A Little Angina in the Night

It is reported that my sister has had a heart attack. It was apparently bad enough that they flew her to Portland (why didn't they do that for my mother?), but the latest news is that there was "no serious damage" and that she will pull through.

I'm not entirely without human feeling and I wouldn't wish this sort of thing on anyone, but I've divorced myself emotionally from my sister so far that the feelings I do have are more or less abstract.

There's certainly a part of myself that can't help but recall my sister's well-developed sense of Drama.

When my mother was in the hospital recovering from the amputation of her right leg, and the spotlight was off of my sister for sixty seconds, instead of being there to support Mom, my sister chose That Moment in History to flamboyantly walk out on her husband, take up residence in a shelter, and come in to the hospital late at night after visiting hours to hit up Mom for money.

She ended up moving back in with him anyway, soon after my mother was released. It was all just a stunt.

Over the years, my sister has done herself harm or threatened to do herself harm in flagrant bids for attention.

So forgive me if at some level. . . well, it doesn't smell rotten exactly, but mainly what I'm feeling right now is a bit weary of this.

She works two very stressful jobs, is under a lot of pressure to support her family, and, last I knew, had pretty horrific eating habits, not to mention the long family history of heart attacks on my mother's side of the family. She's also abused her body with a wide variety of chemicals over the years -- much worse than I ever thought of being, because she mixed alcohol with drugs. One time she put herself in the hospital because she'd been driving under the influence of LSD.

Neither my father nor I know whether or not my sister has health insurance. Dad is concerned that he's going to have to take on some of her family's expenses, and asked me if I knew whether or not a payout from the estate is possible. My answer was that I didn't know, but that until recently she had taken much more money out of the estate than I, and that she may be close to the end of what she's entitled to. What she's done with all the money she's taken out so far remains a mystery. Her husband and family haven't seen any benefit from it. I should remind my father that she claims to have $30,000 in a retirement account, and say that if worse comes to worse, she may have to dip into it. Otherwise, her husband and her son will just have to knuckle down and get a job.

I wish her well, but will not visit her in hospital. For me, she exists only in these occasional calamitous dispatches, and in the reports from my lawyer of her constant demands for money. The person in the family home movies that I work on every night is already a ghost.

-- Freder.

Restoring the Past

As I plow through the processing of approximately 175 pictures that I scanned yesterday, I'm faced with inevitable memories and emotions, and occasionally tears, although that's rare. I have the work to focus on, and these things are far enough away in the distant past to have lost some of their sting. The moments of hard sadness come when I'm at work, sneaking up on me suddenly when my mind is on other things.

The photos have yellowed with time, and restoring them to their original vibrance has an eerie effect: Some of them look like they could have been taken yesterday. Except for the cars and clothes.

I'm amazed at how much of the basic family furniture is now set up in my house. I see paintings that my mother did that are still with me, and others that are not. I wonder where they went.

I particularly like seeing the jailhouse standing beside the pool at the Edina, Minnesota house, sporting a different coat of paint, and knowing that it came all the way through all those years and four moves to where it now stands.

The picture above is an interesting one. I can't think of any better illustration of how different my sister and I have always been. Note that she has no problem encroaching on my personal space, and that her duck is agitated and scared. I would be, too, in his position.

Typically of my sister, she did not even allow me to name my own duck. She named them both, and that was that, and my parents just stood by and let her do it, they way they always let her have her way and allowed her to boss me around.

The ducks really landed my Dad in the doghouse. He just brought them home one night, without even consulting Mom. They grew up to be perfectly white. One day, they got out of their pen and disappeared into the neighborhood. We drove around and spent the whole day looking for them, but never found them. At the end of the day, they came striding back into our yard, side by side, quacking enthusiastically as if nothing had happened.

I think it was my Grandmother Mel who finally got rid of the ducks. She could not abide animals, even dogs and cats, the ducks were over the top for her. I was so sad when the car drove away with them in a cage on the roof rack.

When my mother was a little girl, my grandmother Mel just "got rid" of my mother's pet dachshund, Schnitzel, one day. I don't think Mom ever really got over that. I think that's why, at the first opportunity, Mom decided that she was going to have just as many pets as she wanted.

Oh, dear, I'm afraid this has all been a bit of a ramble. That's what old pictures do.

-- Freder.

A Letter to Dad

In receipt of your snail mail letter the other day. Stop beating up on yourself. What's the point? Mom's gone; nothing can be done, it can't be helped now. I'm not beating up on you and you shouldn't be beating up on you. Past is past.

The little girl's name is Jackie Evancho. I witnessed her discovery a year ago on the NBC show AMERICA'S GOT TALENT. Mom and I watched this show obsessively and I have continued to watch it obsessively since. It was one of the things that got me through last summer. The show is full of surprises: people who come on virtually swaggering about how great they are, only to completely flame out in front of millions of people -- and then this little girl comes on, completely humble,  and you don't know what to expect, but then that voice comes out. 

Just another one of the surprises that life hands out -- and you have to be thankful for the GOOD surprises when they come along, because the bad ones are so very bad.

I must confess that I'm so far along in my thinking of that bitch who calls herself my sister that it takes me somewhat aback to see a letter that's addressed to me -- and to someone who no longer exists. If she ever did. The past is becoming a fantasy world, and she is nothing more to me than a ghost. Thank god for that.

Maybe lunch next week at your convenience?

DT

Putting The Wolf Behind Me

Yes, this is really Us. Although my costume   is Superman, my face is JFK. Which not only dates me, but is something to Ponder Upon, whether you agree with the connotations or not.

Right around the time this picture was taken, my sister sexually abused me for the first time.

From that day, to the day in the early '70s when she threw me out of the recliner because SHE wanted to sit in it, to the day a couple of years later when she threw me off of the toilet because SHE wanted to shit in it (never mind that there was a perfectly serviceable bathroom just thirteen steps down) to the day just a few months ago when she sold the old house out from under me even though I was willed the right to live there for five years --

-- from that day to this, I cannot think of my sister without thinking: "I hate you, Claudia."

And yet --

-- today, for the first time, I thought of her, and thought, as always, "I hate you!"

-- and then thought, But I don't HAVE to hate you anymore. You don't even know my address or phone number, and if I have any say in it you never will. You are Out of My Life, for once and for all, forever.

You bitch. I never have to put up with your abuse, ever again.

THANK GOD FOR THAT.

Life is so much better without you in it.

And yet, it comes at such a cost.

Flop sweat

It is the day before Opening Night, and like all producers I am concerned for the success of the show.

Last night I pulled up the big rugs in the living room and dining room of the Old House, rolled them up and loaded 'em. I had the notion that the rugs would be a fairly big deal to the cats, something they would instantly recognize when they get to the new diggs. I must have been right, because when Honey came downstairs this morning she completely freaked out! I haven't seen her so upset since the first day that the auctioneers came to raid the place, and I've never heard her yowl like that. Of course, it probably didn't help that there was a strange man in the house. She ran and hid, and when she reappeared I couldn't pet her or hug her enough.

The strange man was from the moving company. If I was doing this right I'd probably get more than one estimate -- but just now I'm inclined to take the path of Least Resistance, providing the number he gives me isn't completely outrageous.

Yesterday I talked to the estate lawyer and learned some interesting things. The Wolf is at it again: she's been appearing in the lawyer's office every other day, hounding them for money. She wants $15,000, and she wants it yesterday. The estate doesn't even have that kind of money at the moment. Everything is still pending, though we close on my mother's house this coming Tuesday. I reminded the lawyer that at some point we have to remember to dock my sister for the $2,000 that she already has swindled from the estate, and come up with a number for the other things that she stole.

Sue C_______, the paralegal who works with my lawyer, had been in contact with the auction house. The first auction, of the least valuable pieces in my mother's collection, apparently brought in somewhere around $45,000. The lawyer was thrilled with that. I don't know how I feel. When I heard the number I didn't feel either happiness or disappointment. I felt completely empty. It saddens me to reduce my mother's life to numbers.

In the "more than enough Misery to go around" department, Sue and her husband H______ lost their house to a fire recently. I'm told that there wasn't much in the way of flame, but the smoke destroyed everything inside.

I'm reminded of a postcard I used to have. I used to think it was funny. It was a cartoon of a man poking his head out of a foxhole. He was surrounded by total thermo-nuclear devastation, a desolate landscape of craters and debris. He had one black eye, bruises all over him, and half of his teeth knocked out. But he had a huge grin on his face, and he was holding up a sign that read:

LIFE GOES ON!

Of Wills, Wolves and Melodrama

Actually, this picture is unfair. My sister is nowhere near as cute as this wolf!

I need to start thinking about making a Will. Now.

The day when The Wolf who Calls Herself My Sister was at the house, going through my mother's clothes, she looked at my scrapbook and then coyly said, "So, if anything happens to you, can Patty have this?"

And I thought to myself, "What, are you going to have me killed now?"

The thought did actually occur. But I pushed it aside, actually flattered that The Wolf was covetous of my pictures.

But some time later I told this story to my father in an email, and instead of telling me it was Melodrama (which it probably is, as my friend B____ did point out), he wrote back to tell me that the same thought had occurred to him!

And when I told it to my lawyer, as a joke, she not only didn't laugh -- she looked concerned!

People shouldn't react like that to the things I tell them. I'm an impressionable boy. Now a part of me is looking nervously over my shoulder from time to time to see if there are any Hit Men hiding in the trees!

My sister is not just an alchie like me -- she's also a junkie who nearly killed herself driving through a red light at high speed while she was on LSD. She has done things that, much as I dislike her and enjoy smearing her in public, I can't write about here. She undoubtedly has Connections with what is referred to in the Funny Books as The Underworld.

So -- you know -- just in case -- if anything untoward happens to me in the coming months, you will all know who to blame!

Meanwhile, I'm getting all my Ducks in a Row. If she and her Unholy Spawn can't inherit anything from me, and know it, that's the best defense -- the same as changing the lock on the house was the best security measure that I took all those months ago!

Snow in October

It was not a good Halloween, but Halloween had a good one on me.

I woke to a heavy snowstorm blanketing the yard. It ended by 11:30 and melted away shortly after, but it's the principle of the thing, damn it! Snow on  Halloween day! Another punch in the face.

This was going to be my day for me -- some time to get a few things done, but also some time to write: not just emails or the blog, I wanted to start in a small way on completing a short story that has been sitting on my computer desktop for a year.

It didn't happen. Phone calls, emails, chores that took longer than they should have. I was just sitting down to warm up by doing a blog post when my sister turned up in the yard.

She wanted to go through Mom's clothes. I felt like telling her that she'd had her chance. But I figured that letting her do this would get it out of the way, and then I would never have to see her again.

The whole time she was going through the clothing, she kept asking me when I was going to move. I kept answering "I don't know." Because nothing is final yet and I'm not packing one box until I have a completed deal. And then I am going to move at my own pace. I am tired of being pushed on every damn thing.

She asked if I'd spoken to my neighbors about selling the place. I said no, and for the same reasons. I don't want to have the place sold out from under me when I have nowhere else to go.

She seemed unwilling to accept this answer and started pushing me again to go down there and speak to them. I said I didn't want to. She said, "I know R____, really well, I'll go down and talk to him. Do you want to come with me?"

I said I wished she wouldn't. She chose not to hear me. She demanded that we load up her truck with all the clothes it could carry so that she could "help" me by taking it all to Goodwill. I said I didn't need or want her help. She chose not to hear that, and started loading up her car.

I gave up at that point. I just wanted her gone. I started helping her load just so that she would go away, let me have what remained of my Sunday, and the next time, if there was one, it would be easier to control the situation just by not letting her in.

It must have been three-thirty or later when she finally left. I breathed a sigh of relief, and started to try to pick up where I'd left off. I had a load of laundry in the washer and a VHS that had finished duping, so I set about shutting down those operations for the day.

She hadn't been gone ten minutes when there was a knock at my door.

It was her again. She hollered in at me, "R____ wants to see the house, it's his step-son that's interested and they're leaving for California tomorrow!"

I couldn't believe it. I started cleaning up. My sister hollered in at me to get the keys to the barn. She started going through my key rack. "Which one of these is the right one?"

"None of them," I said. In truth, the keys on that rack (which my mother made many years ago) are for decorative purposes only.

There were two men standing in my yard. One of them introduced himself as the step-son.

They walked through the barns and then they came into the house, Claudia leading the way, giving them a hard-sell sales pitch the whole way, never shutting up. They went into my mother's room. They went down the basement and into the outrooms. Claudia said nothing about the window I'd boarded up after she broke it entering the house illegally.

I didn't want her to go into the main house. I didn't want her to see what I had kept and how I was making the place comfortable again. But there was no way to stop her without making a scene, she was in full carnival barker mode.

When she entered the living room she saw the head of the lion costume and said, "Oh, there's my lion costume! -- Ours!"

It never was hers or ours. It belonged to our mother. She merely let us use it once in a while (usually with reluctance!). It's not mine even now. I'm just its caretaker. That means I have to protect it from my sister.

She didn't remember half of the things that Mom had made, just as she hadn't remembered her own WAC costume from her childhood when we found it in Mom's closet. But she kept saying "Our mother made most of this stuff!" to the men as if it meant something to her.

They went upstairs and looked in all the bedrooms. When they looked in what had once been Claudia's bedroom, but which has been an extra room for me now many years, I heard Claudia exclaim, "Oh, you saved my old desk! My desk! Hmmm, I wonder what I could do with it. How could I use it?"

I thought: It hasn't been your desk for thirty-five years, you bitch. Now it's coming with me, or it's going to the auction house.

When they were done, Claudia took them down through the back field to see the pond, and I stood just behind the closed door and sobbed.

But I wasn't rid of them yet. Ten minutes later I saw them in the front yard, all talking. They went out into the driveway and talked some more. I kept going back to the window and finding them still there and thinking to myself, Why don't they go?

After what must have been twenty minutes I saw them coming back to the door.

I made the mistake of opening it. The guys were very polite and friendly, and I suddenly realized that they were a gay couple.

"J____ and J____ have something to say to you," my sister said.

The Wolf in My Sister's Clothing

Sunday was my first opportunity to spend a whole day giving the house a good beating.

I vacuumed, swept, and scrubbed the floors in the living room and the kitchen, then vacuumed in the front room, front hall and office. Brought some things downstairs in a futile attempt to make the place more homey. I was actually feeling somewhat cheerful then, because at the time I still had ahead of me the definite prospect of moving on to a new place.

Given that I didn't believe I would live here much longer, I had made an offer to my sister and her husband. They are facing the reality of losing their home due to the mortgage he took out on the place when he built his "resort" (actually, it was a nudist colony which, predictably, failed in a big way. What kind of genius puts a nudist colony in an upper-central Maine farm field where half of the year it is freezing and the other half of the year the black flies hold sway?). Tony had built a little workshop near their house, and now he was at work expending it and turning it into something they could live in, but it will never be anything more than a shack.

I told them they could move in to my mother's house, rent free, for a time. In return, Tony could do a little work on the house, and everyone would benefit from that. Tony wanted to come over and look at the house. Claudia was going to stay away because she knows I hate her, but I needed her to come over and go through our mother's clothes to see if she wanted anything. The rest would go to Goodwill or Kenaset or the Salvation Army or someplace like that.

I was looking forward to seeing her reaction to the house, and the state that they had left the place in. I wanted her to see exactly what she'd made me do.

But I was disappointed. She walked through the door -- and didn't react at all.

Not an "Oh my Gosh!"

Not a "Wow!"

Not an "Oh, Mom."

Not even a widening of her eyes.

If anything, she looked satisfied.

Tony went into the upstairs rooms through the back (something that hasn't been possible in at least two decades), and I went into our mother's room to get Claudia started. Before she even looked at anything, she said "My husband won't let me wear anything Mickey Mouse."

It was a pointless comment as I'd already taken out all the Mickey tees and sweatshirts and nightshirts for myself.

I followed Tony and walked him through the place, pointing out some of the damage. When we were done he went to look at the place from the outside.

Claudia was pretending to look at my mothers coats.

She volunteered to help me move. I don't want her help. I don't even want her to know where I end up. I want to be done with her forever. There has to be one good thing to come out of this nightmare.

When they left she asked for a hug. There is no limit to her hypocrisy, and no shame attached to anything she does. Everything is somehow justified in her mind, even the most outrageous violations of faith, trust and personal property. I reluctantly allowed her to hug me, waiting all the while for the knife to slide between my shoulder blades. I didn't hug her back.

When I stepped back indoors I went straight to my mother's closets. I had made a point to taking anything of real value out before Claudia arrived, and of memorizing the way everything in there was laid out. All of the boxes of costume jewelry had been disturbed, both on the shelves and on the floor.

Claudia had not been going through the clothes at all. She'd been rifling the boxes, looking for valuable jewelry.

That's the way to do it...

Monday morning around ten, and for at least two days afterward, the auction house will be at my home taking it all down. I know that during the day, my concern will not be about grief management, but on the logistics of six or more people all coming and going from the house through at least two entrances.

Their plan is to set up tables in the front yard (for this reason I have been unable to put out Halloween decorations). Two people will come into the house and start picking. Two people will act as runners, carrying the items out of the house to the two people manning the tables. These last will sort the items into lots, then pack and load everything onto the truck.

I've been trying to get the house ready for them, emptying drawers and more, but many of the desks and dressers and closets are actually inaccessible to me, which means that this will be an ongoing job. Also, I have no room to store anything that comes out of these places -- I will have to deal with it as space gradually opens up.

I have had to make plans of my own. Wanting not to worry all day about the cats getting out, I decided to lock them in my rooms upstairs, two in the bathroom and three in my bedroom, being mindful of matching the personalities to avoid cat warfare. I may have to switch them out a couple of times, as I'm not about to put a cat tray in my bedroom -- that's an idea I do NOT want to put into their heads! Likewise, Pooky will have to stay in the bathroom all day. I am not having her poop all over my sheets!

I plan on taking a lot of pictures. That's probably the best thing about digital cameras -- you don't have to worry about wasting film.

I know that it will be a long, busy day, and that I most likely will not have time to think much about what's happening. My father has said that he's going to be there for moral support; if he stays true to form, he will actually try to take over and run the operation. Then it will be my job to channel him in some other direction. That's all right. One more distraction for me.

My biggest fear is that my sister will find out what's happening and try to disrupt the process. I know that she wanted to lay claim to certain items, and until I found out that she was stealing from the house I would not have stood in the way of this. But things are different now. My position is that she made her choices and took them. She doesn't get to pick any more. She gave up that right. If she complains, I will happily tell her, "You're perfectly free to bid on things."

I had to swear my father to secrecy on the dates before I would tell him anything. I believe Monday will be safe. But her husband will be at home and he frequently drives down my road, and I fear that he or one of the kids will find out what's happening and convey the news to Claudia. This could make Tuesday or Wednesday a little sticky. If she turns up, I will ask her as politely as possible to leave. If she doesn't, I will call the state police.

At the end of the day, everyone will go away, and I will be left alone with the cats to clean up and deal with what remains. That's when I expect the tears to come.

The plunderers are coming. . .

The blows keep coming, fast and furious. On Friday I heard from the state police: as I suspected, they aren’t going to do anything about my sister’s thefts. And on Saturday I received the proposal from the Auction House.

They want to start ASAP, which I interpret as sometime within the next two or three weeks.

They plan on clearing the whole place out over a period of three days.

Although I knew it was going to be like this, seeing it in hard type was upsetting, to say the least.

I'll be left with a few sticks of furniture and some modern stuff that no one wants, yard-sale stuff, and a big empty mausoleum with just me and the cats to face the winter.

I won¹t even have a desk in my study. In fact, I have to clear all my stuff out (and off) of it so that they can take it out.

I know that it needs to be done, but I'm so not ready. A friend asked, would I be ready next year? No. But it would make the winter easier.

I have always hated and dreaded that terrible season. How bad will it be, alone in a big cold empty house? I don’t think there’s enough Prozac in the world to cover that prospect.

I would move somewhere else, but what to do about the outside cats?

Missing Links from a Missing Link

I was excited this morning to stop by my brand-new PO Box and find something inside: the prints that I ordered of my digital photos!

Then I realized that much of the backstory is missing from this blog. For example, you might ask why I needed a PO Box when I have a perfectly good mailbox at my home.

Other than a brief post when I started the blog, I haven't mentioned my sister much at all.

I didn't want to obsess or vent or rant or rage, though I've been doing a fair amount of that away from here.

So: some missing links from the backstory.

The week after our mother died, my sister began entering my home illegally while I was away at work. She  stole a lot of my mother's things right out of the house, took them to an antiques shop on the coast and sold them at way below market value.

Why didn't I notice right away? If you've looked at some of the photos I've posted here (including the slideshow in the sidebar and at the bottom of the page, "Views from the Funhouse"), you can see why. My mother was a hoarder, and it's easy to take one or two things out of any given location, re-arrange a bit, and no one is the wiser. Also, I was stumbling around the house in a drunken state of despair.

But eventually, I did notice. I immediately had the locks changed and the burglar alarm system brought back on-line.

As soon as she could no longer access the main house, my sister broke into the barns and outbuildings and stole a large amount of things from there. To make it look like an outside job she broke a window. I can safely say that she is the one responsible; I have both a written confession and a voice message on my answering machine in which she doesn't deny anything.

That was when I called in the state police. I still haven't gotten any results from them. But I will press charges if I am allowed.

Then, someone stole my credit card statement right out of the mailbox and made a run on my card to the tune of $5,000.

I say someone, but this is exactly my sister's M.O.: she once stole one of my mother's Social Security checks out of the mailbox, forged the signature and cashed it.

So -- not only did I lose my mother and my best friend, but I have been fending off attacks from my sister ever since.

Hence, the PO Box.

P.S. -- the prints turned out really great! Not bad for a cheap $50 digital camera!

-- Freder

In my father's house

On Saturday afternoon I made the trek out to R__________ (stopping along the way to redeem EIGHT big garbage bags filled with almost a year's worth of bottles) to have lunch with my father and his wife

It's a little bit sad, but also a little bit good, that three hours spent in their company left me with so little of substance to say.

I was dreading this so much that my hands trembled throughout much of the encounter. I could see that my father was noticing this, which made me tremble all the more. I wondered what he would say if I told him that I still drink at night.

When he opened the door, he said what an "honor" it was that I had come. My father always expresses himself in ways that seem false to me.

Then the ritual of hugging these two people that I have seen so little of and had so little to do with and feel deeply disassociated from. As if now that my mother is gone, all of a sudden the last thirty five years never happened.

He began by saying that he'd thought I would bring one of my "friends" along. I could actually hear the quotation marks but could not understand his meaning. We'd never discussed my bringing anyone. The invitation, not to say command appearance, was for me alone.

He looked at me cheerfully. He said, "Aren't any of them housebroken enough to bring along?"

I stared dumbly at him, feeling somewhat as if I'd landed in a play by Antonin Artaud. At last he told me that by "friends," he meant the cats.

This was venturing even further into the realms of the surreal. Why would I do that? Why would I traumatize one of my kitties by tossing her or him into the car, driving for an hour along back roads to a strange house where any cat would, at best, be tolerated? Even if this had ever been discussed with me, I would have said no.

I was given a nice lunch of fried haddock, baked potatoes with cheese and a HUGE bowl of raspberries and ice cream for desert (when I saw it, I never dreamed that it was all intended for me!).

Dad talked at great length, as he always does. I've come to realize that he fancies himself a raconteur, but his method of storytelling is to spare no detail, however small. Once in a while he would ask about me, only to pick up on something that I'd said and start all over again.

From time to time, his wife would enter the monologue, often to take issue with what he was saying. She is a kind enough woman, but her English is not the best, and her speech is heavily accented, so I often have a hard time understanding her..

At one point dad announced to the room that he had to go to the bathroom, and disappeared upstairs. My father's wife used this time to lecture me about my sister. She told about her father going underground during the Vietnam war and how angry she was at him for leaving her, as the oldest, to take care of the family. One day her grandmother scolded her, saying that no matter what he had done, he was her father and she could never make another one. My father's wife wanted to apply this to me and my sister. She said, "It not matter what she say or do, she your sister, she your family, you cannot make another."

She repeated this over and over again, to the point where I wanted to say "I GET it already!"

But I do not agree. In fact, most of my favorite books and films are about new families that create themselves in the absence of a blood family. Even THE WIZARD OF OZ is all about the creation of a family. People are creating their own families all the time, especially when blood families become intolerable or dysfunctional, as mine has been all of my life.

It's in my own work, too, in nearly all of my stories. The novel that I ended up posting online (you can find it here) is clearly about the creation of a family.

It went on. Around quarter to three I got up and carried in the four bags of things that I'd brought with me. One of the bags was VHS that I thought would interest them. The rest were all things from the kitchen, food that I will never eat, spices that I will never use. There was bramble jam from England, bottles of mustard and ketchup, jars of pickles that had never been opened, several bottles of salad dressing, peanut butter, canned pineapple, pesto, and something called "artichoke appetizer."

My father's wife has a thing about not throwing away food, stemming from her struggles as a young woman in Vietnam. We shall see if any of that lot challenges her resolve!

Before I left they arranged for another visit. My father wants me to buy a new (used) car. He wants to go car shopping with me.

I can't afford a new car, and anyway, I would almost rather go to Afghanistan.

I broke all speed records driving home, not understanding why. It isn't until now, typing this, that I realize how relieved I was to have the lunch at my father's house behind me.

"It's th' SUSPENSE that GETS you!"

Recovered! A Toy Horse

The week after my mother's death, while I was stumbling through Wonderland in a drunken stupor, my sister began entering the house when I was away and stealing from the collection. Warning to antique dealers or wholesalers: do not do business with Claudia Takacs, my sister. She does not represent the estate. This past weekend, some of the missing items were recovered. Now it is in the hands of the State Police and the D.A. But justice is slow, and sometimes it never appears at all.