Month: April 2018

There’s a beach in Brooklyn that is always strewn with mostly bottles and dead horse bones. I’m not sure why. Why do bottles continue to wash up on only this shore? Where do they come from? My friend Anthony found a plate marked “Made in Occupied Japan” which means it’s from 1947-1952. What is it about the seas, currents, tides and underwater geography that brought it here somewhere around 60 years later? Many of the bottles look the same, that makes me think they’re all coming from the same bottling manufacturer or bottling plant.

I just read an essay in the Times titled Who Doesn’t Love to Hate-Watch HGTV? First, it’s not hate-watch for me, I love it all. But I did agree that so often the homes are being turned into the same place over and over and over. I wish there was more variety in the final product. But it doesn’t make me hate these shows, I still love them and I’m still entertained.

The essay did make me fantasize though, and this is a big part of the allure of these shows, fantasizing, but my fantasy was: there’s a contest and I can pick a home (paid for by the network) and then pick one of these show hosts to renovate it. There are certain things that each of them does that I love, and the best would be a combination of their talents, but in my fantasy I went with Brett Waterman from Restored. Those are my tastes, I love history and original details. But I love the Good Bones girls and what they do (and they have excellent taste in paintings), and I considered them, and I love how the Home Town people make things out of what they tore out of the house, and Jonathan on Property Brothers when he’s designing for one of those Brother vs Brother contests, I could go on. Oh and I want both Love it or List it and Love it or List it, Too to return!

Also part of my fantasy is buying my own furniture, and artwork, and having a say about all the finishes if there’s something that can’t be restored. I don’t understand people who hand all of this over to the show hosts and then move into a home they didn’t lovingly furnish themselves. Even if some of my tastes are just plain bad, I want my home to be reflection of me, bad taste and all. Otherwise I’d feel like I was moving into someone else’s home.

Which reminds me, my yearly Spring Cleaning is coming up. I can’t afford all the professional cleaning I had done in the year pictured below, but oh well! What I need more than professional cleaning is to have all of my wooden windows restored. They are completely falling apart. Brett Waterman can’t help me alas, because I rent. They’re likely never going to be fixed by anyone!

I’m not getting anything done today. I think I should just surrender and do something fun, instead of sitting at the desk, hating myself for not being productive. I’ve been berating myself for two hours now.

My cats. Admit it. Wouldn’t you like to curl up with them? Oh good god. Bodhi just walked across the keyboard and something about how he does it always turns on “voice over.” This happens every other day. There must be a keyboard shortcut to turning it off.

I lugged Bali through the snow and rain, and from the #1 train to the Q to take him to see a doctor at the ASPCA. I thought he might have a urinary tract infection, but the vet thinks it could be feline idiopathic cystitis. She’s going to call me today with the results of the blood and urine tests. While there, Bali tried to bite Maria, one of the techs who trained me. Not cool Bali.

I’ve been reflecting on how Bodhi and Bali have changed roles. When I first took them home Bodhi was the love bug, the one who had to be in my arms and near me at all times. Bali was sweet, but shy, and would cuddle up from time to time. But now that they’re comfortable in their new surroundings, Bodhi is constantly on the move, playing, jumping, running (my poor downstairs neighbor) and Bali can usually be found quietly curled up on my lap.

That’s Bodhi on the left, giving his perpetually alert look, and Bali with his sincere face. (I took this picture in the fall. They’re bigger now.)

Strecker Memorial Laboratory was a pathology lab connected to City Hospital, which I wrote about in my book about Blackwell’s Island. The lab was closed by the 1950’s and a photographer named Anna Kaysen went inside in the 1960s and took pictures of what was left behind. Which was a lot it turned out. This one was the saddest.

Anna must have found it among all the artifacts in these jars. This one seems to have been taken with a different camera. It almost feels like it was taken in the 19th century, and not just because of the sepia tone. I enlarged it to try to see what was in the rest of the jars, but it was not clear enough to tell.

This appears to be a foot just laying on the floor. How could it remain so well preserved?