Todd Heimbecker

So, there was supposed to be some kind of work day at the New Paltz Community Garden yesterday. I showed up at the brutal hour of 9am, and nobody was there! No apologetic emails or texts either. Not then and not since.

You're supposed to do one of these work days each season, & this one was mine. (I believe in getting this kind of chore out of the way early.)

Anyway, they had their chance, and I ain't signing up for a work day again.

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Also, mega-snark from the usual suspects when I posted the news about Alpha Male's passing to the Well group on FB.

I have heard from various sources... I wrote.

That's just a rumor!

You don't know that!

Snark! Snark! Snark!

Well, I do know that, and since Alpha Male basically saved the Well—a tottering horseshoe crab of a social media site that has been around since the 1980s—by scraping up and leading a team of investors to buy the damn thing and run it as a type of coop, I thought they might want to know too.

But no, they'd rather activate moldering feuds from 30 years ago, so I took the post down.

I fumed!

Then I chastized myself: These people are irrelevant! Why do you let yourself care?

But it took me a good half hour to stop caring.

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Apart from that, it was a pleasant if melancholy day. Real-life Flavia was once again up at Brian's old house. "Do you want anything? Come up and see what you might want."

So I drove up to the Catskills through the Shawangunk Mountains:



Claimed Brian's really high-end Ninja blender and an excellent portable mixer with many fabulous whisk attachments. And two Moroccan end tables.

Also took more boxes of books to disseminate among various local libraries (all of which raise money with periodic book sales).

And promised to find a good home for Brian's voluminous collection of camping gear. I am hoping RTT wants it. There are bags & bags of it.

It was good to see Real-life Flavia. The house itself, though, was... sad. I'm still shocked by how much I miss Brian. I've weathered the deaths of people who were closer to me with far less emotion. Though it wasn't just Brian's ghost that made me feel sad, it was also the horrible state of neglect the house was in. There were mouse turds everywhere and dust and filth and smoke grime.

How could real-life Mimi (who showed up to take a shower) have lived with this for 10 months?

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Calling Betsy has been on the To Do list for over a week now, so I did that last night.

I actually like Betsy, but she is exceedingly high maintenance, which means I've gotta ration my exposure, plus I am not a big phone person.

Betsy has had a recurrence of her Lyme disease except maybe it's not Lyme disease, maybe it's just a complete physical & mental breakdown. (I can relate: That's exactly what happened to me with the Schlock gig).

Towards the end of the call, though, it occurred to me that in addition to all that, Betsy is really quite nuts.

She was ranting about some sort of penalty she had to pay on her 2023 taxes, which was all due to some TurboTax snafu.

"Well, if you don't really owe it, don't pay it," I said. "Amend your 2023 return."

No, no. She couldn't be bothered.

"You don't have to do it. I'll file the amendment for you."

No, no. It was too much work.

"Betsy," I said. "If you don't correct the underlying mistake, they will keep charging you more penalties. Do you not get that? I am happy to do this for you—"

No, no. She just couldn't deal with that.

It occurred to me then that she liked the fact that she was being targeted unjustly. She enjoys thinking of herself as persecuted. She will actually go out of her way to create situations where she can feel persecuted.

This is one of those insights you wish you hadn't had.