Harlem afternoon

I passed that mural in Harlem. My daughter and I gaped at the particular color of blue. In this concrete city, it reminds me of the Caribbean Sea.

This book I'm writing is a bear. I am now at 108,000 words and still going. As I had predicted, my subject remembered lots of additional stories and details when she read the first draft, and I've added those, and now my editor wants me to go deeper into some of the legislative stuff, which I fear could be deadly boring but I am endeavoring with all I am to make it not so. I'm so immersed. I get up every morning with a drive to get to my laptop, thinking maybe this will be the day that I make it to the end, or at least, get everything worked in so that I will have left is to revise the last two chapters in light of the crazy continually unfolding in our world.

I took a break yesterday to go plant shopping with my husband, daughter and niece at this really cool plant outlet under the elevated train tracks at Park Avenue and 116th Street in Harlem. Who knew that outdoor plant corridor went so many streets deep and had such and abundance of gorgeously thriving plants? It made me want to fill my home with greenery, but of course, first I need to declutter and refurbish, and then I could add the plants tastefully, as decorative finishes, you know, like they do on HGTV. We do not live in an HGTV apartment. Can I tell you how worn our house is now, with all three of us home every day since March 16, and how cluttered the place gets now that I'm not sweeping through every morning like a dervish after everyone leaves for work and tidying and straightening and picking up and putting away. Also, dust. I'll say no more about that.

But I digress. It was fun plant shopping and being out in the world with my loves, through it was a hot and humid day and my mask felt hot and humid, too. I kept it on till I got back in the house, though. This is the mandate in my city, though people are starting to get a little lax, which troubles me. Did you see Trump finally wore a mask yesterday while visiting a hospital? Only because they said he wouldn't be allowed inside if he didn't wear it, and now the magats (which is what I shall call his cult members from now on) are crowing about how he looked like a badass and where can they get a mask like that too. Thing is, the idiot president missed an opportunity here: Imagine if he had issued magat masks at the outset? All his cultists would have been wearing them.

My boy has been transferred to a new firehouse for a year, as all new firefighters must rotate through both engine (water hoses) and ladder (climb and rescue) houses. His home house is an engine house, and he has come to really enjoy it there. They have a workshop with power tools, where he had been building a bicycle from scratch using the frame of his dad's old bike, and a gym where he worked out daily, and his fellow firefighters have become his cohorts and friends. Now he's having to start over with a whole new crew in the time of covid and while he's philosophical about it, my mother's heart wishes it weren't so. He's trained in brownstones, store fronts and high rises, and now he will be training for single family homes, shopping malls and beach fronts, as his new house is in Queens. May he be safe. May he be healthy. May he make this firehouse, too, a welcoming place.

This is so stream of consciousness. Back to plant shopping. My niece wanted to get two plants for her room. She is in what used to be my son's room, and when he came over two weeks ago (two weeks already!) he looked into her room and said, "Why does your room still look like my room? You need to make it your own." I think she felt he gave her permission to go to town in there, and now she has begun, with two lush babies that she picked out from the plant outlet. I need to go out and do things like that a little more often, because the most delicious part of going out is how much I love being inside my house once I get back home.