Waiting to Get There. Usually on the A/C/E in Chelsea, New York City.

  I took this picture a couple weeks ago at the Ed Ruscha exhibit at MoMA. Tom and I went to the opening mid-day on a random Tuesday.  I liked this painting and it seemed like a good way to say sayonara to this year's NaBloPoMo. This, right now, is the moment when "won't" turns into "will." As in, I will finish this thing with a flourish. Thanks to all approximately 10 of you who have been with me on this journey (according to the blogger stats page).  Whew. It's a thing to write a post a day for 30 days.  But yeah, will do. And now we're at... Done!  

 On this penultimate NaBloPoMo - I have nearly succeeded in posting a post a day for one full month on this National Blog Post Month, yeah, my inspiration is waning. So I was planning on just posting this picture of some of my money plants:  Some of my money plants At one point I had probably 20 gorgeous money plants. The deal is that the money plants have baby money plants and then I feel bad about squashing them so I wind up with a Dugger family of money plants.  It was just too damn many money plants so I gave a bunch away. I felt very charitable when I did so since my mother saw money plants not half this nice for sale at Giant for $9 each.  Right?! Just another reason why my house is actually a farm. Anyway, this was going to be the entire post, but then, when I was looking for a great picture of the money plants, I ran across this photo in the photo library: Tom with a knife and his brother. It is a photo of Tom wielding a knife. Shirtless. With his brother in ...

Here's the entry in my alumni newsletter in the "alumni news" section: "I am thrilled to report that we have published a special edition of my very successful journal. Our contributors include top thought leaders from around the nation. Here's the link.... " Yes, this cat is actually using the alumni news section of a college newsletter to: 1. Shamelessly promote his shit 2. Not be humble, even in a coy way Ok let me just add some context: One time I met this guy in his office. This was years and years after college. I walked in all friendly like with a colleague of his and I said to him, "Oh, you have the same last name as my husband does! It's such a small world, maybe you are related!" And this guy goes, "No. We are not related." Anyway, this was the most noteworthy thing that happened today -- the spark of pure WTF that is reminiscent of my last interaction with this asshat. 

Look, not to brag about my amazing prowess at sussing out the art that will be critically acclaimed just as soon as the critics get their shit together, but yeah. Bruce and I have done it again. We were at the Whitney at the crack of 11am during member previews of the Henry Taylor show. I was smitten just looking at the advertisement for the opening.  Also, I'm kidding here. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then is probably the most accurate way to put it. Anyway, I’m planning to go back, but now that it’s all popular I will need to time my arrival with some precision given the hoi polloi and all. I loved this one. It wasn’t Bruce’s favorite. 

The fancy beans 🫘 It’s a worthy unboxing that goes on when I get  these beans from Rancho Gordo. Look at these splendors of the vine! Your average bulk kidney just withers in shame in comparison!  Sadly they all sort turn a basic shade of beige in the Instant Pot so if you’re playing the long game, don’t bother. But while they exist on my shelves, I feel like a cottagecore influencer, hashtag fo shizzy.  

  It is pretty to hike in autumn! Me, Mom and Dad went out for a short hike yesterday. In a very small world moment, coming the other direction down the trail, was somebody I knew and her boyfriend and their dog. So crazy when shit like that happens. Introductions all around: Mom and Dad, this is Kathy, this is Karl, and Karl says, And this is my dog....  I drop off at that moment because I'm exclaiming to Kathy wow, what a crazy coincidence and she's explaining maybe not so much, Karl actually lives nearby. My attention swivels back to the conversation Dad is having with Karl when Dad says, "Help must be a troublesome name for your dog... like if you're calling for her yelling Help! Help! -- How often do rescue workers arrive?" Karl interrupts, "Her name is HOPE, not HELP" Mom looks over at me like, ya see? I told you his hearing was going.

We went to bed at midnight and could not turn off the light in our bedroom. WTF really? And we have house guests, making it less possible to go into the guest room and just save the problem for another day. Ceiling fan with the light removed because that's what happened next. Also, this. It is fairly impossible to sleep with your bedroom light on full blast, but trust me, we thought about it. Then Tom snapped into action and got tools out.  I mean for chrissakes this is a ridiculous problem to have.

 Beautiful Thanksgiving with the family. Then we watched the movie Whiplash. Then, of course, we watched YouTube reaction videos of the movie Whiplash. Then we watched reactions videos of the reaction videos of the movie Whiplash.     What a time to be alive. 

 Was going through an old box and found this relic: Found in a very old box because I am old This is a mask from the Halloween I dressed up as a 🧞‍♀️ genie. I was maybe in third grade. My mom made the entire costume by hand… including this mask. She glued on pearls and gold trim because no self-respecting genie just wears a plain electric pink mask. It was the best genie costume ever. I felt magical.  My mom is the best. ❤️

  Purslane in the Aerogarden When I first got the Aerogarden, I'd weigh the crops I harvested for amortization purposes. For example: Amortization Schedule. Look, of course it should have been a spreadsheet and the micro green reference prices of course should be footnoted but I'm busy and that's just how it is. Then I started growing Purslane instead of random lettuces and you can't even buy purslane in the store most of the time, making it, you know, priceless. So I stopped keeping track. It was getting onerous anyway. Purslane is " a tasty weed that is loaded with nutrients ." And right?! It is tasty. Also, as I know from prior harvests, (see above) I can and have harvested 100 grams for one full serving size. I am practically a farmer. I said to Tom maybe we should write off our house as an agricultural zone. Tom wasn't into it. He reminded me my eighth grade math teacher went to jail for declaring his house was a church and not paying any taxes for lo...

I went to MoMA and saw some major arts. Something about this watercolor appealed. Jelly fish-ish mesh arts hanging from the atrium roof A Gustav Klimt you don't see every day. It's called The Park. Trees in The Park. Tree trunks in The Park. So... yeah. I achieved my goal and wandered around amongst artistic treasures of humanity. But it was a shit show. The whole walk uptown was a mess, so many people on the sidewalks. And then getting in to MoMA was nothing short of a hairball. And thank god I'm a MoMA member otherwise I would have been waiting out on the sidewalk for probably hours in a line that stretched practically around the block. Attempting to get into MoMA proved a challenge . I left in fairly short order and walked over to the E station across the street to go home. There's a huge and really long escalator going down to the train platform. At the top of the escalator, I felt THE BREEZE... the one that indicates the train is pulling into the station. The next ...

Maybe left? Maybe right? We were behind this Mini Cooper on 17th Street and Tom was thinking it was gonna maybe make a left on 10th Avenue. But 10th Avenue is a one-way going the other direction, so... maybe not? Honestly WTF? Maybe the turn signal itself is installed upside down? Maybe?

 I was at MoMA today. It was bedlam, but that's a whole other story that you are not going to hear about right now. Right now I am merely pointing out that in the MoMA store, there is a whole section dedicated to Yayoi Kusama: The Yayoi Kusama Collection in the MoMA store. I mention this just to remind everyone that Yayoi Kusama is kind of a big deal here in New York City. I know she's a big deal because I've seen two things with my own two eyes: 1. Yayoi Kusama basically was let loose to whip up whatever the hell she wanted in the Bronx Botanical Garden a couple years ago . We went there with Bruce and Nardo and yeah, it was a BFD spanning half the park. 2. There was a Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room on display at one of the galleries in Chelsea and although I went over there to see it, I did not see it. There was a line around the block and I'm not waiting for six hours to see pretty much anything, despite my curiosity. The line to spend "one minute" in the Yayoi...

 Stacie and Andy came over and we had Mexican food and reminisced about that time we went to Cuba.

  Scandinavian House, Scene of the Happy Hour At 5pm yesterday, I walked up to the Scandinavian House on Park and 37th or something. I don't really understand the Scandinavian House, admittedly.  The have a security guard counting people who walk in, as well as an information booth.  They have a strange little shopping area with an array of mostly Scandinavian goods variously piled up and/or scattered about on shelves, tables and other horizontal surfaces.  They have a restaurant with a large seating area and an awkward bar that is less of a bar and more of a counter. Upstairs, they show movies, mostly on Wednesdays. I think there's a piano because sometimes I get notices saying someone is there playing the piano. They also occasionally show works of art or like, historical objects such as carved whale bones. idk. Maybe this is the whole point, it's a Scandinavian House filled with Assorted and Random Things Scandinavian.  Anyway, last night there was a Happy Ho...

Yeah so what is it with gilded age robber barons and their fixation on mantlepieces featuring babies beating the shit out of each other?  We saw this baby street fight in one of the mansions up in Newport a couple weeks ago: A Fresco of babies beating the shit out of each other It's for sure a theme because I saw a similar baby-at-arms mantle motif in the Morgan Library. I don't know why but the whole thing reminded me of a cartoon Bruce sent me a few days ago: A cartoon Bruce sent me I mean, you can see where I'm coming from: robber barons are crappy employers after all. The babies could represent poor leadership and those stone masons really must have laughed their asses off for days. I'm thinking it's some pretty glorious stone mason revenge porn when you can stick it to the big boss with a fuck you "company where I work" baby-on-baby mantle piece right in the Vanderbilt living room. My second theory is that the babies depict, in eerie foreshadowing, th...

 Good news! I do not have Covid. That is all.

On Sunday, I got up super early especially considering the night before was Friendsgiving and Corduroy Day and yeah, we were out late, what can I say. It's important to celebrate the high holidays. After actually managing to get up when the alarm went off and get my ass to the train station in plenty of time, I decided to celebrate myself with a wildly overpriced matcha latte. It was so early the seating area wasn't even open! This was the first time I've taken an Amtrak since Moynihan Station opened. Or since I realized Moynihan Station was open, which may not be even close to the same date.  I have thoughts.  First of all, my train ticket admonished me to catch the train from the aforementioned Moynihan Station, which is why I went over there. Along with everybody else. And that is my point.  The place was packed and I had to wait in a super long line in front of a group of Gen Z's bitching about how inefficient the whole process was compared to, you know, London. Als...

Storm King is a big outside sculpture park by Beacon, New York. And wow, has it become quite the thing since the last time I was there in ... idk 2005 maybe. Which was, dare I say nearly 20 years ago. What's my age again? We headed up there with Bruce and Nardo and encountered this temporary exhibit. I think it was called "the sun and the moon" and the liminal shapes are hand cast in the form of tree branches or something very Druidic. Tom gets interactive: We were slightly concerned he would step through and discover it was a portal and he'd enter another dimension and we would never see him again. Luckily, that did not happen.

It’s Friendsgiving AND Corduroy Day, ie 11|11 - the day that looks the most like corduroy. I am celebrating both by attending a dinner party in Queens.  Currently, we are enroute to Queens on the subway. It’s hard not to judge everyone on the train for really failing to get in the spirit of the day. Don't they know it's a corduroy high holiday?!! corduroy! Personally I am bedecked in a fall-themed pin wale corduroy which I feel achieves a requisite dual-prong festivity. 

I went on WireCutter and looked up the best sleep headphones. Then I just bought the top pick, despite the Wire Cutter write up being a little on the lackluster side even as the top pick.  After that, I went and told Helen I'd seen an article the WireCutter was shutting down. I swear I saw an article that WireCutter was shutting down. Helen became alarmed. She fact-checked me and, yeah, turns out I was misinformed. WireCutter is not shutting down. With that ding tarnishing my reputation as a reliable narrator... let's talk about this headband that plays my music, podcasts, and/or audiobooks while I am falling asleep. https://amzn.to/49xpn44 Frankly I love it. Or, I love the whole idea of it as I have not tried out any other brands as aforementioned. Not that you can trust me anyway due to my new rap for making shit up and spreading false rumors. But I am really sure I read somewhere that WireCutter was shutting down. It's amazing what a little audio distraction will do to ...

This is the puzzle we put together during our family vacation over the summer.  Puzzle we put together over the summer The whole time we were putting it together, I kept wanting to jump into it. Kind of like that Aha video, you know, the one where the girl jumps into, ok fine, it was a comic book, not at puzzle.  But look, you know what happens inside that comic book... the men in helmets chase our heroine and hero around with wrenches. Bottomline, it was a bad scene and everybody gets extremely sweaty. Like exceptionally damp, it's really very notable. Based on this one example, I'm going to strongly suggest that if you're going to jump into something, a book shop puzzle feels like a sensible option. There's pretty colors and cool posters and a cat and the hot chocolate.

1. My eighth grade math teacher went to jail for tax fraud. He put down that his house was a church.  2. That time in my hometown, down in the quarry, when Dane got shot in the face with a BB gun. Almost took his eye out. Photo Credit 3. The kid up the street was named Kenny Reed.  Kenny Reed! Can-He Read?  No he can't!  Kids are so fucking mean. 4.  There was a practice corn field out back my high school so the "Aggie" and 4H kids could practice crop growing. Come September when the corn was tall, all the stoners and the truants and ninth graders getting drunk on RobitussinDM -- pretty much everybody at some point or another was out in that corn field. You could wander around in there and meet all kinds of people. 5. My gifted and talented program consisted of me, reporting to a closet in the biology room to conduct unsupervised fruit fly experiments. These experiments went horribly awry and I infested half the school with fruit flies. 6. Speaking of unsu...

When Tom booked the hotel room, the website said that there was an "interior view." And sure, we've had rooms with interior views before... you overlook the atrium. It's not ideal, but when traveling, one must be flexible and all that. We entered our room and opened the curtains: Ummm, WTF... Yep, we have a view of the elevator Here's some facts about being literally ten feet from the elevator separated by glass and one fabric curtain: 1) If you open up your curtains, everyone waiting for the elevator will turn around and look at you.  2) It's pretty loud, especially if there's a wedding party on the same floor as you making beer runs all night. 3) You will be looking directly into the eyes of anyone coming off the elevator We have staring contests  with everyone who comes out of the elevator Anyway, we had to stay there for one night but we got moved the next morning.