the Evil Fridge

I am sorry to report that the new fridge is a subtle torture device. It emits a horrible high-pitched whining noise that, after awhile, is akin to having one's eardrum pierced with an aluminum needle. Worse, not everyone can hear it. My sister and brother-in-law visited this weekend; "oh, that IS annoying," said my sister. "What?" said brother-in-law. Frantic emails to my brother, the mechanical engineer, elicited the information that it could be a fucked-up fan, or a bad bearing in the compressor. Which will be a help, when I phinally get around to calling Phil and explaining that I'm a hysterical neurotic psychosomatic female. "No, my brother said it might be a bad bearing in the compressor." Useful.

Meanwhile I've gotten into the habit of turning off the fridge whenever I'm working in proximity to it for any length of time. Sometimes I forget to turn it on again, like today, and the milk goes bad. It's like living in Mexico, revisited.

Otherwise, things are good, things are Well. I had a Quiet Personal Triumph last weekend. The gallery on Madison Avenue wanted to keep my work up through the end of October, and I almost said yes, despite the fact that Open Studios was last weekend. Then I thought, wait--it's already been up for 4 1/2 months, nobody has signed my guest book except people I've sent there, and as far as I know there have been no serious inquiries for the seriously priced pieces. Thus the decision--"Madison Avenue/Brooklyn Stairwell? Brooklyn Stairwell/Madison Avenue?" became more complex.

Eventually I decided on Brooklyn Stairwell. Fortunately I had help from sister and brother-in-law, who schlepped out to Madison Avenue on Friday and helped me summarily strip the walls and load the truck, parked in a bus stop in the rain. The gallery people were moderately unhelpful and wistful; 'we wish it could stay up longer.' But hell, people, you're treating it like WALLPAPER. Brother-in-law, an architect, said, 'it does look great here. I bet it's sold them a lot of furniture.'

It was the right decision. I didn't have a horde of people stampeding my stairwell, ah, studio, but those who came were serious and some of them bore checkbooks. I sold enough to earn myself three days of relaxation, while getting over the cold I gave myself, getting ready for the event. Everybody liked the homemade cake, too.

Cutting the last ties with the last abusive ex-lover was also the right decision. After I got over the extensive and extravagant grief-and-sobbing phase, which took about a day and a half, it's like the sky opened over my head. I can't explain it any better than that. I don't know who I am anymore, but I'm NOT that woman who got yanked around, abused and betrayed, and I never will be again. Who knows what the future will hold.