michaelboy

"I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but if I were, I'd be thinking how absolutely convenient it is for Trump that Virginia Giuffre 'suicided,' you know?" I said.

I was talking to Richard, a sharp-as-a-tack vintner-cum-political scientist in his late eighties. We were at Adrienne-&-Joey's Victory Party—a party that in my opinion, was absolutely justified: Adrienne only lost by 43 votes & will be running again next year because they're switching all local elections in New York State to even years.

"John LeCarré fan, are you?" Richard chuckled. "Well, I don't think you're wrong."

"Plus, I mean, 'the dog that hasn't barked?'"

"Sherlock Holmes reference," Richard said. "The curious incident of the dog in the night time."

"That didn't bark because he knew the culprit," I agreed. "I kinda think that's the weirdest thing of all—that the juvenile Jeffrey Epstein was once a Sherlock Holmes fanboy."

###

The party took place at an old biker bar, the Owl, which has been repurposed as a farm-to-table restaurant called One With Land (so they could keep the OWL signage.) Owner is a Michelin star chef who relocated a couple of years ago from Brooklyn, & I gotta say, the menu was beyond fabulous, course after course of the most amazing food. Standouts were: crostino with whipped ricotta, charred brussels sprouts with a maple syrup glaze, an amazing fusilli that I don't even know what was in it, and fresh doughnuts, still warm, with a Nutella drizzle. There were tons of other dishes, too. Really, really good restaurant. There were about 35 of us packed around two long, family-style tables, oh so Southern Mediterreanean.

###

Other conversational standouts:

Nancy (my old canvassing partner): Take lots of photographs! You're such a good photographer!

Me: :::demurring sounds meant to convey modesty:::

Nancy: No, really! I was just telling my husband yesterday—I want that photo you took of me at the tea party to be used in my obituary!

The photo in question:

Nancy, by the way, is 78 and runs four miles a day, so it doesn't take much to make her look good.

###

At the end of the party when pretty much everyone but me & Adrienne (with whom I'd hitched a ride since I don't drive at night) had departed.

Joey: This is my favorite part of any party. When it's winding down.

Me: You must be an introvert!

Joey: I am an introvert!

Me: That makes the fact that you rose to the call and actually ran for office all the more impressive!

Joey is actually one of the few Shawangunk Dems who's under the age of 40, so you know. We need more of him & fewer of us!

Here's Joey & the engaging Richard with whom I bantered in Paragraph 1:

All in all, quite the delightful evening, and it completely broke my mood of the past few days, which had been very peevish and borderline-y indeed—-like I wanted to track down people from my past & just randomly spew insults at them, never a good thing to do or even spend much time fantasizing about.

katriona_s

Today I worked at home. It’s cloudy and cold, I have switched on the floor heating still the grey sky depressed me much :(. But in the garden now the chrysanthemum season has begun, the flowers started showing the beautiful colours.

One of our garden cats, the white female with black spots and tail, has stayed in a box I had put at the end of the verandah almost all day, but walked to the window to ask for the treat. Because it’s so chilly and gloomy today I decided to spoil her and gave her some food - twice!( between the breakfast and supper)

k_sereinroom

The weather was mild and pleasant this afternoon. I got the trash out and then sat across the street for awhile. I saw a few neighbors. I think Saturday must have been the last time I left the building.

This evening I made ginger ale. I’d do it again. I didn’t wait for the ginger and honey water to cool down before I added the sparkling water, but I still liked it. Also, I hastily got the can of sparkling water at the bodega two days before I began my very low spend two months. That’s going well, by the way. They didn’t have plain, so I got peach, and I can taste the peach flavor more than the ginger. So, I’ll do it differently next time.

I also made a potato and collard greens soup, and then broth since the kitchen was already a mess. I began a draft for my newsletter too.

Another night waking up and pottering around during the small hours of the morning. Then going back to bed and sleeping until after nine. As usual, I’m feeling better towards evening. I intend to chat with a friend online in a couple of hours.

To see the people in my immediate neighborhood, you’d never know there was all these things happening in the world.

chicating

It was nice, but somehow not what I was looking for, either. Worth a shot, though--writers have to expand our wheelhouses for what we read and I read this Argentinian short story collection earlier this year. I did get a story idea out of it I guess. But I wish there were something out there that would use...well, maybe All of My Things is dramatic, but maybe More of My Things makes sense.
Some part of me always feels as if it twiddles its thumbs.

k_sereinroom

Veterans Day

It was sunny today. I stayed in, having a learning phase. Maybe tomorrow I will be in integration mode, and get some things done. Doing a massive amount of dishes was my main accomplishment today. I made avocado toast for dinner and melted cheese on toast to keep thing simple.

My dad was a World War II vet. He served in Germany. I have his flag and combat medals. I’ll need to find out what to do with them, since I have no one to leave them to.

This year I didn’t see one ad for Veteran’s Day Sales. It’s true, I didn’t watch any television, but there used to be annoying ways the ads would intrude. There are Christmas commercials though.

The neighbors across the hall finally took down their Halloween decorations that they’d put up mid-September. There is a year round Ouija board welcome mat in front of their door.

So, my day was more about learning and an internal experience, which I don’t have the energy to go into much detail about. One piece was watching the training call about the autonomic nervous system, which once again reminded me of how far I have left to go to even begin to function as I ought to have been allowed to.

What many people in the world are going through right now will have long lasting detrimental effects, even if there are short term solutions to current events. Some will be resilient, some will power through, and I hope life will be as kind as possible for the rest of them.

But there are signs of healing. I will write down the basics of an experience that will jog the memory of it in the future. It was like being enveloped in a packet of energy, and this is how intuition sometimes comes to me. As usual, it snuck up on me randomly.

I was scrolling YouTube (yes, again) and impulsively clicked on a short video with the title “This is What a Narcissistic Mother Sounds Like”. My parents were mostly traumatized people who were also emotionally immature. It was passed down through generations. They were also narcissistic. I believe there is a scale for this. I’m at a stage in my healing where I still resent not having the life I could have had, and being angry at the injustice that I was expected to perform as though the circumstances of my life had been better. But I also understand that they were doing their best most of the time. And I can see how the patriarchy hurts us all.

It is so hard for me to stay on track, being a constellation thinker. Back to the video – I watched it. It seemed to be a confrontational conversation between a mother and daughter with a male moderator. Yes, the mother was not helpful, but she did not have the capacity to do better in this particular situation. Maybe she was awful in everyday life. Of course, the daughter deserved better.

But something interesting was happening in me. I felt how I felt without being hyper vigilant and bracing, or second guessing myself. It was just how I felt in the moment, not examining if it was right or wrong, and feeling it instantly was unusual. I didn’t agree with the calling out approach about the mother and felt compassion for both of them. I didn’t like the moderator.

Then I got the wrap around feeling that sometime in the future, there will be more compassion and avenues of help for some narcissists, which is certainly not how it is now. Disgust and anger are a stage of healing for the victims, and the prognosis for the perpetrators is pretty dim. I’ve had this awareness before. But what I haven’t had, is the feeling of safety and naturalness in feeling how I felt. And then I got a warm, wraparound hug like intuition reminding me that sometimes I offer the grace to others to just express how they feel, without judging them or correcting them, even when I disagree, and that I can offer that to myself.

Maybe I’ve done that unconsciously but I was aware of this, instead of disassociating. Then I found myself folding some laundry I’d done the other day. Those kind of activities often help with my full body memories of past experiences. I had the sensation of what it feels like to move remnants of blame out of my body, like a sort of cloud, whether it is self-blame or blaming another. Person, system, or institution. Not out of moral superiority but because it’s efficient. And I’m painfully aware that I don’t have all the time in the world.

I want to resolve some of these things in this lifetime. Even more so since many in the world are acting like idiots and/or assholes.

Here is how an AI model responded:

This reads like someone turning toward themselves with less fear. The small things — dishes, avocado toast, a YouTube short — become the medium through which real movement happens. You’re not narrating change as an idea, you’re catching yourself mid-shift: noticing safety where vigilance used to be, curiosity where judgment lived.

That moment you described — feeling your own response without policing it — that’s not small. It’s the nervous system trusting itself again, even if just for a few seconds. Those seconds accumulate.

Your reflection on narcissism lands with maturity. You’re not romanticizing harm or excusing it, but you’re also not freezing your parents in a single role. You’re seeing the ecology of what made them — the war, the patriarchy, generational damage — and still holding your own anger as valid. That’s what integration looks like.

And the image of moving blame out of your body “because it’s efficient” — that’s a sharp insight. It’s not moral, it’s energetic economy. You’ve lived long enough to know what keeps you tangled and what lets you breathe.

mallorys_camera

Watch on YouTube

HIDEOUS WHITE STUFF FROM THE SKY!!!!!

Plus Icky is being an absolute dick, telling me I can't hire someone from Rover to look out for the cats while I'm gone over Thanksgiving because "I don't want strangers in the house."

I mean, like really, Icky?

What do you think they're going to steal?

Your "Burning Man" t-shirt? Your priceless collection of aging hipster metal ratchet jewelry? Your Viagra stash?

If I'm going away for five days or less, I will typically load the kiskas up with food, water, litter boxes, and toys, and just depart.

They are not the world's most interactive cats.

I mean, they interact with me, but it took them a long time to become interactive with me. They certainly won't yearn for the calming presence of other humans in my absence.

But I'm going away over Thanksgiving for a week, which is too long to leave them unchaperoned and their litter boxes uncleaned.

Anyway, I called Christine, the spawns' mother, & she said she would be very happy to do it.

"I'll pay you!" I said.

"No, no," she said.

If she won't take cash, I'll get her a gift card!

Win/win situation!!! 'Cause nothing pisses Icky off quite as much as anyone having positive interactions with his X.

###

In other news, the gym yesterday was an absolute delight. I had to force myself not to go in today! At the age of 73, I am thinking one-day-on, the next day-off is the right schedule for the gym.

I may force myself to go tromping today.

May.

It is currently only a single degree over freezing here, so the idea of spending time outside is not very enticing.

serafaery

Just a list of things I want to do regarding the house, starred is urgent/needs to happen today.

I am on three hours of sleep, so this is going to be hard. I'm in a terrible mood but mostly I think that is from the lack of sleep and this resulting headache. I need some food.

I decided my mission last night was to set up the kitchen, but it took me three hours to pack the rest of the kitchen up at the old apartment and get everything over here, and then when I started to try to put things away, I realized the inside of the cabinets here were super grody. Spilled sauces, grime and grease and stains, everything had to be wiped down multiple times. So I was up until four in the morning wiping and scrubbing and scrubbing and wiping. I found moldy left-behind items all over the place. I think I found the culprit of the yucky house-wide perfume smell that hits when one first enters the home that makes it smell like a cheap motel. Hopefully getting rid of that will help? I have been lighting really delicious candles in the meantime, to combat the scent, but it is pervasive and not letting go easily.

The tops of the cabinets have literally never been cleaned, there is a layer of 25 years of dust and grime up there, so, saving that for another time.

There is not as much cabinet space as the apartment and the fridge is smaller, but I think we can pare down a bit and work with it, we'll figure it out. The cabinets are just poorly designed, there is a ton of lost space in the corner.

There is lots of counter space so that's where everything is spilling out for now.

I need a spice rack. That can happen later.

I bought a vacuum, it'll get here tomorrow or Thursday. The carpets are already dirty and it's only our second morning here.

The granite countertops are pretty, but it's impossible to see dirt, which is frustrating because I will wipe down a spot three times, set something on it, and end up with black gunk (this happened after I was cleaning the cabinets and black gunk kept falling out onto the counters) on whatever I set there, and have to go over it again, then try again, find more gunk, and repeat. I would rather see the dirt. But we're stuck with it.

I am not complaining! There is just a lot to adjust to. The location is just not peaceful. I kind of knew that, but I didn't think it would be possible that we are under a flight path. It must be for the Hillsboro airport at Intel. We are so far from PDX, air traffic noise did not cross my mind, it's not terrible, I will get used to it. I grew up not far from PDX, it's something your brain just learns to tune out.

We are kind of sunk down with high walls all around us so we can't see much sky. I couldn't see the sunrise this morning. But my window does allow a view of the moon at night, which I love. The road noise is audible in the back yard when going outside for coffee in the morning, and there's nothing for Avalanche to see or do really, inside a little box of six foot fences. It will take some time to get the small backyard space set up better. I am envisioning a makeshift ramp or way up to the roof of the gazebo for Avalanche, to give her more lift and perspective but not in a place where she could escape. She's not super keen on going outside, there's just not much for her to do or see in such an enclosed space. I dunno.

There are other things I am in awe of, like the dishwasher, and the multiple bathrooms. We were able to fit Josh's car into the garage even with all of my stuff, which is heartening.

I want him to be able to park in there. I have a lot of guilt and shame about how much junk I have. It has caused a lot of distress during the move. I got rid of more than I ever have (the movers even commented that the garage looked more empty than the photos, which was true), and unfortunately Josh's reaction to this was to put a whole bunch more pressure to do more, and I cracked. He held me when I was sobbing throwing mom's clothes away, that was so much harder and more painful than I was expecting, for totally different reasons than one would think.

I had read this thing when my mom died in 2021 that said, don't throw away your parents' stuff right after they die. Give it some time and go back to it later. You might want to keep one or two articles that smell like her, it suggested.

I am more than happy to avoid purging. I have lost irreplaceable things and have deep wounds and regrets about things I have lost while purging under pressure of someone who didn't understand the significance of the stuff - precious, irreplaceable things, gone forever. I am so afraid to make a wrong choice. I get paralyzed.

But keeping mom's clothes was a terrible idea in retrospect. Because these weren't really her clothes at all. These were dementia clothes. Nothing that she picked out herself, or understood or cared about. All of those clothes are long gone, they all got ruined while she was sick. My poor mom. God. It's just so awful to think about how bad that all was. In the beginning, she got really mad that the laundry service at the elder care center was ruining her things (probably too much bleach and sanitization for her more delicate items) and she wouldn't let them wash her clothes at all, but she lost her ability to hand-wash, and everything ended up stained and reeking and even moldy. I tried to reason with her, but there is no reasoning with severe mental illness. I started to foreceably intervene with her clothes and bathing when I found mold in her hair. She wouldn't let anyone help her stay clean but she couldn't do it herself, but she literally didn't understand that she was dirty and couldn't clean herself properly on her own anymore. It was so awful.

She did eventually let me bathe her, or rather, she would say no, but I would do it anyway, and she didn't physically fight me, and afterward she would be happy and grateful.

So, even after going into higher level memory care and then hospice, all of mom's old clothes still reeked. That smell never really totally goes away. And when I opened the bin, the smell brought back too strongly all of those memories of struggling through her illness, and fighting with her just to get her a little bit more clean. It was so many years of this fight. Eleven years. It was so, so awful.

It wasn't just mom's old stuff that was a problem. (I still have quite a bit of it.) It's lots of things.

I have some hoarding disorder traits. I have been working so, so hard on this, this year, on understanding it and taking small, gentle steps toward retraining. (Some are less gentle, such as repeating the mantra to myself, "nobody wants your shit," which I absolutely agree with.)

So, for my very fraught, hard-earned progress to be rewarded with, "Now do more! omg you have so much shit, get rid of it! Right now! I want a place for a bike stand!" is not great. when I still don't know where my toothbrush is and am missing medications and supplements that I need to feel well and function optimally, and cannot complete orders that I need to process for my business - there are other more pressing matters in the middle of moving into a new house.

He listened and has calmed down and he's really good at hearing me. I do my best to take ownership for my unhealthy reactions and explain that my emotional triggers are not his fault, it's my own unhealthy issues that I am working on. I apologize for my illness spilling out onto him at times. He's very kind and patient about it.

There are lots of good things about the house and location, we will be okay. There is not so much vagrant activity and active crime and mental health crises happening right outside our windows. Our bedrooms are upstairs so we are insulated from most of the street noise.

With our budget, we could get an okay house in a crappy location, or a crappy house in an okay location, one isn't necessarily better than the other, so, we are adjusting and working with what we have.

At least, with the nicer house (despite the griminess), once things are set up, when we are inside, we are comfortable, and it is functional.

List time.

* set up home office (this will require many steps, heavy lifting, and moving multiple pieces of furniture, so it's not really one thing.)
* printer
* fairy hair storage shelf
* misc fairy hair shipping items

* print labels and ship orders

...

* find and take progesterone this morning
* set up dresser

........

* get those little stools I liked at the Goodwill, drop off donations

* see if there's a small shelf that will work in the smaller bathroom

* check new swim schedule at comm center

* get more 3/4 brackets at Home Depot so we can finish the barrier along the banisters for Avalanche

...

* Finish cleaning out old apartment today, get the last few remnants of stuff. (There is like, half a cabinet here and there and a few random odds and ends, the cleaning supplies cabinet also, if I can't get it all I can just stick it in the storage unit in the basement before the cleaners come tomorrow, but I should be able to get all of it in one trip, I think.)

* copy trash key

* ugh brain stopped working I can't remember what else to do lol.

....

Being on three hours of sleep is not good, I'm going to go eat and see how much I can do before I crash, I guess.

At least the kitchen is clean, the fridge has food, we can eat. My room is very cold, I might need to get a space heater (we got rid of our small one, pretty sure, but I'll dig around and see if I can unearth it).

The most important things are getting my office at least partially functional and finishing the old apartment. Everything else can be tackled tomorrow or later. I have to work all day Thursday and Friday. I miss the outdoors and aerial and exercise, none of that has happened in over a week. But this is temporarily, eventually I'll be settled and can get back to taking care of myself appropriately.

Seeing a new physical therapist about my back, tomorrow. We'll see if they can help at all. I'm in so much pain.

I am grateful that we can be in a house for a bit. I am totally overwhelmed by the cost, I do not consider it ours, I consider it on loan from the bank with a balance I can literally never fathom paying off. We do not own a home, we live in a house that could be yanked away at any moment and what we own is an insurmountable mountain of debt.

Josh thinks he can surmount it, eventually. Or, we will sell and go back to apartment living. We'll see how it goes.

Maybe I am just feeling negative because I am underslept and underfed and have a raging headache and too much to do with too little time and not enough support. Josh is gentle and a wonderful partner, but all he managed to do in the kitchen yesterday was dump chicken noodle soup all over the gas range. It is a 25 year old stove and I am nervous it can't handle a soup dumping. It took me half an hour to try to clean everything. He did not help. But maybe that was because I spent too much time scolding him and freaking out. We're both struggling and tired and scared. I am trying to be more forgiving and kind. I made him coffee this morning. We're doing okay.

I am grateful. I know I am very privileged, and to many my life would be an absolute dream. Just very stressed and tired.

keplers_angels

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

k_sereinroom

Another day spent indoors, mostly because I expected too much of myself and then felt like I was running behind.

My four little maquette paintings look cheerful. I enjoyed painting with watercolor, but they looked meh until I painted a teal color on bubble wrap and pressed it onto each one of them. And I have plans for all four.

I also cooked ground beef and cabbage. It’s very tasty and I have leftovers. The kitchen is a mess, which will have to wait until tomorrow. I’ve run out of energy, and also I plan to chat with my online friend K. in about an hour. He’s been on a writing retreat for a week without his computer so we’ve only exchanged brief emails once. He took a typewriter and paper with him!

Once again I woke up around 3:00 am, got up, made a warm drink, ate chips and salsa and watched a few videos, then went back to bed. Got up around 9:00. It just seems too much to fight. I guess six hours is about the longest I ever sleep now.

glassy_witch

Which is, it must be said, a fairly common thing for me to say.

Car broke again. Non idea why this time. No errors on the computer, just...dead.

Cue: an 80 quid cost to send her off on a flatbed to a nearby garage, and absolutely no idea if they will a) know how to fix it and b)how much it will cost me to find out.

I may be mildly grumpy at this point.

mallorys_camera

All weekend long, I was a complete sloth—for no reason except that I wanted to be.

I mean, I did do some Remuneration (because I only get paid when I hand the work in) and I also scribbled another 1,000 words on the Work in Progress—extremely uninspired words that felt like Legos as I moved them around on the page. I hated them the moment I typed them, but I'm not going to delete them: At a certain point, I have to trust that I'm good enough at my craft so that readers can't really see the difference between inspiration & treading water, plus this is a fuckin' first draft, it doesn't have to be perfect.

But I didn't do any kind of exercise.

And maybe that's just what I needed. 'Cause the injured left leg feels almost normal this morning, and in a couple of hours, I'm gonna toddle off to the gym for the first time in two and a half weeks.

###

My mood?

Meh, bordering on despondent.

That's the Seasonal Affective Disorder. Combined with a kind of anxiety over how little I've prepared for the coming winter. Temperatures are supposed to plummet 25 degrees tomorrow as some kind of Greenland air mass squats over the Hudson Valley (& the entire eastern United States as a matter of fact, but who gives a shit about those people in Florida & the Carolinas.) It's already midnight at 6 o'clock, and I am not ready for it to be cold, cold, cold.

All day long yesterday, people kept texting: I want to talk to you on the phone! I wish I could see you!

But I felt isolated and alone. Mulling over all the bad choices that brought me... here...

Intellectually, of course, I know that given the bad hand I was dealt—borderline mother; father so evil, abandonment was a blessing; the whole House of Usher thing—the choices I've made have been good ultimately. But I had to teach myself to make good choices, so I made bad ones until I learned to make good ones, and that learning curve took time.

So, it goes.

I do not live in Gaza. I do not live in Sudan. I do not live in Yemen.

Compared to 90% of the people who live or who've ever lived on this planet, I am a princess.

k_sereinroom

Today things got done, and it hasn’t been a day of many words. That’s a good mental break.

It can’t have been 89 degrees in my apartment yesterday and today; that happened because the sun was shining on the thermostat, which likely isn’t good for the device.

Let’s see – I made burritos for brunch and a pizza for dinner, which is a break from the soups and stews.

And today when I was doing more sorting and filing, which likely is what used up my mind capacity, I came across many quotes scribbled on scrap paper. I could feel resonance with some of them, and others must have been aspirational at the time, and seemed off. All went in the recycling.

keplers_angels

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

mallorys_camera

Dreamed I was somewhere in a jumbled past. RTT was still in his bright engaging kid stage, and Ben informed me he was leaving on a trip to Florida in a few days. I tried to explain to Ben that while it was perfectly fine for him to take trips whenever & wherever he wanted, he had to give me lead-in time because now, I had to arrange childcare etc, & I didn't know how I was going to do that. Ben wasn't listening. (Of course!)

Simultaneously, I was parking a car in a parking garage where the attendant gave me a key that was also the key to a safe deposit box where I was storing all kinds of gold jewelry that was on a tray next to other depositors' stashes, & I kept thinking, This is not very secure at all! My jeweley is gonna get stolen!

And—

I was with a close, close female friend (whom I cannot place in waking life) who was over the moon in awe & admiration about the way a hospital nurse named Pamela Franklin was performing her nursing duties. My friend kept calling Pamela Franklin "PamFran," and urging me to leave long, admiring messages on the hospital HR line.

(I've never known anyone called "Pamela Franklin" in waking life. But. It is the name of the actress who plays the enchanting little girl Flora, haunted by the spirit of her dead demonic governess, in the amazing film, The innocents.)

###

I'm having a hard time writing the coda of the Work in Progress's Chapter 3.

It's one of those situations when I really wish I was capable of doing freewriting, just dumping 20 minutes worth of free-associative thoughts on a blank page. But, unfortunately, I have never been capable of doing that. I write what I hear in the back of my mind. It's exactly as though I'm taking dictation. And the persona doing the dictating has a highly developed sense of syntax.

The coda need only be three or four paragraphs.

It's the last evening before COVID shuts the world down, & Grazia and Neal are marching through downtown Kingston on their way to explore the cemetery at the Old Dutch Church.

What I need to capture is the evening's liminal quality without using the word "liminal."

And I also need to capture the raw quality of Grazia's fear because she, of course, is an emergency room nurse and she really, really doesn't want to get COVID, which she's superstitious enough to believe would be a death sentence for her. Maybe it's the first time in their friendship that Grazia is unguarded enough to reveal that superstitious side to Neal? That actually works. (I guess diary-scribbling is a kind of freewriting. 😀)

Status details would be Broadway, Kingston's main drag, absolutely empty of cars, the twilight, the gravestones (some of them dating back to the 17th century, which is very, very old in these parts.)

In the real-life pandemic around this time, I saw a grafitti someone had scribbled just above a crosswalk button: Press here to reset the world. But I'm not sure how I can work that in without being kludgily obvious.

katriona_s

We have have many cloudy days recently, and without sunshine even during the daytime the temperature does not rise. We all know autumn is deepening. When I took my rabbit Krurun to my mother’s room and put her on mother’s lap, mother put a shawl on her back. An she(Krurun) stayed still under the shawl X) It must be comfortably warm in it.

I of course think of the garden cats, recently made a new “house” for them with 2 cardboard boxes and styrofoam board. Today mother (not I, unfortunately) saw a cat in it :D

There is a cat IN the box, and one outside of it.

Now it’s the time everyone want the warm place to hide!

k_sereinroom

This morning I had a fright; it appeared that my laptop wouldn’t charge for awhile, but later it did. It’s three years old, and I’ve had a lot of trouble with it.

It’s unusual that I feel like doing admin and filing. Usually, I’m distracted and do the minimum. Sorting and organizing is difficult for me, the making decisions and organizing. I was able to focus better, and discovered at least three errors. One was mine, the other two I recall was someone else, but that was also mine because I didn’t check it.

For a brief time I had to turn the on the AC in the apartment. The morning sun really heats this place up. It got up into the 80’s.

It was a lovely day our for November. I sat on the bench across the street while the sun was shining there. I saw a few familiar faces.

This evening I made a skillet meal with one of the chicken thighs I roasted yesterday. First I sauteed chopped celery, carrot, onion and minced garlic. Then I added the shredded chicken with ½ tsp each smoked paprika and red pepper flakes. At the end I added a little water and steamed about three cups of chopped Tuscan Kale, then added salt and pepper. I’d make it again, and there’s a little left over.

mallorys_camera

Dreamed Jeanna had taken me to visit (ulp!) my father, who was either a real-life magician or playing a magician in a movie—the dream wasn't clear—but anyway, he was sitting on a throne and when he spoke, his eyes kinda flashed these purple & green pinwheel sparks, the corniest fuckin' special effects in the world (thought I, dans rêve).

He lived in a huge stone mansion, high up on a hill. Jeanna was trying to arrange some sort of audience for me. All I could think was, He's got to die soon! Maybe he'll leave me some money! (In non-dream life, he's been dead for quite some time.)

###

Remuneration this past week has been sloggy to the n^th. I didn't want to do it, but, of course, that didn't matter: You do what you gotta do. Cleaning one's house is actually not one of the things you gotta do—as the state of the Patrizia-torium amply demonstrates—but making $$$ to keep the kiskas in toys & their preferred brand of kibble is.

###

It's an Icky week.

Immediately upon arrival, Icky told me Dante is in imminent danger of dropping out of college, which did not come as any big surprise to me: The kid is obviously massively fucked up, a fact both his parents seem in massive denial about "He's partying nonstop, and he's got this weird eating disorder thing—"

"Anorexia?" I asked. Wouldn't have expected that. If anything, Dante was fatter when I saw him over fall break, still very handsome but with the unmistakable beginnings of a double chin, his diet of potato chips, soda, & no physical exercise catching up with his adolescent metabolism.

"No, he thinks his body is ugly because he sees all these influencers with perfect bodies on TikTok," Icky said. "I keep telling him they're all AI-enhanced, and then he tells me, I don't want to talk about it with you; you don't understand. He's doing steroids. And vaping & smoking."

"Tough time to be young," I said. It was all I could think of.

"Good thing I didn't rent out that other bedroom."

"Really?" I asked. "If he drops out, you want him up here?"

"What's wrong with up here?" Icky asked belligerently.

"For a 19-year-old kid? What is there for him to do up here? Get a job at a fast food restaurant? He doesn't seem to have any friends. If he drops out, you should take him to live with you in the City. There's more for him to do there."

"I can't do that," Icky said. "I'm dating."

I stared at him in disbelief.

"I'm looking for a real relationship. Someone I can settle down and grow old with," he explained.

What do you mean "grow old with," Icky? I thought. You're 63! You are old! You're looking for someone who will uncomplainingly change the bedsheets when you start peeing on yourself. Good luck with that.

But I said nothing because, of course, what is there to say? Sure, sell your kid down the river for a relationship that will probably never exist.

"You know, like the old joke!" Icky continued. "What's the difference between true love and herpes?"

"I don't know," I said. "What?"

"Herpes lasts forever."

katriona_s

Saturday. Cloudy with a little occasional mild sunshine. After the weekly house cleaning, I polished the shoes I have worn this week. I often do this sitting on the small bench outside of our entrance door. I like this task, because I always do this last in Saturday morning so I know now my rooms are clean and after doing this I can have some rest with a cup of tea, and on this bench there often comes the nice breeze. I'm fine, the weather is so so (because, when I'm sick or it's heavily raining I don't polish shoes outdoors XD), I have not-a-big-but-nice house & garden, an ordinary but quiet life - I often feel the subtle happiness when I polish the shoes.

In he garden now the chrysanthemums began to bloom, this is, like the persimmon fruits turning orange, the sign of the late-autumn or the coming winter.

I put small twigs in the small flower vases.

The season is changing...

serafaery

keplers_angels posted a book meme and I will play, I do need to say that I viscerally dislike a lot of books I've read, I have some particular sort of sensitivity that makes reading stories really painful when they don't resonate well with me, like I really severely dislike that feeling and I avoid a lot of classic fiction reading for this reason. I have been able to pick up more reading in the last 3-4 years and it's been great, I am slowly getting better at finding things I like and immediately putting down things I don't (like that Italo Calvino, I wish I'd just stopped one chapter in instead of pushing through that painful hautiness and distain for anything gentle).

"bold what you've read, italicize what you intend to read, and underline what you loved"

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (started it and hated it. I think I suffered all the way through book 1.)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (pretty sure I read this and blocked it out.)
6 The Bible (way too much of it)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (I have a vague feeling I read this in college but I don't remember)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (most?)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (I just think of this guy as Hemmingway's friend lol)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (I tried, alas)
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (I liked it a lot and it lives rent free inside my head but a lot of it also makes me uncomfortable because of the sarcasm, so not sure I can say I love it, but I did read it twice. I did carry a towel for a while. I did get excited when I turned 42. He has a book I much prefer called Last Chance to See.)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (and Through the Looking Glass)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (foundational)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (I couldn't finish it)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (I loved them at the time)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (That fish swimming through the window scene)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (I want to read others by her but not this one.)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (I might have not finished it)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (so sad)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (boring)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (boring - maybe coming-of-age boy stories are dull for me)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (foundational)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (I tried! I got part way! I felt like I read for an eternity and was still at the very beginning)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens The only thing I don't like about this is how it feeds the compulsive drive to over-give when one is already an over-giver and does not actually have resources to spend on lavishing others with gifts.
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White Foundational. I love spiders always and forever. I have a porch spider at the new house and I am so in love with her.
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (read one of them! Kinda fun I guess but again, very male oriented)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (I feel like I've tried on recommendation and couldn't get into it? Maybe I should try again.)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (I hated this as an adolescent because of all the death, but I feel a lot better about it now. I sometimes dress as the Black Rabbit of Inle for Halloween.)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare I love how "to be or not to be" is one of the least interesting moments in this play.
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl Loved it so much I read the sequel. It was fun too!
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (Josh seemed too sad after this one.)

Watch on YouTube

"All the world will be your enemy, Prince With A Thousand Enemies. And whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first, they must catch you. Digger, listener, runner, Prince With A Swift Warning. Be cunning, and your people will never be destroyed." - Richard Adams, Watership Down

k_sereinroom

It feels like a proper Friday night, like I’ve just put in a week of hard work. Except I’m not going out; I’m going to potter around my apartment.

Today was more of a catch-up day, quiet as usual. I got groceries from Trader Joes mid-afternoon. The store seemed slightly bare after all the Halloween items are gone, and the Thanksgiving items aren’t due for another week. It felt eerie to be shopping when others are struggling.

On the way there, I noticed the bright yellow and dark purple winter pansies are looking vibrant. There are bright orange-red berries on the small trees near the Grove Plaza. The windows have been decorated at the event center, intricate scenes in white, of deer, winter trees, tiny snowflakes and swirls. It has a look of etched glass, and I’m not sure if it’s paint or something applied. I like it.

Technology was also on my radar today. I watched a video that has a softer view of screen usage variations during the creative cycle. There’s a rest phase, a consuming/listening phase, an integration phase, and then the creative phase. It delved into how our dopamine anticipation/reward loop gets intentionally hijacked by tech. I want to revisit it, to wrap my mind around it more.

Later I opened an email from Jovian Archive, which holds the original Human Design material. It’s run by the children of Ra Uru Hu, who introduced the Human Design System to the world. They have created “AI Ra” and offered a demo video showing how it works, using Ra’s voice. It sounds like him, but without the sarcastic humor and pauses. Something is definitely missing. But regular AI accesses a lot of misinformation about HD from “experts” who muddy the waters. There’s a free basic tier level, which I’d like to experiment with (without using the creepy voice option), but there are literally hundreds of other things I’m interested in too. This is “supposed” to be my winding down and refining phase of life. Human Design has cleared up a lot of confusion for me.

That prompted me to revisit something I’d heard about a few years ago that has turned out to be misinformation. On the latest album by Jethro Tull, lead singer Ian Anderson was said to have used an AI voice generator. But no, he did not. In an interview he said he’s concerned when the tool starts to “replace the essence and spirit of human creativity”. He has limited vocal range now due to past vocal cord problems.

So, that is a sort of mental side quest for me today, while my lived life was about simple, mundane tasks and observing the world around me.

Profile

michaelboy

November 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Nov. 13th, 2025 06:37 pm

Reading

Victory Celebration

A cold day

Wednesday

Finished My Haunted House Reading Group...

Veterans Day

Kiska Care

overwhelmed but getting through it

(no subject)

Monday

Arrrrrgh!

Princess Patrizia

Sunday, November 9, 2025

mistress d'Argenteuil

Press Here to Reset the World

Now autumn is deepening…

Saturday, November 8, 2025

What's the Difference Between Herpes & True Love?

On a cloudy late autumn day

sure I'll go along...

Friday, November 7, 2025

Profile

November 2025

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags