Author: Stacy Horn

The universe threw me a bone!! Only a few traumatic moments, and I was done in half the time and now I’m home where I will take it easy for the rest of the night.

My prayers go out to Shanghai and the victims of that terrible fire and also to their families and friends.

(I took this picture walking home on Bleecker Street. Okay, it was another night, not tonight, but it looks mostly the same.)

Yesterday was supposed to be such a nice day. Then my computer wouldn’t come back from installing updates and the whole rest of the day right up until an 8pm radio interview I had scheduled was spent in recovery mode.

Then, during the interview my brain refused to wrap itself around the word “electro-magnetism.” I couldn’t pronounce it! For the love of Christ. I had to go with, “you know the word I mean.”

So no work done yesterday, no play. I’m trying to recover some piece of mind today. But the computer is still a little weird, the chapter I’m working on is hard, money is still an issue, how am I going to research and write, AND make a living, AND run Echo (okay, that doesn’t take a lot of time) and and and and and … deep breath.

The capper for my day is a dentist appointment tonight at 6 for the final round of planing and scaling. I will cry. My poor student dentist will curse her luck at getting me.

Buddy the chemo-cat has no problem chilling out. Thank God the cats are stable.

My apartment is officially clean. Really freaking clean. So today is my day off. I might go to a movie, take a long walk down the river. I don’t know. Maybe both? Oh! I should go to the Fricke (a museum) because it’s free from 11 – 1 on Sundays, then walk home.

I took this last night at the birthday party for my friend Rebecca. That’s Rebecca on the left.

I am exhausted! Christ! I think I got old in one year. All this cleaning is killing me, and I even did a “pre-cleaning,” in that I did some of the harder jobs in the days leading up to my Holiday Cleaning. (Yes, I am insane.)

I am now on Day 3. I always save the easy jobs for last, like going through my clothes and getting rid of anything that doesn’t fit, ironing, desk organizing.

I tried to figure out what I could take a picture of that would convey the cleanliness of my apartment and settled on this. It shows my new, sparkling shower curtain, and the new bath mat.

Usually the very last thing I do is put up holiday decorations, but I don’t want to. That concerns me. It sounds like a depressed person thing, not putting up holiday decorations. But I don’t feel particularly depressed. Maybe I need to embrace change. Maybe I have become to sort of person who doesn’t put up holiday decorations. (Scrooge.) I wouldn’t mind a nice wreath though.

And I wouldn’t mind having a tree! Except for the part when the cats climb it, break all the ornaments, get tangled in the lights, bringing the tree crashing down and getting electrocuted in the process.

This is how Buddy gets me up in the morning. He starts eating a book or a magazine and I instantly jump up and feed him. They’ve trained me better than I’ve trained them.

Holiday cleaning begins tomorrow! After a morning interview with the current organist and choir master of Grace Church.