act?

I did not know.

But on the way home, I stopped by the liquor store and bought a small flask of bourbon.

Now, I haven't done any recreational substances in months.

Not because I am anti-recreational substances or moralistic or anything like that but because, for whatever reason, it's felt important to be absolutely compis right now.

But last night I wanted to be shit-faced.

Only to discover that—alas!—I have become immune to bourbon.

Not even the soothing respite of Law & Order: SVU could bring me the numbness I craved.

###

But today is a brand new day. And it's actually sunny! (After a solid week of rain.) So, hope is doing that little one-legged jig.
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Dreamed about Tom. Probably because I'd just done his tax return & been on the phone with him for an hour. The Story of How I Lost All My Money is now an amusing one, and he got a big chuckle out of, And then my husband ran off with someone he'd been in 4-H with 40 years ago. When I asked him, Why?, he said, "Well, she saved all the poetry I wrote when I was 16! In this fancy journal. With pressed flowers!"

Must say, I got kind of a chuckle out of it, too.

This is what they don't tell you about heartbreak: It all turns into funny stories if you can wait it out.

Anyway, in this dream, Tom & I were in this strange house filled with 20-something self-involved magicians—kinda like the cast of the TV show The Magicians—who kept levitating objects and working other highly annoying acts of magic. The house was absolutely filthy, too! But I kept finding objects among the filth that I thought maybe I should steal—like this pair of earrings with carnelian stones. I didn't actually like the earrings, but somehow I thought I should own them.

Then we were walking down a really old street with cavernous grey buildings. This is a shortcut to Flatbush Avenue, I told Tom (though it did not look like any shortcut to the real Flatbush Avenue that I have ever seen.) I am taking you to my grandfather's old house.

Are you sure you really want to do that? asked Tom.

And then I woke up.

###

Productive day yesterday in that I finished Adrienne's website and now don't have to look at it ever again because I refused—smilingly but firmly—to do any of the tweaks.

They've got Joey who is apparently some kind of Big Mojo cyber-guy. Let him do the tweaks.

Once I got a feel for Squarespace, I actually enjoyed working in it, and I could see myself becoming pretty good at it if I did more. Working in Squarespace is kinda like playing video games.

After that, I polished off the last of the Friends & Family tax returns.

And today is my very last 2025 day as a TaxBwana. Honestly? I didn't really enjoy it this year. I think because I felt no bond whatsoever with the people I was working with, and esprit du corps is a huge part of these endeavors for me.

###

Meanwhile, the Patrizia-torium & the car are both a mess, so Deep Cleaning is in my future.
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So, Trump announced his tariffs.

If you have a 401(K) or an IRA invested in EFTs, you immediately lost another 15% of your net worth.

Quite a few of my TaxBwana clients erroneously assume I am some kind of financial whiz—even the Trumpish ones who believe the current economic shitstorm is some kind of Rapture from which they will ascend in a few short months' time, richer than ever. They constantly pepper me for financial advice.

Of course, TaxBwanas are not allowed to give financial advice, which is a Good Thing because it allows me to maintain my air of inscrutable knowledgeability while not knowing a goddam thing.

Frankly, I don't know what I would do if I had anything resembling real money.

Over a 20-year window, staying in equities is the smartest move—except most of the people peppering me with questions will be dead in 20 years.

Liquidating to cash will make them vulnerable to inflation—which is about to rise dramatically.

And it's too late to buy gold. Gold is presently hovering somewhere near $3,100 an ounce.

###

The tariffs are so-called "reciprocal tariffs" that include duty taxes on uninhabited islands near Antarctica because, you know, those fuckin' penguins...

They're intended to pay for Trump's income tax cuts, I suppose. There is a Mad Tea Party logic to them: If you do the arithmetic, it looks like they took the U.S. trade deficit with every one of its trade partners, divided that sum by the dollar value of each trade partner's exports to the U.S. & slapped the resulting fraction on as a tariff.

This is just bizarre.

For example: Madagascar, one of the poorest countries in Africa, has just been hit with a 47% tariff. That's because Madagascar is one of the few places on the planet where vanilla beans grow. Madagascar can't afford to buy stuff from the U.S., so, of course, they don't, hence trade deficit. Tariffs are gonna drive up the cost of vanilla astronomically—but that's not gonna make anyone in Madagascar buy more American goods.

###

There are some exceptions to this methodology, of course: The 10% tariff on U.K. exports, for example, is clearly a gift and will go down if King Charles III can figure out a way to knight Trump. It clears the way for Britain to become a gateway for EU goods, and as the designated middleman, the U.K.'s economic prospects are bound to bounce higher. Maybe I should be telling all those troubled TaxBwana clients, Invest in DHL Supply Chain and UK FedEx!

Tariffs are kind of the equivalent of sales taxes. Tennessee, for example, may have no state income tax—but it has an across-the-board state sales tax of nearly 10%, and when you add that to county & municipality sales taxes, you get a hefty sum that is equivalent to if not higher than the income taxes charged by a state like New York.

Caesar is gonna get rendered unto one way or another, in other words.

I wish all those idiots—for which read half the population of Wallkill—forever whining about New York State taxes would just fuckin' move to Tennessee. Ass! Door! Slam!

Anyway. I'm not buying anything but food in the foreseeable future. And no food that has vanilla in it!

###

In other news...

Forsythia has started blooming:



In these parts, forsythia is the true harbinger of spring.

###

Yesterday was my last day TaxBwana-ing at St. Joe's in New Paltz. My clients included:

• A lovely and clearly overwhelmed young woman whom the site greeter and the site coordinator, both of whom have been shits to me, complained loudly about before her arrival because she'd been a bit too forceful on the phone.

She was eager to learn the rudiments of financial literacy. "What's a dividend?" she asked. I explained.

She was also the daughter of a Sicilian immigrant, speaks fluent Italian, & has visited the Old Country many times, so we had a long conversation about Palermo.

• A retired airforce veteran who talked to me about the twice he'd been kidnapped by aliens.

• A disgruntled couple about my own age who I had to work hard to charm. I succeeded! By the end of our tax session, they were showing me photos of their dog. But man! I had to work hard.

She had about 50 IQ points on her husband, so naturally, I wanted to travel backwards in time, to the point where they first hooked up, & ask her, What are you doing?

Since they were both old, they were both lawn furniture—as am I, of course! Impossible to ascribe properties like "attractiveness" to.

But I think once upon a time, he was a whole lot more attractive than she was, and thus, she struck a very bad bargain, which has turned her into a sour bitch in her declining years.

###

I have a shitload of stuff to accomplish today. Sigh...

If only there were 36 hours in a day, and 24 of those hours were daylight.
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I was 20 minutes late to TaxBwana yesterday—got stuck behind a tow truck that was chugging along hilly 44/55 at 20 miles an hour—and so missed Moira, the totally delightful 86-year-old whose taxes I did at Highland a couple of weeks back. She came in at 9 with an enormous box of treats! (TaxBwanas can't take money, but we can take treats!)

"Patrizia, Patrizia, Patrizia," Steve the site coordinator grinned. "That's all she kept saying. You have a fan."

This was particularly touching to me because I know exactly how much disposable income Moira has, and it's not much. The treats outlay was a significant expenditure for her.

Then later in the day, one of the TaxBwanas approached me: "They're my friends, so I really don't feel comfortable doing their taxes. Too much information, you know! But I really want to make sure they get someone good. Will you do them?"

So, you know: Ego validation!

###

My mood turned to meh as the day wore on. The political news is really quite awful, and I find myself preoccupied by the question: Why exactly did you choose to be born in this time & this place?

Because I am quite convinced: Choose I did.

What am I supposed to do? Personally, I see the world in shades of grey, but the world defies me by shaping up into some kind of Manichean battle: Good Guys versus Bad Guys. Belinda, my Trump-voting pal, all but admitted to me when we went out for Himalayan food last week that she regrets her vote. (And, no, I didn't prod her. I deliberately steer away from political discussion when I am around Trump-voting pals.)

But how do I know that I'm not one of the Bad Guys?

Life! The ultimate role-playing game!

###

The only real talent I have is writing.

But I'm not under the illusion that anybody reads much of what I write.

###

Meanwhile, I am wayyyyy behind on my Remuneration goals & Adrienne's website is still not done.

Icky & his ill-mannered spawn have vamoosed for the next 10 days, leaving me in solitary possession of the casa. So, that's a good thing.

(Minor showdown with Icky last week. He complained the kitchen was dirty. I told him that I was perfectly willing to clean up after myself, but I'd be goddamned if I was gonna clean up after him & the Spawn. I did clean up after him & the Spawn a couple of times when I first moved in, in an effort to ingratiate myself, which doubtless gave him the wrong idea.

And I get the feeling you want me to move out, & I am looking for another place to live, I added.

I don't want you to move out, said Icky. And cleaned the kitchen.)

Black Chicken seems a bit more chipper. And tonight, I will be hanging with the Girl Squad at the Parkview, which should be fun.
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Another dream about Rick Raffanti & the House of Usher! (Should I start skimming obituaries?) Only this time, the House of Usher was a very grand place, filled with crystal chandeliers, stained glass, & gleaming mahogany. Rick stood on a balcony high above me, calling, "DiLuch!" (My nickname in the volleyball days.)

We embraced.

He told me he had recently remarried. Connubial bliss was the term he used.

Do you own this house now? I asked. It's the house I grew up in—Well. Kinda, sorta.

But, no. He didn't.

###

Meanwhile, yesterday, I toddled off to the gym & repurpled my hair—two activities designed to cheer me up because Black Chicken was making me very sad: She would not eat the corn tortilla bits I lavished upon her, & she would not leave the henhouse. She is clearly depressed—but I can't do anything about that because she is not my chicken!

It seems like a waste of time to expend emotion on a situation you can't do anything about. Yet I couldn't help grieving for her. The plight of animals often moves me more than the plight of humans. I mean, fuck humans. I suppose that makes me cloyingly sentimental.

###

When I got back from the gym, I played around with SquareSpace. Watched tutorials—which always moved too slowly, so I'd give up & dash downhill through the software itself, trying to find the elusive backend.

After a while, I developed a begrudging respect for SquareSpace. Saw how I might actually come to like the software if I got better at configuring it.

SquareSpace is design-oriented rather than content-oriented, and that means they have many fail-safes in place to prevent you from undermining the layout. I can see the utility in this: Professional websites must have a certain look. But it also makes it exceedingly difficult to tweak the content.

Anyway, I came up with a design & basic verbiage for the Adrienne homepage, & sent a screenshot to fresh-faced little Brian, the campaign manager.

Fresh-faced little Brian shot an enthusiastic email back: He loves the direction I'm going in!

I actually think that's true.

I'm pretty confident I can finish the website this weekend.

Which will be a relief since I didn't actually volunteer to do Adrienne's website. In the runaround, I was somehow volunteered.


###

I'm on my second reread of Tracy Daugherty's Larry McMurtry bio. It continues to delight.

One of the most interesting things about McMurtry was that while he was an obsessive literati, he was not necessarily obsessive about writing. In his youth, he thought he was obsessive about writing and produced one perfect novel: The Last Picture Show.

Later on in his life, he carved out the novel most people think of as his masterpiece—Lonesome Dove—from a mess of half-finished manuscripts & screenplays that had accumulated on a series of desks over a span of 20 years or so.

But his true passion was not for writing books; it was for collecting books. McMurtry was a kinda modern-day priest of the Library of Alexandria! And the most interesting parts of his biography are his rare book scouting adventures.

###

About Lonesome Dove itself, McMurtry was ambivalent. He likened it to Gone With the Wind—a very apt analogy, I think.

Now, I happen to think Gone With the Wind is a great American novel!

But I didn't attend a graduate program in English literature at a major university, and McMurtry did. I am a post-modernist: I see absolutely no difference between so-called high culture and so-called low culture. Ovid's Metamorphoses, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills—they're absolutely equivalent to me.

Larry McMurtry was not a post-modernist.

###

Lots of other fascinating things in this book—as, for example: McMurtry had a long relationship with Ken Kesey that started when they were in the Stegner Fellowship together.

About Kesey, McMurtry wrote, "He made it plain that he meant to be the stud-duck... There were about a dozen of us assembled when Ken made his entrance, and he was hardly the only competitive person in the room. Like stoats in the henhouse, we were poised to rend and tear... we were all young males. Ken plopped himself down at the right hand of Mr. Cowley and got set to read what turned out to be the first chapters of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. This was stud-duckery indeed."

Now, I happen to think One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a steaming pile of shit.

Sometimes a Great Notion is better—but, you know. A Look Homeward Angel imitator.

Back in the Jurassic when I was young, Kesey was a mega-cultural icon. Literary excellence was one of many laurels heaped upon his brow.

I do understand how One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest got nominated to its place in the American literary canon: The literary pantheon back then was male-dominated, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the Male Castration Fantasy made print.

But I simply loathe it.

Anyway, Kesey's mental decline is episodically chronicled throughout the McMurtry biography, & I, for one, enjoyed reading about it.
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When I went to visit Black Chicken in the morning, she was brooding on her eggs. When I went to see her in the afternoon, I couldn't lure her out of the henhouse for anything. Was she mourning her companion? Or did she remember the predator that snagged Brown Chicken?

I fed her corn tortillas, & she crouched down to let me pet her.

Back at the casa, I beseeched Molly Mabel Cat: Communicate with the spirit of Brown Chicken! Let me know how she is. Let her know that I miss her.

'Cause that's the way I roll.

###$

Meanwhile, I have been busy, busy, busy.

TaxBwana was not quite as much of a slog as it was on Monday, mainly because my clients were very nice, and I ignored the other tax preparers.

And once I got home, Adrienne's little campaign manager Brian—an impossibly fresh-faced senior at Northeastern University in Boston—wanted to Zoom.

He's written a platform statement, which I will incorporate into Adrienne's website, although that, too, has been a slog—mainly because I'm supposed to be building it in SquareSpace—a platform I know nothing about. Hitherto, my website design experience has been confined primarily to WordPress websites and old-time HTML docs powered by CSS engines.

SquareSpace is one of those out-of-the-box website solutions. It does have customization options, but they are buried four layers down. SquareSpace would prefer you to use one of their AI-powered templates: cookie cutter templates, seeped in ubiquity. My mind rebels against them. I suppose I need to start thinking in terms of utility, not originality: There's no reason at all why Adrienne's website needs to be creative.

And also I need to hunt down a couple of SquareSpace tutorials on YouTube.

###

I'm applying, too, for a summer job as Director or Assistant Director for Gardiner village's summer recreation program, which means hunting down references & customizing a resume from all my volunteer gigs (since I haven't held a real job in going on 15 years now.)

I went through the usual Who would recommend me for anything? self-abasement ritual, but, of course, Marty & Flo (TaxBwana) and Ellen (Vision of Wallkill) are leaping all over themselves to be references, so, you know, I don't quite understand why I put myself through unnecessary anxiety. Some part of me must like anxiety.

I have a fair number of writing clients still, so strictly speaking, I'm not desperate for the $$$.

But times are troubled-er & troubled-er.

Diversification seems like a prudent strategy.
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Strange, strange, strange, strange dreams....

In the middle of the night, I dreamed I'd been just horrible. Acting out in the most destructive, self-centered ways. Till finally the people around me grew tired of it and locked me in a room.

I managed to escape & went to find BB. Railing at the injustice of it all. BB received me cooly. Yes, I could stay in his apartment, if I promised not to misbehave. But no, I could not accompany him to dinner with his three lady companions. I was simply too much of a liability.

Woke up to pee. Staggered back to bed.

And dreamed some more.

I was playing video games on my computer. Three, maybe four video games simultaneously. When I went to check the time widget—I had to be some place—I couldn't find it; in its place were these strange, cryptic hieroglypics. And then I noticed the computer was very hot, so hot that it had, in fact, melted, turned into this great mass of grey rubber. Oddly enough, I wasn't that panicked: I had backed it up not so terribly long ago & of course, my entire diary is online. I would just have to eat the $1,500 or so a new computer would cost.

I ran off to find Ben in the apartment we shared—a variant of one of my first Oakland apartments, the one over the Indendent Driving School that occasionally turned into a dirty video store, only located on upper Flatbush Avenue where my dreams frequently misplace it.

Do you want to break up? I demanded.

No, he didn't want to break up—but he, too, was off to dinner with three ladies and distracted.

###

I think dreams are meaningful, so I'm glad to be remembering mine again.

###

The Larry McMurtry bio continues to be an utter delight. Every paragraph so rich, studded with brilliant language & reflections. McMurtry is what I would describe as a flat writer. Not uninflected! But short on the figurative. Daugherty plugs McMurtry into a mythic landscape I want to wander through.

###

In other news...

On Sunday, Belinda took me out to lunch at a Himalayan restaurant in Beacon as a thank-you for doing her taxes. We had momos:





Food was delicious & Belinda told me stories about her dysfunctional relations.

All relation are dysfunctional, right? And everybody is a relation! So how is it that the people who tell the stories are always the sane ones?

###

Then yesterday, I TaxBwana-ed. Three of my clients were recent emigres from Haiti, and only one spoke English, so I struggled by in my execrable French.

You don't have problems, I thought midway through the first return. These people have problems.

It was a grey & rainy day, which maybe was why I was filled with loathing for my fellow TaxBwanas. One of my rules for getting by is that in any situation I find myself in, I always look around for someone I can conscript into the role of Situational Best Friend—it just makes being in a group a whole lot easier. But there is no one in this group I can conscript: I don't like them, but more importantly, they don't like me. They don't dislike me; they just don't like me.

I suppose it's kinda like the deal with DNA: You share 95% of your DNA with snapping turtles, and yet when you look at snapping turtles, you think: We don't have very much in common!

The other TaxBwanas breathe oxygen. So do I! The other TaxBwanas have opposeable thumbs. Me too! The other TaxBwanas have larynxes they use to make sounds that are equivalent to the sounds I make & that I can interpret.

And yet, when I look at them, I think, We have nothing in common.

And that makes me feel lonely. And sullen.
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Sue was short & plump with a nimbus of curly white hair and what I would characterize as a fairly advanced case of adult ADHD. She is also quite deaf, has only one hearing aid—there was a story behind that; I didn't listen to it—& the hearing aid she does have had rolled beneath her bed so she didn't bring it. So, communication in the flesh was difficult.

On the other hand, she is obviously bright & has numerous close friends. And she made one extremely astute observation when we were discussing electricity bills: "Your monthly bill is that high? But, of course, if you keep your computer on most of the time, that is going to drive up electricity costs."

Very, very true!

And something I have completely overlooked.

Henceforth, I will be turning my computer off when I'm not using it.

###

The house itself turns out to be historic: It is the Benjamin & Maria Hasbrouck House' c. 1798-1800. One of its original fireplaces was actually stripped out and is now on permanent display in the Fine Arts Gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.



The landlord will be taking me on a tour of it at 11:30 a.m.

###

In other news, TaxBwana-ing yesterday was exhausting, plus I forgot to eat before I ran out of the house in the morning—these days, I rarely get hungry & can go days without eating, though I do get lightheaded and shaky.

I was very shaky yesterday plus that stranger-in-a-strange-land vibe was going on all day—like Who are these people? Why am I here? How can I get out?

My first client of the day was absolutely wonderful, an 86-year-old woman in full possession of her mental faculties who seemed to sense something of what was going on with me internally & kept trying to feed me her sandwiches. She literally had 12 1099-Rs and 18 interest statements—all pittance amounts—so I was with her three hours.

"The housing situation is crazy," she said. "If I didn't own my own house, I don't know what I'd do."

And told me the story of her hairdresser who lived in a tiny apartment above her shop except her landlord was now selling the building—what was the hairdresser going to do? Her income was miniscule; she had no children & she didn't drive.

"And that story is being retold a thousand times all over the place," my client sighed.

Maybe I should just kill myself, I thought.

And that thought made me very happy.

Nonexistence!

But, of course, if I killed myself, it would be devestating for my children, and I can't destroy them that way.

I suppose I'm just very, very sad over Annie.
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Just to document how truly awful the citizenry of Wallkill hamlet are...

There is a FB group that everyone in Wallkill reads. I started reading it when Molly Cat decamped last September in case somebody found her.

In addition to lost pet notices, the group is filled with postings like: A strange man was walking down the street & stopped for THREE WHOLE SECONDS in front of my house! I dialed 911!

Yesterday, somebody posted this to the group:



Now it happens the Wallkill postal service is very bad, and that is because all mail to Wallkill is now routed out of Newburgh, which is not even in the same county as Wallkill.

In an effort to be helpful, I posted a link to an article that explained this:



And got the following reply:



WHAT the fucking fuck?

Did I mention Trump? Did the original poster mention Trump?

These Trump cultists are fucking morons.

It is utterly depressing to live in close proximity to them.

If I had a stronger personality, I could just ignore them.

But, you know. I'm porous.

###

In other news, I spent yesterday finishing off six tax returns for friends & family, going to the gym, fielding texts from Sue, and feeling stressed.

I would very much like the fabulous New Paltz house to work out, but there is no way I can jump on it in April despite Sue's feverish promptings, & that's just the way it is.

I will say this for Sue: She has an uncanny ability to read my mind despite never having met me in person, so just at the point where I was wondering, Hmmmm. Finding a new place to live or assisted suicide? Which is the better option?, she texted, Are you sick of all this yet?

Not sick, I texted back. But definitely overwhelmed.

Really, all I want to do is curl up in bed with the kiskas and two pounds of hazelnut truffles and watch endless episodes of The Empress, the German TV show about Empress Elisabeth of Austria.

But that ain't happening any time soon.

###

Shortly, I must scamper off to TaxBwana.

It dawns on me that Elon Musk is very likely to cut the grant that funds TaxBwana. We tax preparers are all volunteers, but there is an IRS grant that pays for our Chromebooks & the software we use.
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Eighty-five-year-old Tom Gallagher (not his real name) looked just like what Robert DeNiro might have looked like had DeNiro spent 50 years as a dairy farmer in upstate New York & then, when he hit 65, given the farm away to his son and started driving a school bus.

Salt of the earth. Really nice guy.

Unremarkable tax return on the surface...

Just a W2 from the school bus company, a social security benefit statement, and $14.62 from the Aren't-You-Glad-You-Live-Here-&-Not-There Federal Credit Union.

Except...

That social security benefit statement was wayyyy whack.

Tom made $20,000 more from social security in 2024 than he did in 2023, which is just not possible, and also, they were taking out an ungodly amount of money for his Medicare benefits—also not possible unless his other income amounted to $400,000 or higher. Which it didn't.

Someone needed to straighten out this mess for him. Before the end of the fiscal year when presumably Elon Musk will be closing all social security offices.

And there was something else.

Tom fished out a bunch of envelopes with lawyers' names on them.

In 2024, Tom paid $15,000 to discharge a debt—

"They told me the Ulster County Sheriff was ready to serve me with papers—"

I frowned. "What was this debt?"

A second mortgage on a house he once owned. Under the terms of the divorce agreement, his X-wife was responsible for paying off that debt. After all, she got the house. But she'd defaulted on the loan in 2010, and since the loan had first been made in the early aughts while they were married, he had cosigned—

I frowned again. "In 2010? But they had no authority to go after you for this. After seven years, creditors can no longer take legal actions to compel you to pay off the debt—"

"But they told me the sheriff was coming after me—"

Business as usual for predatory collection agencies who buy the original debt at half a cent on the dollar and then partner with crooked lawyers.

I was appalled: This was elder abuse, pure & simple.

Not only had these vultures managed to extract $15,000 from this guy—who clearly was not living high off the hog—but in 2026, they would send him a 1099-C for $104,000, the amount remaining on the defaulted mortgage. And since the IRS counts the amount of discharged debts as income, Tom would get taxed on $104,000. Not good.

"You know, I've lived a good life," Tom said suddenly. He smiled at me. "I really have. It's a beautiful world, and I've been very happy in it."

I wanted to weep.

I excused myself from Tom & his tax documents to go & talk to Patty.

Tom lives down the street from Patty. Patty is the very cheerful greeter who checks TaxBwana clients in before they get assigned to the various tax preparers. Tom was here because Patty had chatted TaxBwana up to him.

"Do you know his kids?" I asked.

"Danny? Oh, yeah, sure. Danny is concerned—Tom's fading very fast. But you know, Tom's feisty. Wants to remain independent."

I explained the situation & added, "Somebody's got to report this to the Ulster County Office of the Aging. I don't know whether they can get him his money back, but it's fraud. He's a victim. And somebody really should follow up with social security—"

Patty said she'd do both. And talk to the son.

Patty is very neighborly.

###

My second clients of the day were a retired correctional officer & his wife. As I've written before, prisons are what pass for industry in this part of the world.

Benjamin Buford (not his real name) was a preternaturally young-looking 70-year-old. Nary a wrinkle or a sag, blazing blue eyes, facial expression etched in permanent disgust. Much of that disgust aimed at his wife who was kind of silly & frowsy and looked as though she was 15 years older than her husband—though they were, in fact, the same age.

He left for an appointment after half an hour.

I continued working on their returns & started drawing her out—which is something I like to do. I love narrative! Any narrative! All narrative.

She told me what it was like growing up in the Wallkill Valley & at first, it was quite charming, stories about the cows, the chickens, the apple orchards, the river where frogs harrumphed & lazy fish lolled under rocks. Summer evenings where kids played stickball & a million fireflies flamed, flickered, and flamed again.

But then she began complaining. Things were so different now. Her voice dropped confidentially. So many black people. So many people speaking languages other than English. So many Jews.

She leaned across the table. "But Trump's gonna change all that."

O-kay!!!

Good to know.

I cried in the car all the way home.

This is all too much for me. The center is not holding, and I have no glue.



Once home, I rewatched Anora & liked it just as much the second time.

This time, since I knew the plot, I focused on the thematic underpinnings, what makes this script a brilliant script. The script is online.

There's a heavy—though subtle—mythological overlay.

For example: Ani is Persephone. That becomes obvious once Igor tells Ani that her real name, Anora, means "pomegranate" & "light"—pomegranates are Persephone's fruit, and once Persephone eats six pomegranate seeds, she is forever bound to the underworld where she must spend six months every year.

Another example with mythic resonance: Ani & Igor both love their Russian grandmothers, benign Baba Yagas—or are they benign? We really don't know.

###

The actual rom-com part of Anora's script is not Ani & Vanya at all; it's Ani & Igor, the softspoken hitman who would rather be doing anything in the world other than breaking open the candy jars at the actually very famous Williams Candy on Surf Avenue in Coney Island.

Igor tries to rescue his name!

IGOR
I like Anora.

Ani turns and looks at him with a “WTF” face.

IGOR (CONT'D)
The name. Anora.
(beat)
The name. More than Ani.

She turns back to face forward.

ANI
Says the fuck head named Igor.
(beat)
Fucking... Igor.

IGOR
Igor means warrior. It's a good
name.

ANI
Yeah? Igor means hunchback weirdo
you, fucking clown. Can you shut
the fuck up, please?

—and in the very last part of the film, after Igor gives Ani back the engagement ring, and she initiates sex with him, it is Igor who catalyzes Ani's breakdown by moving to kiss her.

A kiss is a type of emotional intimacy in a way that a fuck only sometimes is. No one else in the film has wanted emotional intimacy from Ani—not the patrons in the club where she dances (desires aptly cataloged in the opening collage), certainly not Vanya whom she marries in an irrational moment because not-so-deep down inside, Ani is a little girl who believes in fairy tales. (Note that she wants to spend her honeymoon at DisneyWorld in a suite designed for Disney princesses.)

Igor sees & understands Ani.

It's clear, though, that Ani wants neither to be seen or understood: She begins to slap and punch Igor and finally collapses on top of him, crying. He holds her while she cries. The crying scene breaks off after about two seconds, and the movie ends with only the sounds of the windshield wipers underlying the credits—an extraordinary bit of film-editing, that one, because in the actual script, there is more dialogue that thankfully didn't find its way into the movie.

Ani reminds me a great deal of June Miller, the protagonist of my Work in Progress.

###

Anyway.

Today, I must Remunerate, and tonight, the Girl Squad is demanding my presence. I blew them off twice last week. It's really hard for me to focus on anything right now other than how quickly the world is falling apart. And that doesn't make for good bar chat.
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The political situation here in the U.S. is so awful—and degenerating incrementally every day—that I'm almost ashamed of paying any attention to my personal life at all. 'Cause what in my mundane little life can possibly compare with the chaos raining down?

Nonetheless, I continue to remain preoccupied with my mundane little life.

Like yesterday, I only did one tax return, but it was a tax return with many moving parts—including the dreaded credit for energy-efficient home upgrades. Morris & Roberta Salt. (Not their real names.) He—a retired union leader; she—a retired doctor who specialized in internal medicine.

Nicest people in the world! Religious Catholics but joyful, nonjudgemental Catholics. Laughed and bantered the entire three hours they were there. Had an excellent marriage, the type of marriage that turned even a banal errand like getting their taxes done into an adventure.

"Can I give you a hug?" Roberta Salt asked after I'd printed out their tax returns. "You are absolutely wonderful. I cannot thank you enough. You're stupendous."

This ringing endorsement should have been enough to wipe the image of a leering, crouching Linda from my brain—only it wasn't because I am far more susceptible to believing the negative things people think about me than the positive, and also, I was going home to an empty house—save for the kiskas—where no excellent husband awaited with whom to plan entertaining adventures.

###

I did go tromping. Five miles on the railtrail. When I got to TaxBwana at 10 am, the day was sunny & bright; by the time I left, it was gloomy & overcast with a northwest breeze blowing but still 55°, so I figured I should take advantage.

I wish I could say the immersion in nature cured my lingering melancholy.

But the trees were bare. There were huge patches of ice on the trail. So no, it didn't.

###

Meanwhile, Trump called Americans "bloated, fat, disgusting" yesterday.

Why this remark is not getting the publicity that Hillary Clinton's ill-timed "basket of deplorables" remark garnered is beyond me.

Trump seems to be pulling the choo-choo whistle on the Dementia Train so far as I can tell, but you're no longer seeing anybody referencing that.

The House of Representatives passed a budget bill yesterday that, when passed by the Senate—and it will be—is gonna shave $880 billion from Medicaid.

This will gut not only the people who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford healthcare & must depend upon the government to provide it for them but also the slightly better-off people who can afford ACA-provided healthcare so long as they get a small government subsidy towards it.

At least 38% of Trump voters depend upon Medicaid. The actual number is probably higher.

Since all sorts of public health safety guardrails are concurrently being dismantled, this is not a good situation. The CDC, the FDA, etc are all organizational eunuchs. That piece of shit RFK Jr wants to make childhood vaccinations voluntary. There is a sizeable tuberculosis outbreak in Missouri and a bigger measles outbreak in Texas. I wonder when polio is gonna make a comeback?

Trump is gonna throw some kind of pathetic tax break at the base. Maybe raise the standard deduction again. The base will get a few hundred dollars more a year! Most of them are too stupid to connect the dots with Medicaid, and for the few who aren't, buyer's remorse will come too late.

In more positive news, RTT made his official announcement via The Ithaca Voice

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Busy, busy, busy.

Also anxious, anxious, anxious.

###

I was doing Mrs. Baldoni's tax return when I snuck a peek at my email. Mrs. Baldoni (not her real name!) is a cheerful 97-year-old widow who was led into the TaxBwana sanctum by a caretaker. She was with it mentally but completely deaf. Her only sources of income were social security and interest on multiple bank accounts.

EZ/Peazy, thought I.

Except that each of the interest statements was for $15,000 or so, and no federal or state income tax payments had been set aside for any of them.

Wow! I thought. Interest is—what? At best, 4% of a total deposit? Who keeps that much cash around in a time of inflation?

I was not about to give financial advice to a 97-year-old woman with $750,000 sitting around in various bank accounts, though. No, no, no, no! She should be giving financial advice to me!

I'd just delivered the bad news about the accumulated tax liability—a hefty sum—which I was relying on the companion to relay to Mrs. Baldoni.

My phone pinged: New email!

I looked: Icky sending me January's electric bill, which, according to Central Hudson, was in excess of $1,000.

WTFUCK???

Interestingly, I did not freak out.

Instead, I completed Mrs. Baldoni's return and then dashed off an email to Icky, typing very clumsily because my phone has an itty-bitty keyboard & my fingers are quite big.

We need to sit down and have a conversation about this, I wrote. If the high electricity bill does not represent a mistake on Central Hudson’s part, then it represents the use of the space heater after you did not order heating oil in a timely manner. I do not want to be penalized for your error – – particularly as next month’s electric bill will also reflect this.

If the bill was accurate, my part of that conversation was going to be, Fuck you, I am taking you to court.

As it turned out, the Central Hudson bill was not accurate: Central Hudson had tacked on 1,000 additional kilowat hours. This was rectified.

But the incident did bring to the forefront how deeply I dislike this guy.

I do like my space! And he's only up here for 10 days out of every month.

Still, I really do need to think about not being here next winter.

Sigh...

###

Other than that... I spent the morning—which I should have devoted to Remuneration—working on Adrienne's campaign. There are a lot of tedious details that need to be CC'd and BC'd to God knows who. It's massively time-consuming.

Also, RTT did get the Working Families Party endorsement, which practically makes him a shoo-in for the Ithaca City Council seat.

We are quite the political little family!

At least, we are not fulminating in futile rage over Trump. We are trying to do something constructive.

And it's Max's birthday today! I could not love him more or be prouder of the person he is and what he's accomplished.



Shortly, I am scampering off for lunch with Belinda, my Trump-loving pal.

And after that, I must get my windshield wipers replaced.

But when I get back from that, I must sit down & make some money.
mallorys_camera: (Default)
In my dream, I wrote four perfect sentences. They just came magically into my head.

Wow! the dream me thought. I better write these down before I forget them.

And I did write them down—in the dream.

But when I awakened, I had totally forgotten them.

###

On Tuesday, I came down with a cold. Non-stop snoozles, runny nose, inability to focus. I gave up on useful work, and napped on & off, and read.

That vanquished the cold but then yesterday, driving home from TaxBwana, I was infected with a melancholy so deep I burst into tears & kept crying on & off the rest of the day.

Don't ask me what that was about because I couldn't tell you.

My two TaxBwana clients hadn't made that much of an emotional dent except that they were both old—the one, a 90-year old woman, sharp as a tack & physically vital, living on the remains of an ancestral apple orchard her family had owned for more that 100 years; the other, a retired NYC cop.

"Wait!" I said to the cop. "You used to commute from New Paltz every day to the Bronx?"

He had!

Maybe the 90-year-old lady had made me sad because maybe I was seeing the beginnings of cognitive decline in her: She was very flustered, and had only brought in pages 7 through 11 of one form that I needed to see Page 1 of. But hey! It was a mistake that many people far younger than her can—and do!—make & having taxes done is nervewracking for most people.

Anyway, I was sad, sad, sad, when I got home though that didn't stop me from doing useful work.

This morning I woke up with a right-sided backache that won't stop me from doing useful work but may stop me from going to the gym.

I can't figure out why my back would ache. On Monday, I actually did heavy exercise designed to phuck up one's back, & I was fine; yesterday, I did nothing. The ways of the aging body are mysterious!

###

It is bitterly, bitterly cold out. Temps barely brush freezing! But bright & sunny, and the angle of the sun is higher in the sky, which means the sun actually sheds some warmth.

The local meadows and pastures are still frozen beneath enormous plates of white ice that shine like polished glass. And likely to remain so for the next few days.

It is an eerie sight:

mallorys_camera: (Default)


So yesterday morning, I trekked down to the car feeling exactly like little Eliza in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, leaping from ice floe to ice floe—

A politically incorrect joke, I realize. Trump’s reelection has brought politically incorrect jokes back into the mainstream. I am a big fan of politically incorrect jokes, so I intend to take full advantage since this may be the only positive thing associated with Trump’s reelection.

But lo & behold! When I started the car, it would not move!

And that’s because the left front tire was frozen into the ice.

I then proceeded to do exactly the wrong thing: Namely, I stepped down hard on the gas pedal—which only succeeded in getting the right front tire stuck in the mud where it, too, promptly froze since temperatures were in the low teens.

So! Go to the Gardiner Library to be a TaxBwana, or stay home & deal with the car? What to do, what to do…

I opted to TaxBwana! Called Steve, the very nice Gardiner TaxBwana site coordinator who very kindly drove out to Wallkill to pick me up.

Had a very busy day. Four clients in five hours, including two prison guards at the Wallkill Correctional Facility, penitentiaries being the only local industry in this part of Ulster County. He was a Vietnam special ops guy who in retirement has become an expert on the types of weapons used in the Spanish-American War; she was an expert quilter.

Then, I did this incredibly irritating woman who just would not shut up—mucho distracting when you’re trying to concentrate on the finer points of entering 1099-R forms into the tax-computing software. She was nattering on & on & on about the horrible drive in from High Falls down ice-covered roads, but I, who had my own automotive perils to deal with, did not want to hear about ice-covered roads.

"Did you grow up around here?" I asked brightly in an attempt to stave off more road horror tales.

"Oh, I did, I did. But I lived most of my adult life in the City."

"And what did you do in the City?"

"Oh, the usual. Worked humiliating jobs for shit wages, and realized my life was going nowhere." She grinned mirthlessly.

###

Around 2 pm, I went outside to call Ellen. "Hey, would you be able to take me shopping tomorrow so I can buy some groceries?"

"Sure," Ellen said, "but what's going on with your car?"

"Oh, it's frozen into the ground. But the temps are supposed to be going back up in 10 days, so I'll be able to drive it again then—"

"Patrizia, don't be ridiculous! You can't go 10 days without a car! Not here."

After listening to my car story, she announced that she was going straight over to my house to dig out my car. "What time are you finished with the tax thingy?"

"Around 3:30—"

"Great! So, I'll be around to give your car a little push if you need it, and you'll be able to start your car."

###

Three-thirty came and went. No end in sight to the poor, the anguished, the taxpayers.

I called Ellen.

"Well, I've got you dug out," she announced cheerfully. "But your two front tires are still pretty frozen into the ice. I don't want to dig too hard around them 'cause I don't want to damage them. But I'm thinking with a little push—"

"You can push my car?" I asked doubtfully. Priuses may look little, but they're deceptively heavy."

"Easy, peasy. I'm gonna go home now to warm up. Call me when you get home."

###

Four o'clock came & went. Then it was 4:30, and the last taxpayer was fixing their John Hancock to the 1040.

I called Ellen.

"Thank you, Ellen, for everything you've done for me today. I am so incredibly grateful! But I am really exhausted, & all I want to do is go to bed and watch Law & Order—"

"Patrizia," she said, "tonight the temp is going down to 7°. And that means the tires are gonna freeze again. The sun was out today even though it was cold, so the car is kinda sitting in a pool of water. I mean, you should do whatever you want to do, of course, but you are a strong lady, and you can do this—"

So, when I got back home, I called Ellen to come back, and together we tackled the car.

It took us another hour and a half of rocking the damn thing, and then chiseling and hammering more ice from the tires.

But finally, we got it to drive.

It is now parked at the head of the driveway, near the house, and shortly, I'm gonna drive to the store and buy kiska feed all on my very own.

"You are my hero!!" I cried, embracing her. "I am so very, very grateful—"

Physical demonstrations of affection make Ellen uncomfortable.

"I got your back, Sis," she said, wiggling backwards out of my arms.

I went inside the house where—thanks to Icky forgetting to order heating oil once again—the thermostat was registering a frigid 34°.

Raced upstairs to the Patrizia-torium to switch on the space heater.

The space heater labored mightily, but its brave efforts weren't able to bring the temperature of the Patrizia-torium much above 56°.

I was so exhausted I had to force myself to eat.

And though I piled on the blankets so I was warm enough, I had a hard time sleeping. PTSD, I suspect.

###

This morning, the heating oil guy showed up early. He had to tromp through 20 yards of solid ice to get to the oil outlet, and then he came inside to bleed the line and start the furnace.

"I don't understand why your landlord can't do what every other homeowner around here does and get a contract so we monitor your oil usage and deliver more oil before it runs out," he said.

"He doesn't get a contract because he is a dick," I explained.

And really, that is all that can be said about that.

###

It Is What It Is.

Life is good except when life is bad, and the good and the bad are wrapped around one another like that Escher print of the hand drawing the hand.

Efficiency

Feb. 13th, 2025 01:18 pm
mallorys_camera: (Default)
The Ulster County TaxBwanas are a lot less together than the Dutchess County TaxBwanas.

In six hours yesterday, I saw exactly two clients—which seemed like a colossal waste of my time.

I suspect the underlying issue is simple: Dutchess County TaxBwana partners with United Way, which has a large promotional outreach network. United Way books all TaxBwana appointments in Dutchess County via its 211 number.

Ulster County TaxBwana partners with no one and books all its own appointments on the site coordinator’s personal phone.

The result?

Very few people in this part of Ulster County, at least, know that TaxBwana exists.

I’d rather be doing taxes in the gritty, impoverished city of Newburgh—until comparatively recently the Murder Capital of the US of Ay!—but Newburgh is in Orange County, and I live in Ulster County, one mile away from the Orange County border, but still—Ulster County. And for some reason, the greater TaxBwana organization frowns on intercounty miscegenation—though next year, I am definitely gonna figure out a way to do it.

###

Meanwhile, New Palz has a small number of urban poor, two of whom I saw yesterday.

Both were women in their 60s, émigrés from the Bronx but born in Puerto Rico. Both were surviving on incomes I would have thought impossible to survive on.

One was soignée—which is really hard to pull off on $17,000 a year; the other wore pajama bottoms and was obviously having a hard time.

I liked them both, and my advice to both was the same: Apply early for your social security benefits! (Neither made enough money from their regular jobs to trigger the earnings test.)

So, that was my good deed for the day.

###

I am trying to wean myself away from obsessively reading news.

There is not a damn thing I can do about any of it, so you know—what exactly is the point?

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