Author: Stacy Horn

I decided to get a wreath. The thing is, it’s within the cat’s reach. I’m okay with them ripping it to shreds, if that’s what happens. In that case I will call it their Christmas present.

Because cats. Readers of my blog may remember how the cats broke the glass lampshade on my floor lamp, which I only recently replaced. It took me over a year to decide I could even afford to replace it. Then, I wasn’t sure about the proportions of the shade. It is too big? But I decided it was perfect and came to love it. To prevent the cats from knocking the lamp over again I barricaded it with an end table. All was well. The end.

Well, the happy ending lasted, what? Just a little bit over a month. A couple of nights ago the cats came at the lamp again, and instead of knocking it over they jumped at it and slammed it into the wall. It didn’t completely shatter, but the pieces that broke off did. Mostly. So except for a few pieces that survived, I couldn’t glue it back together.

I looked at replacement shades, but then I thought, what’s the point? They’ll just break whatever I buy. What else can I do? The jagged, broken parts were all along the top rim. I thought, maybe I could find something to wrap around the rim to cover them. A pretty ribbon perhaps. Maybe some tulle? I headed off to Mood.

Here is the lampshade before …

And here it is after. The bad bits are in the back, covered by the bow that I tied with the ends of the material. The bow part looks a little cheesy, that’s why it’s in the back. But I love the sparkly material I found. It’s an $8 fix! Once again, all is well, and my cats still suck. Because you know they are not done with this lampshade.

My choir singing and talking about singing in Central Park. I make a couple of appearances, in an Elizabeth Warren tshirt.

I hope to be able to write about East New York (ENY), and a friend drove me around the neighborhood yesterday. More about that on another day, but he also drove me to Houdini’s grave (in Queens, but close to ENY). I thought a message to his wife was engraved on his headstone, but I googled it and it turns out I remembered the story wrong. The message I remembered was actually a secret code he would communicate to her after his death. If she got it, it would be proof of life after death.

But I noticed there wasn’t a death date for her on the tombstone. That’s because she’s buried elsewhere. He is buried in a Jewish cemetery and she is buried in a Catholic cemetery, so perhaps it was religious thing. Further proof humanity is nuts. Like having relationships isn’t tricky enough. Let’s come up with ways to make it even more challenging!

I walked up to Central Park and over to Bloomingdales and back, taking pictures of the Christmas decorations along the way. But when I got home they all looked terrible. I looked at my camera and the ISO was jacked all the way up (making the pictures very grainy) and the quality was set at a very low-res. I have no idea how these settings got there, but this has happened before, and the worst time was when I was at the beginning of my professional life.

I once wanted to be a photographer and through a friend and incredible luck I got two assignments at the New York Times. Which I botched, due to taking pictures with the wrong settings. It was humiliating. And I made my friend look bad. Twice. He was conducting the interviews and was without pictures to accompany the articles. I still cringe thinking about it. (The subjects were Rueben Blades and Willem Dafoe.) Oh God.

This is one tiny part of why I love writing books. I have plenty of time to go over my work and correct any mistakes. Here are a few shots anyway. In that middle one I was scrambling to get my camera up and ready to get a shot of the girl with the purple hair walking by the purple window. It’s not a great shot, but I made it in time, damnit!