the leak

 Have I mentioned thatI should have either become a plumber or married one? I have 9 toilets, 4  bathtubs, kitchen sinks and dishwashers, 3 hot water heaters, 2 washing machines. and endless repairs.

    So this happened. 

    I heard Toby running the bath upstairs and went into the bathroom to find a shower coming down through the hole Z had cut in my ceiling to see what was going on. I called Toby to stop running the bath, and ran for a pot to catch the water (and then my camera), and the water stopped. But she said she had flushed the toilet at the same time. 

    We did a test. First she let the water out of the bath. Then she ran more water in the bath. Then we waited. Then she flushed the toilet.

    Bingo! An inch of water in the pot. 

    So today Z replaced the seal on her toilet. Another test. Still with the rainshower down here. 

    Next up: A plumber and further destruction of my ceiling.

city life

 

    That's the new World Trade. That's Donna with her new blue and yellow hair. 

    That's Fanny with a crabapple tree. Her hair is as it ever was. As is mine, only longer and whiter.

    This is the springtime in New York City. 

    People are on the streets. Eating at Odeon in TriBeCa, where we were. Talking about their vaccinations and the outdoor summer shows coming up. Just walking and looking around. Yeah, mostly wearing masks. 

    The people who moved to New Jersey or their country houses are coming back. They are sick of the burbs. They want to see other people. They want to eat at any of the other outdoor cafes that have sprung up in every neighborhood, often in the street. They want to ride Citibikes and scooters and jog down by the river. They want to be together. Out on the street.

     This too is city life. We live in these little stacked boxes so we can go out on the streets and be together. And sometimes, often, when the building is as old as mine, the boxes leak.

    I didn't realize it until I took down the curtain in the bathroom to wash, but the window molding is destroyed, and the ceiling is about to fall in. The super thinks the steam pipe is leaking. He says they will come to tear down my ceiling today to see where before the heat goes off for the season. 

   Springtime in the city. 

belated st. patrick's

 

So yesterday I got this loaf of Irish soda bread in the mail. Doro baked it, I craved it, and she sent it posthaste. I posted up her recipe some years back. Here it is, if you need a refresher course. Yes, she's really Irish, unlike, it turns out, me. 

   So I celebrated a late St. Patrick's Day yesterday, after celebrating a late St. Patrick's Day earlier with Annie O'Malley's daughter (the one with blue, not green, hair for the occasion) and granddaughter. We kept it traditional.

redux on uws

 Out once again! Barb took the picture. Another nice day!

98

 

Still loving the spring look thanks to Kate Knapp. But more visitors at the table these days post shots.

Fanny and Ryan (and of course Donna). Ryan finished the puzzle.

Then they left and the next arrived. Yes, that's Donna in the blue-and-yellow hair.

Simon and his friend Ben came in from Providence on Spring break. Not much odf a Spring Break, but a break from their parents anyway!

where are they now?

 Hannah calls this picture "Early Duck Face." I rag her about her selfies with what we once would have called a pout, but now popularly goes by duck face. 

   I look at this picture and I see pretty much only Hannah's cousin Harry. What would that look be called? 

Oh, and bangs. Why did I ever do that? 

Anyway here's what we look like now.

happy st. pat's!

 

Yeah, I know it isn't a shamrock, but it's the greenest pic I could find. Just don't go anywhere near a bar in New York City.

Here's why: The Old Story

more windows

 

I know, I know. More interiors, more windows. 

   I have gotten so used to life in the box, that I hope I will be able to break out. One friend posted, "I'm going to miss social distancing." Ed calls the inability to keep track of time "pandementia."

   I'm just marking time until I move to the next box, in about a month. And eating a lot of good food, being as I'm in NYC and the closest food store is Zabar's.

agoraphobia

                                The winds are strong

                                It's bitter cold

                                I think I'm getting too damn old 

                                To brave the island's icy floors

                                Or even to go out of doors

 

                                I think I'll watch the sun from here

                               As it strikes my chandelier

                               Get deliveries from the store

                               And wait for spring a little more

 

—homage to Frank Martin

 

bi update

 Despite my replacement efforts of a few years ago, the windows on the nor'east side of Claudia's Surf City were terminal. Waldyn, of my Santana family, did his best with puzzling together and bondo-ing the other windows, but the oceanside, no diceroonie. Rotted beyond repair. So Waldyn and his brother braved the cold and the wind and the waves and the ferry to replace the windows and trim I replaced, poorly, not that long ago, and it's a new scene.

And that necessitated replacement of interior trim. I asked Waldyn to keep it simple so that he didn't show up the remains of my effort. But I suppose he couldn't help himself. So it's better too. I can't wait to see it. I barely remember what my house looks like, not having been there for almost a year.

All photos by Waldyn Santana.

And in a T'ville update, it looked like the river might flood, so Randy and Virginia went down to my house and moved all my paintings upstairs, which I had neglected to do. Really, one painting (and my beautiful old refrigerator) is the only thing I regret about the previous flood. Actually, the old refrigerator still exists, under a tarp in Randy and Virginia's woods.

new day

I went outside! There were people there! New York is happening! It's amazing! I went in a store, too. IKEA. You can tell it feels springlike if I start buying supplies for the season in Block Island. And it feels springlike. I mean, 65 degrees? 

Yes, and then I met friends for lunch at an outdoor cafe. Socializing! In the time of Covid! Well Ed and I have had two shots and Barb has had one. And I got a parking space. And ate many things I shouldn't have. And it was very fun.

I did not, however, buy kangaroo meat or alligator meat or python meat. Maybe next time!

 

loser

 

I admit it. I'm a loser. What have I accomplished in this past year? Fuck all. Well today I did go through the toiletries I have been hoarding from hotels all over the world and take the unopened ones to the All Angel's Church, which allows homeless people to shower there. And I got into the cleaning supplies cupboard and combined half-used bottles of Murphy's Oil Soap and Dawn. I moved some shit from one closet to another. And, hey, I went to Zabar's and bought some cheese for Toby, had a three-way with Chien-Chi and Ed. On the phone. And, yeah, did the4 easy part of a jigsaw puzzle. Loser!

women rule

This goes out to every woman I know. Phenomenal all. Happy International Women's Day!

 And to everyone reading this. 

For were not you all born to a woman? 

You'd be nowhere without us.

 

Thanks to Gil who sent me this shirt made by Kamela Harris's niece. A phenomenal gift.

clothing museum

In the year of our goddess 1972, I graduated from college. (I can't do maths, so I don't know how long ago that was.) That summer, my friend Laura and I decided to take waitressing jobs in New Hampshire. Why on earth, I can't recollect. Probably had something to do with fantasies of being country girl back-to-the- landers. I know I bought a 1954 Dodge pickup "old enough to vote," the seller told me proudly. It wouldn't be the last pickup either: I'm on my fifth now. 

    We landed jobs at a place called the Fitzwilliam Inn. The apron was required wear for the inn, and I sewed it by hand and cross-stitched it myself, with pockets and everything. Hired as a pair, probably because the red-faced host thought two young things added to his staff would bring in lunch trade—the other waitresses being bent over with age and withered by cigarette smoke. The way one of them, a Mainer, described the ham omelet was by saying the ham "ran through there with rubber boots on." The place had pretentions. For instance, the waitresses had to recite the appetizers and desserts, one of which was called "fudge nut balls." Many of the gentlemen who lunched there took great delight in asking me, "Fudge nut WHAT?" And I was too shy to shout, "BALLS!" The ladies who lunched, on the other hand, always asked whether I went to Monadnock High. "No, I just graduated from college." "Really? Where?" "Vassar." Taken aback. "What did you major in?" "Chinese." "Well you should be working at a Chinese restaurant!"

Laura and I didn't last long, and neither did the summer. My boyfriend visited once, but he was a city boy and had nothing to do while Laura and I were at work except play with the ugly Holstein-spotted dog we called Cow that hung around our wrong-side-of-the-tracks apartment building. So we packed up the truck, said goodbye to the creepy neighbors, got in the truck and headed off down the road that would soon lead us to Hawaii and a step up to bartending.

And I have no idea what to do with that damn apron.

 

trash talk

 

I'm on about trash. Maybe because so much of it piles up from these big buildings in NYC—and keeps piling up when the garbage trucks are being used as snowplows. 

Now plastic grocery bags are outlawed (as in Rhode Island as well). However, what is the use of plastic shopping bags being outlawed, and everything being recycled if recycled items are a) packed in plastic bags and b) no country will take our shit. 

I hate also to see on the street all the wonderful things that have been thrown out. Fortunately (because I am drowning in those wonderful things that have furnished four places in three different states), there are many sites that will flag you if they see great stuff curbside and the pandemic has brought on a rash of trash. Or you can leave them in the giveaway shed at the town dump. Or you can call Goodwill or someplace to pick up good stuff, and someone else will buy it for charity. That's what my neighbor and I did when we cleaned out our closets. It was a beautiful thing.

i don't like chocolate

 

I know. It's weird. The people who don't like chocolate are few and far between. One of them is my grandson. I have met a couple others. So I'm in a bit of a fix when it comes to the classic New York cookie, the black-and-white. (I like classic black-and-white photographs, too.)  What I really need is another person who likes chocolate to share with. Takers?

injury to insult

 

So this happened. I swear I walked into a door. Yeah, I know, that's what they all say. But on top of being down for the count with my secon Moderna injection— now this! Donna Ferrato couldn't resist taking pictures. I mean this bad girl has taken more photographs of black eyes than anyone living, having made something of a specialty of domestic violence. 

Anyway, there's a great review of her new book, Holy, in the Washington Post today. Check it out here. And here's an interview and more pix from a London journal. And I got Donna back from making me go outside to have my picture taken.