From all sides jackhammers hammer and it’s raining. We are one week back from Fire Island, where we spent 7 days swimming, eating, drinking, and lolling about. After the family drama of France, Fire Island was a real vacation with real fun.

I am desperately afraid of the ocean so can only go in when it’s calm. So I only ocean swam a few times, but the bay, of course, is just on the other side of the tiny barrier island and I swam there every day. The wonderful thing about bay swimming is you can talk to the other people swimming and that was fun. I had a very pleasant and depressing chat with a woman about climate sorrow and how to process our feelings as the world becomes less beautiful, with parts even ceasing to exist.

Fire Island does feel temporary. How can it stand against rising oceans? Calvin and I talk about how, when we’re really rich, we’ll buy a doomed house there and I secretly think we’ll just go down with the ship, old people waving sadly as we are engulfed by the Atlantic. We’ll each hold a cat up in the air with one hand, wave with the other, and we’ll all drown together.

Clearly I’m cheerful today!

Daisy goes back to college tomorrow and Calvin and I are upset about it. We’re also upset about the faucet of our kitchen sink, which has just broken off. It is now duct-taped together until the Handywoman is back in town. It works but makes me wince every morning when I see it. We are also anxious about the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, especially after the titans of TV, Iger and Zaslav, seem so contemptuous of the strikers. How can the strike end with a good contract if the people in power think so little of writers and actors?

Maggie was silent for about a week and we did not see her and it was FANTASTIC. Then, Wednesday night, I heard her voice outside. She had a giant bandage on one leg and I spied as she ordered around one of her lawn minions. It was very, very strange.

She often has people working in her yard but I’d never spied before, and I never will again because it was upsetting. Basically Maggie was ordering a woman to do very weird things. “Take the sprinkler and put it on the walk so it’s a little fountain. Now fill the watering can from the little fountain. Now pour the water from the watering can on my hand.” In the meantime, the sprinkler is spouting water all over the stone walkway, not plants, and Maggie holds her cigarette in one hand as the other hand gets watered by her helper.

I guess that’s why the yard is covered with random bits of things and garbage, because the tasks made no sense and built to nothing.

We then gathered from Facebook that she broke her leg (ergo the bandage). So she continues in her way.

My latest obsession is trying to understand Russia, so in that spirit and I am listening to a book called, Stalin, Vol. 2: Waiting for Hitler, and reading (with my eyes) a book called All the Kremlin’s Men. The latter book covers Putin’s years up until about 2 years ago. Lots of backbiting, lots of people, and helpful. The Stalin book is post-Lenin, pre-Hitler and is a 48-hour listen. That’s long in audiobook-land but Stalin has millions of people to kill and many colleagues to betray, so it takes a long time.

The sad thing is that it’s made me realize I need a better understanding of Lenin and the Russian revolution, and a little bit of knowledge of post-Stalin up to Putin. Then I realized I know nothing about the conflicts between China and Russia and Japan and Korea. I didn’t know Manchuria was shared by Russia and Japan, kind of, with shared being not the right word, and Japan also was a player.

Before the world vanishes under the oceans I would just like to understand a little about Russia. Is that so much to ask?