My garden.  I had cute little things written next to each photo.  They didn’t take.  But I spent my summer making this–everything from the multi decks to the plants.  Well Eldon did the carpentry.  I didn’t include the upper deck or views from.Next post.

The pink blossom tree is the Crepe Myrtle.  The Myrtles are named for it  Next year I will photograph the process–cutting it back to the bark–waiting and waiting and waiting….Then!  Same with the Elephant Ears.

Please scroll down for a real post

I came across the coolest blog for us people kicking & screaming learning to be older–very old grandmother.

Yes Courting has a new yet retro look.  After all these years I decided to name the pinup and can’t decide between Dinah, Delilah or Savannah.

I would like to thank Marcy who did the banner and button.  She’s also responsible for Smartly which I have been reading and might write for if I can find the time in between having house guests, pondering the bigger questions in life like why is everybody acting like Elizabeth Gilbert discovered solo female travel?, my garden which loves loves loves peppers & herbs and apparently hates tomatoes, sudden lightening storms I find myself rocking in the glider on the upper deck  and admiring a rather massive storm;  I realize I’m outside and begin screaming,  and much more–all on this higher level of non-consciousness.

In September it will be 50 years since Betty Friedan wrote her article on the problem with no name for–are you ready?  Good Housekeeping

She should have been the one to get all the merchandising deals.

No I’m not bitter.  Personally I would have found it more inspiring if  Gilbert were disabled, a single mother of three, not a privileged woman.  Hey I moved from the mother ship, New York, to a small city in the South where you need a car and I don’t have one, knew nobody who lived here full time and managed to make a life for myself.

Oh yeah–the section in Wal Mart for foods for the Jewish holidays –this year they put it in the health and beauty aid section.  I am not making this up.

This move just screams “movie rights,” “food and gadget tie-in.”

Unfortunately I’m working on the memoir first so nobody get any ideas about making such a move for the book/movie/merchandise potential.

Though I have always envisioned a line of table wear, plates etc., and lingerie with Dinah, Delilah, Savannah or whatever her name is!

As always thanks Thom for the 3WW words
late summer, 1970–Park Avenue South, NY NY

My job was tedious. I checked ads in all major East Coast newspapers but the New York Times for accuracy. The regular employees were laid off for the summer, and college students hired. Boys were paid $80 a week and girls $75. I didn’t consider myself a feminist but I thought that absurd and asked the owner why there was a disparity. He looked at me as if I were stupid:
Boys need the extra money to take girls out.

I had a boyfriend. I don’t think we had been on one real date in the almost two years we had been seeing each other on and off.

Everybody else would grimace when doing the work. Except for the pay disparity, and the bells that went off to signify beginning and ends of breaks, lunch and the workday, I loved it. Essentially I was paid to read newspapers. The Manchester Union Leader, Manchester, New Hampshire was my favorite. A typical headline read “Hippie boy spotted walking through town.” Sub headline, “hippies not wanted here.” The newspaper loved President Nixon and the war in Viet Nam. People in New York who were pro war weren’t this uncouth. Well the only person I knew well who was pro war was my father. Being the father of two daughters and a former Communist turned capitalist he was classier, at least in public.

In private, my father spent a lot of time grimacing and yelling. He called my friends and I freaks. I was proud that he knew the word though later I realized he didn’t mean it in the way we used it. He couldn’t wait for this phase of my life to be over.

I had friends at work and friends from college. Officially I was living at my parents house on Long Island. Unofficially I was living on many couches in the city and some on the Island where I went to school. After work we would walk down to the East Village where everybody seemed to live in tenements that smelled of Lysol, cat pee and cabbage soup. Every apartment looked the same with mattresses on the floor covered by Indian print bedspreads and a bean bag chair or tables and chairs found on the street.

After an evening spent smoking joints and drinking cheap wine we would stumble into some apartment. The wine made me sick so I stuck to joints. It helped me sleep in strange beds and use bathrooms that weren’t always clean.

I wanted my boyfriend but he wasn’t in New York for the summer. I settled for whoever was closest.

I am missing New York something fierce tonight. It was an incredibly hot day; one where my temper was as fierce as the weather. Then we had another tropical rainstorm which lingered into evening–not very tropical but I guess welcome.

My garden has been suffering. There are some potted plants that need to be watered maybe six times a day in this heat and I just can’t, but when it rain inches in an hour or two, the rain overwhelms the plants.

This summer isn’t a “nobody remembers one like this,” but there hasn’t been one with so many consecutive hot days. It does cool down a lot at night, now, and that does help.
You can almost feel summer ending though it’s so hot and that’s sad too.

The thing about New York is it’s all about possibilities. My move to South Carolina coincided with the worst economic times since the depression, yadda yadda….I was supposed to save money not lose it!

I don’t regret the move. I love my new friends, my house, having a new life and being so close to the ocean.

I bought a safe today as part of my hurricane preparedness plan; the other part is buying plywood as I live in what FEMA considers a low risk area but then I have to ask myself questions about FEMA and do I trust them? Then I remember that there’s a fairly new admin and I get even more confused as I’m not sure how much of FEMA consists of career civil servants and do they really make the policies etc? I remember how Social Security, a former employer of mine, could have five regulations for one situation and non superseded any other. As a claims rep you had to use your judgment, and decide which is the best for the individual. Though you have three months of training, every office has its own training and biases on rulings.

I would assume a hurricane’s more clear cut but then I remember Katrina and others and….

I know because I live east of Route 17 I have to evacuate if the hurricane is over a certain category. I have all sorts of plans and back-up plans mostly involving train rides or riding it out at my friend Lil Red’s house in Little River.

I have never thought so much about hurricanes but the storm two weeks ago woke me up to the very distinct possibility……

It’s the sad season for me, though this year I barely feel the familiar dual sadness of what September signifies for everybody and October for me. And not feeling that sadness brings its own mixed feelings for it means I have moved on, and left both my parents beyond somewhere. For when I grieved so arduously for my mother I also had my father. Now I have neither. Carrying them in my heart is very different.

Finally I know the age you are no longer an adult orphan. It’s the age you leave all the grief for whatever reasons. In my case I think it was because it was just too damn hard to carry it with me.

No it wasn’t New York I was missing tonight. It was both the life of sadness and the happy life before it I was missing. And yes I still can write but truly believe I need cooler weather. Even with the AC on my brain has been on melt.

I have decided to make a big deal of it. Also my blog has been on life support for years and I want to take it off life support–hopefully with some renewed life. Blogs aren’t people; they can regenerate brain or blog cells. This won’t be until the end of September. I have important things to do, first, such as beat my Exercycle time. (Five miles in 24 minutes is my best so far)
lines I have already written
Bone gave me his ten favorite–well let him say it:
I like to call these Ten Savage Masterpieces.

it can feel as if you’re trapped in a manhole cover or a pot of not quite boiling water. This is about humidity in New York–specifically the Upper West Side

But, and this is a big but

And that’s how I met the man for whom the bells were tolling

The way people have been talking about tents in the local papers you would think they’re as important to good moral character as motherhood, apple pie and lack of taxes. Yeah, a line about here

Sometimes the noted celebrity will also be the crazy person.

If you think of Fairway as a sparring gym for the mind, you’re almost understanding it.

I have no idea what I’m doing. Faking my way through home and garden.

I answered that age old question I never knew I asked

Then I walk four blocks to the beach, actually sit in the fierce gray/brown waves with teal teasing at the horizon and forget everything but how incredible the world is.

CLo and W are exploring their Hispanic/White redneck roots and going to a Dave Matthews concert in New York.

(If you have any favorite lines of mine….There have been articles and blog posts written that just quoted my lines. Unfortunately I don’t have them or they’re somewhere in the abyss called Courting Destiny.

Then of course I had to break a promise to my father–did get special dispensation from my mother and play (and it is a game with absolutely no skill involved anymore) the stock market. For awhile it was incredible. I literally made myself sick and have only myself to blame. I was sick in May and June and have been spending the summer recovering. I really only talk about it to Lil Red and Eldon so most of the world doesn’t realize I didn’t wish for death but thought it was coming soon many days this past spring/early summer. I did wish for a medically induced coma I could be taken out of with a better mind and body–sort of like my blog.

One of my favorite stories. It was a blog favorite back in the days I had a blog that wasn’t on life support. This Friday the 13th will be six years since my first post. There were years I did nothing but blog 24/7. My blog needs a miraculous resurrection. As does its blogger

Sometime in the late 1980′s Lucia, Noel (a male friend who no longer lives in New York, and yes he’s gay) and I were walking up Lafayette Street, in Nolita, a section of Manhattan that was called Noho then. Nolita stands for north of Little Italy, and Noho for north of Houston. We were walking on the east side of the street where there’s a fire station.

We had just left the architectural studio and store that Lucia managed and was the scene of many parties, and occasionally ended up sleeping there when we were too wasted to make it home. It had a shower, bath and almost all the amenities of home except for a bed, but did have a huge table that we would have to clear the dust off, in order to sleep, but, uh most times, we would forget that step.

This is mostly extraneous to the story I’m telling, but good background, for something. We were young and hot though we were the last two to believe that part. Don’t know why; enough people told us, wanted to know us, or marry us. Lucia was a four by 40 girl. This story takes place before the fourth marriage. I was a Maid (or Matron) of Honor more than most women; and I’m only counting Lucia’s weddings. She used to compare herself to Elizabeth Taylor:
“I believe in marrying them, not living with them.”
I’m more the let’s live together, not get married type.

Okay, now that’s out of the way, are there any other deep dark secrets that I can waste time saying: I once voted for a Republican for president; that’s about it. Oh no am I becoming prudish on my birthday? Can’t happen; no I won’t allow that. Here it goes:

It was a hot June night. Not hot as in oppressive, I want to die weather like today, but hot enough. In New York, the hottest part of the day is always dusk when the heat’s had time to settle on the cement, and the buildings seem to ooze both heat and drops of hot water from the air conditioners. The steam rises both from the street, and subway gratings, and it can feel as if you’re trapped in a manhole cover or a pot of not quite boiling water. One thing you learn in New York early and never forget: heat rises.

I was wearing a blue with little pink and yellow flowers bustier dress; the skirt flowed like a Marilyn dress. Here comes the big confession: sometimes when I would a dress like that I wouldn’t wear underwear; go commando as it’s called now. But, and this is a big but, I had a two piece bathing suit that almost exactly matched the dress; only the flowers were a bit larger. That morning in a burst of clothing creativity, I decided to wear the bottom as underwear. To make the dress work appropriate I had worn a blue silk fitted jacket that I had left at the studio.

Noel was walking to my right, and Lucia to my right. The subway grating was right underneath me. The fire station bells began ringing as it did whenever notable people passed it. I couldn’t understand why suddenly Lucia and Noel were trying to tame my dress that was whirling with the blast of hot air from the subway. Their faces had turned bright red, and not from the heat.

Something made me turn around, and face three very well dressed men who were trying not to smile. Two of the men were young, very good looking; “bodyguards,” I thought before my brain had time to register exactly who they were guarding. Or maybe I really didn’t want to realize this. I thought of something clever to say, but before I could say it I began laughing. Real laughter; not girly giggles or shameful bursts of restrained laughter that turns into coughing fits. I knew that as long as I lived I would never forget this meeting. But I just couldn’t stop laughing; the six of us were standing on Lafayette Street, laughing until tears came.

And that’s how I met the man for whom the bells were tolling; the boss of bosses himself, John Gotti, shortly before he went to prison.
If Lucia comments, and she will, do not believe her version. I wasn’t just wearing underpants, I was wearing a shield of armor, a belly covering bathing suit bottom.

No I don’t approve of him or anything he did. Just getting that out of the way. But it’s a hell of a story.

This is an absolutely true non fiction story that happened on Thursday but we’re going to pretend it happened today. It could have
I was walking in the crosswalk outside of Bilo when a car came out of nowhere. I jumped onto the curb very very quickly. The woman was opening her window to yell at me–you could tell from her face when she saw the crowd of angry people and sped off.

They weren’t angry at me but ready to mob her as she had been going fast in a shopping center parking lot. A place where people, by definition, walk. This wasn’t me practicing defensive walking. I walk therefore I get defensive in an area where the car is king. People kept talking to me until I left the shopping center. Apparently I was very lucky as she came an inch or so away from me.

I laughed my way home as my hair salon is in that shopping center and I could picture what the girls in the salon would have done had I been killed. I am a very good customer.

Then I went to the beach. Now North Myrtle is in the midst of a tent controversy. Too many people bring tents and put them on the first line to the shore line. Sometimes they connect five or more tents. This isn’t good either for people like me who just bring chairs or more importantly for life guards who not only have to see but run in case of emergency. The way people have been talking about tents in the local papers you would think they’re as important to good moral character as motherhood, apple pie and lack of taxes. Really. Somehow all this gets tied together in letters. It makes my day.

So I looked for a space as far from tents and from umbrellas as possible. I plunked down my stuff and began to read. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a giant very heavy umbrella falling–coming straight for my head. I took my right fist and punched it away from me. The ten people who belonged to the umbrella couldn’t stop telling me how they had almost killed me and how sorry they were. They talked to each other about what a close call it had been. Really I was unaware but must have been vigilante because of the earlier incident. I told the people about it. They were insistent that I go home.

I didn’t. I took my chair and put it in the water as I love sitting in the water. Then I went out beyond the breakers and body surfed. Normally that scares me if I’m alone or don’t have a boogie board but I figured today is my lucky day.

Still fourteen more minutes to go

If I were a better blogger I would be going to Blogher which is taking place in New York in August (not on my birthday weekends) so I truly have no excuse not to go other than fear of not being known, and a general hatred of large gatherings in which I don’t have a central role. (Hey at least I’m honest.)
If I were a better blogger I would have a reader and comment on at least 100 blogs a week.
If I were a better blogger I would have a brand that I was known for so people wouldn’t be confused when they read my blog about what I write about–anything and everything.
And if I were a better blogger my blog could easily translate into one book; not 20 on vastly different subjects.
If I were a better blogger I would have a kid or three so I could write cute knowing stories and be offered products to place other than horrible books that I’m expected to write glowing reviews of–I don’t.
If I were a better blogger I would focus on making as many Facebook and Twitter friends as possible rather than just having fun on Facebook.
If I were a better blogger I would be 20 years younger than I am or face being “old” and write for Eons (I’m not into nostalgia in the traditional sense so this doesn’t work.)
If I were a better blogger I would know HTML well and figure out what’s wrong with my blog so that it shows on readers and Networked blogs. (Honestly because of my disability I don’t even try.)
If I were a better blogger I would use my disability for fame and fortune. Though when you have NLD it’s easy to be bright and verbal and almost impossible to figure out a game plan.
If I were a better blogger I would have a game plan despite my inability to figure one out.
•••••••••••••••••••••••
When I began blogging six years ago this month nobody I knew had heard of blogs. They patronized me for caring. Then my blog became read and got publicity. Only I found my life blog-centric which wasn’t helping me get published or make money. Now that blogs are the way to godliness and a better more wonderful life I have about as much desire to keep my blog up as I have to become Mother Teresa.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••
I keep my blog as I still believe I’m talented. I might be lacking in self-esteem but I know how to tell a story. I don’t feel comfortable in this world of shameless self promotion (not that it’s called that anymore) but I’m not sure I feel totally comfortable in the world at large.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••
The only thing that I’m bitter about is not knowing I had NLD at least ten years ago. I could have planned my life better while I was still comparatively young. Blogging would have come after writing, not before it.
However I didn’t. Now that I have my house and life somewhat together I can finish what I began so long ago. I always begin years in September–will always be on a school year calender even if most begin in August now.

This is my year and welcome to it.

For the months of August and September I’m putting in old posts. If you have any favorites….Might do this through the end of the real year. That way I can clean my blog and focus on things more important to me while letting people see what I have done

OK I might do this everyday so that it shows my work, the good, bad, ugly and sometimes almost great. This was a post about Fairway, a store that just being two blocks from my coop played a big part in my life as it does every West Sider’s–well now there’s Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, but then….This post was written in December 2004. It’s just a slice of life.

Fairway’s a dirty, much loved and much hated grocery/produce/take-out store on Broadway in the Upper West Side. It has high quality food for a lower price than we are used to. You never know if you’re going to bump into or be bumped by a noted West Side celebrity, or a crazy person spouting verbiage at everybody or at one person in particular (me). Sometimes the noted celebrity will also be the crazy person.

For many years I would avoid it because crowds make me crazy, or I would go late at night when the store’s much less crowded, and many of the customers are Broadway and other stars. Since I’m really bad at spotting famous people they would have to be pointed out to me. Sometimes they’d be a little annoyed that I didn’t recognize them and introduce themselves to me.

As I said in a prior post, I can gauge my mood by how I react to the daytime crowds. Somehow Fairway can bring out the worst in many people. When somebody would joustle me, I would either apologize for being alive or scream at them. (It’s a Fairway game.) Though the person was the one who stepped on my feet, they would usually accept my “I’m sorry,” by screaming, cursing or saying something sarcastic.

If I would bump into somebody, and apologize the above would happen also.

In the past year for various reasons I’ve become a much calmer person. Therefore I usually find the antics that go on in Fairway amusing. Fairway’s also less crowded (though only a regular would notice that) because of the competition from Whole Foods, other more physically appealing stores, and especially Freshdirect which delivers food that’s ordered over the Internet. There’s a competition going on between the owners of Fairway and Freshdirect that I also find amusing.

Sometimes I still get crazed by Fairway during the day, and know then that I should go home, or somewhere peaceful, because the Upper West Side’s usually crowded, and I don’t want to be among crowds.

Mine is not an atypical reaction, though I’m probably the only person to have analyzed this in such depth. I don’t want to know what that says about me, and my thought processes. I only know that I no longer react when somebody bumps into me, or screams that I have bumbped into them. It would take a miracle not to bump into people as there is very little space between aisles, shopping carts, and people. It’s most people’s nightmare come true.

I usually enjoy watching people argue over space, the last Stonyfeld Caramel Yogurt (oh I’m the one that does that) and such other amazing things as the last purple garlic bulb. I have seen macho men reduced to sniveling and/or tears in Fairway, because somebody snatched something out their hand. Fairway’s competition at its meanest and Survivor has nothing over it.

Any 80 year old who can successfully shop at Fairway can win Survivor as it takes skill, careful planning, coordination and a host of other attributes to shop there and leave in one piece.

There’s just something about Fairway that brings out the worst in people who are usually logical and calm. Fairway’s an almost poetic symbol of the Upper West Side. It’s dirty and hostile seeming on the outside, yet when you take the food home, wash it and prepare it, it’s excellent. Not that people on the West Side are dirty–that’s a dumb metaphor.

The bouncers at the doors, and yes I mean bouncers as in a club, size everybody up before they go in. They only admit people who might go postal, and/or known liberals. They always let the old lefties from parents generation in, because they’re the best at the game.

I’ve never asked what they do with the conseratives, because frankly I don’t want to know.

As much as I tend to dislike Fairway I’d miss it if it were gone. It would also be very bad for the Upper West Side and Manhattan in general as people tend to get their hostility out in Fairway, not on the streets or at home.

If you think of Fairway as a sparring gym for the mind, you’re almost understanding it.

This was the first post I ever wrote in Courting on 8/13/04. I didn’t know people read blogs then. I didn’t know people would read mine. I will be putting in old posts all month in honor of my seventh year as a blogger.
When you think that you’re all over it, and the pain has subsided for good, something triggers a memory, and you’re no longer the sane stable person you were five minutes earlier.
You think, bastard, you ruined my life.
Or at least my formative childbearing years. Oh right I ruined his. Always forget that part. We’d play games that were too dangerous to even think about. I kept flying down Dead Man’s Curve faster and faster sometimes forgetting that the edges became ever more jagged and sharp. I would win the races because the pain felt good.
I had told him the first night at some club, not the club, but some cleaner looking Village fixture, that I hated pet names and terms of endearment.

He called me Pumpkin and worse, Baby. Other women envied me. He was a Southern Jewish Outlaw singer/songwriter on the fast track to memory lane. Even I was forced to admit that he was cute. We made a good looking couple. Sometimes that’s all life’s about. I’d walk into work each morning pissed as hell at something he had or hadn’t done and everybody would tell me about my perfect life.
Three of my five best girlfriends weren’t in New York. Elle was in Miami; Lucia in Atlanta and Jaz in Geneva. When they’d come to town with their men or on their own they’d just be so bowed over by his attention and obvious devotion. Lizzie and Dawn thought he was my savior.

Dawn was to give a eulogy years later for her longtime boyfriend, Franklin. “I saw stars in my eyes when I first met him, and I’m still seeing stars.” Everyone laughed a bit uncomfortably since we all knew that it was true.

I had done it. I had the worlds most perfect man. Could I tell them about the ever growing Dixie beer collection and the roaches that would be lined up around the 40 butts in the ashtray that would greet me when I came home twelve hours after leaving?

Every day I had an hour subway commute, I worked for ten hours, and came home to the house of horrors. He would be in the same position he had been in when I left with just the beer cans and newly filled ashtray as evidence that he had ever left the bed. (Had to, to get a new Dixie, and I assume pee, I hope it was in the toilet.)

I knew one contest that I could win. I had Fifth Avenue’s largest Dixie beer collection. Probably the only one. I would think that as I emptied the ashtray, washed some dishes and cooked dinner. I washed the glasses especially well, just in case that was were he had peed.
Yes, I, princess of Manhattan take-out, cooked dinner every night. It was difficult to support two people on my salary. Actually my salary was decent. I supervised fifteen people on the largest anti-trust case in American history. Out of 80 supervisors I was in the top percentile pay wise. I liked my job and loved being good at it.
I was a girl (women we called ourselves then) and never paid for a dinner, unless I was trying to make a point by not accepting somebodies now-you-fuck-me dinner. Even in the days of militant feminism which was overrated, I would let men pay for meals, drinks and/or the bottles of Dom Perignon they would send to the table my girlfriends and I were sitting at. Long as I didn’t have to put out anything my than my acerbic tongue.

Before I had been with him (and during the last year) I was out almost every night. The owner of the club, my club, was an old special friend. I seemed to know a lot of club owners, managers, and the like. I even knew Marc the doorman at Studio. I don’t know how I knew so many people. It seemed normal then.

Out of principle I wouldn’t spend any of the money my father had given you. Not when an able bodied man with half a mind slept next to me each night. He’d take the money I had made and use it at a whirlwind tour of New York’s worst bars. Nobody comped him.

He’d sing romantic songs. After awhile they stopped seeming romantic. Just this morning I heard Steve Earl being interviewed on the radio. I couldn’t help but wonder if he hadn’t ate his gun one day, in another state, would he have now been a big alt/rocker?

I wonder that each time I hear Lucinda. She had provided the introductions at the club. The club that looked tobacco stained even when freshly painted, was dark, dingy, with great people and music. The club that launched a thousand of my nights; not to forget many music stars. He wasn’t one of them.

He was talented; had a unique way with words, and now I begin to remember all the ways he embarrassed me with his words. Yeah he had a unique way with words for somebody who was half illiterate. I believed his story that he had dropped out of high school.

Soon after he confided that he had two years of college. In some ways he was brilliant. His ideas would be big now. If only he could have admitted that he was depressed instead of always blaming his problems on some other thing, some other person. I came along. Miss-no-self-esteem-sure-I’m-responsible-for-all-your-problems-plus-the-state-of-the-world.
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You should have known the first morning when he wouldn’t let you leave for work and called you (no shit) a prisoner of love. You told him that was gross and you hated cute more than anything in the world.. Now you wish that you had walked out then and never looked back but you moved in together the next night.
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