Love, Sandee

Do you think that I enjoy putting hexes on people? No! Yes, it’s necessary sometimes in the playground of my mind for me to believe that I have this option, while we all know this is delusional.

Well anyway — but I did take a hex off a guy I decided I liked. I discovered he did something very nice for somebody. So I thought about it all and decided that for the rest of the week I’ll go on a love mission. This means that I’ll have compassion for people and their stupidity, ignorance, fear and self-loathing. I’ll try to identify with these human frailties instead of suffering from the self-righteous indignation that fires me up to a state which makes it completely okay for me to damn people to hell.

Love,

Sandee

P.S. Still, if I could only — hahahaha! — Check out this cool witch’s coven –“She must die, die, DIEEEEE! — Give me power — sickness, sickness…death, death DEAAAATH!”:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cemeterial Musings

I eat tofu, walnuts, steamed vegetables and quinoa for lunch and dinner.  I never take vitamins because doctors have told me that it isn’t necessary as long as you eat the right foods.  I was washing my hands after every handshake.  I opened doors with the sleeve of my sweater and stood three feet away from sick people.  So why should I be sick?  I was taking precaution against getting sick while working two jobs – I was trying to help my immune system.  It didn’t work.

In my twenties and thirties, I rarely got sick.  I had the immune system of an Olympian. Then five years ago I started getting a couple of colds a year, which I think might have been because of my hormones shifting.  This last year I didn’t have a cold except now and I’m sure it’s because of the stress of learning a new job and not sleeping, fuck the fact that I was eating very healthily.  Now I’m just pissed and I’m in the pity pot.

It’s Halloween and I wasn’t even able to invite anyone over because I’m sick.  This is the first Halloween in a couple of years I didn’t do anything special.  I have to go to works tomorrow – yes “works” – I’m going to my gallery job, then I have to do two tours at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.  My jobs are great and I feel settled in at the cemetery now, but I suppose it is strenuous.

I usually never buy cold medicine, but I have some now – people at work told me to get Airborne.  I also have Robitussin and Echinacea.  At the cemetery, I have to be hearty to do two 1.5 mile tours, check people in, light kerosene lanterns and direct traffic, so it’s necessary.  Because of these two jobs however I wasn’t able to plan to celebrate Halloween except for decorating my apartment and purchasing a new set of purple creature horns which I wore during my tour yesterday.  A couple of people complimented me on them and I think I looked sexy but I had no takers, oh well.  This year I thought I might be the “Henry:  The Portrait of a Serial Killer” character for Halloween and walk in the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village, but I didn’t have time to buy the male wig or the extermination can.  Henry had a distinctive walk.  It would have been great to walk like that in a parade.

So I’ll just sign off now and prepare to watch Fright Night and eat some of the Halloween candy that I bought for the trick-or-treaters who usually don’t come anyway except those couple of times. I wait for them every year like Linus waits for the Great Pumpkin.  And since none of my measures to prevent illness worked, I’m eating Chinese food for dinner, bleh.  On the plus side I guess is that I think I lost weight from working in the cemetery — Happy Halloween!

Getting my hustle on

I’m getting my hustle on for my book and may be doing more readings.  I envision waddling up and down Broadway wearing a flappy sign with a picture of my book Mean-Spirited Tales on it, front and back.  Maybe I’ll hurl copies of my book from a tray to passengers on the A train.  Really — no.  I did read an article about a man who makes boo koo dinero selling candies on the train this way.  Hurrah for self-employment!  High falutin publishers, kiss my grits — no I totally take that back.  But the threat of the self-published author is on the rise.  Just saying.

I used to think it was cheesy.  But it’s not now — not since I’ve done it.  It is more reputable than it was in the past.  Though there is snobbery about it.  At this point I’m just glad to have sold enough to buy groceries, socks, candies, and Styrofoam skulls.

It’s brilliant that people have read something I’ve written, and that they’ve paid either ninety-nine cents for the Kindle version or nine ninety-five for the hardcopy.  I’ve always dreamed of making money writing.  You’ve all helped to make that come true.  Each and every last one of you out there in TV land.

I spoke to a woman who manages space for vendors.  She explained the system to me.  It wouldn’t be cost-effective for me to buy space to sell my book.  But I appreciated the feedback.  Much love to her.

I spoke to a gentleman at a bookstore today.  He said they were always concerned in getting numbers in for book signings.  He told me that he had been disappointed in the numbers of people that writers had brought in for their readings.  He asked if I thought I could bring in 20 people.  I told him I had 25 people for my last reading at the Indian Road Cafe.  I believe more people would have come if it weren’t at 10:30pm on a Halloween weekend.  I hope I didn’t exhaust my numbers in the last reading.  I so hope some of you come to my next one.  I’ll give out candies and promise not to read War & Peace.

Haha!  — Wouldn’t it be messed up if I invited everyone to my reading, and read a technical book on statistics instead – leaving everyone baffled? – Hey, wait a cotton picking minute! – I must back track to what I said up there about the Kindle version of my book – it’s only ninety-nine cents!  So why isn’t, like, everyone buying it?  That WSJ article about marketing my book is a liar – yes, an article can be a liar.

I thought titling my book Mean-Spirited Tales would be cheeky.  But maybe people don’t like “Mean.”  They take it literally.   Maybe I’ll change it to Saccharine Tales of Banality.  Haha!

REE-spect – my damn holiday!

I’m wiser in maturity.  I respect people and I’m community-minded.

I took my Halloween decorations off my door yesterday, to respect the people celebrating Xmas.  I want to show respect to the neighbors who have a wreath on their door opposite mine.  I didn’t give a hoot about stuff like this before.

Since my namesake hurricane came this year around Halloween I didn’t celebrate properly.  But it just felt plain rude, keeping the gravestone on my door, intruding on their holiday.  My holiday is gone now.  I need to get over it.  That’s maturity.

A few years ago, I left the Halloween ghoul on my door through Xmas, but made it season ‘appropriate’.   I cut a thought bubble out in white paper and wrote “Merry Xmas!” on it.  I attached it to the ghoul’s mouth like he was saying it.  Get it?  I merged two holidays!

Though, everyone knows I’m the ‘lovable’ freak on the top floor, the kindly spinster who ought to have eight cats but for some reason doesn’t.  They accept that I leave my Halloween decorations up until I officially feel Halloween’s over.

One year it ended in April.  But I try taking them down sooner now because Halloween is anticlimactic when you take your decorations down from the last year in, let’s say, August only to put them right back up on October 10^th.

So I’ll take down the Halloween decorations inside my apartment after Xmas, that is, if the world doesn’t end on Friday.  Oooo, I’ll bet there will be some slamming End-of-the-World parties on Friday.  I wasn’t invited to any of them so I’ll be celebrating Armageddon by myself this year.

It Came!

Carrie from Hello Sailor is a very talented artist.  She’s a brilliant painter, and I could read her writing forever – her words just carry your eyes.  I also love her sense of humor, quiet and sly.  So yeah she’s gifted.

You might have seen my post about a painting that she named after me called ‘Sandee-Day of the Dead Girl – Dia de los Muertos.’  Well I of course ordered it, and it has arrived.  The package was addressed to Auntie Sandee – so cute!   That’s it, up there.

I was totally teary-eyed when it came.  One of life’s moments to be cherished.  Sharing beauty and kindness from sea to sea — from the UK to west hell, er, I meant, the USA.  Beautiful.

I think I want to get a red frame for it.  Maybe lavender or purple.  Pink wood?

I’m threatening to paint my walls teal and to get pink shades.  I was influenced by a movie with a riverside apartment painted blue and there were pink window shades.  Only my walls will be teal.  So I need to pick out a compatible frame color.

Let’s see how long it takes before I embark on this project of getting painted – I hate that kind of stuff.  First I need to take down my Halloween decorations — ba haha!  See ya!

Ass-Crack, Anyone?

I sell copies of my book every month, hallelujah.  So where’s my $27.69 from last month’s sales?  The price of *quinoa just went up and I need Halloween socks, a disposable rain bonnet, and some Limited Edition Pop Tarts.

Amazon was supposed to shoot this money over to my account.  I wish they’d hurry up–it’s Pop Tarts LI-MI-TED Edition!  By the time I get my money, the damn things won’t be in the supermarket anymore.

*For those of you who don’t give a shit, quinoa (pronounced:  keen-wah) is a healthy ‘super-food’ that tastes like ass-crack.  It costs a lot of money but I could probably grow it on my fire escape.

Purloined

 

Today I thought I’d eat a turkey, cranberry, and stuffing sandwich and watch Thankskilling on Netflix.  Not only do I love Eva Halloween for keeping Halloween alive all year, I also love her for introducing me to this movie.  Even if I don’t like it – I love the idea of watching it on Thanksgiving.  This doesn’t mean I’m not grateful for stuff.

But I might get to hang out with my dear friend and her mom instead.  I’m grateful for that.  She came to the rescue five years ago on X-mas when I had nothing going on.  While not a fan of Thanksgiving and X-mas, I do usually visit relatives.

Five years ago on X-mas I went to this friend’s house and had the X-mas of the century.  It involved Bloody Marys.  Stupid me topped those off with antihistamine because of my allergy to the dog and had to be ‘walked’ home.  At least I remembered it all – oh wait – no I didn’t.  “Did you like the gift that I bought for you?”  I asked the next day.  “I opened it in front of you.  Don’t you remember?”  She said.

For the next fifty years, with a little help from my friends, I’m going to piece together all of the events, incidents, and ‘interludes’ that alcohol viciously purloined from me.

 

‘Never to return’

I had a great birthday.  I always do.  I look forward to getting older and older, moving forward, upward then out of here, ‘never to return’, to quote that uni-browed wonder Frieda Kahlo.

This attitude helps me to treat every birthday like a holiday.  I took the day off and went to the NY Botanical Garden.  I walked through the forest to the waterfall.  The sound of the rushing water had a tranquil effect on me, so I stayed there for a long time.  I used a twig to etch my name and birthday, 11/17/62, in the dirt with a circle around it.  One of my best friends called.  We had an enlightened conversation for a while with the sound of the waterfall rushing in the background then mom called and that was a nice conversation too.

I hung out a bit in the forest then went to see the Japanese kiku chrysanthemums.  I had a hard time finding the greenhouse and had to pee and couldn’t find a bathroom.  I found some stupid porta pottys and unfortunately had to use one of them.

I walked and walked and walked and felt it in my ass and legs because I haven’t slept enough and had some pre-menopausal weirdness going on —  or — maybe it’s just because I’m half of a hundred years old!  But the landscape is so lovely there, though Sandy wreaked havoc on a hundred of their trees and a lot of the pretty leaves had blown off of them.  The walk to the chrysanthemums was worth it however – what a fascinating display.  I have wack pictures taken with my cheap phone camera which doesn’t do them justice:

That last picture is a group of chrysanthemums that had been grown from a single stem — too bad it’s all fuzzy right?  And who the hell is that nice lady?

I came home — ate what I wanted to eat — a hamburger medium rare and huge onion rings from the Piper’s Kilt.  Being a cake enthusiast, of course I had cake and cake!  Since Halloween was somewhat intercepted because of my namesake hurricane, it’s still going on in my apartment, which is decorated thusly.  Usually Halloween’s officially over for me after my birthday anyway.  I watched the movie Vault of Horror with the last of my Halloween candles lit and said ‘This is the life’!

And thank you all for wishing me a Happy Birthday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bum Couple of Inwood Farms

*My friend calls this neighborhood Inwood Farms – hilarious.

The bum couple in my neighborhood think they’re the neighborhood’s honorary bums.  People coming home from work stop to have forty-five minute conversations with them.  During these conversations they pause to wave or to say hi to people.

I think people talk to them for a cheap show of magnanimity.  Look at me everybody. I don’t have problems talking to bums.  I talk to Frank the bum but never this long.  I dare these people to invite Mr. and Mrs. Bum to their homes.

The man said hello to me once because I made eye contact.  It irritated me.  He looked wounded when I didn’t continue to speak to him or his wife.  I think they silently scolded me with their little puppy dog homeless faces.  Nothing against bums – I love Frank, and the other bums are cool.  Hell I might just be a bum myself at the rate things are going in this country.

For a long time they lived in the 207^th Street subway station.  Transit workers played chess with the husband by the elevator.  People stood around watching.  I love chess.  I played naked chess with my computer, listened to death metal and ate olive oil toast every night before blogging.  But never would I play chess with that bum.  Number A:  on the subway station benches he had biblical placards.  And Number B:  one said Halloween was the devil’s holiday.  So you take up space in the subway station, proselytize AND put down my favorite holiday.

They live on the benches by the park now.  The husband plays chess on the park wall.  Sometimes there are two or three games going at once.  You’ll find the wife waddling back home sweet home with a cart full of groceries during the games – maybe she’s got hors doeurves and crudite in there for the boys.

Sometimes when it rains they’re hidden behind rain slickers, garbage bags and two gigantic umbrellas.  If you didn’t see two pairs of feet underneath you might think there was just a heap of crap on the bench.  They must get along really well to be able to sit so close.

But I’ll bet that husband could show me some mean chess moves.  He reminds me of a guy I was infatuated with who also played chess.  He and his wife are tall and heavy.  This guy was too, with a deep voice and big feet.  I joked that the bum couple reminded me of me and this guy.  He was in financial trouble and I had taken this job making half the money I used to make.  I had some strain myself.  So we’d be together – broke.

I said to someone, “I think I hate them because I’m afraid I’ll become them.”  But no, I just don’t like them.  Sue me for not liking a downtrodden married bum couple.  It’s far more evil to use bums to demonstrate your bullshit magnanimity.

Horror Story

Sometimes I take a circuitous route home.  I walk three quarters of a mile on a wooded road, the scenic route, before getting on the #10 bus.  Across the street is the Henry Hudson Bridge.  Yesterday an old man at the stop began talking to me about the horns on my head.  I inched away from him toward the bridge, which I was always curious about.  “Yes we had Enchanted Weekend where I work.  Okay, o-kay –bye bye now,” I said.  So I climbed the stairs to the bridge and had a lovely constitutional.

There’s a building at the end of Palisade Avenue that I wanted to see from the bridge.  At intervals I stared over the bridge at my lovely building, which overlooks the Hudson.  At the Hudson River Museum yesterday, there my building was, immortalized in a painting – a sure sign that I am to inhabit this early 20^th century dwelling one day.  The wind was vigorous.  The palisades were wondrous, and Inwood Hill Park invited below as the leaves are beginning to turn.

I stopped finally to look over the bridge at the water.  At the end of the bridge, the paths led only into Inwood Park.  I had assumed there was a path at the side of the parkway leading to the street.  Should I go back to Riverdale after walking all this way?  A woman was killed in the woods years ago.  People had been attacked.  I never go into the woods alone.  A runner took the curved path into the park.  Maybe he knew the way out.  I followed the runner.

Inwood Hill Park is called a forest.  There are cliffs rising high over Manhattan.  The trees are so thick that you can’t see buildings.  And there is no street noise.

The runner was gone and I was alone. I tried another path, but it led back to where I came from.  I thought of the Blair Witch Project where they try getting out of the woods but go around in circles.  They eventually die in the night.  Now it was dusk.  I heard crickets.

I walked quickly, uphill endlessly, scared as shit.  I was sweating.  I was relieved that the upward climb was over, but there were more paths up there.  Trying to figure out which to take was confusing.

There was an ancient iron lamppost with a broken globe.  I wanted a sliver of glass, a weapon.  Still walking quickly, I pulled a pen from my bag, ready to stab.  I called Eric, panting.  “Eric I’m in the woods.  I’m scared.  I can’t find my way out.  Can you stay on the phone with me?  I need someone to know where I am in case something happens.”  At times I jogged, grateful to be going downhill.  I reasoned that I should stay to the left where the trails led to the foothills.  Eric’s voice faded then I couldn’t hear him.  The call was dropped.

The darkening woods menaced.  It’s ironic about my creature horns — I told people at work that I was a wood creature.  I still had them on — haha.  An old tree on the right had a fantastical orange fungus.  What other monster imagery would I see?  A human threat?  Even in fear I thought fleetingly to take a picture of the fungus.  When would I see something like this again — get this opportunity?  But fear propelled me forward as I couldn’t waste any light.

At Halloween, during Haunted Inwood when actors hired to portray monsters guide kids through the night time woods, festooned with fog and cemeteries, there is a ticklish horror.  This was no ticklish horror.  More dark green paths led to an area where I saw a building way below.  I heard children.  But were they phantom children, like in the Blair Witch Project?  I took another path, trying to get to the building, but it went north.  I planned if necessary to climb down the rocky hills to the streets, veering off of the useless paths, so what if I tore my pants.

I got back on the original path.  At least I knew then that I was headed south where I would eventually get out.  I walked faster, heading for the wide stairs with wooden edges.  As a kid I got lost with my father and brother in these woods.  We came out around here.  I had shown daddy how to get us out.

Through the trees I saw the playground on Dyckman a way down. Would there be witchcraft involved where I’d continue to see the playground but never get on the right path?  I winded around another path then I was out!  I wanted to kiss the ground.  I called Eric back, then left a dramatic message with another friend.  I walked on the avenue at the border of the park, looking up at the dark menace of green looming over me.   I saw friends on my block and told them what happened with an exaggerated spirit of adventure, leaving the horror back in the woods.