one thing today

I buy a bagel and ice coffee. I go across the street to the blooming park and I'm told there's no eating there. I sit down on the space on 6th ave and Greenwich and a woman pulls out the other chair at my table and sits a few feet away.  I tell her she can share the table with me. She does and we talk about nyc and the library and montauk and this and that.  I go to the post office and the young woman who helps me makes sure I push all kinds of buttons to prove I'm not a terrorist sending lethal things and I tell her things have really changed since back in the day and she says really and I say oh yeah and we both agree that the only things that stay the same are babies. She smiles big and displays her teeth with big gaps between them.  I cross the street and run into my handsome Russian dentist who does some tv acting and he doesn't know I know that back in his day he was a cage fighter. I saw him fight on Youtube. I love his coloring, all whites and grays and paleness...

  ... was blue and orange tonight - a rare combo and one I never really think about and it makes me want to apply the colors in my in-progress painting of an exhausted father troubled in a jungle with his beautiful daughter at his side who wonders why her dads head is resting on a tree and why he his so weary and sad.

  I'm scared of my dishwasher. I've never had one before. Some people are afraid of fire. I've always been afraid of floods. I had an Oscar party and a friend ran it for me for the first time without any trouble. I tried to use it last night, followed the instructions - even the bit about running the hot water in the sink before I began - which I don't think we did when we ran it that first time. I added the detergent and started it up and this morning I opened up the washer and lo and behold - the plates and bowls look crustier than they did when I placed them in the machine. The detergent pod was on the floor of the dishwasher. Dish placement problems, something else? Time will tell. At least it didn't cause The Big Chelsea Flood of '25 I have inside my head.  lucky