I’m still not too happy about Will.  I did e-mail him today at work — he learned how to check work e-mail at home when he was out, plus he apparently had been in the office two days last week — and said I liked the band and the show, but whether he was at work or at home, I had no response from him.  And yes, I was rather surprised to learn that he had been at work two days last week and hadn’t called me, but neither had he called me when he got home from the hospital.  He just called me to cancel his whore the morning after he was injured.  We have a book coming out soon about dealing with “the narcissist in your life,” so maybe I’ll get a clue as to how to rid myself of Will.

I’m still unhappy about the stuff we lost from storage.  So much of it seems like evidence of what I’ve done and where I’ve been, and now that evidence doesn’t exist.  Poems I wrote and some that were published, mementos of jobs I’ve worked (for some reason, I was thinking about the issue of my old radio station’s program guide that had a little profile of me, from 1977 or such), everything concerning the magazine I edited and published and the magazines  wrote for, all my my vinyl, my mother’s wedding dress, forty years of journals, letters I received from friends over a 30 year span…it makes me ill.  I really thought I had kept the journals here but I guess not.  School books.  College texts, not to mention all of the extremely expensive books I bought on mythology and symbolism and hero myths.  The copy of I Robot that Isaac Asimov signed for me at the first-ever Star Trek convention.  Summer camp literary magazines that I edited and wrote for.  I feel like I’ve lost the proof of my past, or the past itself.

The good news is that for my one-year anniversary, I got a promotion and a raise.  I’m now an Associate Publicity instead of a Publicity Assistant, and my darling publisher somehow managed to wangle me a 10% raise.

I finally, finally went to see Will play last night, first time in eons.  Sherry was nice enough to sit with me, since I didn’t really know anyone there.  It made me a little sad that Sherry thought I had met all of the musicians on stage and various other musical people who were there, but I knew none of them.  I said, “Peter hasn’t invited me to anything but gigs for a long time now.”  She said, “I was sure you would have been at some rehearsals.”  I said, “No, he doesn’t ever invite me to rehearsals.”  She made some noises about how she would invite me the next time, how nice this group of musicians is and how much I’d like them.  She said that Will is just absent-minded and hasn’t excluded me on purpose.  I think differently.  I never hear from Will until there’s something he wants from me.  He never even let me know that he was back in the office for two days last week.  I didn’t get horribly depressed at the show but knew I’d been left behind.  The band only played one set; it’s a largish ensemble going very heavy on the Harry Smith Anthology stuff.  I left after the set and before I could see Will.  He never wants to talk to me at these things.  I told Sherry I had to leave right away because I had to take the subway and didn’t want to linger late.I’m really not sure why he’s so invested in my coming to these things, but I feel like I did the right thing by going.  I’ve been trying not to be resentful and to be kind and loving as much as possible, but I feel really used/discarded/neglected by this former friend.

On top of everything else, that asshole Kirk was at the club — Will has nothing to do with him any more, but this particular club is still Kirk’s spot.  On my way in, I just didn’t meet his eyes and zipped on past, but on my way out, he was stationed at the door and called my name loudly, yelling, “Come on, say hi!” I actually ran out the door.

Leo and I took my bonus yesterday (the company recently distributed $425 to each employee, owing to a profitable year; after tax, I had about $230) and bought two pair of sneakers for each of us.  Our podiatrist insists on New Balance, so we went to a discount sneaker store and got him two pair of NB and I for one NB and one Nike.  I still have that freakin’ fungal thing on my right foot, which hurts on and off, so sneakers it is.

It’s time to get back to the gym again.  My eating isn’t too bad but I’ll never lose weight if I don’t work out.

My dear mother-in-law, tough and loving, died on Sunday morning.  She was just too worn out to get well, and too uncomfortable to stick around.  Because yesterday and today are the last two days of Passover and considered a holiday, we had to have the funeral, with a graveside service, on Sunday afternoon.  (Relevant Jewish facts:  any Jewish holiday has similar restrictions to the Sabbath.  Jews do not embalm and funerals are almost always the day after the death.)  On top of that, you can’t start sitting shiva (seven days of ritual mourning) on a holiday; usually, it begins immediately after the funeral.  So what this meant for us was that the funeral was on Sunday, there was one hour of shiva afterwards, and then shiva was suspended until sunset tonight (the end of Passover).  But since we mostly spent those last two days of Passover at Pop’s anyway, it’s kind of like an extra-long shiva.  (Shiva, which only applies to immediate mourners — Pop and Barry, in this case — has it’s own prohibitions in addition to the Sabbath-type ones:  you have to cover the mirrors in your home as not to promote vain thoughts, for instance.  And a few that have to do with making yourself less comfortable so you’ll remember that you’re in mourning:  you are supposed to sit on low, hard benches or boxes rather than a comfortable seat, men can’t shave, you’re not supposed to wear leather shoes, and so on.  Mourners are supposed to stay at home for seven days sitting in their uncomfortable seats while friends and family come to visit and take care of them, which usually translates into bringing food.  Mourners of course cannot cook during shiva, nor can they handle money, use the phone, etc.) 

So now we all know more about Judaism. 

Everyone cried plenty, not just when Mom died but in the several rough days before, and everyone worries about Pop.  Although we also worried about Pop all of the time that Mom was in the hospital because he was pretty lost without her at home.  65 years with a stay-at-home wife will do that to a person.  Actually, Pop is mighty good at housework, but can’t cook at all.  So he not only had to be kept supplied with food that required little or no heating up, it had to be kosher-for-Passover food.  My sister-in-law Elise and her sister Evette had come over before the holiday to get his house ready for Passover (short version:  you have to get rid of anything leavened or anything with legumes, and change to an entirely different set of dishes, pots, dish drainer — everything around food has to be changed to a set of stuff that you only use for Passover.  Paper plates and plastic cutlery make this is a little easier.  The everyday stuff has to be stored away.).  Anyway.  Elise stayed with Pop on Sunday and Monday nights (because she couldn’t drive on the last two days of Passover), and Leo’s staying with him tonight and tomorrow night.  Elise and I have to be available to do a lot of errands during shiva but of course most of the religious-oriented stuff she’s had to do.  (She arranged the entire funeral on her cell phone.  She’s fairly amazing.)  I had other kinds of errands the past couple of days, like going into Leo’s office to get his pay because we were flat broke.  And today I went back to Manhattan to buy pot because we were totally out and this was not the time to be out.  (Leo will be going without tonight and tomorrow since he’s staying at Pop’s — he even has to go outdoors to smoke a cigarette — but will be ever so glad for it on Friday night.)

It’s crazy, our heads are spinning, that apartment is so empty of Mom, and Pop is just making lists and doing chores in a rather obsessive way, though his short-term memory is weak and maybe he doesn’t realize that he’s talked about how he has to take his pants into the tailor NINE TIMES ALREADY THIS MORNING.  I love Pop, he’s a fantastic guy.  But he gets very involved in planning and talking about these tasks and chores and won’t let it go at all until that mission is completed…I’ve probably spent more time with him in the past few days than I had in the past few months, and spending long stretches of time with him, Leo and I can see why Mom used to complain that he drove her crazy, before she got sick.  Leo was there at ten this morning, and by the time I got there at five, his eyes were rolling in his head, and he has a long stretch ahead of him. 

Pop’s long-term memory is still pretty good, though, so we’ve been hearing a lot of his old stories for the 30th and 40th times.

More later. 

Why are these people smiling?  What’s it all about?

Not a bad picture really, though I’m wearing a “dress-up” top that I don’t really like.  It’s the one I always wear with my black suit, except it was too hot to wear the suit, so I wore it with a black skirt.  David looks just fine.

I’m just kind of maxed-out on stress and worry, between my own ongoing health saga and my mother-in-law’s continuing problems.  And then throw in work.  I’m liking and understanding work better and working harder and getting along with Tina…but I never seem to feel refreshed enough to really attack it hard every day.   I need better-quality down time.  Maybe that means getting to the gym, just getting my body in a healthier state.  Or maybe it means writing a fucking novel.  I dunno.  Maybe I have to give up smoking pot.  I’m not even sure what makes me feel good any more.