Every day's a holiday

It was snowing this morning—of course, it was!—while I reviewed my heating expenses for February: $440 for heating oil and $153 to Central Hudson.

That's only half the heating bill for the house.

Fuckin' insane.

Central Hudson needs to be taken over by the State of New York. But I don't know what one can do about the heating oil. Except move to a warmer place.

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My good deed for yesterday:

One of my clients was a very feisty 87-year old. She appeared primordial to me, like an ancient Baba Yaga, which may have been the racial disparity—she was Black, and I am white—or may have been due to the fact that she'd neglected to put in her dentures.

Anyway, this lady had a Cadillac healthcare plan through the City of New York, her former employer, but Medicare was still taking out $220 a month from her Social Security.

"You might want to look into that," I told her granddaughter. "I mean, it's possible each healthcare provider is providing a different set of services, and she uses both. But it's also possible you're looking at redundant costs and can get an extra $220 a month by getting rid of that Medicare payment."

She's been going to Schlock for 20 years, and I was the first one to point this out to her.

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In other news, I will be interviewing real-life Daria today after I scamper home from the tax trenches. Here are the questions I've prepared:

1. Can you tell me your five most vivid memories of Mexico?

2. What did it feel like in your body the first weeks after moving from Mexico City to the U.S.—were you more numb, anxious, exhilarated, something else?

3. Is there a specific moment from that first year—at school, in the street, at home—when you realized, “I am not in Mexico anymore,” and what happened?

4. When you think back to meeting Brian in the PD’s office, what are the first three sensory details that come up—what you saw, heard, or felt in your body?

5. What did you think Brian saw in you, and how did that perception change over the years you knew him?

6. How did the relationship move between friendship, mentorship, and sexuality over time, and did those roles ever feel like they were in conflict?

7. Were there specific conversations or arguments with Brian that you feel “made” you—changed how you think about law, justice, or yourself?

8. Did you ever feel a power imbalance because of age, profession, or life experience, and if so, how did you navigate or rationalize it at the time?

9. When you look back now, what do you wish your younger self had known about him—or about you?

10. How did being with Brian interact with your romantic life outside him—did he complicate other relationships, or make them easier to understand?

11. After Brian died, what was the strangest or most unexpected way your grief showed up (a habit, a dream, a physical sensation, a decision you made)?

12. If you had to describe your emotional “role” in Brian’s life in one sentence—as he might have described it—what would that sentence be?

13. When you first realized you were sexually attracted to Brian, what surprised you most about that feeling—his age, his role, your own response, something else?

14. Can you describe your very first sexual encounter with him in terms of mood and pacing—was it slow and negotiated, impulsive, awkward, inevitable?

15. What did Brian do in bed that made you feel particularly seen or desired—not just physically, but as a person?

16. Were there things you only did sexually with Brian and never with anyone else, and what about him made those feel possible or safe?

17. Did the fact that you worked in the same universe (courts, law, defendants) bleed into your erotic life together—role‑play, gallows humor, power dynamics?

18. How did sex with him feel in your body—grounding, explosive, dissociative, comforting, like coming home, like leaving?

19. Was there ever a moment during sex or after where you suddenly felt your age difference very sharply—either in a good way or as a jolt of discomfort?

20. How did your conversations immediately after sex usually go—jokey debrief, political talk, silence, tenderness, scheduling the next time?

21. Did you ever feel like his other lovers were in the bed with you emotionally—comparing, competing, imagining his history—and how did you manage that?

22. Was there ever a specific fight or rupture around sex—jealousy, boundaries, pregnancy scares, STI scares—that you remember as a turning point?

23. When you think of his body now, what are the 2–3 details that come back first (not necessarily erotic—could be scars, smells, textures, nervous habits)?

24. Did you ever notice a difference between “grief sex,” “reassurance sex,” and “just because” sex with him—and if so, how could you tell from the inside?

25. How did your bilingual/trilingual brain show up during sex—were there certain words or dirty talk that had to be in Spanish or French, and if so, why?

26. Did you two have any long‑running sexual jokes or coded phrases—things that would sound innocuous to others but were charged for you?

27. How did you end things physically—was there a clear “last time” you slept together, and did you know it was the last time while it was happening?

28. Looking back, is there anything you regret not doing with him sexually or emotionally—something you were curious about but held back from?

29. Has your body ever surprised you with a grief reaction—arousal at an unexpected reminder of him, or the opposite, sudden numbness with someone new?

30. In your fantasy life now, does he still appear, and if so, does he show up more as a lover, a friend, a ghost, a critic, or something stranger?

31. Imagine you are trying to explain the sexual part of the relationship to a skeptical friend—what is the one argument or image you would use to say, “This wasn’t just another older guy using me; it was this”?

32. How did your relationship to Spanish change after the move—did it feel like a refuge, a secret, a source of shame, a weapon?

33. When did English start to feel like something you could think and feel in, not just translate into, and was there a particular event that marked that shift?

34. Do you experience different “selves” in Spanish, English, and French—if so, how would you describe the personality or emotional color of each language?

35. In simultaneous translation, what does it feel like inside your head—are you ahead of the speaker, chasing them, or hovering in parallel?

36. Can you describe a moment on the job when the emotional weight of what you were translating nearly broke your professional neutrality? What did you do with that feeling?

37. Have you ever made a deliberate choice to soften, sharpen, or slightly alter someone’s words while interpreting because the literal translation felt emotionally or ethically wrong?

38. What does fatigue feel like for you after a long day of simultaneous interpreting—mental fog, physical tension, emotional overload—and how do you come down from that state?

39. Do you ever carry other people’s stories and emotions home with you through their words, and if so, how do you protect or “clean” your own inner voice?

The chicken gurlZ have started laying!

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And I am 90% certain that the constant dull ache in my shoulder is a well-known side effect of statins (and the reason why they have such a bad rap) and 10% certain that it is a mysterious cancer that appeared suddenly out of nowhere & will kill me in six months (so I better clean the Patrizia-torium and finish the novel.)

Since it does not seem to be resolving, I will call the cardiologist on Monday.

People with thyroid conditions seem to be particularly prone to statin side effects & I have Hashimoto's. Not even sure I would call the ache pain—it's more a thereness that never goes away, that I'm always conscious of, & that therefore messes with my efforts to lose consciousness (i.e. fall asleep).

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Meanwhile, I went to a Schlock office every day last week and am on the schedule every day for the next week.

I hesitate to call this "work"—though I am being paid to go into the office. Mostly, I sit there and try to hide the fact that I'm reading Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil by pretending to do tax case studies. I display dense tracts on the monitors of the computer assigned to me about depreciation & passive income. See? I am studying! I want to be the best little tax preparer you've ever seen!

Sometimes, I answer phones. Sometimes, I make phone calls: Hey, former Schlock client! Don't you want to spend $250 on something it would take you five minutes to do for free-eee-eeee? Sometimes, I do actual tax returns, and those are always fun.

It all reminds me of that time in the first grade when I got busted by my first-grade teacher for reading Tom Sawyer under the table. "Patty! Put that book away and read your primer!" she'd scold.

This is seasonal work. Come April 15, I remind myself, there will be no further call for your services until next January. You are a farmer! Harvest those tax returns while you may!

I make myself as innocuous and invisible as I can. I even let them call me "Pat"! Who gives a shit? I wouldn't recognize most of the other people in these offices if I passed them in the street. What do I care if they recognize me?

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If I were more gifted at compartmentalization, I'd work on the novel while I'm at the Schlock office.

But doing nothing eight hours a day is exhausting. When I get back to the casa once my shifts are done, all I want to do is throw fuel in my stomach & watch mindless television. So, I'm not writing then.

I'm still working out what I want to do with the next section of the novel, though. Initially, I thought the next section of the novel would be about sex, but ironically, neither real-life Daria nor real-life Flavia was having sex with Brian at the time he died. Of course, what I'm writing is fiction, not real-life.

Anyway, sometime this week, I will be interviewing (and recording!) real-life Daria at some length. Yes, I will be debriefing her about her relationship with Brian. But I also want to know what it felt like to come to the U.S. from Mexico City at age 11, what it feels like to be able to do simultaneous translation, like how do you keep from getting the languages all mixed up in your head?