Angel Ackerman's Blog, page 27

A successful romp at Easton Book Festival: Sex in the Text

**author’s note: I’m sorry, not sorry, that this piece has become rather long and a tad historical. I will divide the piece with subheadings so that readers seeking particular topics can scan quickly. But for those who love historical context and rambling storytelling combined with my unique chaos, have at it.

It’s a quiet October morning, before the sun rises, and I am sharing my thoughts with you regarding our experience last night at the 4th Annual Easton Book Festival (2022). I’m posting in my personal blog, as I don’t know if I have fully formed thoughts (other than I had my concerns that the grassroots chaos of the festival, part of its charm, might drive my organized self to lose my mind and LO! and BEHOLD! I had a great time. Perhaps the cusp Taurus in me is mellowing into a new calmer self, my Gemini side).

I appeared briefly in the original Easton Book Festival “trailer,” look for me on YouTube with my salmon dress which looks rather orange and my trademark scarf. I join a lot of local celebrities so that tickles me.

The pandemic appeared in the festival’s youth and the city has decided to renovate (and in my humble opinion destroy) Centre Square, where the Book & Puppet Company bookstore is located. They have reduced the circle from two lanes of traffic to one and eliminated all the parking in front of businesses. They have also been toying with the traffic patterns, often closing main streets and making the traditional heart of the downtown one way. As someone who has lived in this community for more than a quarter of a century, I’m annoyed.

My history with downtown Easton

The city has two main parking decks currently in the same basic vicinity, which is good, but they have destroyed one convenient central parking lot and pocket park to build a new deck, which is not open yet. The oldest of the parking structures will soon be eliminated, as are on-street parking permits for residents. As more upscale apartments and multi-story structures join the historic downtown, the footprint of the city is changing. Or perhaps gentrifying.

My first apartment, with poet Darrell Parry, who is on the board of the festival, was an absolute dump but so much fun. We were two recently out of college, engaged kids with a pile of student loan debt and cars that barely ran. I worked at Lafayette College in the Public Information Office and Darrell worked at Caldor, a department store that, like many, no longer exists. It started his career as a shipper/receiver and honed his skill as the master of packing boxes.

Our rent for our strange one-bedroom started at $450 a month, with off-street parking and basic utilities included. We couldn’t afford cable and dial-up internet so we chose internet as we had television our entire lives and the World Wide Web was new. We would often scrape our change together and walk to Coffee and Tea Time Café, which also no longer exists, and I believe the structure is now part of the freshly-reconstructed Hearst Magazine offices that have moved to Easton from New York City. And on spaghetti nights we would order garlic bread from Colonial Pizza, which does still exist, since the restaurant was practically across the street. When we would call to order, they would often say, “Is this the neighbor?”

And then after spaghetti and garlic bread, we would go down to The Purple Cow Creamery, which later had to change it’s name to Bank Street Creamery, but you can still go there for ice cream. It’s not the same owners as it was in my day, but it has remained a hot spot of the downtown.

And since I’m already aging myself, I might as well add that Book & Puppet stands pretty much next to a place called The Crayola Factory. When I was an intern at Binney & Smith (now rebranded as Crayola since that’s the name everyone knows), I was tasked with writing and pitching a then under-construction, exciting new attraction in the former Orr’s building, another defunct local department store, called Two Rivers Landing. It would contain The Crayola Factory and the National Canal Museum.

(And I happen to be a Crayola junkie and a canal aficionado.)

You see, in my day, you could actually walk through the real Crayola factory in Forks Township and follow this blue line through all the stages of crayon and marker production. When you arrived at corporate offices in the morning, if they were making crayons, the air would carry that trademark warm aroma of wax, and if they were making markers, it smelled like burnt plastic.

I can remember sitting in my cubicle in corporate communications pitching my press release about this new family attraction to national magazines. My small, unattributed contribution to history. I did a lot of fun things at Crayola. Including dressing professional dancers in phallic crayon costumes at New York City’s Rainbow Room.

Okay, so now you see why I did not start this in the Parisian Phoenix Publishing professional blog. Because I’ve transformed into an old woman telling you the way it was in my day. And if I want to throw it back another generation, whenever I get off topic, I like to reference Arlo Guthrie‘s “Alice’s Restaurant.” If you don’t know the song, you’re young enough to find it on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Music. “This is a song about Alice. Remember Alice?” the lyrics say, even though the song seems to have nothing to do with Alice for most of the 18-or-so minutes the song goes on.

This is a song about the Easton Book Festival and “Sex in the Text.” Remember the Easton Book Festival?

This is a song about Alice. Remember Alice?

Arlo Guthrie

Darrell hates that song.

Opening Act: Poetry galore

I will not make a James Bond reference off of that title to relate it back to “Sex in the Text.”

Darrell Parry Nancy Scott and Eva Parry (“the Teenager”) Reading Braille Joan Zachary

Lynn Alexander opened the poetry segment reading from her collection, Find Me in the Iris. Followed by our own Nancy Scott, then Darrell and Rebecca Reynolds. Nancy read from newer work, including a poem about her recent move. Darrell read from his book, Twists: Gathered Ephemera, with a rather stunning introduction delivered by Lafayette English professor and festival board president, Chris Phillips. Rebecca read from each of her books (Daughter of the Hangnail and The Bovine Two-Step) and her work in progress.

And if you ever wanted to watch someone read Braille, here’s your chance.

Sex in the Text: Making Love Between the Pages

So, for some reason GLVWG (Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group) and our (Darrell, the festival board, myself and Book & Puppet) connections did not yield more panelists for this discussion. So, Darrell and I talked about making the panel into a talk show type format where questions could be placed on index cards and William Prystauk, author of the Kink Noir series, and I could ask the questions of each other Oprah-style and discuss.

We had a fantastic time and the questions were thoughtful not only from a literary perspective but also from a societal values perspective.

It was a refreshing night, and I hope the spectators enjoyed it as much as Bill and I did.

So much to do and I want to binge watch Top Gear America

Today was my first Monday day shift at the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy. I worked second shift, then 10-hour shifts and now I have moved to Monday to Friday 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. After almost a year of 10-hours, 8-hours feels so short. And it feels like we’re always on break. And transitioning from a 15-minute break to a ten minute is disorienting to say the least.

After work yesterday, I went to the chiropractor, the amazing and dedicated Nicole Jensen of Back in Line Chiropractic and Wellness Center. I feel like she’s learned my body to the extent that it’s personal to her, the challenge of keeping my misconstructed extremities functioning. I think she has this zone she gets into, where she’s plotting a strategy and it’s her against me, well, the physical form of me.

I felt my body start to compensate for my hip falling out of place yesterday. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t even feel wrong, but I noticed elements of my posture changing. A little more protest from the right side, leaning that way more heavily, occasional back pain.

I don’t have the best understanding of mechanics or physics, so my brain is slowly clicking when it comes to considering my femoral anteversion, which means the head of my femurs sit in my hip sockets kinda facing the wrong way making my legs kinda face backwards I guess, makes my bones put pressure on the socket at the wrong angle pushing it out of place? Maybe?

And me, either being a trooper or an idiot, did a 8-hour work shift on a Monday, where I performed at 95%, went to the chiropractor and then visited Andrew, my also amazing and dedicated coach at Apex Training. I think I scowled at him more than usual. The work out was brutal and ended with… what did he call them… offset dumbbell rows? Imagine kneeling on the bench and doing a dumbbell row with a 20 or 25 lb weight while holding the other leg up in the air.

Meanwhile, I reached out to David from The Cerebral Palsy and Fitness Podcast and asked if my discovery and fitness journey would be something of interest for his show, and he said yes. I also updated Andrew Gurza of Disability After Dark Podcast about my upcoming “Sex in the Text” panel at the Easton Book Festival. We had recorded an episode in June, but my parakeet (may he rest in peace, that might be what reminded me of the interview) made so much noise, we hope to rerecord an interview in November.

That’s fine with me, as so much has happened since June: my service dog application, new physical struggles and this “Sex in the Text” program for Easton Book Festival among them. I’m lagging behind on my preparations, which means I’ve been scanning my Fashion and Fiends novels for sex and jotting notes about themes, goals and techniques.

But then, my new computer Midnight came with a free trial of Apple TV, which made it ridiculously easy to subscribe to a free trial of Motor Trend‘s streaming channel. Why on God’s green Earth would I as someone with no understanding of physics or mechanics need Motor Trend? Three words: Top Gear America. It’s the only way to see Top Gear America featuring Dax Shepard and cars.

I don’t think it’s readily apparent from this blog, but I adore cars. If I had any sort of skill with tinkering, I would be more hands-on, but I am useless. But, I can still drive and appreciate cars. And I certainly admire and appreciate Dax Shepard from more than one angle. I just want to watch every available episode (there are two seasons available) and forget about the rest of the universe.

Which right now is tempting… because the episode on the Lamborghini, Bentley and Porsche SUVs had me laughing out loud. I started the hot rod episode but pried myself away for what ended up being a very trouble night of sleep. Bad dreams and body pain, to the point where I was up for an hour from midnight to 1 a.m., debating whether to pull the laptop into bed. I, instead, smeared my back and hips with CBD arthritis cream and drifted away into another uneasy three hours of sleep.

So much to do before the book festival, but the cars… and the Dax… call to me.

“Birthing” The Death of Big Butch

This one is important to me. It came to me during a difficult patch of my life, the saga that leads to this manuscript ending up in my lap starts a few months after my father’s death.

The project description and the photos of Steve’s Café don’t address how this story spoke to me and captured some sensory moments of my Generation X childhood better than I can at this time.

I encourage you to check out this discussion of The Death of Big Butch. In the story, Jimmy Washburn has to face his responsibility as a father and his role in his small town life. The year is 1974, almost one year to the day before I was born. The town is a fictionalized version of a town a county away from my hometown.

Jimmy works primarily in auto body restoration. My dad, Jimmy, was a diesel mechanic for most of my my childhood. Jimmy likes to “have a couple” with the guys in the local quiet barroom. So did my dad, Jimmy.

Jimmy has a son, Little Jimmy. My older brother was Little Jimmy until he aged into “Junior.” Jimmy has a baby girl born during the course of the story, like I said, a year before me.

Jimmy has a good friend, Butch. My mom has a Butch in her life that my daughter treasures as a grandfather figure. Jimmy has a friend, Cheesy. My childhood dog was Cheezie.

I see a lot of my dad in Jimmy. I think some of Jimmy’s struggles my dad probably shared. And like Jimmy, my dad was raised and lived in a Blue Collar version of America that doesn’t exist anymore, at least not where we are geographically. Maybe it does in pockets somewhere.

And we don’t talk about this, but I’m going to say it. In America, of my parents generation, men didn’t show feelings. You didn’t do that. Together, in the bar, that’s where men went to hide or quell or ignore their feelings. You could be a sloppy drunk, but you couldn’t be a sensitive man.

People didn’t go to therapy then. Especially not in Blue Collar America. People didn’t get treatment for depression or anxiety. That meant you were weak. So they drank. Everybody drank to their issues, and many people still do.

But this story is about escaping that, about making change, about what inspires people to change.

The core staff of Parisian Phoenix— Publisher Angel Ackerman, Art Director Gayle Hendricks and photographer Joan Zachary— met today with author and …

“Birthing” The Death of Big Butch

Farewell, Yo-Yo parakeet

I drank too much coffee yesterday and didn’t get to bed until almost midnight, which was fine, and allowed me to appreciate those dark, quiet hours deep in the night. I miss those. When I first started working as a picker in the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy, I worked 3:30 p.m. to midnight and I really loved the shift.

I think I’m naturally solar-powered so to wake up with the sun out and spend the brightest portion of the day doing my own thing meant a lot to me. At 2 p.m. I would drink a coffee and head to work. And since I don’t tend to be very productive after the sun goes down, using those hours at a job in a warehouse suited me just fine.

But last December, we lost our shift and had our choice of moving to traditional day hours or what they called four-10s. We worked from 6:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. four days a week and had three days off. I selected the Sunday to Wednesday cohort, as the teenager was still in high school and that fit our life.

Now, the four-10 cohorts are being aligned to a Wednesday to Saturday schedule and I opted to go Monday to Friday, 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. This has already caused upheaval and it doesn’t start until Monday. This has been a lot of babble, but I guess my point is, for a few hours last night, it felt like the way things used to be.

But I was woken at 5 a.m. today by a sound no bird-owner ever wants to hear. I have one remaining male green parakeet whom I call Yo-yo. He’s been acting unlike himself for a day or two, and he had no voice. He would just open his beak and make this scratchy chirps. And he was hiding.

I had suspicions the kittens had gotten him. No proof, but a hunch. He has recently learned to jailbreak his cage, and last week, I found him on a windowsill. He flew back to his cage when I opened the door (he had squeezed out through the water bowl entrance). And I didn’t think much of it.

He repeated this yesterday. And I opened the door. But with everything happening, I forgot to make sure he was in the cage and safe when I went to bed. And the Teenager even confirmed that he was still out when last we spoke around 11 p.m.

When I turned my light out for the night, he was sitting on top of his cage. I had been waiting for him to go in. You see, before my fostering journey, I would periodically let them all free fly. I had three at that time. It was magnificent to watch them swirl around my room.

So when I went to bed, and turned out the light, he went to sleep. Birds, like me, are solar powered. As soon as the darkness hits, they sleep.

And I have four kittens in my room. Not fully-socialized, born outside kittens.

Now normally, when the kittens try to climb the bird cages, my Goffin’s cockatoo, Nala, attacks their feet through the bars. But this time, they managed not to wake Nala.

At 5 a.m., I woke to the flapping of wings and a strangled screech. I flipped on the light to see the three oldest kittens of the “random litter” gathered around Yo. One of the boys grabbed Yo, snarling, and dashed under the bed. Now they are fighting over my bird. Feathers everywhere. Jean-Paul Sartre, the sweetheart foster rescued as a tiny kitten, sprints under the bed, under whoever has Yo and snatches Yo.

It is from Jean-Paul that I grab Yo, but it is too late.

I can only hope his death was quick. And that he forgives me for failing him.

Yo-Yo’s babies Yo-Yo’s only colorful baby Yo-yo, Mama Periwinkle, Boo-boo and babies Mama Periwinkle and Papa Yo-yo Boo-Boo Birdie and Papa Yo-Yo protecting his mate and nest

End of week update: the stats, the hip, the fitness, the coffee

Yesterday might summarize recent trends in my life. I know I posted a blog post before I left for my last 10-hour shift at the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy. Monday I start a more traditional Monday through Friday shift. I’ll get home earlier, but I lose a day off. And I’m used to having Thursday and Friday off which is nice for running errands, making appointments with doctors and professionals, and for connecting with people regarding my business, Parisian Phoenix Publishing.

I still had my Friday nights and Saturdays, even if I had to head to bed earlier than most people want to on Saturday night. Many well-meaning friends and everyday people have made comments like “well that will be nice,” “no more long days” and “you’ll have your weekends back.”

But I’ll no longer have that feeling of “getting work over with” and I’m no longer part of a unique cohort. We worked alone in the building on Sundays, and that was peaceful, and for two hours every afternoon, we more or less finished the work the traditional day shift left behind.

So, I arrived at work yesterday morning, basking in the bliss of using my new Ninja DualBrew correctly. (I still have to buy coffee filters, but I love the ease of use, the temperature of the coffee, the different settings for the strength of coffee, AND how I can select just the right amount of coffee for me. The reservoir is cool for me, because it removes one more decision or step to screw up. I have been known to double fill the coffee pot when I forgot I already did it.)

On Sunday, I normally perform between 100 and 105 percent of daily metrics. I may have once hit 108. This Sunday, I hit 97. This annoyed me. It was the first sign that something was off. On Monday, I kept struggling. I didn’t really notice anything physically wrong but I did note that my toes on my right foot were really burning by the end of the day. Andrew, my wonderful coach at Apex Training, had asked if we could move Monday night’s session to Tuesday. I said sure.

I busted my butt for the rest of the day and hit at least 99 percent, but I may have hit 100. That’s when I noticed some residual issues in my body. Just that nagging sense that something was not right. I attributed it to working hard and not having my regular Friday appointment with Nicole Jensen at Back in Line Chiropractic and Wellness Center. She had a class on Friday, so she had moved clients.

Tuesday I could feel my right hip turned wrong. It was a weird feeling, like my leg was facing the wrong way. In reality, it might not work that way but that’s how it felt. And my right hip was very tender to the touch. I still didn’t have any pain, but movement was getting harder. So I tried to stretch my hips during the day, but by the end of the day, I had only hit 90 percent and it had been hard. I asked Andrew if we could move the Tuesday session to Wednesday, worried that this was more of a structural issue than a muscular one and working out could push me from discomfort and mobility issues to actual pain.

And a year ago, I was in pain every day and I don’t want to go back to that. Ever. I was flipping through my journal and last year at this time I was starting every journal entry with a number from the pain scale. That broke my heart to see.

I took a muscle relaxer, stretched some more and went to bed after a nice meal. Wednesday morning I didn’t move any better, but I was no longer stiff. But by the time I got to work, my gut said this hip was really struggling to do its job. And I was about to stand on it for ten hours.

At 6 a.m., I called Nicole’s office and left a message. At 9:15, they called me back and scheduled me for 5:15 p.m. I knew that if I waited until my regular Friday appointment and forced that hip to work out, it would lead to pain and harder-to-fix problems.

I emailed my boss as I couldn’t find him and it turned out that he had called out sick. I arranged to leave at 4:30. By my calculations, I hit 87 percent. My right side just didn’t have the mobility it should. The drive to the chiropractor took about 20-25 minutes, and when I got out of the car, it felt like my right leg had fused and stretching it into a step felt ridiculously hard. But still no pain.

This is when cerebral palsy plays tricks on the brain. As I’m (what feels like) dragging my leg into the chiropractor, I started wondering, “maybe I just need to stretch,” “maybe there’s nothing really wrong and I’m just lazy and my muscles stiffened.” But then I remembered the burning toes. Something was pushing my posture forward and my body was fighting it. But I still had my doubts.

Now, no one has ever gaslighted me in the medical community, except maybe my first primary care physician who referred me to the wrong specialist in the days when I had an HMO. I now always have plans where I chose my physicians myself.

When Nicole entered the room, I explained what’s going on and she quickly confirms that yes, my hip was crooked. Like really crooked. She even made a hand gesture. And that my body had done other weird things to compensate. It all moved beautifully when she manhandled it. She pondered what caused this when we had just considered potentially spacing out my weekly appointments to every other week. Did I overdo it at work? Was it missing the adjustment Friday? Was it skipping my workout?

When I got up from the table, my feet did, as Nicole put it, sexy normal feet posture. My balance has improved dramatically in the last few months, and my strength has returned, and my stamina is definitely increasing.

I stepped out of the chiropractor and took some long, beautiful, easy strides.

It. Felt. Good.

No, it felt GREAT.

So, I don’t know how Nicole would feel about this, but I went to the gym. And let me tell you– Andrew delivered a brutal work out. We did split leg squats in sets of 20 reps each leg with weights. He said I was moving better than I ever had before and I said, yes, because Nicole had straightened my body and stretched out my lower extremities. Like, literally, just did. We did military presses with 25 lb dumbbells. We did core. We did upper body exercises like IYTs. And shoulder taps and mountain climbers and rope slams.

And then, before a shower or dinner, and it’s 7:30 p.m. now, I had to deal with the hellions in my room. I had to swap out and refill three litter boxes for the six cats in my room. I had to vaccuum. I didn’t clean the bird cages, but I did feed and water everyone. And I’m still wondering how the heck those four kittens have trashed my closet without opening the door.

I wanted to blog all this last night after I ate my omelet of cheddar, peppers, homemade farm-procured, roasted tomatoes. But I was exhausted.

I like my coffee pot

That’s all I got for ya.

It’s 5:15 a.m., on my final Wednesday of my 10-hour Sunday to Wednesday shifts at the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy. I loved these shifts. I love having three days off. But as of Monday, I will be Monday to Friday, “normal” 8-hour shifts, 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. More change.

My chiropractor had a class last week so I missed my regular adjustment and now I can feel my hip moving inward. I never expected that this journey to improve my fitness and awareness of how my body works (if you aren’t a regular I have diplegic spastic cerebral palsy) would lead to this strange zeroing in… I am starting to pinpoint these subtle differences, but I am still learning how to fix them.

I bailed on my strength coach Andrew last night. He had asked to move my Monday session to Tuesday and by Tuesday (yesterday), I just didn’t have it in me. I didn’t sleep well. My stress was through the roof. I overdid it Monday (trying to prove myself to no one but me). And to top it all off, my diet had been all processed foods. When I felt that hip turning inward, I knew my body needed me to stop.

So here we are, the final Wednesday. The third day of my life with my new Ninja DualBrew coffee pot. Unboxing video here.

The Teenager got her second fix, and she loved it. She was aghast to learn that a sweatshirt could cost $78 at full retail price, but I think this experience will teach her the difference between the workmanship of different brands. She asked me not to record her trying things on, but I wish she had because the fit and look of this fix was exponentially better than the first. Unboxing video here.

I have to leave for work in a moment, but let me say I am on my second cup of Green Mountain Dark Magic coffee, courtesy of one of the Teenager’s clients, and I must say it’s the only coffee to keep pace with my Supercoffee.

The Ninja DualBrew has been great so far. I like the brewing options, the heat and strength of the coffee, but I am making small errors in operating it. But I haven’t experienced any of the problems listed in the reviews. My four a.m. brain likes the K-cup option, and my weekend self loves the option to brew a pot. I have not tried iced coffee yet.

When Life gives you Lemons buy a new Coffee Pot

As many of you know— I had to buy a new computer over the weekend and it impacted my stress levels and my financial health.

So to console myself, I participated in Target.com’s pre-Black Friday sales and ordered myself a new coffee pot: a Ninja DualBrew.

Here is the unboxing.

I have been making my coffee in my espresso machine for most of the last three years, because I don’t have a full size coffee pot. I’m the only coffee drinker in the house now and I rarely drink more than one cup. I like it really strong and really hot so the Krups espresso machine I bought 23 years ago is just fine.

The teenager programmed the new coffee machine to have my coffee ready before 5 a.m. We used the “rich” setting as remember— I like it strong. We also chose 26 ounces.

Well, Supercoffee brewed on rich had me vibrating after a cup and a half. I brought the rest to work. It’s noon and I’m still drinking it.

I need to rethink that tomorrow.

Murphy, you’re not going to win: How a Great Day Broke my Heart, part 2 — Parisian Phoenix Publishing

This is the second half of the MacBook Air Saga.

Part 1 of this blog post appeared on Angel Ackerman’s web site, angelackerman.com, and was reposted on ParisianPhoenix.com Yesterday, Rosie, the rose gold 13″ MacBook Air with the intel processor that Parisian Phoenix publisher Angel Ackerman bought refurbished from Apple about eighteen months ago when she decided to invest in the small press concept, took […]

Murphy, you’re not going to win: How a Great Day Broke my Heart, part 2 — Parisian Phoenix Publishing

Murphy, you’re not going to win: How a great day broke my heart, part 1

Yesterday, I “broke” my dear blind friend Nan out of her independent living facility, her first outing since her bout with Covid-19. I drove up to the door in that convenient wide lane that have under the overhang and lowered the window on her side of the car.

“Hey, Nan,” I shouted. “Your getaway car has arrived.”

She laughed, and since she recently had her first Corona experience, it sure was nice to hear her laugh again.

I had the Spotify ready to go, as Nan loves a good random computer generated playlist, and we pulled off. Her goals were simple.

CVS for vitamin C and ExcedrinBatteries for her clock, 2-4 AAAsStop at her old apartment as there was a package for her that was not forwardedGet some cash at the bank.

Well I told her right off that we had a 40-pack of AAAs somewhere in my house. So that was easy. I then told her I had thought I might take her back to my house for chai, but thought maybe getting out of a building into the sun would be more fun. That we could listen to Spotify in the car with the sunroof open sipping chai.

“That does sound nice,” she said.

“The same theory as taking the dog for a car ride,” I explained.

She laughed when I compared her to the dog, and I pointed out that really we both liked things that the dog would enjoy.

Nan and I headed into CVS, where I found her 200 generic acetaminophen, aspirin and caffeine tablets and 100 chewable vitamin C/rose hips tablets. The original price was $31.00 before tax, but I had carefully set up my CVS app to use some coupons that reduced her total to $20.58.

We drove to my house, got the batteries, and headed to her old apartment building.

“I just thought of something,” she said to me. “How are we going to get in?”

“I suppose you’ll have to tap the lobby door with your cane until someone sees you,” I said.

But there were no parking spots on street, and I pulled into the parking lot.

“Why don’t we just drive down to the back door and see if we see any of your neighbors,” I said.

“Good idea,” Nan agreed.

I saw the maintenance man at the back door. I pulled into the middle of the parking lot and hopped out of the car, escorting Nan as I hollered, “Excuse me, but can you let this vagabond into the building?”

She got her package.

We then got my favorite teller at the bank and almost went to a Dunkin several miles away, forgetting there was one on the other side of the bank.

We remembered in time.

We sat in the car, windows and sun roof open, enjoying the sun, listening to cars and birds and all the mundane sounds Nan had missed when trapped in her room with Covid.

And then, she went home and I talked to my friend Maryann Ignatz. I did all the press stuff I had planned for my business. I thought I deserved a small rest. I went up to my room and cuddled with some fosters, including sweet Jean-Paul Sartre.

The teenager texted that her boss was stopping by later. If you’re a regular here you might recall our “cat foster godmother.”

I decided to go downstairs and clean.

I grabbed my computer, Rosie, the 13″ MacBook Air, last of the Intel processor generation, and my iPhone. Foster cat Khloe has been a member of gen pop lately, free roaming the house because she scared the dog so badly. She can be a little dramatic.

The teenager has a baby gate with a cat door at the top of the stairs. Khloe was walking out the cat door and I went to unlatch the gate and must have tilted my hand just enough that Rosie the Laptop slipped from my fingers and somersaulted all the way down the uncarpeted, hard wood stairs.

When I opened her again, her screen image was splintered.

I have three book projects underway for Parisian Phoenix, and the Easton Book Festival coming up. I’m still wondering how best to pay off the recent ceiling repair…

Now is not the time.

But life is like that. I have to remind myself that we have more appreciation for the things that don’t come easy, that real success is slow.

And then I broke down into hysterics, alone, just me and the dog. And I scrubbed the floor on my hands and knees.

This saga will be continued on Parisian Phoenix’s blog.

October Newsletter: Let’s talk about sex, or poetry, or cats, or scary stories

Organizers of the free local event Easton Book Festival have invited Parisian Phoenix publisher and author Angel Ackerman and Kink Noir author …

October Newsletter: Let’s talk about sex, or poetry, or cats, or scary stories