It?s still overcast/ rainy ( I guess the storm got STUCK grrr) but I?m hoping for a productive day inside .

Desk, bed, dishes , kitchen counters , washing stud tail on little Persian male, cleaning ears and vacuuming/ washing living room rug .

Need a trip to IKEA for plastic bins to corral exotic food items now occupying shelters ( paper bags ) in living room ? living rooms are not collecting baskets for the ? waiting to be filed ? Also need four long "invisibly mounted" shelves for above desk . Will hold not just mail n files but geraniums overwintering ( and giving me winter blooms hopefully)

Labels , hanging folders and filing frame from Staples , hole punch.

Items to properly hang mirrors and paintings after a YEAR living here .

Frankly I?m scared to put even a nail in the wall my lease says I can?t and landlords in NYC love evicting tenants for the smallest things. ( and the super has a KEY and lets himself in without any notice )

But spackle an a touch of paint will fix any nail holes if I move out and I?m thoroughly sick of living with my mirror on the radiator and my painting on the back of the couch . Ridiculous!

Letter ( and email - for the legal record !) to landlord not to raise my rent ( despite the slum like conditions he refuses to fix he?s trying for ten percent on a one year lease !!! Only in NY kids !

Need to notify Brooklyn post office to forward mail also because every bad actor is sending notices to old apartment deliberately so I never receive them grrr .

B - ff egg beaters/ cheese omelet ,homemade ff small cornbread w fresh corn, chili beans , chai tea latte

s- pastry, Yemeni coffee latte

L - Chile verde chicken soup , seared marinated eye round w chimichurri n avocado, salad

s - monkfish chowder

D - tbd but hopefully homemade Chinese w lots of fresh veggies.

lol !! My Mother felt the same way - and she too has her ears pierced now .

Of course my Dad had to do the piercing using an ice cube and a needle to save ten dollars over the mall's piercing gun w free studs included.

the dishes were pretty good, but the curried chicken salad needed more curry powder and salt - and the nutty oat bars I made could have used more sweetening. So if I make either again, I'll do that - but I wasn't surprised by any of that (well, at least the salt and sweetener part) since she's a dietitian!

the farro/chickpea stew was excellent! apple muffins were pretty good, too.

I think more people had tattoos than you realize. They were just able to be hidden in the appropriate audience. All of mine can be as well if I choose but I am glad to see some of those old rules going away.

I was devastated when my 17 year old son got a tattoo. I could not believe he would do something like that. In 1989, few people had tattoos. Mainly military ones if they did but not kids and definitely not very many females. I remember thinking that it was awful, but would have been worse if it was a girl.

He got a rose on his left shoulder with the words "Live to Love". He did it during the Christmas school days off. After school started, one his teachers called me and said, "Mrs. Meffe, I don't want to alarm you, but do you know about Kevin's arm?"

I said I did and she asked me how I reacted to that. I told her what his father said. "If you are going to live to love, you better use protection".

There was nothing I could do about it, so I just accepted it. When my niece got engaged and my sister took her shopping for a wedding dress, my sister found out that her daughter had a tattoo on her back. That was more than 10 years later and it was still a shock to us.

Now it is so common and while not so much for my generation the younger people all seem to have tattoos. I have learned to appreciate the artistry and work that can go into creating them. One of the ladies in my weight loss surgery preparation group had just gotten a tattoo of her deceased mom on her arm and was worried about how it would look after surgery if the skin sagged a lot.