Stacy Horn

I scrub, polish, and dust every single surface and item in the apartment, but the best and most dramatic moments are always when the window washers are done and when the rug comes back from cleaning. What does Finney do the second the rug is put back down? ATTACK. (Good god it’s everywhere. How will I prevail??)

I can never figure out how to take a picture which will show just how clean my place is. I even got under the desk and washed every wire, and tried for the nth time to make it look less like a rats nest under there (failed). I probably sound like an insane person, but yesterday I sat at my desk and worked on the copy edits. The sun was shining in my sparkling clean window, everything around me felt a little brighter, the colors more intense, and the cats were rolling around on the carpet, fed and content. Clean homes are peaceful.

The last thing is finding a nice little something for myself as a reward. In the running: a new bathing suit (but that means shopping, which I hate, so that probably won’t win) new music (a strong contender because it will only cost a few dollars) pedicure (never fails to make me feel pampered and happy) and flowers (another inexpensive pleasure).

I went out to Queens College and the Aaron Copland School of Music to a concert titled: An Evening of Women in Song. It was wonderful. I’m ashamed to admit I only knew one of the female composers, Britlin Losee, who I wrote about in my book about singing. That is just plain wrong. All these female composers I’ve never heard of! I googled every one of them and some of them are quite famous!

Hildegard von Bingen (although her name rang a vague bell)
Bianca Maria Meda
Rosephanye Powell
Libby Larson
Gwyneth Walker
Thea Musgrave
Joan Szymko
Laura Farnell
Bernice Johnson Reagon
Ysaye M. Barnell
Rosephanye Powell

My favorite pieces of the night were Britlin’s, which I filmed and uploaded to YouTube, Ysaye M. Barnell’s Sound-bite from Beijing and Bernice Johnson Reagon’s Ella’s Song. Thank you Dr. Sandra Babb and H. Roz Woll (the conductor and assistant conductor) and the Queens College Women’s Choir for such a fabulous night. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t plan this better and bring all my friends. Anyone who wasn’t there really missed out.

That’s one of the titles of my book currently under consideration, and my favorite. Please, please love it marketing department.

American Idol fans: What the hell? You didn’t love Josh??

Buddy is looking too thin, and I was about to take him to the vet, but his eating is picking up, so I’m hoping it was just a bad patch we’re past. It’s so hard, because he does have lymphoma and it’s only a matter of time. I don’t handle it well when I pet dies. It utterly destroys me. God, he does look terribly thin doesn’t he? I don’t want to face this. Poor little thing. Poor us.

It’s a bad angle though, it exaggerates his thinness. He looks better in the shot below this one.

I was poised and ready to take a picture of the attack that was sure to follow, but it didn’t happen.

The point is, they were really freaking big. These hawks were sitting on a building on the south side of Washington Square Park. I’m not sure if zooming in conveys their size, and I don’t own the right camera or lens to have gotten a decent shot. So there’s a pulled-back view below, which might give a better sense of how big they were.

Hawks eat whole flocks of pigeons, I read. That’s upsetting. I know they need to live too, but still. My poor pigeons.

This is one of my favorite parts of book writing. It feels like sliding into home.

A copy editor has gone over my book to fix grammatical or punctuation problems, and to suggest different wording or sentence structure. A great copy-editor can really make a difference so I can’t wait to see what she’s done. This is also when I make my final changes and fix the mistakes I found when fact-checking, and so on.

In other new book news, my editor suggested an alternate title which I love to death, and I’m waiting to hear how real a possibility it is. I had to change one word because she used a word we never use in choral singing, but I found another one that worked just as well.

Spring Cleaning Status Report: The window cleaners come tomorrow, my freshly cleaned rug returns on Friday, and then I will be done, done, done! I will dance around my shiny clean apartment and luxuriate in all its sparkliness, and then I will settle into the copy edits.

Finney and Buddy lounging on the bed. Note the evil furrowed brow on Finney. Buddy’s all, “Jesus, maybe I should find another place to nap.”