Stacy Horn

A cat bit me at the ASPCA yesterday. It’s nothing serious, but I so hate taking antibiotics and this doctor prescribed two! It’s because I’m allergic to penicillin and I guess nothing compares to penicillin and you need two if you don’t use it? I should have just asked, but I was stuck in wtf-mode. I just googled it and even doctors who are conservative about prescribing antibiotics make exemptions for cat bites, and particularly cate bites to the hand, and that’s of course where I was bit. The cat who bit me was very sick and I hope she’s okay. I’ll find out when I go back to work tomorrow.

Here is the tree at the main branch of the New York Public Library. A book I requested is in and I could go there today, but I feel like curling up and relaxing at home.

It was a good day at the library. The materials I found gave me ideas for how to structure the proposal I’m working on for my possible next book. It was great because on my way to the library I was feeling defeated. I wanted to go one way with the book, my publisher another, and I needed a compromise that both sides could get excited about.

Skaters behind the library. The park behind the library, Bryant Park, becomes a skating rink in the winter. I’ve never learned to skate and it looks so fun.

I live in a very wealthy neighborhood even though I make very little money myself. I was lucky enough to find a rent stabilized apartment over thirty years ago, and I don’t want to think of what my life would be like without it.

The only thing is, when I walk around sometimes, and look in the windows, I see such fabulous scenes of affluence I feel like the Little Match Girl shivering outside. Sparkling chandeliers, tall towering Christmas trees, amazing works of art around the apartment, lush furniture. I’m not anti-rich people, but I do covet their pretty things sometimes. I thought I would do a series of pictures of what I see. I just had a flash of deja-vu. I think I’ve had this idea and posted about it before. Just looked and I have!

This isn’t one of the scenes I just described, it just made me think of it. It’s a nice display though.

Thank you people who decorate outside. You make it fun and festive to walk around.

I was watching a video of a baby piglet taking a bath that someone tweeted, saying something like “This is your breakfast, enjoying a nice warm bath.” It’s a hard world to live in if you believe eating animals is wrong. I don’t ever lecture about it, or post pictures (mostly), because I don’t believe that is how minds are changed. But it is hard to walk around with the bodies of animals hanging in windows, or arrayed in grocery shops and elsewhere.

I saw these guys and just felt bad. They were swimming along, la-de-da, and then they were yanked from life in some cruel and scary way, and now here they are, tossed in a bucket, in bits and pieces. No one grieves for them.