Healing stew (hopefully)

The healing process for my husband’s knee replacement is ongoing. Sadly, we had to cancel dinner with our son for his 25th birthday tonight, because my husband just isn’t ready for restaurants yet. There’s still a ton of pain, swelling, and stiffness, which apparently is normal at this stage (3 weeks post-op), but he’s never dealt with anything like this, so it’s pretty hard.

I decided to try a recipe I saw on NYT Cooking “most popular recipes of 2025” list—Slow Cooker Garlic Butter Chicken. It looked easy and it was. My husband loved it. He said the flavor was great and it really was. I even made my own croutons, which soaked up the delicious sauce perfectly.

New England is experiencing real “depths of winter” cold right now. (It’s giving late January vibes.) Given the very cold weather and the knee, I think this was a success. And so easy.

Next time I’ll put the croutons in the dish first to absorb as much sauce as possible 😋

Here’s the recipe:

Slow cookers (aka crockpots) are the best, right?

Vanity Project

As the arthroplasty recovery continues, I’m indulging myself in a ridiculously vain social media trend. People are uploading photos of themselves as teenagers to ChatGPT (possibly started by the women abused by Jeffrey Epstein as young teenagers) and asking how Chat thinks they will look at their actual current age. The comparison inevitably makes people feel good about their looks.

Me at 13
How ChatGPT thinks I’ll look at 60.
The real me last month

Also, we shouldn’t even NEED the Epstein files to force Trump to resign in disgrace.

If you haven’t read the entire transcript of Katie Johnson’s 2016 testimony as reported by Andy Borowitz of the Borowitz Report, you really should. It sounds 💯% true to me. Trump should be in prison.

In 2016, a woman using the pseudonym Katie Johnson filed a lawsuit alleging that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked her and Donald Trump raped her when she was a 13-year-old child.

The scenes that unfolded today at the U.S. Capitol dramatize the importance of listening to survivors’ voices. In that spirit, I am posting below the full transcript of Katie Johnson’s testimony.

~Andy Borowitz

Warning: it is extremely graphic and disturbing.

I came to this interview of my free will. No, there was nothing promised to me for doing this interview. Yes, everything that I say in this interview will be the truth.

I met Donald Trump at some parties that I was working for Mr. Jeffrey Epstein. There were about three or four times that I had encounters with Donald Trump. I was 13. The first time that I met Donald Trump was at a party at Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion. There was an orgy going on and he was kind of watching off in the distance.

He basically asked if I could come over and give him a hand job. At first I wasn’t very comfortable with it. This was my first party and I didn’t think that that was my responsibility. But my recruiter told me that I needed to do it. So I agreed to it and then he, you know, I began to—sorry this is a little difficult. But before I gave him a hand job he kind of slapped my hand away and said, “You need to use a glove.” The recruiter ran over and handed me a glove and said, “No one touches Mr. Trump’s penis without a glove.” So I needed to use a glove. I gave him a hand job and then immediately after he had an orgasm he left and I didn’t see him again at that party…

I originally came to New York trying to be a model and in my travels I met a girl named Tiffany there who was very interested in me and said that that’s what she did is that she helped girls, you know, get what they wanted. She could help me get into modeling, that she knew a lot of people that were higher-ups and that it would be no problem. And so that’s why, you know, I would just basically have to come model at a couple of events and meet some people, there would be no sweat.

So of course I went, you know, that sounded like no big deal. And she was recruiting the girls to come to these parties and they all looked, I mean most of them were my age. There were maybe a couple girls that were maybe 14 or 15 but it seemed to me like we were all very young.

Jeffrey Epstein knew that I was 13 years old. When he interviewed me, he asked me to get down to my bra and just my panties and I thought that was weird but, I mean, modeling. Maybe it was something about my figure. He asked me to give him a massage. He asked me my age, I told him that I was thirteen, I told him why I was there, and he basically said, “Well, you’ll do, you know, I’m sure that you’ll fit pretty nicely here.” And then he tried to basically slip himself inside of me. And I pushed him away and I said, you know, I’m—because at that point in time I still believed that there were models and then there was the girls that did that. Like I thought there was a separation. So I told him that I wasn’t interested in that but he said that I would do.

And as far as Donald Trump, he knew that I was 13, and I believe that Tiffany told him. He seemed to take a liking to me because I was so young and I was also a virgin. So, I don’t know, he seemed like he wasn’t really into having girls that were liked by the other guys. The whole glove thing—he kind of liked things to be his first, you know, for lack of a better term. He was the one who wanted to get to a girl before everyone else did.

Donald Trump knew that I was 13 because the first night that I was there, Tiffany actually suggested that and she had a whole bunch of different wigs and I expressed interest in them and I always told her that I would love to walk around with blue hair. And so I tried some on and there was a blonde wig that she said that looked great on me. So, I wore that wig and Donald Trump had specifically asked about me because I remind him of his daughter and she said, “Well, she’s 13 as well.” So, he knew the first time that he saw me. He took a liking to me because I looked like his daughter.

The reason I’m coming out now is—when it happened originally, I just wanted to forget about the whole incident. And when I saw that he was running for president, I felt that it was my responsibility to come out and tell our country what kind of man this person is. I don’t think that he should even be the dog catcher, let alone running the greatest country in the world…

The first time that I met Jeffrey Epstein, he did try to force himself inside of me without getting the go-ahead or anything. And then it was probably about the third or fourth party is when he basically forced—it was another massage and it was basically like, it wasn’t sex, but it was, there was penetration. And I told him that I didn’t want that, but he kind of got a little irritated. So, I don’t know, there was something about him that, I guess I kind of held a lot of resentment towards him. By the time that that happened, I already started catching on that maybe I wasn’t there for modeling and maybe I was just getting used for things and I kind of held him responsible.

I did receive money to go to these parties. After every party, I was paid by Mr. Epstein. There wasn’t, out of all the girls that were there with me, most of them were 13, 14. I think the oldest one might have been 16, but just turned 16 and she’d been there for a while…
Second time that I saw Mr. Trump was, same scenario, he was an onlooker at an orgy and Tiffany came over to me and said that Donald Trump had requested that I perform oral sex on him. And never, I’d never done something like that with anybody, so I was a little nervous. So, I walked up to him and he was sitting there very proud-like and I just kind of moved in that direction and he kind of slapped me away and said, “What are you doing? You need to put a condom on.” Like I was some dirty filth or something. Tiffany ran over and handed me a condom and apologized profusely and said that would never happen again. And she looked at me and scolded me basically like a child and said that, “That’s not how: Donald Trump always, anytime anyone touches his penis it needs to have a condom on or a glove. Especially when it comes to performing oral sex.”
So, I apologized and then I performed oral sex on him. And once again, once he was done, he hopped up and that’s the last I saw of him at that party. It’s like once he’s done, he’s out. Some of the things that I noticed that were weird with him: sometimes before the parties he would come over and Jeffrey Epstein and himself would kind of banter back and forth and he was very, Donald Trump was very racist. He said a lot of racist things. There was a lot of comments towards Mr. Epstein about being Jewish and he called him a Jew bastard, said that he was cheap and there were some words I didn’t even understand.

Something about his, you know, the shape of his penis being directly related to his mole or, I mean, I’m not too familiar with the Jewish tradition—but I’m pretty sure that whatever he was saying wasn’t very nice. He also referred to, you know, people of Hispanic origin, he called them Spicks. That was around the first time that the World Trade Center had gotten bombed in the 90s. And he was talking about the towel heads and how we would just be better off if we didn’t let them in and basically got rid of everyone, every single one that was already here. And it made me really uncomfortable, really, really uncomfortable.

He also loved to call Black people n—– and Arabic people he called sand n—–. The only time that he tried to give me some money was our last encounter together, where he acted out a rape fantasy. I was forced to give that money back because Jeffrey Epstein paid us after the party. I don’t even know why he gave it to me, maybe to make me feel more cheap. It was a rape fantasy to him, but I wasn’t playing.

The next thing that Tiffany approached me with was that he had a fantasy where he walked in on his maids, maids basically making out and it was some type of fantasy for him. At that point, I was like, “I don’t want to be involved with anything that has to do with him.” But she’s like, “You are just basically the other one. So, there’s nothing that you will have to do. Just—he’s requesting you to be involved.” So, I reluctantly—I mean, I felt like I didn’t have a choice there, but it was basically, he’s walking in on his two maids, I was one of the maids, I was the white maid. And there was a Spanish girl, Maria, who was the Hispanic maid. And we were making out and he walks in and he gets really angry and threatens to call immigration on Maria if she doesn’t come over and make things right and give him a blow job.

So, while she is over there giving him a blow job, I am supposed to look scared like, “Oh, oh no,” cleaning up things and pretending like I’m trying to go back to my job as a maid. And then he’s being so rude to Maria. I felt so bad for her. It just didn’t seem like a fantasy. It’s the weirdest fantasy as far as that goes. He was threatening, he was threatening to call immigration on her. She wasn’t even near going down to give him, perform oral sex on him before he slapped her away and said, “What are you doing? You know you need to put a condom on.” And she’s trying to say “I’m so sorry.” And he’s like, “You can’t even, I can’t even understand what you’re saying. Just speak English!” He called her derogatory comments. And then he’s like, “You know what, you don’t know what you’re doing. Have her come over and show you how it’s done.” And so I, again, I said that I didn’t—I had to go over there or else he was going to call immigration on Maria. I didn’t know if it was true or not, but he said that if I didn’t show her how to perform oral sex on him, then he was going to call immigration on her and then get rid of us both.

Anything that was in relation to him getting off or being satisfied or happy had to do with him being in power, extreme power. And it was always intimidating when he was like that. You didn’t really know if it was true. If you refused to play along, would he really call immigration on Maria? Would he really get rid of us both? And I didn’t even want to know what that meant. It wasn’t a game.

The one night that I had the blonde wig on, he mentioned that I reminded him of his daughter. And actually the maid’s fantasy, I didn’t have a blonde wig on. I was trying to stay away from blonde wigs at the time. But he actually requested, told Tiffany that that’s what he wanted me to wear. Like he wanted it, and anytime I put it on, anytime I had it on and he’d see me, he would say, “Oh man, you look—” and it wasn’t like a, “Oh, you remind me of my daughter.” It was this sick, evil “You remind me of my daughter.” It was just this weird pleasure, sick smile. Like I don’t even want to know what he was thinking about. I could imagine what he was thinking about.

After the parties would end, we were to report to Mr. Epstein and basically tell him everything that happened, with who, what they liked, what they disliked, if there was any requests, if there was any talk about anything. That’s what we told Mr. Epstein—everything. And then he paid us, and then we got to go home.

The fact that Trump has a chance to be the next president makes me feel disgusting inside. I’ve always been proud to be an American. I think we live in a beautiful country. But I just see him ruining everything. He’s horrible, what he portrays on the outside isn’t even that great, but people don’t even know the half of how evil, how sick and twisted that man is. I have a friend that’s been my friend ever since the school year that I stopped going, the eighth grade. I confided in her, and she knows all about it. She knows everything…

I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to save the country that I believe that we have. I know what he does behind closed doors. I’m willing to sacrifice my life to put our country back in the right—like, going maybe in some type of positive direction. Not even, there’s no right or wrong, but a positive direction. This guy’s not going to take us anywhere positive.

You know, as far as my life changing by coming out with this information, I’ve thought long and hard about whether or not I should. And I’ve gone back and forth. But I think that the American people need to know what kind of man this person is. And if my life changes because of that, then so be it. But the American people need to know what they’re dealing with. If I had the chance to talk to Donald Trump, I would run the other way. I’m scared of him like I’ve never been scared of anything else in my entire life. I can’t explain it to you, but the fear of him even being in a next room, I have a panic attack.

The last encounter that I had with Donald Trump, Tiffany approached me about a rape scene that was supposed to be played out. And I didn’t like the sound of that at all. But Tiffany promised, assured me that it wasn’t going to be—if it was anything I wasn’t comfortable with, we could stop. That she would be right there and that it wouldn’t get out of hand. And that it was just a fantasy, like it wasn’t really going to happen. And so I told her that I would. I mean Tiffany was always nice to me. I trusted her, or else I wouldn’t have always done what she asked me to.

But she was there and he came in and I was basically tied to a bed with pantyhose. And they were so tight it hurt to even lay there. And I tried to say something and he was just “Shut up! Shut up, bitch!” He was being really, really rough.

It just didn’t seem like a fantasy. And I started to get scared and he was basically like ripping my clothes off. And I got freaked out. I told him that I didn’t want to do this. I screamed over for Tiffany and she was like, “Mr. Trump, she’s only, she’s not—this is scaring her.” And he’s like, “Oh you shut up too.” He just turned into this animal. It was like a completely different, completely different person. It was like everyone in the room was scared of him. And I couldn’t do anything about it.

He ripped off all my clothes and he started to basically have sex with me and I was screaming. I’d never had sex before, it was my first time and Tiffany was yelling at him too. She was saying I was a virgin and he told us to just shut the fuck up and just basically took my virginity while I was crying and telling him to stop and basically begging for him to just stop. And Tiffany didn’t know what else to do either. No one was there to help us, or me. And so, after the fact, he basically finishes. It didn’t take that long at all. But it felt like it was like five and a half hours. It felt like it was an eternity.

I was crying and Tiffany was consoling me and she was apologizing. She told me that she would never put me in that situation again. But he comes over mad because I was crying and he said that I should be thankful that someone like Donald Trump took my virginity. Well, he didn’t say took my virginity. He said, I should be glad that someone like Donald Trump popped my cherry and not some pimply little 14 year old. And I just was like, “What if I get pregnant?” Not even talking to him. I didn’t want to talk to him. I was talking to Tiffany and he said, “Well you’ll get an abortion then, bitch.” And then just walked away. And I told Tiffany I needed to go home. I never went back again.

I guess it’s for you to decide. I don’t have any kids myself because I’m afraid to have kids because who knows what kind of damage they can get into, but if you have a 13-year-old daughter, would you be okay with the person who’s running our country doing that to your little girl? And I just, I don’t know. I just want people to know. I think that I have a faith in our society that we’ll make the right choice. He seemed to be taking great pleasure in dominance and control and the more I screamed, the more I got scared, the more he was enraged with power and it was like he was just charged with it. It was scary.

Arthroplasty

I have survived an arthroplasty. And by “survived, ” I mean I accompanied my husband to his total knee replacement surgery.

I am not good with medical stuff. I get “white coat anxiety.” So, I think I handled things pretty well. He is back home and resting comfortably.

The only thing I messed up was hanging up on the surgeon (twice!) when he called to tell me everything had gone well. I couldn’t seem to answer my own phone correctly.

Also, I ran over a curb when driving up to the area where the nurse rolled him out in a wheelchair, but my tires seem fine. (Phew, can you imagine if I got a flat on the way home?)

Oh, and I had to plug my ears with my fingers and look out the window when the physical therapist described to my husband exactly what the “madman with the drill and the saw” does during a total knee arthroplasty.

I will be having a drink at 5pm. Or maybe an Oxycodone (kidding)

Image from Pexels

Thursday Doors—Squeeze Burger, Sacramento

I went looking for a door photo for Dan’s Thursday Doors and found this:

If someone asked me yesterday if I’d ever been to Sacramento, the capital of California, I would’ve said no.

But I was wrong. My high school friend Susan and I took our 11-year old sons on an epic Northern California road trip in the summer of 2012 and stopped at the famous Squeeze Burger (formerly Squeeze Inn) in Sacramento. We were on our way to her house in Lake Tahoe from Oakland.

Upon further research, I found pictures of the famous cheese-skirted burgers online, which look familiar.

We were in the second Sacramento location (now closed), which featured the original tiny Sacramento storefront as a booth in the restaurant. Perfect for two boys traveling with their moms.

This is why pictures matter people. By the time you hit 60, you will not remember half the stuff you did in your life.

How empty-nesters repurpose space

We now have three unused bedrooms upstairs, but we’re using our one and only dining room as a combo art studio, home office, and marijuana dispensary.

Because…stairs

I’m definitely seeing the benefits of living on one floor.

When your kids are home, it’s nice to have separate floors for various activities. Young kids can be sent “up to bed” and you can still watch your shows on whatever volume you want. Older kids and teens can go to the basement to roughhouse or just hang out adult-free. And everyone can have privacy and space when needed.

When it’s just the two of you, it’s different. Do I really want my other glasses enough to climb the stairs to get them? If I need a pain reliever in the middle of the night and the only bottle is in the kitchen, how bad is the pain really? Bad enough to go downstairs in a cold, dark house? Maybe I’d rather just try to sleep with the pain. A bee’s nest recently grew to massive proportions in our basement because nobody was down there to see them coming in. And how exactly are we going to deal, if my husband’s arthritis requires joint replacement?

Sometimes I decide to go upstairs to get something, get distracted by laundry sorting or some other upstairs activity, and return without what I went up there for. I’ve found that if I say my plan aloud (“I’m going to get a sweater”), there’s a better chance I’ll complete the mission. And if I forget, there’s a chance my husband heard me say it and can remind me.

So, convenience. That’s how empty-nesters repurpose space.

The indignity of falling

I was determined to close all three rings on my Apple Watch yesterday, so I went out for a walk in the rain. I wore a baseball hat and a large LL Bean raincoat with the hood up. My peripheral vision may have been slightly impaired.

I was listening to music from my phone in my pocket, when I briefly looked at my watch to see how far I’d walked. I must have stepped on a piece of loose asphalt and turned my ankle.

I went down. All the way down. I landed on my left side and caught myself with both wrists. I was briefly laying on my side in the wet street (a quiet cul de sac).

My watch started beeping and tapping my wrist telling me that I’d fallen and asking if it should call for help. That part was actually nice. Someone cared! But I didn’t think anything was broken, so I hit the little X to decline.

What the fuck ankle! You can’t handle stepping on a little bump?? (This ankle has let me down before.) How many times have I implored my mother and others “watch your step, don’t fall”? Falling is the worst. It’s sudden. It’s stupid. You weren’t watching. Dumb.

A few days ago I voluntarily got down on the ground to take this photo of a mushroom along the side of the rail trail where I typically walk, which has no loose asphalt.

Cellpic Sunday – ultra wide lens

I no longer own a 35mm camera, so all my pics are cell pics these days, but it’s fun to join in a creative group activity like John’s Cellpic Sunday.

Goosewing Beach Preserve, Little Compton, Rhode Island, USA, August 2025

I took this with the ultra wide lens (0.5x) on my iPhone 15. I like it because it captures lots of beach & sky and my legs look very long and tan and no cellulite is visible at that angle. They almost look like my old legs from my lifeguard days.

Very old parents

I think it is the nature of things for parents to care more about their children than vice versa.

Our children love us, but not how we love them. Oh how we love them. If they are struggling, sick or unhappy, it can be hard to function ourselves. If your parents live to be very old, you will be old too. You may be dealing with old people problems like osteoarthritis and macular degeneration at the same time as your parents. In some cases, very old parents outlive one or more of their children, which is obviously terrible for the parents. Nobody should have to bury a child. Ever.

But here’s what I think I want to say. You don’t owe your very old parents a myth of your own happy carefree existence. You’re old too. And things have gotten worse. The country has gotten worse.

I’m definitely not saying you should call up your very old parents and unload your problems on them. (If you’re still doing that at age 60+, you may have Peter Pan Syndrome.) I’m saying that if they call you a lot (and are of sound mind), it’s OK to be yourself. You don’t have to make up cheerful bullshit all the time just to keep them happy. Because that’s exhausting. And you’re old too.

On the flip side, if you’re having a good day and feel like chatting, call your mom. Nobody’s ever gonna love you like she does.

Interesting facades in London, 2019

Where have all the eyebrows gone?

I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to realize that women’s eyebrows fade away as they age.

I recently posted about feeling pretty darn good about how I looked all dressed up for the first time since turning 60. Not to rain on my own parade of self-confidence, but the one exception was my eyebrows. Where’d they go? I did use a colored gel product on them, but clearly it was not enough.

Soooo, having spent an embarrassing amount of time watching complicated eyebrow tutorials, I’ve decided this quick and easy one is the easiest to follow:

My beautiful 60+ friend Susan recommended the very cheap and readily available (at CVS) wet n wild ultimate brow retractable pencil, which I bought in Ash Brown (because ChatGPT said that was the best color for me) and I think it was a good call.

I’m not usually on here with make-up tips, but hey…if I have one, I’ll share it.😊

I don’t think I did a thing to my eyebrows in college…they were just there.

Perspective shift

OK, I’m starting to sense a certain outlook change now that I’m 60.

I’m sure there are lots of people out there that start wonderful new adventures at age 60, but I think, for most of us, that feeling that the path is wide open is over. That “open road” feeling you had in your 20s, 30s & 40s—that life could still potentially take you anywhere—has passed.

If you haven’t already done it, you’re probably never going to:

—move to Paris

—became a famous musician

—join the Peace Corps

—become a doctor

—become so rich you never have to worry about money

—move to the other coast

buy an RV and travel the country (actually, I think some people DO do that in their 60s)

—leave your spouse and run off with an old flame

—have children

—learn to cook

—get a graduate degree

—make the Olympic team

I’m not saying these things can’t happen in your sixties, but they usually don’t. Those big forks in the road are in the rearview mirror and your focus shifts to the twenty good years or so that you hopefully have left. Sadly, too many people are consumed by health and money worries in their 60s, but if you’re lucky enough to not have to worry about basic needs, you may want to return to fulfilling creative pursuits like painting or writing, or focusing on being fully present with family and friends, or traveling to your bucket list destinations.

The dreams are different now. And there are fewer of them.

My high school senior graduating class in 1983—when anything was possible