In the time before Maggie, I was not often afraid. Because I am fearful more often now, possibly often-often since Maggie bonkered up, I can examine my fear very closely. I’m very focused on short-term safety while in the fear thrall.

Thursday we drove to Bard College for a morning tour and then to Vassar College for an afternoon tour. Then we came home, ordered souvlaki and went to the bathroom. Between colleges we had eaten lunch in the bright, hot sun. I had forgotten a hat and the sun prompted a migraine that erupted right after we finished the Vassar tour. Thanks to my stalwart, possible stroke-encouraging triptan, the migraine just broke over my head but didn’t penetrate. If I don’t say, I acted admirably under pain and did not snap at Calvin or at Daisy, even when Daisy persisted in loving Vassar when Bard was so much more interesting and helpful. I did not snap once.

Yes, Daisy has chosen and she has chosen Vassar. Mazel mazel to her and let’s hope she gets in. We came home and all was quiet. Wyatt was home but very quiet. He has an entire roster of new friends at his high school and I have almost zero knowledge of what he is doing. I hope he is not doing opiodes. Maybe he is microdosing? I don’t know. But he’s a joy to be with and his grades are really good so I don’t pry.

I dimly registered that the carport camera was off. Lately the epic storms plus the strange house improvements we have done have messed with the electricity. Calvin is so busy making big career moves and directing shows that I don’t want to bother him, but it’s been offline.

It’s just been so quiet and relaxed that I haven’t pushed on the camera. Did I say in this blog (kaching! It’s 2004 and I’m blogging!) that I had to go on an anti anxiety drug because I was just coming unglued and my psychiatrist is very young and just spent 200k on a wedding and he said in our first session, “I’m hearing a lot of obsession.”

I don’t want to be a person who is obsessive, so I’ve been actively, psychologically, trying not to obsess about Maggie. Because I work fulltime earning a Ph.D in her specific psychosis, it’s been difficult practicing detachment. In addition to that, the drug for anxiety interacts with my migraine drug so I’ve cut that does in half and now I’m having hellacious migrainse. So I’m a little off kilter.

I only checck her feeds a few times a day and on the road to colleges I checked even less. That night we came home and I set the table and then went upstairs and smoked some weed. I heard Maggie’s gate squeak outside so I started listening.

“You’re the asshole. You don’t get to blame me for your bullshit. Your fucking daughter was so mean to my daughter in school, and you, you’re the asshole. Your cunt daughter.”

Then the sqeak of the gate.

At this moment I’m afraid, I’m high, I’m annoyed that I’m high and I think it’s pretty funny that I can follow every step of her stupid logic and I know exaxtly who I am in her strange mind. I texted Paul McCartney and everyone tried to listen but she was already gone.

“She was talking to me,” I told them in the dining room. “I need to get my work laptop out of the basement. Wyatt, come with me to look at the camera in the carport. There’s something wrong.”

Being a stoned, hungry person also meant I could not fix the camera. It was dark and I was starving and nothing constructive was left in me for this day.

Wyatt and I went to the carport and he looked at the camera and I walked around being nervous. “We’ll do it tomorrow, I’ll cal Nest or get a chatbot.”

As I shut down my work laptop, which cannot sit around on unplugged, Calvin and Wyatt jumped into action and reset the camera by pushing a button. It came back on, my fear was gone, the camera was up, my laptop was returned to the basement, and life went on. I am afraid of her physically but I don’t think she will break in but I do think she might and I’d rarther not leave work equipment around her.

Fear is not that interesting

It’s not.

Today I was in the longest nap I could have. I just wanted to hide and hibernate and let my poor head stop vibrating. As I lay in the darkening room I hear her again, coming outside to throw a bottle in the recycling, cursing me.

She led with a lovely rendition of the theme to Sesame Street. “Sunny days, sweeping the clouds away..” Then she stomped around and said some angry things about her ex husband. “He doesn’t want this house!” Then she turned to us, “Those wanna-be directors, wanna-be writers, wanna-be drummers (what does that mean? We did have this drug set from the time QuestLove did Sesame Street, and no one wanted to play the drums so we gave them away on Facebook. Maybe we sold them but for like $50 bucks. Or does it refer to Calvin taking drum lessons when he was a kid in France. So did my brother. Was that it?).

Then she said:”And Wendy, she wants to be funny? Ha!”

She concluded with wishing us to move to Scarsdale and that she’s not moving, we are.

Is the Scarsdale stuff anti-Semitic? I think it might be. My best friend in college was from Scarsdale and she was very sensitive about it and every time Maggie mentions Scarsdale I think, “is this about us having a Jewish last name or did she remember my friend, whom her husband asked for her number. Argh. Did she give it to him? So creepy.

Such a tangled web one imagines when one deals with someone not sane.