Stacy Horn

St. Vincents, the hospital near me, closed this morning. The place was crawling with news trucks. It’s sad. This was the hospital for 9/11. It was started by four nuns 160 years ago, in response to a cholera epidemic in New York, and well, it’s just plain sad that what they started has come to an end.

Also, I have a lot farther to go in case of emergency.

I will be back at the Census by the time you read this.

The People Magazines are piling up.

TV shows on my dvr are piling up.

I’m not getting reading done, not getting writing done, not getting research done, not exercising, not meditating.

Tonight I am going to work out a plan. I will have to write this book in increments, ie, an hour of writing one night, an hour of research another, and so on. Plus I have to fit People Magazine reading in. And my big yearly Spring Cleaning, which is coming up fast!

It’s fun at the Census though. Yesterday I had to find various foreign language speakers to be enumerators. Oh, the name of someone I knew came up on the list of possible people to hire and I hired her.

We’re training all the enumerators now who will be hitting the streets shortly. If you didn’t return your forms New Yorkers, they will be knocking on your door.

That’s my apartment in the top window. I took this looking down the airshaft from the roof after feeding the birds this morning.

Mavis sent me this New Yorker cartoon!

Coincidentally, today, aka day two of my two days off, I’m going to pick up bird seed (and other things), write, go to the library, work at the Grace Church archives, exercise, make my lunch for tomorrow, iron the curtains I washed yesterday and put them back up, and no where in all those things is any kind of real day off activities! There’s no time! This is insane.

I still haven’t quite got the hang of how one has a full time job and also writes a book. I’ve done this before though, so I know it’s do-able. But at the moment, I’m feeling severely stressed. I have today and tomorrow off and while I desperately feel like relaxing (I worked six days in a row and overtime) I have a ton of work to do.

Sigh. I took this the other day on the way to work. I couldn’t come back later to see what they movie or tv show they were setting up a shoot for, alas!

I guess it’s not technically a “night shift.” I work from noon to 8pm today. Normally, I would be on the subway by now. How is that even possible??

It’s 7:45-ish. I’m drinking coffee with a purring cat on my lap. Birds are chirping. I’m blogging. I can’t believe that for the next few months I’ll be washed and dressed and on a subway by now. No relaxing with my coffee, cats, birds and blogs. (Don’t hate me. I’m a hard worker. I just prefer to get a slow start.)

Almost everyone is coming in today to work those hours. There’s a big push to get all the materials ready for the classes that start tomorrow for the enumerators. Those are the people who are going to come knocking on your doors to count you. You being the people who haven’t already returned your forms.

I’ve seen all the maps for all the counting. And I’ve looked through all the names of all the people counting everyone in my neighborhood, hoping to spot someone I know (so far, no go).

By the way, have I mentioned that I have no sense of direction? The subway is all messed up on the weekends and I had to get out at a different stop. I had to make my way back to the Census office and of course I was late.
I don’t even know where this building is that I shot. I just remember it was pretty.