brunobaby

I was looking at daybed frames and fell in love with the one pictured above. Then I had a dream that Jim's ghost came back and complained, "I have no place to sleep!" I woke up thinking, "Now I have to get a convertible sofa in case Jim's ghost comes back."

Old Kitchen Ceiling Fixture:

I finally synched my cell phone with my iMac. You like my tree?

Not Oprah's actual bra...I didn't sneak into her mansion, plunder her possessions and abscond with her lingerie. I mean the Le Mystere Renaissance bra, which Oprah endorsed heartily in her magazine and which receives prominent mention in Charla Krupp's forthcoming book, How Not to Look Old: Fast and Effortless Ways to Look 10 Years Younger, 10 Pounds Lighter, 10 Times Better*. It retails for about seventy bucks in Macy's, where I tried it on today.

I've been doing some reassessing over the past few days, what with the experience with the guy on the subway the other day and then cutting my finger the other night. The people I hung out with twenty years ago would have said, "You were asking for it because you want to be a victim."

I was drying the disc attachment to my new food processor, which possesses a slicing blade as sharp as the razor with which Paul Sorvino sliced the garlic in "Goodfellas." Unfortunately, I wasn't watching what I was doing and sliced the tip off my right index finger. Off to the emergency room of St. Vincent's.

I got on the "F" train this morning and squeezed into the middle of a three-person seat facing the aisle. I smiled an "excuse me" to the people on my right and my left. The young man on my left started taking off his iPod earbuds and I thought he was going to ask me a question.

Instead, his face became instantly vicious and he began to rant at me, "You bitch, you c__t, I'm sick of your attitude you nasty bitch..." I grabbed my bag and headed to an empty seat at the other end of the subway car. People were looking away as if I were the crazy person. I wanted to say "I'm a nice person! Don't listen to him!"

When I got to my stop and began to stand, all of a sudden the guy came from nowhere into my face again and resumed his rant, then ran off the train and up the stairs, knocking people out of his way. I turned to the people around me.

"Uh, did anybody see that?" Again, everybody was like, "Don't look at her; you'll only encourage her."

"Okay, just me then."

I stopped shaking by the time I got upstairs and got my coat off. When I went out at lunchtime, I noticed I was walking on eggshells. That nice lady over there...was she suddenly going to come up in my face and turn vicious? What had I done to provoke this guy? What innocent thing was I going to do that would provoke the next person to attack me?

Best not make eye contact. Then I won't set anyone off.

L. Frank Baum wrote seven "Oz" books, and thanks to Literature.org you can read them all for free, along with other great classics in the public domain.

I'd only read the first Oz book, so I got a real kick out of the second book in the series, "The Marvelous Land of Oz," wherein the Kingdom is taken over...by an army of women:

As they passed the rows of houses they saw through the open doors that men were sweeping and dusting and washing dishes, while the women sat around in groups, gossiping and laughing.

"What has happened?" the Scarecrow asked a sad-looking man with a bushy beard, who wore an apron and was wheeling a baby-carriage along the sidewalk.

"Why, we've had a revolution, your Majesty as you ought to know very well," replied the man; "and since you went away the women have been running things to suit themselves. I'm glad you have decided to come back and restore order, for doing housework and minding the children is wearing out the strength of every man in the Emerald City."

"Hm!" said the Scarecrow, thoughtfully. "If it is such hard work as you say, how did the women manage it so easily?"

"I really do not know" replied the man, with a deep sigh. "Perhaps the women are made of castiron."

I went to the Beacon Theater last night to see Hall and Oates' Home For Christmas Tour. They were promoting their Christmas album of the same name. I didn't even know Hall and Oates had a Christmas album, but they covered The First Noel, The Christmas Song and Jingle Bell Rock with arrangements that rendered these stalwart favorites into...Hall and Oates songs. It was as if an improv group had taken the stage and asked, "We need a Christmas song" and "we need a style" and then came up with a brilliant Hall and Oates parody.

They also did a lot of actual Hall and Oates songs, which pleased us greatly, since at $75 and up you want to hear "I Can't Go For That," not "Jingle Bells."

At the finale of the show there was a fake snowfall. Then we went outside and there was a real snowfall. How did they do that?

In fact, the vet called me on Monday night to tell me there was no word yet on Ashley's biopsy. Yesterday, there was no word from the vet about there being no word on Ashley's biopsy. So today I'll call and see if they have any word.

Meanwhile, Ashley is acting just fine, except that every time I look at her she thinks I'm going to put drops in her ears, and she runs somewhere and hides and pees. The house is going to be extremely clean for the holidays, as I play "Find where Ashley peed."

Update 4:25 PM:

The scariest words to hear when you're calling into your voice mail: Your vet saying "I want to go over the results of Ashley's biopsy with you."

So it's twenty minutes later and the tingling is just going away from my hands and the results are: "It's an infection. Keep giving her the antibiotic drops and bring her in for a recheck next week."

Whew!

I'm waiting for a call from the vet's office, where I dropped off Ashley this morning for her annual dental work. They're also supposed to clean her ears and remove the (we hope) benign tumor in one of them.

I Google'd "ear tumors in cats" and found out that even malignant tumors in cat ears are usually local and rarely spread to other parts of the body. Also, many ear tumors in cats are actually skin tumors and they appear in the ears of white cats who are exposed to too much sunlight. I remember reading that somewhere when I first got my original cats. My original cats were pure white. They, and my present cats, are indoor-only and my apartment rarely gets any direct sunlight.

Given the darkness of my apartment, the cats would be more likely to sprout mushrooms. So I'm waiting to hear that my cat has sprouted mushrooms.

The New York Times, who's going with the two "H's" and two "k's" spelling, asks "Christmas or Hanukkah: How does an interfaith family celebrate them both?"

We had a tree on Christmas. We hung Barry Manilow from it.

And you don't have to mow the lawn.

The Post Office is sponsoring its usual Operation Santa Claus, and every year I tell myself I'm going to participate, basically because I feel guilty for not having kids.

The closest I've come to Operation Santa Claus is when a company I worked for several years ago was sponsoring some first-graders in a public school up in the Bronx. My co-workers and I each were given a letter from a six-year-old, written in block letters in crayon, most with helpful illustrations. Mine was from a boy named Jorge who wanted a Transformer watch. He'd drawn a picture of a stick figure whose wrist and hand were bigger than the rest of his body put together. If this were an accurate self-portrait, the Yankees had better sign this kid immediately.

Off I set on a shopping expedition. Except, the other problem with not having kids is not knowing what kids are into. Even parents of small children have been known to become utterly bewildered when their kid obsesses over the latest must-have. So I'm running into Toys 'R Us, Macy's, K-Mart, every conceivable place that might sell items meant for children, and describing this thing, and showing the clerks the picture, and they would all chuckle and say that they ran out of them sometime in August.

"This is worse than when they discontinue my favorite brassiere!" I thought.

At the eleventh hour, I finally found a place that had a shopworn package...oh yeah, and I threw in some extra batteries, which I'm sure made Jorge's mom very relieved.

I don't know yet if I want to set myself up for this kind of stress this year, although added to my guilt about being "child-free" is also, now, my guilt about not having to care for any other adult except myself. So maybe I'll get a gift for an adult. New York Cares is having their coat drive, and they're especially in need of large men's coats. I thought, "Maybe there's a lot of homeless big fat guys." But the reason they need large is so the wearer can layer other clothes underneath. This makes sense to me, since when I imagine myself being homeless I think about how to cut back on excess luggage.

I've already given away Jim's overcoats, so maybe I'll pick up a down jacket at a discount store and donate it. Down is impervious to the elements and easier to keep clean, and it can double as an igloo if you find yourself without a place to live. Except I keep thinking, what if I get mugged by some crackhead and he's wearing the jacket I donated.

"Yes, officer, he was wearing a navy blue North Face jacket that was on sale for $69.99 at TJ Maxx."

The police precinct around the corner from me always has a canned food drive. I always have canned food. So that's probably going to be the charity that I go with this year. Charity begins at home.

And it stars Johnny Depp!

Oh boy, graphic bloody violence and Johnny Depp!