Everyone in my life lately seems to be saying, "Did you do this? Did you do that?"

I say, “Yeah, yeah and what did you do?”

Nada.

Right.

Doc Mizrahi just wants to know what is up with Faye Dunaway. He knows that I have done, did, do what I was supposta.

Well, to the best of my ability anyway.

Ms. 91 likes to read so when we are in the doctor’s office she reads the signs.

In the lab she asks the technician, “What do you do?” The word “phlebotomist” on the sign is an unfamiliar one to Ms. 91. Shit, what happened yesterday is unfamiliar to Ms. 91. The phlebotomist (not a woman who is at a loss for words) is not quite sure how to frame the answer to a 94 year old.

I say, “She is a vampire.”

“She drains your blood.”

When we are finished Ms. 91 says of her blood, “Do I have any left?”

They only take as much as they need mom. They want you alive and the doctor has a mortgage ya know.

Ms. 91 needs an RX refill. Doc says to his medical student, “These are the mystery women… Mary calls in her Mom’s RX for Lasix again and again and I refill it… I’m not a complete asshole!”

He forgives my tardiness and at some point he needs to check her blood levels and I know all that, but she’s obstinate. What am I supposed to do bang her over the head with a frying pan and drag her in?

“Shit Doc! You know what she is like?”

Last time I called him on the cell we were months late for our appointments and his first words were “You’re still alive!”

Mary did you send that check? Mary can you fix the TV headphones? Mary did you solve Mom’s IRS deal?

Yeah, yeah, what? Was I waiting for you or you to offer to do it?

Oh, and believe it or not I once lived the high life.

I tell 91 about it.

Vendors gave me gift baskets… with good shit in them too, not stupid refridgerator magnets.

Why do I always forget there is no “D” in refrigerator?

Why is the slang for refrigerator “fridge”?

If a refrigerator makes things frigid (as in cold) why is the “D” missing?

A friend once gave me a small jar of white truffles. I have had truffle shavings on a dish at the Detroit Athletic Club and on venison at the Gulf Coast Restaurant , famous for its wild game, in NYC along with Champagne Kir or Kir Royale with a friend that had a tony apartment in Chelsea worth a mill.

Yeah, yeah, in a low-cut black velvet number and high heels.

These days I don’t even have the time or coin for the local morels (which I love more than truffles) at the Rattlesnake Club in Detroit, famous for fresh morel dishes and its creative use of other seasonal foods.

Maybe if hold a cardboard sign - I just want one morel... will dance for it.

Didn’t know I was once such a lucky girl. French or Italian truffles these days can cost you from $100- $300 bucks a dish and dealers are cutting them with the less desirable Chinese truffle to up profits like coke dealers use mannitol.

BUT, who needs fungus anyway!

AND, are they really people who sit around trying to figure out truffle trafficking? I can't imagine.

Oh, but just one sauteed morel would be really nice!

Next stop today the dentist. Everyone fawns over her. Of Ms. 91, Dr. Abbatte says, “She is so cute!” Yeah pal, that’s my Vera Wang hat she’s wearing!

Maybe she is my man magnet? The hottie lifeguards at the YMCA love her, waiters swoon over getting her seated, Doc sticks his tongue out at her, but he really, REALLY loves her. My boys on the lighting crew would walk my golden retriever, and my only real love, because he was a TOTAL babe magnet.

Can a 94 year old in a wheel chair be a stud magnet? Hmmmm…

And Shorty (my foster dog), well, he’s hardly a man magnet, but god dammit… here come the tears. He most likely will leave me next week for a forever home and he keeps nuzzling me and licking my chin as if to say “No, I want to stay!”

You know me… I have to keep room for the other strays.

Happy New Years everyone!

I’m tart, bitchy, and sarcastic, but deep down I have a love and fascination for mankind. For those of you, especially lately, that have cheered me on and been entertained by my splurting (yeah I know, spurting is probably more grammatically correct, but fuck it) of verbiage. I thank you and I love you for it.

If it weren’t for many of you I wouldn’t have stories to tell.

May all YOUR stories be fairy tales.

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

– Carl Sagan

There is NO way Mary was a virgin… virgin birth? I just can’t believe that!

– Ms. 91

When I was a teen I read Carl Sagan’s “The Dragons of Eden”. At the time I would have probably referred to myself as an agnostic and the book seemed to confirm this fact, after all, Sagan’s subtitle is “Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence” and like the agnostic he is only “speculating” and not confessing to KNOW. Currently I’m reading Stephen Baxter’s “Evolution” Guru’s favorite book. I never thought that books or one's thoughts could create such profound connections, but they would. These days I lean more towards atheism, how can I not with that little hussy Ms. 91 running around debunking biblical myths to everyone she meets. She vividly remembers her childhood priest, Father Splinter, how handsome he was and the feeling of awe she felt at church, but we all go through transitions in our lives and we should.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

- Francis Bacon

Sagan, brilliantly, discussed the intelligence of the information in the bible (again we assume these folks were speculating too). He found that the bible and its writers might have had some things right in regards to evolution. He sites what God says will happen to Eve if she eats of the tree of knowledge. "In pain shalt thou bring forth children" (Genesis 3:16) and in human evolution the brain developed much faster than the female body did to handle the expansion. The fontanelle or the incomplete infant’s skull evolved, according to early theories, to accommodate this.

Of course the writers of the bible and many religious folks, even today, would say that God knew that eating from the tree of knowledge would enlarge babies' brains. The whole thing seems rather metaphorical to me and man's way of explaining why animals give birth rather easily and women do not, but that is just me.

What hit home with me the most, however, was how Sagan compared creation (Genesis) with evolution. I thought it was pure genius. And Baxter in his wisdom takes it beyond the bible's description of creation and into the future, but he confirms Sagan’s writing in a most wonderful painting of these evolutionary events… hundreds of millions of years ago.

Let there be light.

- Genesis 1:3

To Sagan the first day would represent the Jurassic period and that night? The time the comet hits the Yucatan Peninsula and renders the Earth dark and the dinosaurs extinct. The second day came “seas” from a frozen comet-bombed planet into the start of the boggy end to the Cretaceous. Then dry ground, then plants, then fish, then birds, then land animals, then man, woman and alas some rest. In Sagan’s astute brain the seven days of Genesis represented the two hundred million years of evolution. In Baxter’s equally excellent mind it is the fishes, sea turtles too, and the birds and small plentiful mammals that begin to thrive after the comet wipes away the dinosaurs… he writes as if the first set of creatures never had a chance to evolve, but perhaps the next set was a better path to man.

May we not suspect that the vague but very real fears of children, which are quite independent of experience, are inherited effects of real dangers and abject superstitions during ancient savage times? It is quite conformable with what we know of the transmission of formerly well-developed characters, that they should appear at an early period of life, and afterwards disappear-like gill slits in human embryology.

– Charles Darwin

Even a fetus goes through an evolution of sorts.

Have you ever experienced the feeling of falling in your dreams and woken up suddenly?

I have.

Like the apes we once descended from or Purga, a small mammal, from Baxter's novel that took refuge in the trees.

Fall and refuge is lost. So we wake ourselves up in our nests to make sure we are still safe from harm... the predators lurking below us still at bay.

The Dragons of Eden amazed me… Darwin amazed me. At the time, mom was organic gardening, we watched PBS, did Yoga, dug Julia Child AND Carl Sagan. My brother was sneaking joints, I was smoking menthols and probably had had my first acid trip, was shaking my booty at discos and certainly was no longer a virgin. The farm, Father Splinter and atheism were not on Ms. 91’s mind then and she could still remember what she did two days ago. It was an amazing time and somewhere in Manhattan was a boy that was digging the same shit – yeah maybe digging hot pants more than Julia Child - that same boy, just like I, was raised up in a southern religion and yet began to question everything.

Things would change for us both in the eighties. Guru would watch as his peers cast their votes for a movie actor with an agenda and I would butt heads with my father, who found my decisions, to study art not advertising, to study communism AND risk getting the family on the black list!, to live with a man without marriage. Suddenly I was supposed to think a certain way, have morals I hadn't been taught since I was five in bible school.

BUT this story begins after my own rebellion, the heartbreak and struggle of the Reagan years, when a sudden loss of the seeking of enlightenment seemed to sweep the whole country and my rise to success under the Clinton years when we all began learning again. This story begins after I had closed a successful special effects studio, born of a fascination of all the new technology, a studio that had weathered one recession and then I saw the other one coming. I was sick of the greed and lack of ideas in the advertising world that provided my fodder and instead found work on job boards and with direct clients (entrepreneurs). I had begun to play fantasy football, which landed me some good cash and I had a fairly lucrative Ebay business.

And I started writing… And so did Guru wander the same sort of path.

I wrote on a sports site called The Sporting News. I was the wild girl amongst mostly conservative Christian sportswriters. My fantasy league, a brusque group of stockbrockers, even kicked me out for smack talk! When I wrote I hacked code, added animation to my page, then video and along the way I was learning to write again, but for a girl who was into Carl Sagan, the Tao de Ching?

It was a transition.

I had come to believe by this time that there was a force in this world. One I could tap into with meditation and yoga. It was similar to the Christian thought “Let go, let God”, but it was more a feeling that the carbon atoms that made us all up were connected, that somehow if you let things flow (let go) you would move with them in the ways you were meant to.

Hardly fare for the working man that was looking for stats on his teams, but I made it copacetic... combining sports with life in my scribblings.

Today Ms. 91 and I laugh at the crazy creationist ideas that dinosaurs and man lived together, but back then I was working on a way to create a home for her, my Dad had died suddenly, she had broken every bone in her body and I didn’t think it would be long before she needed to leave the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee and move in with me. She wasn’t religious, but she had yet to be exposed to her daughter’s ideas so intimately. She wasn't yet a Tiger's fan or someone that thought Derek Jeter was hot. She needed my help to survive the every day stuff.

Her bills, her garden, downsizing…

It was around then I found Guru. A man now (at least partly), who had returned like I had in my adventures to a home, his in the mountains and caverns of Manhattan, which had long been a home away from home for me. Here he was, on the same sports site, spouting off about religious fantasy and science. I sent a comment to him one day that I once had hoped that Carl Sagan’s “Dragons of Eden” would be a bridge for those two worlds and I forget how he answered, but it was something along the lines of “Any woman that groks Sagan has me intrigued!”

We flirted, we were both living with old lovers (platonically) at the time, and we wrote long emails. He once said “Hmmm a girl from the south named Mary, the same name as my mom.” He WAS intrigued and so was I, but I had Ms. 91 and Slouchy and he had NH Girl and Cowboy Mama, who was a southern girl fo’ sure, but it would be years before I met her.

When I did, and NH Girl too, I instantly loved them both, so beautifully, like Stephen Baxter's words did he paint them. And in those brief moments I spent with them they loved on me too.

Ms. 91? Guru, if he had ever met her, would adore her. Instead, he sent his herald and all of us had an adventure. Ms. 91 and I, Speedy, Guru and those we picked up along the way.

At the time, I was always working and I still am, my companions were employees of fifteen years or more, they still are mostly. I didn’t realize I had no life.

Meeting a kindred spirit was a thrill – he was also a load – a charming, sometimes sad load. Without him this endless battering of keys would have stopped long ago. He told me I had a voice too and I believed him.

He had multiple personalities barely controlled by a charming semi-merged force I called Matthew. The rest of Guru was a flirty bisexual, an overly aggressive and controlling manly man or he was the loud mouth kid that could be both petulant or heartbreakingly full of the pain only a child feels – the kind adults learn to cope with, but I didn’t know any of that yet.

Nor did I know about the oral fixation until in a moment of stress I watched him almost engulf – like Galactus (Google it) consumes worlds - a pizza meant for four.

He took his time revealing himself and agonized over finally uncovering it all. And by the time he did Ms. 91 was firmly ensconced, Galactus’ herald had been sent and our venture had already begun.

Always agree with them and LIE if you have to.

– Dr. Ron

The YMCA at Night.

My neighbor, Dr. Ron, is a gerontologist who takes care of seniors so he should know. And though the first part is the best advice EVER, in many ways it goes hand and hand with the second part of his counsel.

When I forget this advice I am always sorry for it.

Ms. 91 says, “I hope you finish this book before I die!”

Given that she has high blood pressure, poor thyroid function, congestive heart failure, arthritis, has broken every bone in her body, has P.A.D. (Oh, just Google it!), she’s pushing 95 now, has dementia that has become increasingly worse AND her daughter is a procrastinator - the odds ain’t exactly good.

She says, “I have never read anything you’ve written!”

I, stupidly, disagreed (she has read tons of my stuff) and then I spent part of the day “cleaning” up a story for her that I had written. AND dammit I left the word “shit” in. Get used to it!

However, her daughter, that’s me, is also known to be a whirlwind and can make the impossible happen as well. So, we have that going on and 91 is the same freakin’ way. We kept this April’s birthday quiet, thinking that 95 should be the big shebang, but during the year and one by one the staff at the “Y” became aware she was now 94 years old.

Me just before my "15 minute while Ms. 91 is changing clothes in the stall behind me workout."

Our “little” block long YMCA.

News spreads and gossip abounds in what has become a tight knit community that is the Boll Family YMCA. You see the same employees, runners, b-ball players, class goers, darling children in day care programs and instructors around every time you go and we go three times a week.

The children wave and call her "Grandma", the wheelchair doesn't spook them like the adults that don't quite know how to deal with it. She CAN walk after all, but not everyone knows it.

They’re hip to the fact that she is special and she digs it big time. AND thank Buddha ‘cause her daughter is tired and boosting an ego like Ms. 91’s when she is depressed? A mountain… as opposed to a molehill, yuh dig?

They other day she started crying in the car. “I never wanted to live this long...” she said. I hear it often. Without the “Y”, my cousin Tom and my bro, the doctor, who she claims to despise, but really enjoys the sword fights with and the attention he and his staff provide her… she would be even more depressed.

The Y, a block away from my old studio on Grand.

BUT of course this just makes me depressed.

I sleep on a couch just outside of where she stays in my old dining room, I wake at her every movement and listen to make sure she doesn’t fall. She is the baby I never had and the mother I rebelled from long ago.

That’s some painful shit ("Mom I said shit!"), right there.

She read my story and said, “It’s different… I don’t think I understand it.”

Truth is, she won’t ever read the book and won’t ever really UNDERSTAND her daughter; we come from different times and different paths. She has grokked some of my life, but she will never understand it fully in the way that the author Robert Heinlein meant the word to mean.

A deep understanding… that is a rare thing and I have only really grokked two people EVER in my life. They were best friends and they both moved on.

Sure there were little grok moments, but not like these… not ever like these.

Ms. 91 will move on too. It’s inevitable.

She has the nicest ass of any 94 year old I have ever known.

We are groking right? Everyone has an ass... get OVER it. Dozens and dozens of people have seen it by now and I've seen it too many times to count.

Love handles sag lower, butt cheeks too, but to me it is all beautiful.

People grok, but people also tell little white lies, they exaggerate, they miss things in language and things that go on behind the scenes.

They sometimes miss REAL beauty and find only what was taught them instead.

The two of us talked about death AGAIN, but with brutal honestly. A chance to grok.

Maybe letting her read my written piece on the carnage of deer and the carnage of our lives wasn’t the best pick, but it was the handiest one.

Ms. 91 says she remembers the nurse nodding that it was time to pull the IV. Only it was the feeding tube she was thinking of that was keeping my Dad alive. I had left it in for a few more days because I saw my Mother was in denial and since I had power of attorney and I was my father’s patient advocate, she really had no say in the matter.

It was a nurse, and a really terrific one, that helped me ease my dad into death and my Mom back to reality.

Ms. 91’s sister has a big heart and meaning well, in a discussion on living wills, she said to her sister that she had to specify “No open heart surgery.” in her living will.

She sends the greatest care packages, full of candy, trail mix, fancy breads, magazines and quite often treats that aren’t exactly heart healthy, which are “extracted”.

There is a picture for this too, but we have gone far enough and it waits another time.

Well, no doctor in their right mind is going to perform open heart on a 94 year old woman and I had to explain to her that her living will says “No heroic procedures.” This would easily fall under that category and I’ve already had to refuse intubation (A far less invasive procedure than open heart surgery!) when the hospital a few years ago thought they might lose her.

“No, no I wouldn’t have wanted that.” she says.

What she doesn't remember is me listening to her say "Mary, please just let me die." over and over in the emergency room and she'll never know what it is like to be the one. The one that will have to say, "Let her go."

It is the same deal I had with Dad and I assure her over and over that the doctor and I are only concerned with her comfort and I KNOW her wishes through and through and it doesn’t make it easy, but it IS the one thing I grok.

I wish I had those two friends, but one can’t be brought back to life and the other has chosen a happier path than one such as me.

Saying goodbye to her won't be easy and saying bye to him, my last "grokee" was not a piece of cake.

I feel grok-less and without hope on many days, but blurting out this stuff, well, it makes a difference. If you listen, thank you, if you don’t, don’t make no never mind.

Peace.

I'll save the last chapter of this tale for the man that reminded me to grok, but don't hold your breath. It is a long one and belongs only if attached to a published book.

– My thoughts on my morning drive out of nowhere.

We were both living very different lives than we expected.

I imagined a loft somewhere in the city that I could peddle my art and restored antiques, complete with someone to watch over me - to smile at my face like I smiled at his - not this big old house full of human and animal strays that all needed watching. I once had the loft (larger than the house) AND the house too.

It all proved too much for me.

Too much space… too much stuff…

He was an apartment dwelling city boy when we met, a social animal (BOTH of us party animals) and now he lives in a mansion in the middle of nowhere complete with elevator, heated lap pool, a suite for me with a bathroom and my own fuckin’ bar (with a toaster too!)… the lake view to die for.

Quiet…

So quiet, every noise began to startle me.

“What was that, are those bullfrogs?” I say. “No” he says, “Those are cows.”

I’ve stayed in my world for too long and it’s time for a change. He’s in a world he never imagined.

Adjustments are being made…

We met in the late 80’s, just a couple of freaks that appreciated each other’s freakiness.

On the phone he says, “Watch out for the deer.”

Days of my youth camping in the wilderness with friends that ended in midnight drives home through dark forests, scanning ever left and then right… all this passes through my mind in a flash. Those drives were sometimes harrowing. You’d see them, the deer, on the outskirts of the woods, eyes glowing and you'd think...

“One leap from them and I’m a goner.”

One little leap the wrong way and your life is gone.

Here it is, evening, dark as Russian caviar and I think, “I’m in the middle of fucking nowhere.” Past my old stomping grounds at Michigan State, past my old roommate’s small hamlet of Owosso (Part Cherokee, it figures she’d hail from a town with an Indian name!).

It’s rutting season and antsy doe deer are trying to escape horny bucks in the blackness all around me.

What the fuck am I doing?

I’m on a highway I’ve never heard of and my GPS says I’m here, where exactly is here?

I didn’t see a street, but there was a lone white house amidst cornfields so I pulled into the drive. Luckily, I had phone service because ten feet behind me there wasn’t ANY. I text him to say, “GPS says I’m here, but I don’t know where I am.” I tell him I’m at a white house and he texts, “Bop.” Then, “Honk your horn.”

At this point I figure he is off in his van to try to find me, then he texts, “Look for the blinking lights.”

I’m scanning the road for flashing headlights and suddenly I see in my rearview mirror that an ENTIRE house is blinking. I think briefly, “Okay, this is a new one.”

The street is only twenty feet away and the drive is so close to what is really a tiny dirt road that I had mistaken it all for a driveway. Holy shit! Never thought you could make a house blink!

This house is new and it can do all sorts of things.

And despite the fact that I’m familiar with houses with elevators (plenty in “The Village” where I live) on my visit I twice bumped my toes on the railing which surrounds a two story planned fountain as I headed to the stairs.

I could have avoided it all by taking the elevator, but I’m used to stairs.

The next day we took a drive to the nearest town – a few blocks large. There are lots of white people. Many of them are wearing camouflage and at the only two restaurants I see (owned by the same folks, one a pizzeria, one a diner and connected), where we eat a late breakfast he says, “Mary, NO swearing they might throw you out!”

I survey my surroundings and become uneasy. These are farmers mostly and according to my friend many of them millionaires (he has already pointed out a farm with a landing strip and a private plane and described others that have helipads).

This momentarily terrified me, though I have nothing against farmers, it was an unknown, an unimagined thing, I have to wrap my head around it all.

I have to wrap my head around my whole life.

The two of us giggled because the cashier is not only wearing a camouflage shirt, albeit somewhat more sophisticated than a t-shirt or the typical cargo pants, but weirder still her hair has been dyed green, yellow and brown to match.

Before I left, I asked him if he was happy. He knows my journey, my deal and I know his, like everyone that loves me he wants it to happen and knows it is complicated, that we CARE that we both find happiness?

That’s the bomb.

We have both left our share of carcasses behind (lives lived that we thought worked, but didn’t) and we are doing the best we can to care for love the ones we are with and we understand that dreams really don't exist.

They decay on the side of the road.

He looked a lot like Che Guevara, drove a diesel van
Kept his gun in quiet seclusion,
such a humble man
The only survivor of the National People's Gang
Panic in Detroit, I asked for an autograph
He wanted to stay home, I wish someone would phone
Panic in Detroit

Smiley (Mom), G-Twin, Tab Hunter, Guru Peeper, Gray One and the hugest 30 lb. tomcat you have ever seen show up. Ferals…

Intense stealth and detective work ensue to get them inside or trapped.

Tab Hunter, who lives in the closet and only comes out to eat and poop, escapes by running up the front stairs and down the back stairs (it’s an old house okay!) and then out the back door (open) right past me (sitting on the porch stairs) like a fucking missile.

Kittens are FAST!

He (probably a she) IS coming back in the house to eat and the threshold allowed is now 3 feet, the door that closes off the stairway upstairs remains closed baring further escape… Muaah! BUT the run around to the front of the house to shut the door on him trick ain’t working… fool me once.

Little Guru was caught when I instinctually grabbed her in a storm just after my neighbor’s tree fell into my yard. She has a home as does Gray One. Can't stand to lose Gray One (tomorrow) trade him for Jen-Jen Guru? Then I can still visit? Don't like to interfere with the adoptions. BUT such tears.

A week later a huge branch was ripped from my tree. Luckily, I was not ten feet away this time nor were any kittens and it was the night before our scheduled yard debris pick up. More mulch for the city parks and boulevards… Yay!

The IRS just told me my 94 year old mother owes them THOUSANDS. Lawyer!

I’m so behind with the old mail that the new mail is piling up.

The Jazz Festival is in full swing with people from all over the world crowded around Hart Plaza in Detroit and is hit at 8:00PM with immense winds, BUT some cool cats arrange to take the concert inside and are up again at 10:30PM and into the night, safe in a Ren Cen ballroom. Meanwhile, Tigers are losing badly and in a rain delay and a huge beer tent collapses in the wind and trees fall around the crowds at the nearby Rouge Festival.

AND some moron knocks on my door looking for a partay!

BUT the Tigers turn an 8-2 loss into a 9-8 win in the ninth after the third nasty storm to hit the city passes.

Last night someone cut the lock from my back gate and entered the yard. I have been unloading and loading a garage full of my assets for the film company… I imagine they have seen this and are after the loot. It would be a difficult task to make away with much, but we have a friendly, DESPERATE neighborhood crack addict hanging around.

The garage is secure with a dead bolt and I will board the damn windows if I have to. And luckily, at 2:30AM, the neighbor’s dogs made a beeline for the back fence and no doubt scared the guy away.

I still survive in this war zone… always seem to.

On a cool, slightly breezy Labor Day Barack Obama talked to my union brothers and sisters here in Detroit amongst huge crowds. Trying to fill us with hope for the future.

And later, the Tigers kick some major ass on Cleveland and a pitcher nicknamed Twisted Fister is born.

Just now Ms. 91 cleaned the toilet and can’t find the white cap that covers the screw, a disaster! Then gives me the Depends count for the day.

Ah happiness. A plastic cap can be found or bought as can Depends, but Twisted Fister? That makes me laugh.

Editor's note: Sorry for the quality of some of the pictures, during the work on the most recent film I managed to lose both battery chargers for my Canon and have had to resort to documenting my life, ah storey (shit I mean story of my life!) with my iPhone.

And yes my toilet seat has a dog theme.

I was once kicked out of a fantasy football league for smack talk. Over the years I had removed from these cigar-smoking stockbrokers thousands of their dollars. Never finished less than third and won the pot twice. BUT when they found out I was not like them the shit hit the fan.

I swore at the commish in Italian and that was that. The only year I lost.

After that dust up my alias became “The Wife” and I continued to collect their dough. The truth is I was a faux daughter-in-law, hardly a wife, and the man who was SUPPOSED to be playing fantasy football lacked the interest and the skill and I took over. A year after my faux father-in-law, who got me into the deal, died they dumped me for good.

Not diggin’ feeling pussy-whipped.

But I was able to spot trends, rather than listen to the news and it served me well.

That league is what led me to the Sporting News for stats, info and I eventually found all of the incredible writers there, many that remain in my life today.

So yes, I live with a man that was once a lover and hasn’t been for over ten years, something Matt, an infamous TSN writer and I share in common, and he struggles with this like I do. Everyone has needed to pigeon hole my relationship despite the fact that there ain’t no marriage and we are nothing, but business partners now. The Church Lady went so far as to give me her old engagement ring after her ex, Slouchy's father (whom I truly loved) died. She said, “He would want you to have it.” but she meant I should marry her son. Your wish, your dream not mine.

As someone who knows Matthew intimately I have some words for all who would judge him. He used to always say that you should “think before doing instead of doing before thinking.” However, much of what he does in speaking (typing) makes him a contrarian and he agonizes over his lashing out.

What he feels, he feels strongly and there is nothing wrong with that. I tried to post that someone once called him a “self righteous know-it-all” and he loved it, but his post was already shut down on the TSN Face Book group.

He IS different than all of us. He is like no one I have ever known. As much as he hates, and he hates haters, he loves and he loves BIG. He loves the abused, the old, and the animals, especially the strays (something we also share), but really he is a teddy bear. He and I have been around the block, we have loved and we have fought, but we are creative partners, forever.

I promised this and I keep my promises, because he deserves a forum, a place to be heard and he reminds me every day what is important in life.

I adore you my friend and I’m always at your side, whether you feel it or not.

And just when I feel like I’ll have to kill you, I fall in love with you all over again.

It IS just smack talk afterall.

It's just words.

Some of you hear his words and hear asshole - I hear his words and say BRILLIANT!

I dreamed I was in NYC visiting Guru and I spent a day at the Aerie alone. It was one of those massive dreams that come, full of detail, color and people I know or I’m introduced to, who are real characters with distinct personalities.

I dream whole screenplays…

It is always the same scenario, painted into different situations. I’m frantically trying to accomplish something and there are obstacles everywhere. Things fall; I knock things over and have trouble putting them back. My body fights against the paralysis it goes into when in R.E.M. sleep and I have trouble moving my limbs in these sound sleeps and sometimes physically in my dream state I have to pull my foot over a doorjamb or lift an arm up with another arm.

Things go missing often and I can never find them.

Ms. 91 has these dreams too, but they almost always take place on the golf course whereas mine are usually in places I have never been. Familiar places in the dream, but not to my waking self.

In this dream I was alone in the Aerie, there for an entire day and I napped on the floor surrounded by balls of fur. And when I took my walks to Central Park, Romeo (one of the balls of fur) would sneak out with me. We had a tussle with some feral cats that ended with me diving into a pond after him. It was a warm day and the sun would dry us both on the walk back.

In this dream the Aerie’s main room is neat and clean - freshly painted a muted peach. The room is decorated with a smattering of nice antiques and a plush oriental rug, but “The Wall” was gone.

I left my bag at the hotel and I'm walking back, ensuring Romeo isn’t following this time, when I run into a film crew. I'm asked to replace the Production Designer and hire Bill Anderson as Swing and find another Grip.

Note: I don't know anyone named Bill Anderson and Production Designers don't hire Grips.

And suddenly I am off to the races.

Faye Dunaway is starring in the film and someone comments that she moves about like a bird and I say, “Funny you should say that, it is what I have always thought too.”

The title was “Blank”: a film about “blank”. I can see the title card in my mind’s eye, but my waking self can no longer read it, it’s fading

There are a number of people on the crew that are physically odd. The director, Kevin is 3 feet tall and dressed nattily in red. Think André Benjamin from Outkast (and perhaps he was miniaturized because I had just watched André in a You Tube video and thus he looked so small).

One of the Producers is also small and similar to Andre’, but with just a mustache, sans goatee, and the other Producer is a typical white frat boy with a tight yellow T-shirt and beige cargo pants. He keeps telling me testily not to touch the storyboards that are posted on the wall.

My brother, hiding in a wheelbarrow, full with bright green Easter basket grass goes rolling by, being pushed along by a monster. This explained, I suppose, why my truck is suddenly in the middle of Manhattan full of props. I have come here for an escape and some peace and suddenly my world has found me.

Mike, a guy I have never met, is running the costume department and his set up is in the basement of the huge warehouse we are working in and he invites me down. I watch him disappear in the caged elevator and think that there is a mystery to him that I really dig.

The monster heads he creates are huge affairs worn by large men that lounge around bare-chested when not in monster mode. The heads are brightly colored, blues and reds and the hair is matted down and pure black. Most of the monsters wear suits, but some are bare-chested, men with body paint, heads shaved, that move around inside of actors’ costumes causing them to be double-headed or have arms appearing at their hips.

A group of six monsters stacked three on three as if on risers, wheel by at an angle as if they are on a refrigerator cart. All of them dressed in red suits, some with hats.

All the sets are three-sided and made of cheap foam core, but beautifully graphic and simple. One set is black with silver stripes and has a fireplace in the middle. I am busily adding red accents to that one. Another a solid Chinese red that I have placed wheat-colored grass in a vase into and have added to further with sculptures of the same hue.

Darkness has fallen and I keep thinking I should call Guru he won’t know where I am, but I can’t seem to manage it and I still haven’t gotten my bag from the hotel, which has my phone and my wallet.

The whole time I’m rushing around it’s a struggle. I leave something behind for one set and have to go back. I stop to borrow a walkie talkie from the sound guy because after a frantic search no one can seem to find any spares. My legs suddenly stop working and I have to drag myself along. A gold metal wall sculpture from the Chinese red set slides to the ground. One of the larger sets falls onto me as I sit working on the one next door.

It’s chaos!

It is a fast and furious production, sets going up and coming down. The whole look is Fellini gone Broadway musical with comic book flair. The super heroes, like the monsters, from the Aerie wall now coming to life.

The dream ended with me back at the Aerie with one of the Set Dressers from the crew. There are sandwiches layed out for us and soda and juice on ice. The two of us are renting the place for the night, at least what is left of the night, but the Set Dresser is convinced we aren’t alone. She is shouting and banging on the wall saying, “I know you’re there!”

I knew Guru would not return. I knew that New Hampshire girl wasn’t there and was sure that it had been she that had left us the spread, but could not convince this girl that she hadn’t snuck back in. She was banging away with a broomstick, outraged to be renting a place still occupied.

When I awoke New Hampshire girl had arrived with breakfast and sunlight was streaming into the room…

Then I really woke up.

In many ways this dream represents real life thoughts that I won't go into here and in many ways this April dream seems prophetic and for this reason I'm glad I wrote it down. I will indeed be working in a warehouse full of costumes and set pieces, but not with Mike and I will have a real monster, albeit singular, to deal with.

In the late eighties through the early nineties I kept a dream journal a la Castenada (google it). His suggestion was that you try and look at your hands in your dream and this would help you be a conscious participant. I worked at controlling my dreams as this particular guru suggested and one day I had an epic. It too was in a warehouse, but a broken down building full of rubble. In this dream I could save the world from a nuclear holocaust and I made the mental decision to do so. In a conscious versus unconscious way that is hard to explain.

The dream ended with a bloodied Mary sitting against the trunk of a tree and I knew that if I didn't find my hands I would die.

I did find my hands.

I awoke sitting up in bed, very much alive. I have not kept a dream journal since and I no longer know where the old one is. The merging of conscious and unconscious was unnerving.

I'm not sure I'm ready to explore it again.

This piece is dedicated to Marion, who seems to think I know something of her dreams, but if dream espionage were possible I would let her know I was coming. I'm observant, but lack the cunning of a spy.