Hello, the house

The fact that I am posting pictures from inside my house tells you everything you need to know about my hermit tendencies these days. Except for quick errands, I am mostly indoors, sitting next to the big window, working for hours at a time, pausing when my brain gets tired, or when I come to the natural end of a scene or section, or when I'm not sure where to go next, or how to write it. I'll get up from my chair then and turn on the TV and watch another episode of The Leftovers, the twisty apocalyptic series I'm currently making my way through. Has anyone here watched it?

The Leftovers, streaming on Max, is about the people who remain behind after two percent of the world's population simply vanishes without a trace one day. This is not a religious happening where the good and virtuous are taken up to their great reward. Rather, some people, good and evil, just randomly disappear, and the rest are left to grieve them, and to pick up the pieces of a world they no longer recognize. Everyone is deeply dysfunctional, just trying to make it through another day, and I guess what keeps me coming back is the way people hang on through the darkest of times, clinging to one another, helping each other, giving space to the broken places in one another, stumbling toward, not healing exactly, but maybe answers. 

Sometimes an episode gets a bit too intense for me in the moment, and I turn it off and go back to my swivel chair beside the big window, try to knock out another section, and the next one after that. I have surpassed my contracted word count now, but there is still much of the story to tell. The writing is going a bit faster in this last third of the narrative, the story is more in view for me, I don't have to search as hard to find it, which is a relief. Each morning when I awaken, I whisper, "Please make me an open channel today," which is my way of asking the muses to come through the veil, to give me the right words, which I like to think are already written in another dimension, I only have to channel them faithfully in this one. 

I imagine that will sound crazy to most. Oh well, whatever gets us through, I say, because one could make the argument that our world is just about as dark and dysfunctional as the one I'm watching on The Leftovers. The Supreme Court just this morning came down with a series of rulings that are fully aligned, not with the current admin, as everyone will say, but with the project at work behind all that bluster, the forces that deploy the clowns to distract us and themselves while they move the pieces into place for the new techno feudalism they are designing. The high court handed them some critical pieces of that design today. 

And so I stay inside my house, keep my head down and listen for the muses, going outside only to do things like get my hair cut and vote in the primary for the new mayor of New York City, a young Muslim man the same age as my son, who manages to have an aspect of joy about him, who seems to retain the idealism of being a true public servant, who, having trounced the establishment candidate is now being seen as a threat by the right wing, who have rushed to vilify him in the national media as a Jew hater. But he is not that. In fact he is widely embraced by Jews in New York, the vast majority of whom share his grief at the bombing of children. He could not have won without the Jewish vote in our city. And Jewish New Yorkers are now vigorously defending him against all the ugly epithets and outright lies, the posts referring to him "little Muhammed" and calling for his denaturalization and deportation. 

I'm proud of my city that we turned out for for him in droves this week. I'm proud that 25 to 34 year old voters showed up at the polls in numbers never before seen in a primary. I hope he will be our next mayor, despite the dark forces now arraying themselves against him. I think he will prevail. I think the light in him will not be dimmed. This is the sort of thing that gets me through.

Just in case

First thing on waking, I cleaned up the kitchen as usual, which had been a right holy mess from the night before. Then I settled down at the dining table, in the spot beside the big window to work. It was rainy and dark out, so the lights were on inside the house. I looked around at one point, and kitchen looked so shiny and clean, so I took a picture. 

Then I looked across the room where the arrangement my son-in-law made for my husband for father's day was still adding color to the room, so I snapped a picture of that, too. Then I thought about another photo to share, but first, here's the back story of how it came to be.

Sunday night, I lay awake long past midnight, scrolling on Tik Tok, tumbling down many, many rabbit holes, the way one can on that mind-stealing app. First the algorithm was feeding me one video after another explaining that I had been quantum leaping between timelines for the past several years, and giving me points of evidence to convince me that this was indeed the case. I was frankly fascinated by the idea that I could exist simultaneously in several different timelines, though I wondered why I had chosen to tarry in the one in which I am currently conscious, where our leaders have now gone to war for dubious reasons under rather nefarious influences, not that anything is clear to us mere onlookers, who knows what's happening behind the curtain, but it looks bad from here, let's just say that. 

In any case, at a certain point the app started feeding me videos of people predicting world war three, some insisting it had already begun, others giving advice on how to protect yourself should it actually happen, and for some reason I was taken with a video saying the first thing that would occur if my city was attacked is the electrical grid would be knocked out, and that would mean we wouldn't be able to get any water, and the next thing I knew, at 3AM, it seemed like a good idea to just have some extra gallons of water in the house, just in case. So I pulled up Instacart, that's a grocery ordering app on my phone, and I put four gallon jugs of water into my shopping cart and paid, and it said it would be delivered to my door at seven the following morning, and then I turned over and went to sleep.

At 7AM on the dot, the intercom rang and I buzzed the delivery person in. I heard them in the hallway on our floor moments later, leaving the water bottles outside the front door of our apartment. I burrowed under the covers, thinking I'd bring them in later when I got out of bed. I was still dozing at the ungodly hour of 8AM when my husband was leaving for work. He bid me goodbye and opened the front door, where he stopped and called out to me. 

"There is water out here. Did you order bottles of water?"

"Yes," I mumbled from under the covers.

"Do you want me to bring them inside?"

"Yes, please," I said.

I heard what sounded like a lot of effort and floor swishing for four gallon jugs of water. I was confused, but not enough to get up and investigate. 

Then my man called out, "How many did you order?"

"Four," I called back.

"Why?" he asked me.

"In case of World War Three," I said.

I guess he's been married to me a long time, because he only said, "Okay, they're in. See you later," and was on his way. But I was awake now.  Minutes later, I wandered into the hallway and found this.

Four cartons, each with six gallon jugs of water. I have to tell you, the price couldn't be beat, because it didn't alert me that I was ordering cartons, not single jugs. Or maybe I was cross-eyed at 3AM. In any case, if they knock out the electric grid, guess who will have water.

Men in touch with their love languages

 My daughter and her husband came over for Father's day. Our son in law made a beautiful arrangement for the big guy, and he also said some very moving words about the man we all love in a post he made on his social media page for bros who arrange flowers. It's on both TikTok and on Instagram, and it's called Bros(e) Garden. The post has gone somewhat viral. I'm not sure if that link will work, but you can look it up if you have a notion to. He credits my husband with teaching him the fundamentals of flower arranging and getting him interested in the art of it to begin with. I love the colors he chose for his Father's day offering, the tropical blooms, the vivid jewel tones, the mix of red and orange and purple and yellow, just gorgeous. But what he said, oh my heart. I took that photo when our son in law had just walked in with the flowers for my husband, who was sitting at the kitchen counter making oatmeal rum raisin cookies for the rest of us. How we adore these men who are in touch with their love languages. Maybe I'll come back and transcribe what my daughter's husband said about her dad for posterity. Not right now though. I gotta keep churning out those words. I'm closing in on 70K words, and my contract calls for 75K. But I can't celebrate yet because I'm only on Chapter 13, following a narrative outline I made that runs to 19 chapters and an epilogue. I've got a way to go yet. I'm aiming to have a full draft completed by the end of July. May it be so.

Brooklyn and whiplash

My youngest niece here in the city will be moving into her own apartment in Brooklyn at the end of the month. Her current roommate's international work visa will not be renewed, and so the roommate will have to leave her tech job and the country to return home. My niece got approved for a place in a walk-up yesterday, and the apartment itself is a gem, perfect for a twenty-something, computer-coding brainiac. It's also fairly near to where my daughter and her husband live, so that's good. But it's on a busy main drag, and the outside of the building is in dire need of a paint job. It's also above a dingy looking hardware store with a rusty yellowing sign, making the building entry to one side look like a dark hole in the picture on google maps. Plus there's construction across the street, all of it making the block look like it might be not quite ideal for a young woman on her own in the big city, especially one who, depending on the light, can look like she's maybe fourteen years old.

On FaceTime, my daughter helped me put things in perspective just now. "Ma, I walk down that block all the time," she said, "and it's fine. Nice older ladies are out walking their dogs and young couples are pushing baby strollers and fitness girlies are heading home from the gym at all hours. And do you see that luxury building going up across the street? Do you think they're putting that up on a block that's iffy? Plus living above a hardware store will be clutch. I promise you, your niece will be much safer than you were living one door over from drug dealers when you were her age, and you didn't give one thought to your safety then, so stop worrying. Besides, the neighborhood she's moving to is safer than where she is now. Your darling niece will be fine." 

My girl then "walked" me around on google maps and pointed out a couple of sidewalk eating places on the next block, and some other useful looking shops, so trusting in my daughter's assessment, I went ahead and texted my niece congratulations on finding a super cute place, as I sensed that my reserve was making her anxious. This one and I are alike in that way, we both know it. Update: She signed the lease.

The photo is one my niece took of another house in Brooklyn. I just like the sunshine yellow of the bay window. We were all hanging out in my daughter's back yard yesterday. We had gathered for brunch with our friend Brooke, who was leaving to fly back to Boston later. My girl and her love really lucked out with that outdoor space in the city. Can you believe I didn't take a single picture? My son would call that progress.

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On Sunday, as I was traveling home from Brooklyn, talking on the phone to my friend Elizabeth in LA, thousands of national guardsmen were being deployed there, because of protests against migrants being rounded up at their workplaces and herded into unmarked vehicles by plain clothes men in masks, claiming to have the authority to take them. Make no mistake, these deployments are already scaling up in a neighborhood near you. If you live in blue state anyway. Still, what happened in LA this weekend is what you would call an escalation. As Elizabeth said, if these immigrants are such a drain on society, why do they have to go to workplaces and schoolrooms to find them?  At least we got jerked out of the natural human tendency to mute the insanity happening in the world at large and fall back into our daily stupor. Hard to do that with this crew, though. Continuous whiplash is more their style.

This post, man. It has such a deceptive quality of life just going on, of people renting new apartments like it's just the regular everyday. We gloss over the fact that the necessity arose because her bright and credentialed roommate's work visa was cancelled, despite all she has to offer and has already given. Okay, no wringing of hands here. She'll have a perfectly good life back home. But then there's also the terrifying spectacle of thousands of armed military on the streets of LA, tear gassing minuscule crowds, a mere eighty people or so, no violence unless there's a ringer in the mix, which we know happens.

In happier news, my daughter just texted that she and her love are going to start fostering dogs again. They get their first pup this weekend. She's hella excited, which makes me so happy. They lost their dog Munch last year, just before their wedding, and their heartbreak was profound. I feel like their readiness to let dogs back into their home is another step in their healing.

Merry, merry month of May

Y'all.

I spent the last month trying to decide if I'd come to the end of the line, whether I had any juice left to keep writing here. It feels a bit schizo to just keep living your life as if the madness isn't also happening. 

May kept me busy though. Apart from work, it was a socially eventful month, every weekend booked solid, starting with my paint-and-sip birthday party slash early summer cookout, thrown for me by my girl and her husband in their Brooklyn back yard. The next weekend we drove upstate with my girl and her love to have lunch with her in laws for mother's day. The following Sunday was my choir concert, during which we sang an exhilarating 10-minute medley from Phantom of the Opera and actually pulled it off. And then the New York extended family decamped en masse to Dallas for Memorial Day weekend, to celebrate little Harper's second birthday and help her parents stage a "Harper's Beach Club" themed pool party. In between all that my son in law ran a half marathon, my daughter modeled office summer wear on Jenna and Friends, formerly Jenna and Hoda, her fourth time appearing on that morning show, and my son and his wife went to the woods, and shared pictures of their adventures. Here are some photos from the month of May, for my record here. 

I guess there's some writing juice left in me after all. 

Mainly, I just miss you all.

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ALBUM ONE: PAINT AND SIP

At my birthday party on May 3, the painting and wine came after we ate delicious street corn, burgers, and hot dogs grilled by my son-in-law on the newlyweds' (not so new anymore but still less than a year) spanking new backyard grill. Most of us finished (or improved) our paintings after we got home, but we had big fun getting started as we sipped. I had a wonderful time with my husband and all our heart children. Truly one of my best birthdays ever.

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ALBUM TWO: DALLAS

Over four days in Dallas, the extended family, including two grandmothers, a granddad and step grandma, plus assorted generations of uncles and aunts, traveled from other cities to celebrate our little one, who is firmly in her "no" phase. My daughter, daughter-in-law, and niece created another one of their amazing charcuterie tables, which was down to just a few crackers and grapes by the end of the cake cutting. Except for during the 2-year-old kiddie party, which very wisely ran from 10 am to 1 pm on Sunday, after which all the babies and their parents went home for naps, the rest of us lived in the pool all weekend. The photos are all mixed up time wise but you'll probably be able to figure out when the party was happening and when it was just the family, happily eating and imbibing and acting the fool.

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ALBUM THREE: OFF THE GRID

My son and daughter in law spent a few days restoring their spirits in nature. They also played with their new drone camera, creating these atmospheric self portraits, which I think are rather awesome.

And here's one more photo which I swiped from social media, because how could I not post this glamor shot of Harper's beautiful mommy.