goat cookies

In which I somehow find myself with Hank in Niles, Michigan, caring for Louie the dog, Ted the cat, and Silver Bullet, Corky, and Buster Brown the goats. Hank does a lot of pet-sitting for friends and family, particularly his sister's dog Latka, who is maybe the best dog ever. Since we both live in rather crummy and small places, our visits have taken place in various spots like his sister's in Delmar (California). It was actually my idea to get a pet-sit in some nice Michigan spot, so here we are, for two and a half weeks. The house is huge and beautifully appointed, unlike Hank's cruddy little Santa Monica apartment or my perch at Vern's run-down casita. This is simply room after room, airy and nicely decorated. The kitchen is a dream, since I live without a stove and generally cook on various small appliances. There is an espresso maker. There is a dishwasher. Tho I wont be baking, there's a Kitchenaid mixer. Three big TVs in cozy spots. A hot tub. (Three of the places that Hank and I have stayed together have had hot tubs, and I'm hooked.)

Louie the dog is a 105 pound Black Lab, full of doggie love. I cannot stress enough what a dog guy Hank is, tho he hasn't had one of his own for a while. He came in this morning with his back covered in leaves and grass, because he had been rolling on the ground with Louie. This is a very serious love affair. Ted the cat is a bit more aloof than I'd like, but when he wants a scratch or a meal, he comes to me. 

I have taken on the care of Corky, Silver Bullet, and Buster Brown. Corky is a Nigerian Dwarf, calico-colored with a beard. Silver Bullet is black with a little grey, Buster Brown is (duh) brown, and they are pygmy goats, They are fairly adorable, even with those spooky slit-pupilled eyes. They are mostly shy, tho Buster Brown likes his sides scratched. They are neutered, which Kimetha says makes them less smelly and more docile. For farm animals, they are quite easy and non-stinky; they even poop in little pellets, like rabbits. 

First they get a scoop of goat chow (pellets again), divided among three dishes, one of which is divided in two, that's four compartments of food for three goat mouths. But they just push and shove. Then I put a "flake" of hay (a 2 ft square slice) into the hay hopper, and then it's time for treats. Goat treats are actually plain old animal cookies. They push and shove, then each gently nibbles a cookie from my fingers. They are lovely little beasts. They have a big, sunny enclosure with grass, sticks (they like to nibble the bark), something to climb on, a salt/mineral lick. They've got it pretty good.

now, where was I?

I was clunking around in some Google functions, and look at this old-ass blog I found! I guess I didn't think Blogger was still in business. I started another blog in the interim, with the rather lofty idea of writing and posting reviews not tempered by a publication's commercial needs. (This must have been right after I reviewed a horrible book for Blues Music Magazine and was directed not to say how horrible it was because advertising. Fuck that noise! This is the internet!) I must have been having some energy toward becoming some sort of internet writer or whatever that is...

So, it's just about seven years since I last wrote here. I'm assuming I won't be having anything in the way of a career, Those mid-late 2010s goddess years pick-ups were fun, but too little too late. Trying to figure out now how to live as an older American. Trump. Pandemic, Trump again.

I'm 66 years old and not sure how many acts I have left. Just hoping to stay safe and comfortable and happy. But my feet are still not entirely under me since I came up100% broke in New York City during the pandemic, and had to move to a city I didn't know and live with someone I barely knew in order to keep a roof over my head.

Friends, I've been in Detroit for five years. 

We will talk more about why I still don't/can't drive, mostly because I'm not too sure myself. This is the wrong city for a non-driver, boy howdy. So that's the tragic and difficult part of today. (Well, the "tragic " part is, needless to say, not being able to live in New York any more. The "difficult" part is living in Detroit.)

Multiple heavens full of big-titty girls for my roomie Vern, who offered me this perch in Detroit after not seeing me for about 20 years. Really, we knew each other so little, but had masses of good will and affection. And so, he saved my life. He's a big smart serious helpless warm confused goofball; finally occurred to me recently that he is absolutely on the spectrum, which explains oh so much. Vern is mostly quiet and squirrely and we look after each other gently.

I also found my local bestie two doors down, lucky me! Because we enjoy each other a ton, and having a friend who has a car and knows the lay of the land is pretty important here. 

Sidebar: Detroit is a huge spread-out city that has suffered a huge population loss, so there's a lot of empty space and almost nothing is walkable. I live in a food desert. I can walk to two dollar stores, a pharmacy, and a "party store" (convenience store that's basically a liquor store with snacks). 

"Local bestie" doesn't sound that important, but he is very important to me. Companionship. In Brooklyn, I had neighbors to chat with right in my apartment building, on the elevator, in the lobby. Friends upstairs. The clerks I knew in the stores, the pharmacists. I had a lot of people to talk to face to face. Very different here. We've grown to be great friends, Byron and me, because we started doing things together. It kicked into high gear when he convinced me to start coming to the gym. We go to the gym together now; we shop for groceries and for weed, And with his wife Christine, who is no less dear but much more busy, we do some concerts and other fun stuff in the area. These are my peeps.

Then Byron's best friend from high school and college came to town for their 50th high school reunion, about a year and a half ago, and guess what happened? It turned out that Hank was the male of my species.

I should mention that a couple of years ago, I started taking Trulicity for diabetes, and lost about 30 pounds, then I started going to the gym. This brought me to a size I hadn't been at since I was about 19. This was finally getting off all of the weight I put on when I got sober over 38 years ago, 

But I wasn't used to it yet when I met Hank. I was used to men looking at me and trying to decide if they could get past my weight. The first night I met Hank, it seemed like he was trying really hard to impress me, and I couldn't figure out why. It seemed I had become something of a babe, old-lady variety. 

My boyfriend was built for me: not too tall (five-nine), more stocky than skinny (good), thick upper body (good), unspeakably hairy (really good). (Text from Hank: "I miss ya stroking the mohair.") Classic big-ass Jewish nose, bald head, beautiful smile. 

I feel like this is maybe the first relationship I've had where for the most part, it isn't just his neuroses and my neuroses having a playdate. (See: Peter. Which I did again, stupid me, in the spring of 2018. Went through that whole mess again, and by 2025: no longer speaking, on bad terms.. But there was a good photo:

This is basically the only picture of the two of us, except for the one with Weber on my 40th birthday. Geez. (Weber's dead now, too.) I was still big. He is perpetually skinny. We vowed never to be apart again, but I hadn't expected him to become an asshole again. Fool me twice.)

I'm not sure how much I love any of the pictures with Hank and me because they never seem to look quite exactly like,,, and yet...

The woman behind him is his 97-y.o. mother Dulcie. He does NOT live with her.

Hank and Byron and I went "up north" (that's what you call northern Michigan) last spring - Christine couldn't get off (she's a therapist and tends to work five days a week). It was huge big fun being with those two, saw a lot of great sights, and Hank and I started making out on a bunch overlooking Lake Michigan, after seven months of daily emails. 

National Poetry Day

Palm Sunday, Coney Island

clouds hang in lazy accent
of a clear blue sky
in this land dominated by
memory, ghosts, skeletons

presiding, ex-officio,
the parachute jump
silently observes the steady inaugural turn
of the wonder wheel
and the first clattering mobius orbit
of the cyclone

who can doubt spring?
in another beach kingdom,
south of this place
mustachioed men swing wooden bats
at leather balls
squinting at the same sun
as heats Brooklyn's mechanical heart
toward summer

Jennifer Zogott
March 19, 1989

Happy National Poetry Day

public face

Some afternoons, I go to Dunkin Donuts to get a coffee to go, because their flavored coffees are pretty good and I can use Samsung Pay and get points. I'm all about the points. Well, I also think it's cool.

So I was there a few days ago, paying with my phone, and a middle-aged man commented on it and we chatted for a few seconds.

It wasn't until I left that it occurred to me: that was a man of appropriate age and I barely took a good look, left the conversation early, and did not check for any chemistry.

And when I got home, it occurred to me that even if I had thought to pay more attention, I was walking around my neighborhood totally slobbed-out, I've at least upgraded from a sweatshirt to a nice Lands End jacket, but I didn't have a speck of make-up and my hair was pulled back but possibly unbrushed, and I had no earrings.

It then occurred to me that since I do pay a little more attention to my appearance when I go to Manhattan (for some reason), I can do the same for puttering around the neighborhood. So I prepare a little before I go out: make-up, cologne, earrings. I even brush my hair although there's not much I can do with it. I need a good stylist and at least a trim.

I've also bought some slightly better-looking clothing: as I mentioned: a fleece jacket in lieu of a sweatshirt, some solid-color long-sleeved tees, and even a pullover sweater. It's partly in case I go to work outside the home, and partly to have something to wear besides printed tee shorts (I have 3 or 4 more tailored ones, but they're all short-sleeved).

I actually think it's fun to put on make-up, and really not such a pain to remove. Plus I have a lot of urges to buy it (like earrings, it always fits), and if I don't wear it often, a lot of it just gets too old and has to be tossed after a few wearings.

And, as a nod toward being less acquisitive and more experiential, I bought myself a ticket to see Gilbert Gottfried next month. (I also have one for the first showing of The Disaster Artist on Thursday.)

It does sort of suck that I pretty much have no one to be experiential with, I have been saying for many years that I'd rather do something by myself than miss doing it, but I pretty much have no friends who are available for or interested in the things I enjoy. (Except, of course, my ex-husband, and I want to keep socializing with him on the minimal side.) I have to work toward bigger experiences, like travel, and the idea of traveling alone is fairly scary to me. But first, I need to get a passport. Then we'll see.

trying...

I'm working on getting in the habit of writing more, with the goal of writing here every day, which is Step One. I've more or less decided that the only thing I want to do for a living is write, which involves a lot of kinds of work. As far as fiction or memoir, this is Step One.

I also need to take some action about freelance work, starting with re-contacting the editor of Blues Music Magazine; I recently did a review for them.

I don't want to work in an office again. One of the advantages of my last job was that I wasn't sitting all day. (I can still work there part-time if I want, to bring in a few bucks.)

thankful

This is a little challenging for me, since I am of late not much about gratitude and much more about being very depressed and glass-half-empty. But since, obviously, writing at all has not been coming easy, I thought I'd try to punch out two for the price of one.

I'm thankful for having this nice apartment to live in: being able to afford it, furnish it, and enjoy it. I'm thankful that it doesn't feel like a compromise and does feel like a luxury, one that I deserve.

I'm thankful for seeing my nephew and sister-in-law today, and somehow surprised because I didn't think I cared much about my nephew and was convinced that my sister-in-law and I didn't like each other.

I'm thankful that enough of my family managed to get together today, since my aunt and uncle are moving to Arizona on Monday and my dad is very sick - like dialysis-three-times-a-week sick. I'm really glad that my dad got to see his grandson, and that my nephew is concerned enough about his grandfather that his parents have arranged a couple of visits. There's some crazy dysfunction as concerns my brother and my dad, and my brother and my uncle. My brother was not present.

I'm thankful to have enough money not to have to rush into a job, although I'm very unsure about what I want to do or even if anyone will hire me to do anything.

I'm thankful for my friends, and in particular for my little posse from my last job, who have stayed in touch and hung out with me. They're real gems. One of them and his girlfriend took me out to lunch on my birthday. 

I'm thankful that I finally realized it was important for me to finally have surgery to correct my stress incontinence. I suffered with it for about 25 years, and it did nothing but get worse. The operation was six weeks ago tomorrow. Needless to say, I'm also thankful for health insurance even though I pay a mint for it under COBRA. (The surgery was covered except for a $50 co-pay.) 

I'm thankful that I've healed well from the surgery and that it did what I needed it to do.

I'm thankful that my ex-husband went to the hospital with me and stayed with me for a couple of days after the surgery. Having said that, I'm also thankful I don't live with him any more.

I'm thankful for a really good therapist who has helped me tremendously over the past seven years. Although she now says that I need to focus on the experiential rather than the material to dig out of this funk; in other words, I need to do more stuff instead of acquiring more stuff. Right now, I am responding to her many suggestions that I do more writing.

I'm also thankful that I got to review Zeke Schein's book for the October issue of Blues Music Magazine, which would be on your newsstand now if newsstands still existed. I dare you to find a copy.

a job over and done

What a nice thing it is to finally cancel that Monday-Friday alarm.

I actually had a very lovely last day yesterday. I didn't tell any of the clients that I was leaving until Thursday, and all of them knew on Friday, as my little going-away cake was on the calendar. (And someone must have remembered that I like ice cream cake!)

So I got hugged all day yesterday, over and over by some of the same women. Even some of the more religious guys who limit their contact with women to a high-five/fist bump/handshake gave me a hug. I had an easy group and activity and one of my "buds" as co-counselor. Did my last ass-wiping, my last daily goals.

I'll see my buds again, and also some of the women counselors I had dinner with the week before last. The woman who arranged it chose a non-kosher restaurant, which weeded out our manager and one of the more sanctimonious counselors. We had a blast.

The only thing that hurts is that I was very close to a client who is very low-functioning, and did not understand that I was leaving. It was hard not to be able to say goodbye to her. She only speaks a few words, but we communicated with pictures and gestures; she is quite funny and sweet. She likes to hold my hand. She was in my AM group (9:30-10:15) every day, and enjoyed looking at pictures on my phone, especially pictures of herself. For a while, I was taking pictures of her almost daily. She would see one, and either point at herself, or say in her tiny voice, "Me."

It was close to 80 degrees yesterday, so I changed into sandals before my book club. As usual, we barely discussed the book, ate good Vietnamese food, and chose another book. I love my book club.

Then I got home around 9:00. There was still a drop of light in the sky.