politics and the test

If you've read a selection of my posts, you probably know that I'm not a very political person. I always vote, but to be honest, I don't do much research about the local candidates. I do browse their newsletters when they come in, read the campaign material, but I tend to make decisions on whether they're doing things I like. (When I say "local candidates," I don't include the mayor. Mayor of New York City is a very important office to anyone who lives here.)

But the presidential election this year really has me very interested and attentive. We have one candidate who is really liberal and awesome and amazing, and one who is a wealthy, lying racist using deplorable tactics against his opponents. (I'm kind of sorry that Ben Carson is out of it, because he was entertainingly crazy.)

I'm a liberal and a Democrat, and most of the people I know and like, and the ones I'm related to, are one or both. It's what I'm used to; I don't think twice about commenting on some idiotic thing Donald Trump said.

But...it turns out that I work with some really conservative people! Just about 3/4 or them are orthodox Jews of varying stripe, and for some reason, those folks are kind of right-wingy. I'm told that most orthodox Jews are, but I really don't know why. (I learned that this is also true of many hispanic people - when my Dominican then-boyfriend told me he was...a Republican!)

Don't get me wrong - I adore almost all of the co-workers. And the few I don't adore, I still admire for doing this work. As one of my best friends there said to me the other day, "This is not a workplace - this is a family." This might be the best group I've ever worked with.

But man...early in the Trump campaign, one of the guys said to me casually, "I think Trump has some really interesting ideas." I shuddered. I mean, I knew what a piece of shit Trump was before he was running for president, and pretty much everything he had to say, from the beginning of the campaign was pretty dreadful, and got worse.

For a while, I kept my mouth shut at work. It's really natural for me to comment on some piece of news about the candidates, but "Did you hear that horrible thing about Trump not wanting to let any Muslims into the country!" would probably be met with looks reading "...and your point is?"

But we also have a WhatsApp discussion group, and a couple of people posted "funny" political jokes with themes like "we shouldn't pay for lazy people on welfare," anti-Obama stuff, like that. The first one that was posted, I did hold my tongue and simply suggested, a few days later, that we keep politics out of the group.

That worked for a while, until the same person posted a joke - I couldn't remember it well enough so I looked up the post, and here it is: "Breaking News: The Muslim Brotherhood has officially warned the United States that if the United States continues meddling in Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iran and Afghanistan, they intended to cut off America's supply of 7-11 and Motel 6 managers. If this action does not yield sufficient results, cab drivers will be next, followed by Dell, AT&T, and AOL customer service reps. Finally, if all else fails, they have threatened not to send us any more presidents. It's gonna get ugly, folks."

This is a huge steaming pile of prejudice and idiocy. It's kind of all the ugly right-wing nonsense all put together. (Well, except for the Gun Lobby.)

This post got some nods of agreement. Then I posted (this is not verbatim), "I think the people who are thinking about are Indians and Pakistanis, not Arabs. Most Pakistanis are Muslims, but most Indians are Hindu."

Then someone asked me, "But don't you think it's a big problem to get those people coming over here?"

I said, "That's what they said about the Jews." He actually apologized to me. And I said, "It kind of upsets me to see this kind of sentiment in a group called 'Where We Help Everyone.'"

So everyone kind of shut about it since. I think they don't want to offend the "house liberal" just as much as I don't want to offend the conservatives. I'm not even sure how many are seriously conservative - but yesterday, senior counselor had a pile of magazines he'd brought from home, and said, "This one's for Jennifer!" It was Rolling Stone with a picture of Bernie Sanders on the cover. I've never told anyone there that I support Sanders, but I guess they figured it out. (And I actually found it kind of funny, when he gave me the magazine. It wasn't disparaging at all.)


I got drug tested today. We heard a few weeks ago that there was going to be a round of random drug tests, and that someone in the organization had tested positive and was immediately fired.

Of course, Little Miss Liberal does not approve of drug testing at all, nor does her spouse, Mister Liberal. But I kept my mouth shut. I let the young-hippie-guy step up to the area coordinator and ask a few hostile questions and say, "I'm not changing my lifestyle for...this! And what if someone is taking something that's prescribed by a doctor?" This guy is pretty bold because he's mid-twenties and not looking to make a career of this at all. It wouldn't break his heart to get fired. But I need my job, and have made a point of being able to submit a clean test. When I first heard about it, I mentioned it to a few other people I felt might find it useful to know. Drug testing is a huge denial of civil liberties, and embraces that hypocritical line between alcohol and non-alcohol mood-changing drugs (the latter generally known as "drugs").

So I took care of business and anticipate no  problem. But it's also true that when I was looking for work, I consciously avoided the kinds of large companies that would test. I would never consider working for a bank or for a big finance form of any sort, for other reasons; but the stand against testing also blocked me from things like entertainment networks and hospitals and a host of other places where it's not OK to smoke some pot on your own time, but is OK to get as drunk as you want when you're not at work.

The laws concerning marijuana are inching along toward a more liberal consideration, but it's kind of haphazard and fuzzy; things like it being legal to sell medical marijuana but not to grow it for legal sale, and suchlike. Marijuana laws right now are where they should have been 20 years ago. The Nixon administration commissioned a study on marijuana, and when the findings that it was not in any way harmful were presented to President Nixon, he glanced at it and threw it in the trash. (You could look it up. I'm getting kind of hungry.)

Go, Bernie!

P.S. One of my co-workers said to me today, "You used to be a writer, right?" That "used to" should not be correct and I am taking measures.

to begin...

My job had become too difficult and stressful. My duties increased gradually over the nearly three years I was there. Then there was a huge mess earlier this year due to a water main break down the street. We were without phone service for about three weeks, and then without internet for about six weeks. I was using internet from home early in the morning, going into work around 11, leaving around 3:30, then more internet from home. I was practically working 7-7. Once someone suggested that we get a wi-fi hotspot, it improved some, but my desktop didn't take wi-fi so I was working on a laptop and a desktop at the same time. By the time the regular internet was fixed, I was dreadfully behind, and it was one of those spring seasons where there were two major events, two open houses, fall registration to prepare in addition to a lot of catch up.

At the same time, I was seeing a new psychiatrist, who took me off Lamictal and put me on Prozac. I'm not sure how fast Lamictal leaves the system, but I know Prozac takes a while to build up, so I was basically "uncovered" as concerns my depression and anxiety.

So I melted down. It's hard to remember a lot of it, though I was crying at work a lot during the last couple of weeks, then unable to go in at all. My analyst spoke to me by phone every day for a week. As I continued to see the psychiatrist and my meds settled in, I began to feel better, but also realized that 9-5 wasn't for me, never was, and I'd been trying to make myself accustomed to it for years.

I asked if I could return part-time, but they only offered me 14 hours a week, so I chose unemployment instead. I am finally going to find the patience to take better pictures of my jewelry and start an Etsy store, and look for freelance writing work.

In the aftermath, I had some emails from friends at the institute saying they would miss me terribly but also saying they felt I'd been dreadfully overworked. I'd never realized it. One said, "I am very angry with [my two supervisors]. They always overwork and then lose their best people." I hadn't seen it - I just thought that had been the job, and even though I was working flat-out, I was sometimes behind and sometimes very stressed-out.

I worked off a few hours I owed them training the new guy for a few days, but now I'm clear of it. Between that and the meds fully taking hold, I feel a lot better. Freer.

Right before I saw the new psychiatrist, I saw a new primary doctor, who put his foot down about my weight and blood sugar. My blood sugar had been out of control. So I took the whole thing in hand, totally changed the way I was eating, and my sugar is now down to normal, and I've lost about 6 pounds in 8 weeks.

I've changed to Barry's health plan, which was cheaper co-pays, and am beginning the process of a bunch of specialist checkups. Also have to have yet another trigger finger fixed, but it's a thumb, which means just a shot of cortisone and not surgery.

We're shooting to move next month. I'm rather stuck on the idea of living in Bay Ridge.

I apologize that this entry is heavier on news than on feelings, but I'll get caught up on all of it. I feel I have a wealth of time and energy, and being able to keep up with this blog will be one of the benefits.

...and then there was a hurricane

What lifted the burnout was some serious jewelry-making time. Making that shift from verbal to visual language readjusts me drastically. And if I keep at it, amazing things start to happen.

Usually, I have about half a dozen designs in mind at any given time. When I first sit down to work, I almost always start with one of them. And maybe three or four of those ideas actually get made (some more successfully than others), I start to get better ideas as I make those first couple of pieces, and once in a while, something totally unexpected gets created. Last night, from out of nowhere, I made a big amethyst necklace, with some faceted black labradorite (leftover stones with no glow, but a beautifully faceted black oval nonetheless). Have to remake it though: the crimp didn't hold. I think I have to redo it on strong thread with clamshells or knot cups, and I really want to do it before Saturday. But weeknights are so sucky for for doing jewelry. Not much time, and tired time at that.

One necklace that was planned and amazing was a choker of huge, very clear blue apatite chunks knotted on blue silk, with an elongated toggle. (I found a treasure trove of old forgotten necklaces recently, and took the clasps off almost every one of them, giving me once again a decent selection of good-sized toggles and s-clasps.) I rarely make chokers because I don't wear them. Most of the jewelry I make is something I would and could wear myself, even when I'm not making it for myself. I made three chokers by request for the Village Scandal (more on that later), and there was nothing else to be done with 15" of outrageous stones that had to be knotted and could not share a necklace with any other stone. (Apatite is quite soft and needs to be knotted.) It is the most spectacular necklace, and one I would surely wear.

I still haven't made the necklace I want to wear to the Crafts Fair. Which is Saturday. Plus I have things to schlep to work like a brand-new earring carousel and gift boxes. I decided to buy the carousel when I realized that my space will be limited, and I had a whole passel of old, simple earrings that I wanted to sell at $10, 3 for $25. So they go on the carousel. I have three little one-pair earring stands for a few fancier pair of earrings, and two busts for the two best necklaces.

There was a hurricane last week. Enough parts of New York City got clobbered so that Barry and I were both home for a week. I did a little work from home, and all kind of work things had to be canceled and postponed and pushed back. So it's the same hellish crush that the rest of the fall term was going to be, but with a week less to get everything done. And the crafts fair is coming up on us fast.

We were lucky in that we did not lose power or have flood conditions in our neighborhood. Lower Manhattan lost power for days, Staten Island got clobbered, and so did Coney Island and the Rockaways. I'm still a little too dazed to register it. Most of the people I know had some power loss or no problems at all. But I'm hearing that at least 20,000 people need shelter (some have intact homes but no heat), and it's horrifying. Obama and Romney are in a dead heat the day before the election, and that's horrifying too. I feel like I'm moving by remote control...I'm functioning but deadened. And feeling kind of cut off from people.

The Village Scandal has had three chokers (made at the owner's request) and two pair of earrings on consignment for six months. I have been trying to contact the owner for two months to get my money or my goods. She doesn't answer voice mails to the store (and no one ever answers the store phone), her cell phone has no voice mail, she's never there when I go to the store, and doesn't respond to messages I leave there. Last time I was there, I took a good look, and the chokers are in her showcase, but I don't know where the earrings are. I would like to show those pieces on Saturday. But then there was a hurricane. I'm going to have to try to stop down there this week; maybe I can catch her on a lunch hour.I'm seriously pissed off, which is how consignment deals so often end.

I'm very scattered, I guess, and I'm glad to have my routine back even if it is horrendously busy.

global transient amnesia

That's what it was. MRI and EEG were clear. Apparently this happens to a lot of people - a blackout of 2-8 hours - and they don't really know why. But it rarely happens more than once.

I managed to keep my mind off work during my vacation, but now it's maybe too much on my mind. Still a busy season, getting the new candidates (eight of them) registered and up to speed. As usual, in the summer, revising lists, overdue evaluations from teachers and supervisors dribbling in, and the usual summer projects (scanning and shredding old files). Not calm yet.

My new intern is a peach: pleasant and willing to work. I'm pleased, as I interviewed and hired her over the phone.

My fandom for Amitabh has cooled a bit. He can be pretty pompous, and very withholding about his present work. Plus he failed to send any good wishes about my health scare, although other EF did. He plays favorites and can be downright boring. His movies are still great, though.

My interest in Twitter is fading a bit, too. Not much time for it.

I can't really get into it, but...

My family is a disaster. Have I mentioned this? Divorced parents always brings some level of dysfunction into the picture, but a couple of years ago, just when it seemed we were all older and more mature and could put the past behind us...something else happened that ripped everyone up and severed lines of communication and just made everyone a million times more troubled and miserable. And, as the only person in the family still speaking to all of the other members, I spend a lot of time saying that I don't want to be put in the middle. But I live in the middle. Everyone seems to have different kinds of misery and different levels of misery, but we're all miserable. Probably every relationship and every dynamic has been altered, so my place and function int he family is radically different, which is good in some ways and dreadful in others. I am heartbroken for everyone who is disconnected. We're not all that big a family, and we're a disaster.

Guess it's a little more on my mind because I've actually spoken to all parties over the past couple of weeks, which is a little unusual, and the last of those conversations was tonight and with the person I believe to be most damaged. It's just all so sad.

It's an understatement to say that there are not enough hours in the day. There aren't even enough hours in the workday. There were a few really dead weeks at the office, sometimes spaces where there was literally almost nothing to do - the kind of days where you send the interns home early - and all of a sudden it's overwhelming. In fact, it was so overwhelming one day last week that one person I work with said something to another, and that person called a third person, who called me (and she was the appropriate person to make the call), and said, "What's going on, are you OK, and how can I help?" I really love the people I work with and for. But things are still insanely busy and will probably stay that way until mid- or late June. Then it gets kind of dead until mid-August.

Things are even busy in my non-work life, with quite a few dinners, visits, and events coming up. All good things, but I still don't have any time for some of the kinds of relaxing I seem to need. I want to see an Indian movie; I want to spend a little time on Twitter; I want to while away a couple of hours on YouTube. (However, I should say that a week from Friday is planned as a movie-in-the-theater night: Rochelle, Barry and I are going to the opening night of Department, the new Amitabh movie. The last two movies I saw in the theater (I can't remember which order) were Spiderman (fell down a few steps in the auditorium and sprained my ankle) and Lord of the Rings (I fell asleep). I'm too lazy to check when they were in the theater, but it was some time ago. I mean, aren't they about to reboot Spiderman?

Last thing: I have to give a shout out to Mental Floss, which is a simply fantastic website and blog and Twitter with all kinds of fascinating and nerdy and odd facts and lists. I entered a sweepstakes there, forgot about it, then won: twelve tee shirts of my choice from their store. Please click on this link, because these tee shirts are outrageously cool and not very expensive. I've had my eye on a few of them for a while now, but could never choose which one to actually buy. I love tee shirts and could easily spend stupid money on them. I've actually earmarked half of them for Barry, because I don't really wear them as much as I used to, and he does. (I actually wore tee shirts to work at NYU for the early part of my work there, and always wore them on weekends and to the gym. Now I wear them sometimes on weekends and mostly sleep in them. But this has not diminished my tee shirt lust one whit.)

I've fallen a little out of touch with some people, which is kind of a bummer, but I never seem to have any time. Shiva and I haven't emailed for a while; it could be six or seven months since I've been in touch with Rafael; and I owe phone calls to Winnie and to Joyce. I need more hours in the day, I'm serious. And perhaps a mite less family drama.

bad mental health week...or two

So it wasn't just one of those little stressy recurrences of depression. Not only was it bad, but I had my first experience of delusions, albeit minor. A few times this weekend, waking up or falling asleep, I found myself worrying about mind control of children, accompanied by an image of upside-down red and purple tulips falling like a rainstorm - I suppose this was the delivery system for the mind control agent. Those thoughts showed up about three or four times.

That shit is fairly scary, and told me that it was high time to get my meds managed. I haven't seen a doctor in the year-plus I've been on this health plan because it's a $30 co-pay to see the primary doctor, and then a $50 co-pay to see a specialist. Plus my long-time primary doctor is not in the network. But I picked a new primary doctor today, made an appointment for Monday, and called my old doctor to arrange to get my records.

I need a psych consult, a consult for what seem to be two trigger fingers, and a new set of labs, since my body chemistry is no doubt a mess.

Luckily, work gets slightly easier after tonight. Classes are over until September, so no more late Monday nights. There'll be a lot of work through the end of June, three kinds of end-of-term evals to collect and some fundraising stuff, but July and half of August should be dead. I have ten vacation days coming to me and I'd like to take a full week in July and maybe a few other days. I do need some serious stress relief.

Part of the bad stuff was triggered by another horrible money squeeze last week. Barry was under the impression he would be paid in the middle of last week (when actually it's this Friday), and Verizon suddenly decided that no one can carry any back bill at all, did not notify us, and cut off our TV and internet (and would not reinstate it without full payment). We had zero money and no TV or internet, and really no resources to raise what we needed. So we ended up borrowing from my uncle and aunt, which I loathe doing, although they are very kind and generous and non-judgmental. We asked for $300 (Verizon needed $165), and they sent $500.

This kind of thing kicks up more shit than I can even start to get into. My issues with parental generosity/lack thereof are deep and broad and are making me cry right now.

Needless to say, I found I had no interest in reading riddles by an insecure wealthy actor.  SO not into Big B.

I also found some of my weird self-comforting behavior kicking up, the easiest one to mention being excessive playing of computer games (the really dinky puzzle ones). Another one is sleeping most of the weekend. One other I'm too flat-out embarrassed to mention, but I'll simply say it's been a few years since it kicked up.

Oh, and I pretty much ran out of lorazepam in the middle of this, which is what I take as-needed for anxiety, up to two 2-mg pills per day (this is the generic name of Atavan). Since I'm not seeing a psychiatrist now, it's a bit of a hassle to get it, though I don't do it illegally.

It sucks, it sucks, it sucks. But we had back-to-back functions at work today, and I am off to eat some leftover cheese.

Bad news and good news: Jannah's dog Sasha died last week, one of her two little Yorkies. I don't generally like small dogs, but hers are very sweet. Were. Max still is. The upside is that I'm going to visit over Memorial Day weekend.

I also had lunch last week with a friend from Penguin who doesn't want her name in this blog. Can't blame her. I'll just call her Liz, and say I haven't seen her in nearly a year. We ate Thai food at Qi, and I gave her some raspberry sours in a Hello Kitty tin that I bought at Dylan's Candy Bar.  That Dylan's sure is one dangerous spot if you don't want to be eating candy.

a So Here's What day

So here's what: one of the committees at work had two big programs recently, the second of which was this past Saturday, and of course it's part of my job to help them. But I guess they thought I went above and beyond, because they presented me with a $150 Visa gift card. Nice, nice people.

Here's another what: someone around work asked me today when my birthday is, and although it might have been a want-to-show-my-appreciation thing, it felt a little like a boy-liking-girl thing. I mean, he put it in his phone. I don't even have my family birthdays on my calendar (which is not in my phone). Of course, sometimes I think these things and I'm way off base. But sometimes I wonder if one or another guy is looking to make my life complicated.

I finally saw the original Agneepath this past weekend, with all the subtitles. (I'd had a copy before where the STs vanished and then appeared again 20 minutes later, but not matching the scene.) Maybe the Amitabh fans built it up too much, but I thought it was just OK. His characterization was quite good, if somewhat overshadowed by his eyeliner, but the plot was not too exciting. Plus, at least in 1990, fight and action scenes in Indian movies were really cheesy. They use loud slaps as sound effects for punches, and in generally it's all pretty creaky. The saving grace was Mithrun Chakraborty (hope I got this right) - although his character was what seemed to be a dreadful stereotype of southerners (waiting for confirmation from Shiva on this one), it's clear that he's an excellent actor and dancer. I d*wnloaded another of his movies yesterday, and am very interested in seeing it.

birthday season

Welcome to birthday season.  There have always been a lot of people in my life with November and near-November birthdays, and of course I'm one.  Robin is one too, and so is my uncle Howard.  And my aunt Marion.  There are other people who have been in and out of my life who also have those birthdays, which is why the borders of the season are a little wavy.  There are some former boyfriends, an old girlfriend I'm not in close touch with, and, actually, V. as well.  V. was always fun to birthday shop for.  He wasn't that into birthdays but he loved presents.

But this was a big year for Barry:  he turned 60.  The big surprise that I was too paranoid to post about here was that I arranged a surprise jam session.  He plays drums, if I haven't mentioned that lately -- he was in two bands when I met him.  Now he doesn't play in a band but has started to go to a couple of blues jam sessions.  It took me about a year to go to one with him.  He was meeting a lot of people I knew from my blues days some years back, and I got to see them, and I got to meet some people he had met.  I've written about this.  I got a fifteen minute crush on a guy at one of those jams -- I'm sure I mentioned it.

Anyway -- I had an idea this summer to rent a few hours of studio space and get a bunch of his musician friends to come and then have him go there and be surprised.  I floated the idea past a couple of his friends during the summer and they loved it.  Then I had to investigate the whole business of renting a studio and what it cost and how big and what comes with the rental (amps? keyboards?).  And I touched base with more guys, and more or less decided on the date, and so on.  I realized that I would have to tell him to bring drumsticks, so it wouldn't be a surprise that he'd be playing, and he knows the block where a bunch of studios are (30th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue), but he wouldn't know who would be there. 

Some people couldn't make it, but he ended up with exactly enough:  Felix Cabrera (vocals and harp), Evan Wagner (bass), Chuck Hancock (tenor sax and vocals), and Arthur Neilson (guitar).  Felix is Barry's bestie; Barry used to play with Evan in a couple of Brooklyn bands; and Chuck is one of my old pals who Barry also met at the jams.  These are all people who have some other income source.  Arthur is kind of a notch up; he's the guitar player for Shemekia Copeland, who's pretty much the top female contemporary blues artist at this moment.  He's also in the house band for the Monday night jam.  I'm personally in touch with some of these people through Facebook, but Arthur isn't on and he and I have only met once.  I had to have Felix ask him for me, and was absolutely stunned that he said yes.  Barry was also somewhat stunned that Arthur came, because they don't know each other very well.  The deal with Arthur is that he's one of the nicest guys ever, and we got lucky that he wasn't gigging or on tour.  It was a very big deal.

All of these guys are first-rate, make no mistake; there are a lot of amazing musicians out there who have day jobs.  Felix is woefully underemployed.  Chuck works, and has toured internationally, but I'm not certain if he works regularly with any one band.  Evan has a day job and is still young enough to have the energy to play with a band.  (When I met Barry, he played with two bands and had a day job.)

Barry, when he played with two bands.  This was taken at one of his gigs in late 1997, very soon after we started seeing each other.  Were we not adorable?

Anyway, the surprise jam was a rousing success.  They had the studio for three hours, then Evan took Barry out for a bite to eat.

Friday night, which was Barry's actual birthday, I couldn't get off early to do anything about cooking (had to take minutes at a Board meeting until 4:00).  So we ordered in, although I did buy a dozen tiny, two-bite cupcakes from a placed called Baked by Melissa.  They were a big hit.  Saturday was the jam, and Sunday evening Elise (and her sibs Evette and Marty) took us out for dinner.  Marty's wife Laurie was also there, Evette's husband Freddie was not, niece Lindsey was nephew Ross and girlfriend Margaret were not.  The Taub/Singer/Levy clan is pretty hard to get together.  We went to a nice dairy (kosher) place (I had a salad nicoise with fresh grilled tuna, a big fave of mine).

The only thing bad all weekend was at the very end:  we came home after dinner, and most of our neighbors were in the first floor hallway.  No one had seen our front-apartment neighbor Johnny for a couple of days, and he wasn't answering his phone or door.  He had some health problems and seemed a little more wobbly of late, and as we feared it turned out he was dead in his apartment.  Johnny was kind of the mayor of our building, which is a big deal in a six-apartment building.  He helped the landlord (let Con Ed into the basement, washed the hallways, kept an eye on the trash & recycling), and all of us (took packages for people, distributed the overflow from the landlord's backyard garden).  He was just a nice, kind, sweet guy, and we were all really broken up.

I am extra broken-up that his funeral is tomorrow afternoon...the same tomorrow afternoon when my (Providence, RI-dwelling) brother and sister-in-law and nephew will be in New York and available.  I haven't seen them in two years.  We have all been too poor to travel back and forth, and my brother is pretty much not speaking to my dad, so he doesn't come for Thanksgiving...so it's been two years.  I feel terrible that I can't go to John's memorial, but anyone who knows me -- and now you all know too -- knows that I love my brother to pieces.  We have at times been almost smotheringly close.  There was a time when we both worked at NYU Law, across the street from each other, and averaged one lunch and two two-hour phonecalls a week, just crazy.  We've had friction here and there.  Part of it may be that for a really major seven-year chunk of our young lives, it was just the two of us and our mother living together, and she's gone.  He's just one click closer than anyone else I'm related to.

So, I'm stupidly excited about seeing my brother -- and this is even without taking into account my eight-year-old nephew Walter, who is kind of a junior Danny.  Very smart and very friendly and very adorable.  (Pictured: tiny baby Walter, and 2010 Walter.)  (Note my 2002 slobby dressing and grooming.  Oddly enough, I am just now wearing the exact same tee shirt.  But I'm knocking around the house, not out in public.) (This is also one of my favorite pictures of Barry.  He looks very handsome and very sweet.)

I also love my sister-in-law Jane, who is a very good mother and as smart and funny as most of our family seems to be.  Is.  Jane is also the one who was brave enough to take the last name Zogott, which made me feel a little better about kicking it to the curb two years later, when I married Barry.  There are actually only six or seven Zogotts at present in the US, all related to me; Howard's first wife, Tina, uses "Zogott-Onsted", so she's the #7.  I use it as my middle name, so people can find me who knew me as Zogott, but for all intents and purposes, I'm a Levy.

And by the way, this is my birthday weekend -- in fact, today is my birthday.  I got a lot of cards and a lot of Facebook messages and flowers and a potted orchid and a fancy lunch out and a fun dinner in.  Barry gave me a much-needed and much-wanted gift:  a new everyday watch.  The last one he gave me pretty much gave out recently, after 13 years.  That's a pretty good run for an everyday watch.  And he really nailed the style:  dial, numerals, about the size of a nickel, black leather band...and Indiglo!  I like a very simple, neutral, classic, hard-working, old-school watch, and I got me a new Timex.  (Indiglo, BTW, is when you press the stem and the face lights up with an excellent blue light.  I know other watches light up but Timex Indiglo rules it.)  I LOVE my watch. 

I do indeed have other watches.  One I would call "dressier," but it's vintage and tends to need pricey repairs once a year, so it hasn't been in rotation for a while.  The others I have are on the silly side, and some need batteries and one needs a strap.  Some of those are promotional, linked to movies, gifted to me by John Jorge when he worked at MCI/Universal.  One is Badz-Maru.  (You can Google that one yourself, if you're not a Sanrio maven.)

I've found myself a few Bollywood co-fans.  Marty Taub is one.  And also a recent Facebook friend, someone I was involved with many years ago when it was wildly age-inappropriate.  (Can't really talk about all that, but he's still very funny and a smart smart guy.)  And not only that, I have a new Facebook friend who is a Bollywood fan -- and he lives in Mumbai!  He must have seen me on an Amitabh Bachchan fan page, and sent a friend request.  So it's really my first interaction with a Bollywood film fan who not only lives in India, he lives in Mumbai, which is...well, Bollywood. 

(For those of you who don't have the Bollywood religion, the Indian film industry is centered in Mumbai, which used to be called Bombay -- which is how the Indian film industry came to be called "Bollywood."  See?)    I'm really a beginner with Indian film, very enthusiastic, but still inexperienced.  I'm somewhat limited by not knowing Hindi, along with often finding that my ill*gally d*wnloaded movies don't have subtitles.  I may actually have to break down and buy some DVDs (used on eBay). 

I did finally nail a copy of Bbhuddah...Hoga Terra Baap (I think I spelled that right) with subtitles; I believe it's Amitabh's most recent film, certainly his most recent starring role, from this past summer.  I've watched some, but I have to admit I've had trouble getting past the first big song/dance scene, which I've probably watched six times already.  It's a pisser.  Oh, wait a minute...

Not exactly up to what he did in Kabhi Alveda Naa Kehna in 2006, but the music is great and he is way cool.  Though I've noticed that in everything I've seen him in, with the exception of Kabhi Alveda Naa Kehna, he is dressed horrendously.  Be it the 70s or the 00's, he is wearing absolutely godawful crap. 

Anyway, he's the coolest, we all know that.  And his newest grandchild was born two days ago (here's another November birthday).  He has two from his not-acting not-famous daughter, but the new granddaughter is from famous-actor-son Abishek and his famous-actress-and-world-famous-beauty daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, so the media there is insane over it, and this baby girl will most likely be blindingly attractive, whether or not she chooses to be an actress (it tends to be a family business over there). (You can look up pictures of them too, I've done enough tonight.)

I'm not writing as often as I should, because I don't have the time, or am not making it.  I don't have nearly enough personal time during the workweek -- or, like money, not enough so that I can be careless with it.  If I decide to spend two hours watching Bollywood videos on YouTube, that's two hours that I'm not writing.  AB blogs every day, bless his heart, and tweets as well, but I'm no good at brevity.  I need some wide-open time and space to write. 

And since I can't keep anything in order at all at this point, I did also have a birthday-eve dinner with Robin yesterday.  We ate Indian food (and -- new tradition -- Starbucks after).  She gave me three of what I like to call "hair toys":  two velvet headbands and a French hairclip.  There used to be a store in Soho that sold French goods, and over the years, she gave me four hairclips from there.  They're pretty much my favorites.  Then the store closed.  But unknown to me, she found another store in the city that carries the same make of hairclips, and so I now have five of the amazing hairclips!

Since I wore short hair for the majority of my life (see above photo), hair toys are still a pretty big deal for me.  (Please ignore the horrible scrunchy in the other above photo.)  Well, I find that in general I'm a bit of an accessory slut since I started actually dressing myself decently.  I think I somehow crossed over at some point from not wanting to be seen or noticed to wanting to be seen and noticed, connected to a whole change of  dress and hair and wearing makeup.  Not to be too jargony, I think I started to own who I am and what I look like, and I turned out to be more attractive than I thought.  Yay for me!  But I can't quite figure how or why it happened.  Life: mysterious.

better? worse?

The weekends mostly depress me since I often don't know what to do with myself.  Last weekend, I took four days off -- took two for Rosh Hashonah because I felt I needed the break -- and we went to the Atlantic Antic on Sunday.  That's a huge long street fair down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, which is held on the first Sunday in October.  I try to set aside a little money because there are generally a lot of nice handmade crafts.  I got a beautiful bronze hairclip shaped like a sand dollar ($5) and a tie-dyed swing top ($20).  Barry decided to come with me this year, but he does what I try not not to:  buy food.  To me, an $8 gyro is outrageous, plus, I'm not a fan of eating while on my feet.  Thought I confess (please don't kill me, oh sugar- starch and gluten-free friends) that we split half a dozen deep-fried Oreos, as neither of us had ever had one.  Worth the splurge.

This past weekend was dreadful because it was The Weekend Before Pay -- that is, broke, broke, broke.  This is the kind of weekend where I am trying frantically not to think, because it will plunge me into even deeper depression.  I slept a lot, watched TV, watched things on the computer. 

A week or so ago, I was really feeling the absence of scent (cologne, perfume).  My big bottle of Bellodgia has a clogged sprayer and although it's about 2/3 full, I can't get any out.  This happened about two months after I got it; at some point, just from pumping and pumping, I got it to work for a few days, then it quit again.  There's no way to open it.  I even wrote to Caron, and never heard from them.  I had bought some Gucci rush about a year ago, but the sprayer dropped off, so it will only stream; plus, it's not holding well on me at all.  My Sublime and Escape were down to dregs.  It's the season where I like to wear something a bit heavier, like Coco, but what was really on my mind was Shalimar.  Mind you, I've never worn Shalimar.  But one of my grandmothers did, or else she simply had a bottle on her vanity, and I remembered the smellvividly.  It was wonderful and almost overwhelming.  I recognize it on women who walk by.  So I got myself a fairly small portion (1/4 oz. EDT) on eBay, and it's unbelievably wonderful.  I can't believe how happy it makes me.  I'm also waiting for a bottle of Mitsouko and one of Samsara, both also made by Guerlain.  It seems like time to wear classics.

I may have mentioned The Perfumed Court, a website where you can buy smaller sizes of almost any kind of scent you can imagine -- plus it really has a lot of information about the history and composition of pretty much every scent on the site.  It's tons of information, but it does help you to find other scents of the type you enjoy -- plus you can get small samples (not free) to check them out.  It's not cheap, but fragrance samples are not as easy to come by as they used to be.

My brother is having more and more and more problems.  Not much to be done for him.  He's having more and more flashbacks about some bad things that were done to him as a kid, and although he sees a therapist, this stuff has totally paralyzed him.  Neither he nor my sister-in-law has worked for a very long time, and I'm not sure how they get along, except that I guess public assistance goes a longer way in Providence, RI than it does in New York.

I do have a new insurance plan through my job, which is about as good as it can be.  Unlike Medicaid, there are co-pays, but there are none for generic meds and none for lab tests, which is a life-saver.

Work is basically good.  The beginning of the term was pretty hectic, but now things seem to be rolling nicely.  I hired a nice new intern who seems to be working out well; I've had good luck so far with interns.

Barry is now without insurance (we lost Medicaid September 30), which is terrible, but there's not much we can do.  I don't have a spare cent to add him to my coverage (which would totally about $6,000 per year).  I'm really pushing him hard about looking for work...rather, I am strongly encouraging him.  But we are just not making ends meet. We've already sold CDs and books and Barry's drum kit.  Something has to change.

work, play, all the rest

Work:  very hectic.  Classes started this past Monday; suddenly everyone's around, and there's always something for me to do.  Lots. The fall intern I'd hired during the summer punked out on me at the last minute, so I didn't have one before the start of the term.  We weren't getting much yield from internships.com, so I had the idea of e-mailing half-a-dozen psychology departments at good local colleges  I got around 50 applications, and I believe it has only been circulated in two schools so far (Hunter and Baruch). 

Then I cleared the decks and interviewed four on Thursday and three yesterday and I have one more on Monday morning.  I'm looking for two.  There's one I'm absolutely going to ask.  The problem is that two other really good ones have the exact same times available, and I'm trying to split it up a little because three people in my tiny office is a lot; there are only two computers, and there isn't necessarily non-computer work every day.  There's one prospect who does have opposite days available, but I don't want to choose him just for that.  There's someone I like a couple of notches better.  I just have to decide if the guy with the good schedule is really who I want. The more coverage I have, the more other stuff I can do. 

I'm going to a couple of workshops on fundraising topics, which are both half-day affairs, and I'd like to at least have a warm body in the office.  I'm sometimes away from my desk to attend a meeting; I take minutes for the Board and the Executive Committee, and Fundraising has been asking me to attend their meetings.  I'm not sure why I keep having ideas they love; I've really never been involved with fundraising or development.  I think it's a mix of my education administration experience and my publicity experience, with a little writing skill thrown in.  I recently made a suggestion that we call our graduates "alumni" instead, which has a connotation of continued connection rather than here-and-gone.  Everyone went crazy for it.  A few months ago, I mentioned scholarships.  Who at a school hasn't thought of scholarships?

Play:  not much play, but I have a little time to kick back this weekend.  I just got paid on Thursday and I'm already stressed about money, but I'm putting it somewhat aside.  There's just not that much that can be done.  So I've been doing some of the things I like.  I have a lot of things I enjoy online:  my blog reader (I subscribe to quite a few blogs), a few games at Pogo.com, watching Netflix.  Facebook.  Tonight I ended up spending a couple of hours on YouTube; I was looking at something Barry had linked to from Facebook, and before I knew it, I was deep into My Favorites and also finding some new stuff.  I've posted quite a few of My Favorites here.  Some of them I love to watch over and over.  I actually posted three to Facebook, or I tried...Facebook sometimes eats my posts.  I know that one got up there:  Joe Flood singing "Miss Fabulous."  What?  you don't remember that one?  Well, then here it is again:

I was feeling very acoustic tonight.  Kind of mellow, although the Joe Flood song does totally rock, even on fiddle and bass.  Found a couple of new videos I liked a lot, although my favorite one wouldn't do anything for anyone who isn't crazy about old-timey/bluegrass music and familiar with the late lamented Wretched Refuse String Band.  It had one of their old recordings with a photo montage in tribute to the late lamented Richie Shulberg (aka Citzen Kafka), and some of the old band photos included one of my old sweethearts, who played with the band in the 70s.  Big sigh.

I'm not sure I really have that much to say tonight, but I wanted to slap something up here.  I hate to go too long without posting.  No earworms lately, no earthshattering events, nothing too outrageous. 

There was recently some serious flooding, in the wake of the pseudo-hurricane, in my old stomping ground of Binghamton, NY, which is unlucky enough to be at the conjunction of two rivers (Chenango and Susquehanna).  Apparently the nearby town of Owego was particularly hard hit, and I know someone who lived there.  I haven't been in touch with him for about eleven years, and I called and left a voice mail about a week ago.  Haven't heard from him yet, which is a little worrying, but I imagine it's very hectic all around there.  I'd just like to know that he and his family are all right.

I may have mentioned that I'm back in therapy.  Actually, I guess you'd call it analysis.  Back in the day, when I worked at another analytic clinic, it wasn't considered analysis unless you went three times a week.  Now, our students are required to do part of their analysis at twice a week, part at once.  So even though I'm going only once, I'm seeing someone analytic and I'm on the couch, so there you go.  I guess I'm about a month in now, and it feels good.  It's good to be able to spill things out and have someone look at them with me.  I guess when it gets hard, it's less pleasant, although I've already done a fair share of crying. 

I talked some about V., about the fact that I still do think of him and miss his friendship, or the illusion of friendship. My analyst thought it was not out of line not to be over it yet.  Three years, I guess, isn't that long to get over someone who was in your life for over 30 years.  Also, there was a time where I was hugely wrapped up and intertwined with his friends, family, fans...I was connected to a lot of people through and around him.  I'm only in touch with a few of them anymore.  There was something unpleasantly obsessive about the whole thing at times, but sometimes I enjoyed the large "family" that extended out to the west coast and back.

NOW I remember what I wanted to write about:  a certain prejudice.  I'm one of those violently liberal people who can't stand prejudice, based on race and especially based on religion.  I think I disappointed a close friend by refusing to hate all Palestinians and all Muslims.  I eye people very closely when I hear anything that smacks of bigotry.  But I realized today that I do have a problem with one particular group of people, and that's the Russians who live in the US, particularly here in Brooklyn.

We lived in Brighton Beach for about seven months, and when we moved there, I was really excited to move to the big beautiful apartment, to be so close to the boardwalk and ocean, and to have the opportunity to be around a different culture; I even thought that perhaps I would learn some Russian.  Uh-uh.  I cannot describe how insular the Russians who live there are, and how extremely rude and unpleasant they are to non-Russians.  I did not encounter a single person of whom that was not true.  I don't even remember being able to have any conversation at all with any Russian person there, not a chat in a grocery store or subway station, nothing.  In fact, in the stores, we could not get waited on until every single Russian person was waited on, even the ones who came in after we did.  It was as if we were living in a different country, and were entirely unwelcome.  And last summer, I suffered a very bad haircut at the hands of a Russian haircutter who was very brusque and curt and who did not give me what I asked for.

It came to mind today because Barry and I went to an an optometrist today to get po' people glasses (we can each get a free pair of glasses through Medicaid, which we only have until the end of the month), and it was very crowded, we had to wait an hour past our appointment time to be seen, and I believe that every other person there, customer, staff, and medical, were Russian.  No one was nasty to us, but just spending over two hours listening to Russian and English with heavy Russian accents really affected me.  I got cranky and didn't know why.  I guess I have to say, honestly, that I do not like Russians.

Then again, a friend of a friend was saying, a few months ago, how much she hates Canadians.  Canadians?  It seems her job requires her to deal with a lot of Canadians, a lot of her company's clients are based there, and she found all of them rude and conceited.  I guess, as much as you may not want to have that kind of opinion of a large group of people, your experience informs that kind of thing.  I actually rather liked Russian people before moving to Brighton; there were quite a few living in the apartment building where we'd lived in Midwood, and some of them were really nice.  Even the ones who didn't speak much or any English smiled and were friendly.  I guess Brighton just ruined it for me.

There's a new reality show on called Russian Dolls:  half a dozen rich tacky Russian girls in Brighton.  I laugh my ass off.  They're about as stupid and obnoxious as the Jersey Housewives, except they dress and groom in even worse taste.  THIS IS WHAT IT'S LIKE.  There's also a DirecTV commercial with a nouveau riche Russian guy that I find fairly hilarious -- although I also think it's kind of stereotyped and in bad taste. Go fig:

I'm a fool for that tiny giraffe, too.  

Well, I think it's time to watch a movie I downloaded today.  It's not, ahem, generally available for home viewing yet (if you get my drift), and I hope it's a good copy. 

The Big Picture

Things with Barry pretty much righted themselves after about a week, although I'm still keeping him on a very tight leash with money.

The Big Picture is this:  one, my depression and anxiety are not being properly controlled.  I need to see a new psychiatrist ASAP.  I am still taking the lamotrigine (generic Lamictal), but a low dose, 125 mg a day.  (The bad psychiatrist had had me on 400, up from 200.)  I lowered my own dose because after my meltdown and after reading up on the drug a little more thoroughly, I decided that it's a nasty thing to have in my body and I only wanted to take a minimal amount until my med could be switched.  But Barry, who does my doctor research because he has the time, has had trouble finding a network psychiatrist who's taking new patients and who has hours outside of 9-5.  At this point, I told him any hour will work for me -- I just need to see someone.

The second point of The Big Picture is that I worry about money every waking hour.  I used to tell one of my therapists that I was bad with money, and he always said the same thing:  "No, you just don't earn enough."  It took me a long time to understand this.  The point was not to be perfect with money -- the point was to have enough that if you weren't perfect, it wouldn't be a disaster.  I'm not earning close to enough.  Even during a month without a financial catastrophe like having to replace a computer, we don't have enough money.  It doesn't help that our monthly nut just went up $200 -- $100 for my therapy, and $100 for my carfare (the Back-to-Work job retention program paid my carfare for 90 days).  There is absolutely nothing coming in except my salary, and even though I now consider myself good with money (WAY better than I used to be), there just plain isn't enough.

I find I have to poke at Barry all the time to look for work, take classes or see a counselor at FEGS, try to sell our unused CDs to someone on Craigslist, etc.  I think he feels that his doing all of the shopping, cooking, doctor appointments, etc is enough.  I don't know how many times I have to freak out and yell that we need more money coming in, that he has to get something, anything, part-time, minimum wage, I don't care.  That generally buys me one day of him saying, "I looked at Craigslist this morning."  A few times over this past week, I took some time at work to look at Craigslist myself, and forwarded him a dozen ads each time.  That shouldn't have to be my job.  (Of course, there have been plenty of times in the past when I've said "That shouldn't have to be my job" concerning something that Barry wasn't doing, and I've always realized that if I don't make it my job, it won't get done.)

So the upshot of The Big Picture is that I cry almost all the time.  If I'm not crying, I'm close to it.  I usually don't cry in front of other people except Barry and my therapist, but I cry walking down the street, in the subway, alone at work.  I went through this once before, toward the end of my time at Penguin -- also an impending-doom scenario.  It's mostly just silent weeping, tears pouring out of my eyes without much sobbing or fuss.  If I feel particularly agitated, I take a lorazepam (generic Atavan), which is my anxiety-rescue med (as needed, no more than twice a day).  Some days I don't take it at all, some days I take one or two, or even three or four.  (Each pill is 2 mg.)  But I don't want to have to do that.

I don't know how to make more income happen.  I've even looked around for a part-time job that I could do evenings or weekends, but haven't found one.

In addition, our Medicaid runs out at the end of September.  My employers promised (in writing) to provide insurance when my Medicaid runs out, and for Barry as well if he is not yet working, "estimated at $3,600."  I think that was my low-ball estimate because I didn't want to seem too grabby.  $3,600 is nothing.  Even if they pay more and get me a decent plan, I'll have co-pays, which I don't have now.  Or I may have to pay in to the cost of insurance, which I can't possibly do.  This in and of itself is enough to cause constant weeping.

I am supposed to visit Jannah this weekend if I can manage to hang on to $30 for train fare.  That would certainly be a much-needed break, and I think I could actually stop worrying about finances for a couple of days.

My Amazon Associates widget is again not working, but I am reading The Help -- the movie based on it just opened very successfully.  The book is a little on the liberal-southern-chick-lit side, but not bad.  I'd really rather have seen it told exclusively from the points of view of the African-American maids, since the white protagonist kind of makes me grind my teeth in embarrassment.

strange changes

I have indeed changed the title and description of my blog, and if I do buy a domain name, it will be some iteration of the new title.  A lot of people are carrying the banner of Coney Island and of Brooklyn a whole lot better than I am.  That's not being hard on myself; it's just a fact.  I'm writing about other things.  And lately, it seems to be more opinion than memoir.  If you read way back, it's very memoir-y, but these days, not so much.

Yet again, I can't seem to use or see my Amazon widgets from my home computer.  Am I starting to hate Blogger again?  Perhaps.  I did figure out, though, how to change my job from book publishing to whatever it is I do now.  Actually, I love my job.  I kind of bustle around all day long, although it's mostly sitting at my computer, updating lists and documents, and especially reading and sending e-mail.  My phone rings maybe twice a day, but the e-mail just pours in.  Obviously, I adore e-mail as a form of communication.  All of that letter-writing I did from around 1971 right up to around 1998 or 1999 has done me some good.  (And the only reason I wrote letters that long was that I was very close to someone in Chicago who didn't have e-mail and was also a great letter-writer.)

My mind is wandering a little.  I've had a cold all week, and yesterday it was so severe that I stayed home, coughing and sneezing and nose-blowing all day.  Read a lot of the latest book on my Kindle, The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and someone whose name I could tell you if my Amazon Associates widget was working.  (Seriously, Blogger, whassup?)

A kitten is under consideration.  There is a cat rescue woman named Patricia, who sets up right across from Union Square, in front of Whole Foods, weather permitting.  She and I have become very friendly, since I show up practically every day she's out, and we are both great cat lovers.  She is a wonderful woman.  Anyway, I've been resisting, resisting, and resisting...really not easy, because she always has so many lovely and adorable kittens and cats.  But somehow, one of the kittens got to me.  She's six weeks old, a long-haired calico, and Barry and I are in love with her.  We had thought about the name Martha if we ever got another cat; Barry's mother's name in Poland was Marta (which was changed to Myrna when she came over here at age 8), but I thought Marta was a little harsh-sounding and suggested Martha.  And when I first saw the long-haired calico, I thought Coco would be an excellent name.  But of course, she has her rescue-cat name, the name Patricia's been calling her, which is Delilah.  So of course, we've been referring to her as Delilah, and I think if she comes to live with us, Delilah it is.  (That's how our middle cat, Lolly, got her name -- is was her rescue-cat name.  Xena and Maya both came to us without names, and I named them both.  I'm a pretty good cat-namer.)

Anyway, someone has already adopted one of Delilah's sibs, and may or may not want Delilah as well.  If not, Delilah is ours.  I've held her a couple of times, and she cuddles right up and purrs.  She's a beauty, and I've never had a long-haired cat.  Of course, we would then have four cats.  Barry didn't bat an eye -- I'm afraid I've made him into an even crazier cat person than I was or am.  He fell for her right away; he has a particular soft spot for calicos, ever since we got Lolly -- although I'm the one who spotted and chose her.  I'm a good cat-picker too.  I was the first one to spot Lolly, Xena and Maya, and brought Maya home without Barry ever seeing her first.  (This was after Tiggy died, and she and I were so crazy about each other it was pretty much a given that I'd be coming home with a new kitten at some point.)

I know four cats is crazy.  Tell me something I don't know.  That's what we get for not having children.

here's what

besides the fact that the home computer died a week ago...

This has not been the best few weeks.  First off, soon (I think) after my last entry, I think a couple of Tuesday ago, I had a terrible reaction to the meds my new psychiatrist had troubled, and became disoriented and basically really fucked up, and Barry had to come to work and haul me off to the ER.  No fun and really embarrassing.  I've gone back down to the old dose and am looking for my fourth psychiatrist.

Also going to intake for a new therapist on Wednesday.  "New" is not a replacement -- I haven't seen one for around 22 years, although I went on and off from the time I was 9 until I was around 30.

But I've been really crazy lately.  Lots of weeping, the kind of daily weeping I experienced when I worked at Penguin (except that I had a seriously horrible boss there -- hi Shanta Small! -- and I have seriously wonderful bosses here).  My job here gets busy and complicated, but that's not it.  I cry at home, too.  I worry lots and lots about money.  Supporting two people on one salary is really difficult, especially when it's the lowest salary I've earned since around 1995 (with the exception of Dweck).

So then our home computer breaks.  Not just needs-the-disc-wiped-and-Windows-reinstalled kind of break, the motherboard-is-fried-so-bury-it-at-sea break.  This was a week ago.  And so we had to wait until payday (today) to get a new one, which is irritating and embarrassing and just plain made me sad.  Everything makes me feel poor and less-than. 

I really suffer at times like this -- I feel like almost everything shows me how poor and dead-ended I am.  I got a very perky message on Facebook from a nice woman who is the older sister of someone who was a close friend.  My friend, the younger brother, used to feel like shit in comparison to his sister, who was tall (he wasn't), got into Yale (he didn't), and became a doctor (guess).  Anyway, I got this lovely note from her, asking about my career and my kids and so on.  Oops!  forgot to have a normal life!

Also on Facebook, I heard from M., who had been my lover some years back, when he was married and I wasn't.  (That was back in the days when I wasn't perfect -- oh, wait, I'm still not.)  M. was very full of himself and a lot of people didn't like him, but I couldn't get enough of the way he was fixated on me.  Plus the sex was great.  M. is now divorced and remarried, but I'm itching to talk over old times with him.  He really was a pal, at a very lonely time.

All times feel lonely now.  Barry has been an absolute rock, don't get me wrong, but I don't seem to have much except for him and work.

Can't seem to settle down with a book, either.  Can't seem to settle down much at all. 

We're supposed to go see Felix play tonight, but I may back out.  I love Felix to pieces but can't seem to go more than a few hours without crying.  It would be nice to get my chemicals in balance and my mind right.

Do you ever feel too poor to have friends?  Can't afford to get to where they live, or to go out to dinner, or to maintain a nice enough home so that people can visit?  I tried to get Robin and Ernie to come out to Felix' gig tonight, and she said, "I can hardly get Ernie to leave Brooklyn any more."  Leslie can't get Darin to leave New Jersey.  I don't suppose I need a lot of face time with people for them to be my friends, but it does leave me home alone a lot.

So, at least I got paid, and we can go out to Compustar and have them build us a new machine tomorrow.  I love Compustar -- they've been our repair guys for years, and built our first computer around 1999.  Of course, this means we'll be even more desperately poor coming into August 15, but what can I do?  At least we don't have to buy a monitor, keyboard, speakers or mouse.  And a dear new friend is going to provide me with a b**tleg of MSOff*ce.

It just makes me feel kind of sad that getting paid is such a huge event, and that the week before getting paid makes me feel like I'm living in the Great Depression.  Last Monday, I gave Barry around $25, and said, "Buy two pounds of ground meat and two packages of tofu, and a dozen eggs, I have a big bag of frozen broccoli, and buy a small bag of brown rice, a small bag of white rice, oatmeal, and onions."  Once or twice during the week we pick up half a pound of muenster cheese.  This is how we eat the last week before pay.  Barry has to do without soda, chips, ice cream.  He eats oatmeal for breakfast and I barely eat breakfast or lunch.  Maybe a cup of Greek yogurt in the morning and an apple at lunch.  It's seriously pathetic.  And this is without dropping $300-400 on a new computer.

I want to strangle every 18- or 19-year-old who talks about going to Berlin, Paris and Israel.  I want to strangle everyone who can afford a new skirt or a hat or even a manicure.  I can't figure out how they do it -- rather, I can't figure out how to live decently on what I earn.  (Forget about figuring out how to get Barry working.  I've thrown out every idea I can muster, but his heart doesn't seem to be in it, or maybe he's still frozen in fear after two years.)

I am so, so, so not a happy camper.  I'm happy about having a good job and good bosses, and also about having bought a nice summer wardrobe last year. 

working, at last, with a cameo by the old neighbors

Working is good.  For some reason, even though it's more or less the same hours as Back-to-Work was, I'm really beat at the end of the day.  Maybe it's because I'm actually doing things all day long, and trying to stuff a huge amount of info into my noggin.  I keep thinking about the Far Side cartoon (I think it was Far Side), where a kid raises his hand in class and says, "May I be excused?  My brain is full."  My brain gets full around 4:45.  It's only my first week, and I'll have one more week with the outgoing administrator, but there's a lot to learn.  It's not the same kind of pressure that characterized my first weeks at Dweck, although there are a heap of web-based services I have to learn (one for class registration, one for e-mail blasts, one for room reservations, etc.).  It's very different from the institute where I worked before, which was a good thing.  NYCPT was all-Freud, all the time, and very patriarchal.  PPSC teaches analysis along with other theories and treatment modalities, and is run by women.  Much better.  I feel very comfortable with the women I work for (the Founding Director and Executive Director), and they seem to be happy with me.  In fact, they seemed to be happy with me before I started working.  I think I have exactly the right skill set and temperament, plus the therapy culture is very familiar to me.  Before she died way too young, my mother was a candidate at NYCPT, and many of the therapist and trainees were social friends of hers in some way, so I knew what therapists were like (plus I was in therapy myself, on and off, for many years).  In fact, after my mother died, I stayed with one of her therapist friends (who was actually equally my friend) for some weeks.

Also, it's great not to be po' any more.  We're not exactly wealthy, but we're a lot better off.  PPSC as nice enough to arrange (at my request) for me to get paid right away, so the pressure was off almost immediately.  (They generally pay a month in advance on the first, but cut a check for me for two weeks in April.)

It's kind of a best-of-both-worlds window, where I'm working and earning, but still have a few po' people benefits.  I have my free Lifeline cell phone for a year, Medicaid for six months, carfare for 90 days.  Plus we still have some food stamps money (which may lessen or end soon), and maybe one more rent assistance check.  Ironically, our Medicaid HMO (United Healthcare Community plan) has some of the best medical benefits we've had for a long time.  Free prescriptions (which means I've finally started on Januvia). Dental care, for chrissakes!  Dental care!  Barry and I are both getting our teeth done pronto.  (I need a three-tooth bridge, a cap or crown or whatever on a broken molar, and a cavity filled -- any and all of these that are covered.  I'm seeing the dentist Sunday.  Barry's mouth is basically a disaster, a bunch of missing and broken teeth.  He may end up with dentures.)



I was reading something in a magazine that reminded me of a neighbor I had as a kid.  When I was maybe eleven or twelve, I used to babysit for the kids of my across-the-hall neighbors.  The wife was an absolutely stunning hippie-type who sewed and did all kinds of crafts.  The husband -- I'm not sure I knew this at the time, but he was an English teacher.  He had a lot of cool records and gave me some jazz albums stamped with his last name, maybe from college-dorm days.  (They were lost in The Great Storage Disaster.)  The husband wanted to make movies, though, and they split up and he went to California.  (The beautiful wife started dating, an eventually married, yet another neighbor, the singer-songwriter Tom Chapin.)  Some time later, my brother and I were on the subway, and stopped dead in front of a poster for a movie the husband had directed!  We laughed our heads off at the ad -- it was a horror movie, and the tagline was "Just keep telling yourself -- it's only a movie, it's only a movie, it's only a movie..."  It just seemed so cheesy to us.  Of course, within a few years, Wes Craven's success seemed anything but cheesy.  And I recently got back in touch with the beautiful wife, Bonnie Chapin, who is still amazingly lovely; Tom, of course, became very successful.  (Tom was just a local hero back then -- the big star was his brother, Harry, whose "Taxi" album came out while the Chapins, the Cravens and I still lived at 136 Hicks.  My mother went to a party for the record release, and Harry's bass player hit on her.  My mother was pretty lovely, too.)  Bonnie and Tom had a couple more daughters, who sing with Bonnie and Wes' daughter as "The Chapin Sisters."  I'm not sure what Bonnie and Wes' son is up to.  But the 136 crew had a lot of success and happy lives, plus varying degrees of fame and fortune.

On another topic -- I invited myself to Jannah's for Memorial Day weekend, and she accepted.  (That worked pretty well.)  It'll be my third Memorial Day weekend there...I adore the small-town Yardley Memorial Day parade, where they parade vintage cars and vintage veterans.  Jannah's husband John, who works with the Army Corps of Engineers (though he is not military and not an engineer), is very involved with all things military and rides in the parade in his Army truck.  Last year, Jannah's son Alex played his last parade with his school's marching band, which is a hugely well-known band (and even took Alex on a trip to China!).  Alex is now a freshman in college, I think RIT.  It's always nice weather there over Memorial Day, and Jannah's boat may even be launched by then!  It's something to look forward to.  It's nice to have the peace of mind to do something fun.

rocks and cell phones

I was given some, well, clerical work yesterday afternoon that also consumed a lot of today and will probably take a chunk of tomorrow.  (I don't in any way resent it -- most of us have to do some form of paperwork and/or record-keeping.  This job involved a huge stack of papers concerning OAKs (one of a kind pieces), and the job was basically to unstaple it, write the OAK number from the work order on the photo, and restaple it with the photo on top.  (Then I get to put them in numerical order, punch them and file them in looseleafs.)

Of course, the OAKs are made with unbelievably beautiful stones, and looking at them all day was mesmerizing.  More stones than beads, but I love stones, even if I don't use them.  I don't think I mentioned that I stopped into Bergdorf Goodman on Saturday (I had been in Manhattan to see Herb), to see Stephen's jewelry there.  It's actually the first place I ever saw his work.  His space has moved since I was last there, maybe 1996 or 97.  But his new space is beautiful, the OAKs were jaw-dropping, and everything was well-lit and beautifully displayed.

Barry and I are real knuckleheads when it comes to cell phones.  We've always kind of dragged our feet on them.  We've had them a few times, for very short times, but truthfully, neither of us found the need to use them very much.  I can be in a store and call Barry to see if he needs anything.  I can call him from the city -- or vice-versa -- to tell him when I expect to be home.  He can call a car service and go downstairs, and call if the car is late.  But that's about it.  We recently got a pay-as-you-go phone which we share.  It can do all kinds of fancy shit, but I haven't taken the time to read the teeny little booklet, and can't even program in phone numbers.

So Barry e-mailed me at work today, and that said I'd gotten two texts, one that said "Hi" and one that said "Hi Jennifer."  They were not signed.  Not many people have our cell number.  So I took a look at the originating phone number, and sure enough, it was Herb.  So I kinda figured out how to reply, and texted "Hi harold, i'm not very good at texting but it was nice to hear from you jen."  People, this is the very first text message I ever sent in my life.  That phone is a little more intuitive than I'd realized, and I'm fairly good with computers...but that thing is so tiny.  And the instructions are tiny.  It's not that I can't read the small instructions and keypad, it's just that I'm somewhat intimidated or put off.  I'm not yet ready for this:


It took me a couple of viewings to realized that this isn't really a phone for cell phone dummies -- it's a phone for older folk.  Maybe older and cellphone dummies.  But hey, young folk are not going to get excited about the "jitterbug" music, even though jitterbugging was hip for about twenty-five minutes in, I think it was the late 90s.  Anyway, I'll probably need one in about 30 eyars.

earworms and other things that come to mind

The worst earworms are of course, songs one doesn't like.  There is music in my office; one woman plays an internet station that mixes late 70s to current, with a decidedly whitish cast (read: no hip-hop or R&B), and I pretty much like it.  But she's been out for a couple of days, and the other woman has been playing Z-100, which is mostly pretty awful.  It's all pretty current stuff, and they play the same stuff over and over.  Which is not bad if it's Grenade by Bruno Mars or Teenage Dream by Katy Perry.  But that friggin' Neon Trees song (Animal) is making me insane.  I actually had to look up the band & name from the lyrics, which refuse to go out of my head.

I'm not sure what to say about work, after a month on the job.  Some days are very stressful and overwhelming, and some are more pleasant.  I have a couple of no-brainer tasks that tend to be a soothing break, sort of what labeling and stuffing mailers was in publishing.  Some people find that kind of thing dull, but sometimes I just need a break from talking and thinking tasks.  I'm getting to know my vendors, who are mostly very nice (except when they're looking for overdue payments), and the women who work in the factory.  The women in the factory and the design and OAK (one of a kind) design room are almost entirely Hispanic, and mostly Mexican, I think.  It helps to speak Spanish, which I don't, but I understand it a lot and they tend to understand more English than they speak, so we manage and we get along.  My officemates and staff co-workers are nice enough.  Management is fairly hands-off and not really warm & fuzzy.  It's a workplace for me, not a passion, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.  I had a bad experience some years back working in manufacturing, partially because the boss (whose assistant I was) was flat-out crazy and nasty.  But it wasn't my favorite atmosphere.  Maybe it's just a little too stratified for my liking...at both jobs, there was a distance between the administration and the factory workers that I haven't seen at other types of workplaces.  The workers have to punch in and out, and they actually have bells (like in school) for start and stop times, breaks, lunch time, etc. 

Then again, I have a three-day weekend to frolic and be myself, even if I don't have much frolicking money.

I found a woman on Facebook who is the younger sister of my best friend from around age eight to twelve, and I got an e-mail address for her.  I listened to the Monkees with Carla, tried on her mother's makeup, drew "dirty pictures" (mostly just naked men and women, though we only had a very vague idea of what males looked like unclothed), and shared a crush on a boy at school.  She transferred to a different school, and we lost touch.  But she was a great, great friend.  Her sister turned out to be neat, too -- she sets up big equipment towers at stadium rock shows.

It's birthday season, Barry's today, Robin's on Saturday, mine on the 18th.  (I just found out that I share my birthday with James Wormworth, a drummer from the New York blues scene who is now the regular drummer on Conan -- he used to fill in for Max Weinberg, but now the gig is all James'!)  I got Barry a new wallet, which he needed, and a Swiss Army Knife, which I knew he'd love.  We were at Jannah's this summer, and he showed his knife, which John pronounced an imitation.  Barry knew that it wasn't a real one, but I think he may have felt bad, since John is such a mister fix-it and master of all tools.  So I decided right then that I'd get Barry a really nice and genuine Swiss Army Knife.  This one has 17 gizmos!

Robin (don't read this!) is getting a cashmere scarf, since she's perpetually chilly. 

I did get myself an early gift yesterday.  This horrible, tacky Russian-owned gift shop opened on Avenue U a couple of years ago:  ugly vases and ugly decorative items and ugly jewelry.  Except that there was one, exactly one, really nice pair of earrings in the window, silver and marcasite with three long drops.  I didn't want to spend the $85, of course.  Then there was a For Rent sign in the window, indicated some price drops, and I thought I might go in and make a cash offer.  But after a couple of months For Rent, just a few days ago, they posted a Going Out of Business -- 50 to 70% Off sign.  I went in yesterday and the earrings were $40 and I bought them, since I had been hoping to get them at some point for $40-50.  Happy birthday to me.

I generally don't judge people by race or ethnic group, but I make an exception for Russians.  We lived in Brighton Beach for about seven months, maybe five years ago.  The Russians there were very insular, not at all interested in assimilating or even learning English, and were extremely rude to us.  No exceptions.  We would go into a store, and have to wait until every Russian-speaking person was served, even those who came in after us.  And the stores, decor and dress were uniformly ugly, tacky and over the top.  Very nouveau riche, fur coats in 60-degree weather and the like.  That awful, rude, mean woman who cut my hair this summer was Russian.  This doesn't mean that I dislike every Russian person right away -- in fact, the GYN I just saw (she's in the same practice as my regular GYN, who doesn't have Friday hours) is Russian, and I liked her very much.  I guess I do judge people as individuals, except I tend to have an expectation that Russian people will be unpleasant. which I guess is why I mentioned that the ugly gift shop was Russian...it was a very particular kind of Russian ugly/tacky.

In icky news, I went to the GYN the other day for an uncomfortable external problem.  (Squeamish folk can stop reading now.)  I found out that I have something called Lichen Sclerosis, which is a condition where your skin (often in the genital area) gets whitish and thin and itchy and sore.  She prescribed two creams, leaned on me to get some overdue tests (mammogram, bone density, etc.), and recommended a procedure (they don't even call these things "outpatient surgery" any more -- it's an "ambulatory procedure") for my slight stress incontinence (which used to be a lot worse before I started doing kegels, but hasn't vanished).  And a colonoscopy.  So I'll be having a bunch of fun in my spare time.  In fact, I'm having three tests done on Sunday (the mammogram, bone density, and I've forgotten the third, maybe a breast sonogram).  (The doctor did a vaginal sonogram at my appointment.)  My regular doctor is trying to arrange to do the colonoscopy on a Friday -- like many of my doctors, he's religious, and doesn't usually work on Fridays at all.  And Barry's trying to schedule the other thing for me.  Barry's been a huge help in scheduling all this stuff, since I can't make the calls at work.

Robin and I are having our annual birthday dinner tomorrow; Leslie (also a November birthday) was part of it when she lived in NYC.  We're going for Indian food in the East Village, also a longstanding tradition.  We haven't done it much since she got all South Beach on me, but before that we ate cheap Indian food there for years and years.  We used to eat Indian food and browse in a few favorite shops, including the late lamented vintage-goods store Love Saves the Day, and the late lamented craftsy Back From Guatemala.  Fun fact:  BFG was the first store to ever carry and sell any of my jewelry.  They bought an ocean jasper Y-necklace for $20 as a try-out, sold it, and went out of business soon after.

Speaking of which, I'm in the middle of a fairly ambitious jewelry project.  I rarely make anything that I can't finish in one sitting, maybe two.  (Same way I used to write short poems rather than short stories or a novel.)  But I decided to make a six-strand necklace for myself, mostly focused on green: ruby zoisite, fancy jasper, green kyanite (!!), some bits and pieces of moss agate and malachite, and some small green-gold pearls.  Some of the strands will be knotted, but not all.  I was actually somewhat inspired by a Chan Luu necklace that I won in a drawing at Fragments, and which I've never worn because it's too short for me (16 inches).  I don't do chokers -- they're not comfortable or flattering on me.  But the necklace is lovely, five strands of coral in different shapes, some knotted and some not, with a big carnelian pendant.  I'm still not sure what to do with that necklace -- I don't want to give it away, don't want to take it apart, and it seems a little sacrilegious to make an extender.  The thing sold for $395 at the time I won it, and I do love it.  But I'm going to make the green necklace just for me, and at a length I like.

greetings from Brooklyn

I've been a little low since getting back from the Memorial Day festivities, partly because of money concerns. Even though my new medication has gotten me more normalized than I've been in a couple of years, I still haven't felt quite equal to going back to work, at least not the kind of work I used to do. Because I only have the absolute minimum work experience to do publishing publicity, meaning it would be almost impossible to land a job, I'm probably looking at administrative/executive assistant work again. And I always had trouble keeping those kinds of jobs because I generally got bored. Especially when I worked in professional firms (e.g., law and engineering), there was a certain ceiling, and a certain limit to how much I could learn about the business of the company. When I'd learned what I could learn, and risen as high at possible (which was often no rise at all), I would get bored, and start to think that I was very unhappy trading most of my waking hours for whatever the salary was (and I had pretty good salaries for a lot of the nineties, less so later on).

When I was having trouble leaving the house -- that is, up until about six weeks ago -- the plan was always for Barry to go back to work and for me to do whatever I could manage. But Barry's progress has been extremely slow. He's been going to a Department of Labor career counseling center, but has generally let weeks lapse between signing up for information sessions or meetings with the counselor. He's not dealing well with the idea of career change, but since the industry he worked in for many years basically no longer exists (NYC garment center), he needs to learn how to do something else. But he's been balking and balking. (Some years ago, he was unemployed for about seven months, and I tried to convince him to change his line of work, saying that I didn't think there'd be a living for him in the garment center until he was ready to retire. He went for career counseling, but when some options were suggested to him that required some retraining, he *really* balked and just waited until he was offered a garment center job. He only went to community college very briefly, and then mostly to avoid the draft, so he doesn't have much higher ed experience, and no school experience at all for thirty-odd years.)

I went to see Allen Toussaint in Prospect Park the other night (so, so amazing!), and spotted someone I'd interviewed with some years back, the head of a record group that puts out New Orleans, funk, and old rap and soul CDs. I'd almost gone to work for him, but at the last minute, I asked if he could possibly adjust the salary a bit or else let me have half-days on Fridays, and the deal went south. (I had been working at a law firm four days a week, at such a large hourly rate that I was earning over $40K a year, and the new job would have payed around $35K for five days, and I don't remember if that included bennies.) Now, of course, I would love to have that job at $35K, so I'm going to e-mail the guy. At the time that I applied, he was so busy that he hadn't had time to interview assistants, and I'm hoping he still needs someone, even a few years down the line. I think I could tolerate that office job.The Bright Mississippi