I love that America celebrates it birthday in July. Yankee Doodle Dandy being my all time favorite movie–and both James Cagney and George M Cohan claimed 7/4 as their birthdays. So did the author of my favorite song “What A Wonderful World,” Louis! (No last name needed, really.)

I love everything about summer except for the mosquitoes, and flies on food in Little River, the next town over. It’s on the Intercoastal with many good restaurants each having their own live music on Sunday nights. In summer it’s best to sit on the benches next to the Intercoastal and The Crab Catcher and listen to some great music.

I was reading TC’s post on the wonders of summer in Madison, WI. She made it sound so appealing that I was ready to hop a plane….

Then I remembered I’m from New York–and have written extensively on summer in Manhattan. And now I live four blocks from the ocean and am such a beach snob at least once a week I go to a beach that doesn’t resemble Coney Island or Jones Beach. My friend CLo actually calls 6th Street South beach “field six” and she hasn’t lived in New York for 30 years. Field six is the parking field at Jones Beach closest to the beach. You have to get there very early in the morning or after 3PM.

The beach near my house is the main beach for North Myrtle and secretly I do like it. I’m a New Yorker and can find solitude in crowds. It’s also safer–if I venture into the water and somehow get caught in a riptide–well that didn’t happen last week in Cherry Grove but could have and I felt a bit scared. The week before that didn’t happen in the part of Huntington State Park without lifeguards but again it could have….The tide was so low I couldn’t even swim–just float. I thought about going out further but I wasn’t sure how to define “further.” I am such a mass of neuroses.

Yesterday I was melancholy because I felt obligated to go to the beach when all I wanted to do was hang out on one of my decks. That felt so sybaritic. So I wrote that post, DVR’d some shows on HGTV (I can’t believe I’m admitting to that), went out on my downstairs deck–where toilet of Pia used to reside, and played with a chaise lounge until I found the optimum place for moon and star watching.

Today I explored “downtown” Myrtle with a friend. As I’m from Long Island, strip malls are my middle name. Really even Manhattan is one giant one now.

In early evening I went to a soul concert on Main Street. Just about five blocks from my house, an older couple began dancing to Marvin Gaye and then the group Soul Connection put a “Black” spin on some Stones music. As the Stones were originally influenced by American Black musicians, it felt that something had come full circle.

I love North Myrtle for many reasons. One big being its emphasis on music. The Ocean Drive area where I live is all about music. At Mayfest I knew I had moved to the perfect town when Chairman of the Board played. CLo who is never impressed by anything was awed. (Check out their website. I’m impressed and…)

North Myrtle’s about music, the beach, and people having a good time. It’s different than the places I have lived before.

Simpler yet savvy. I almost dread visiting New York next week as I know many people are going to have a two subject conversation–the economy and how to make back money.

I said I might work at Wal Mart to somebody in New York. Most friends get what I’m saying. I’m half joking and half serious about a no stress job that will pay just enough so I can pay my bills. This friend began fighting me. I’m a professional. I’m a New Yorker. I’m from Jericho. I’m….. I told her to relax but she just couldn’t.

I don’t have that same need to accomplish I once had. No that’s wrong. I want to accomplish–but I have lost the need to have status button. Moving from New York allowed this and I’m still moving backwards some of the time.

I live in a place that has seasons but summer is a year round state of mind. Life isn’t about trampling over the next person to get to somewhere, anywhere.

In New York I dreamed of summer the other nine, ten months. Here summer is hotter, summer has more free things to do, summer is sitting on the beach and going into the water not just walking on the beach.

The economy is horrible. Many people are out of work. But the tension level is so much less than New York’s.

I’m learning that I don’t have to stress over everything. It is an adjustment process. I have always wanted to carry over the mental vacation summer always bring. Here the weather might be in the 20’s but it’s endless summer.

Happy 233rd birthday America! 33 is my favorite number. This has to be a great year. (I can be totally irrational when it comes to numbers.)

Stumble it!

I have always been my own muse. This solves a lot of problems such as the weekly pay check Bone demanded. (Kidding, he asked nicely.)

As my own muse I have always been conscious of the quality of my writing. Lately it doesn’t meet my own pitiful standards.

Is it because I have always refused to go to BlogHer? It’s always on the same weekend–my birthday–one of the few weekends of the year I insist on being with people who love me as I think birthdays are to be celebrated not spent trying to impress hundreds of strangers almost none of whom know or care that once this blog was well something more than most blogs. And I can’t blame them for not caring.

I do think Blog Her should have a revolving summer weekend policy as I’m sure other bloggers have birthdays, family birthdays, reunions, vacations–and yes somethings are more important than blogging. Summer fun being paramount.

This makes me sound flaky and not serious but anybody who knows me knows how important writing is too my life. Blogging’s something I became caught up in and now am addicted to and it’s a better addiction than heroin so….

This hasn’t been an easy year. I’m establishing a new life in a new city. A friend from New York called my move “drastic.” It is very different and perhaps I’m in denial when I say that it can’t be drastic as I go to New York often. I have homie or go to friends here. But really how many times a week can you see the same friends? We have our assigned dinner seats at each house; games we only play with each other–both real and head ones and….CLo’s daughter Niece Kelly and a friend of theirs–a funny Gay male (are there any others?) are coming tomorrow night. We’re all in a tither to entertain them. I have known Niece Kelly since she was a wee thing and like her mother she adds a lot to her surroundings. That’s a compliment though it sounds weird to me. See what I mean about not being able to write?

I’m making new friends. That’s both easy and difficult. Nobody can replace my best friends. They have been a part of my everyday life for longer than some of my blogging friends have been alive. I need the easy familiarity of being able to look at somebody and know what she/he is about to say. I need to be able to just look at somebody and burst out laughing….

I don’t feel sad that my blogging muse has dried up. I feel horrible that I can’t seem to write a coherent sentence unless it involves a complaint about a plumber in which case I did the lawyer’s work for her–the tech writing gene never leaves.

more than most people I know how difficult it is to make it as a writer. I need no lectures on that. I do need a cheering squad–and that’s the horrible thing about blogging and once having been rather well known. It makes you feel “you deserve,” when you deserve nothing that hard work doesn’t bring.

I’m willing to do the work but the words don’t seem to come out and I keep reading how you should never take things from your blog though I think I began a damn good memoir about me and Jeffrey or me with Jeffrey as the background

I was doing a writing exercise and that helped but about five weeks ago I read a comment complaint in a blog about people who write more than one screen and want comments. The author of the post emailed me to tell me that was about me and wow!!! I haven’t been able to write since. I know an excuse when I write one, and it might be that I have had much company, that the weather’s finally sultry and great for beach going–though I try to write every day from 9AM until 3PM.

If somebody could define a screen for me I would be ecstatic. There are screens on Blackberries. Then there’s my 24″ Imac. I know people who use 40″ or even 56″ high def flat screen TV’s as their Internet screen. So what’s a screen?

And why do writing exercises seem to favor poetry? They say prose is acceptable but when four fifths of the posts are poetry it’s a poet’s site, and anyway poets know what a screen is.

I’m being silly I know. In part because in nineteen days I enter the last year of a pivotal decade and while I don’t fear the decade coming up I do fear the next or the one after that. I’m a bit confused on that subject too.

Oh lighten up Pia!!!!!!!!!

This isn’t a complaint about blogging. It’s just become real difficult for me to write and I need to blame something as I can’t stand the thought that maybe I really am too old or something

Stumble it!

Dave beats Conan. Dave visits the troops and doesn’t talk about it. Yes to watching Dave laugh after he makes a joke, especially a bad one. It’s so endearing. I do expect the answer to “Letterman V Leno” to be a blank stare as if there’s no contest because Dave is king.

I didn’t find the quote from the show that The Post used to be one of the funnier ones. Unfortunately I can’t think of any but they are great. They usually involve Dave’s mother and holidays. Or he talks about how hated he is. Just gets this gleam in his eye. It’s wonderful to watch somebody put himself down but at the same time get somebody back and really pull himself up. That’s the magic of David Letterman I think.

I have been in love with Dave forever. He might be an old white man but he’s one funny old white man.

He’s razor sharp and knows more about many subjects that many so-called experts know about one. Oh let me shut up. I love David Letterman and am not ashamed to say it. Not in the stalking sense. That’s gross. Not even in the “I want his body and I want it now” sense. More in the “he’s so clever. He makes me laugh. He makes me think sometimes.”

Oh if I had only been in New York last week. I know they were looking for people from South Carolina. But I will be there soon and will be available for any show anytime.

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Cooper’s tribute to Michael Jackson left me crying too too much. He was such an incredibly talented boy and I would love to remember that way or in “Billie Jean”

Though the summer of 77 was one that was to make my adult life, really, Elvis’s death was a footnote to it. It was before I heard the Sun Sessions and Elvis was just a bloated sad man who wore gross suits and spent too much time in Las Vegas. I would go to Graceland now. I really have to put all my CDs onto Ipods as I do have the Sun Sessions somewhere and would love to listen to them.

I picked my three tomatoes from my garden. Of course I can’t get myself to eat them, but look at them and marvel that something from my garden is edible. I hope to have a salsa garden soon.

Though so many stupid things have been going wrong, I learned why my garbage disposal was backed up and it has never sounded so good. I hope to take a class in basic home repair. I never thought I would write that sentence.

I have lived in beautiful pre-war apartments with huge ceilings, much natural light, gorgeous crown modeling reproduced to look like the original in “fancy name” buildings.

But this house that I sweated so over has my heart. The inside looks so different from the inside of the house I bought. The outside that looked like pure wasted and unusable space is a deck upon a deck and I love it.

I wasted the day today by spending it in my sun room and my yard, and it wasn’t a waste at all.

Yesterday I was in Kroger’s and the lights went off two or three times for two or three seconds. We had massive thunder & lightening. I got home and realized I forgot portobello mushrooms which was the main reason for my supermarket trip, as I was making a mushroom dish for a small dinner party. I walked to Bilo, saw ambulances and fire trucks, and on the way home the sky became dark again. I met a Shih-Tzu that I fell in love and he with me and now I think I must have one….

Stumble it!

I didn’t mean to infer that I think MJ is a pedophile. I have no way of knowing. I’m looking at this from the perspective of an eighteen year old who cares too much about too many things and hasn’t yet learned to shade her world
Do I say that my eighteen year old goddaughter Lucianamae refuses to be sad about Michael Jackson because he was a pedophile? Yes for I am proud she has the the moral stance.

CLo refused to believe me when I said he would be mourned as John Lennon was but in death people are forgiven their horrible traits and I do feel sad.

It’s not his fault he was taken from childhood and made into something almost not human. His musical talent was so above the fray. I hate pop and love his music.

I’m not real into this blog lately. Summer fever. Every time I think one thing is finished and I can enjoy myself something else happens. I have a service agreement with a plumbing company. Paid $100. Supposed to come in one hour. Turns out that’s only good in the middle of the night.

So had I called them last night I would have paid more (night rates with a 15% discount) but gotten one hour service. I called at 9AM to find out they would come between 1PM and 3PM. I have things to do and places to go and people…

The garbage disposal is backing up. I never put anything you’re not supposed to be into it–when the dishwasher is on, the garbage disposal floods. I use the dishwasher a lot because of all I have read about how much better a new dishwasher is for water consumption than hand washing. I’m beginning to doubt that.

I’m so not supposed to be owning a house. I had to change my dinner party to tomorrow night. I want one month of no hassles. Just one month……

I do have a habit of living in states with governors who can’t keep their pants….Letterman is making South Carolina jokes (last night) and I love them.

I’m old enough to remember Nelson Rockefeller’s death. Two words: Megan Marshak Some more: I was young enough, superficial enough, and vain enough to make fun of her. She wasn’t the best looking woman around

Stumble it!

My friends believe I don’t have it in me to become truly angry. They think I’m supernaturally calm and hold too much in.

They forget about all the years before this blog when I didn’t let things out in a blog post or now FB entry

I let everything out here so they don’t have to hear it.

People who only know me through my blog or FB probably think I’m angry all the time. In reality I’m only angry, mad, depressed about one tenth of the time.

This afternoon I fell asleep on my lower deck or grounds or (as in the Title) “irregular plot of land.” A bird let out a sharp noise and I jumped from my chaise chair ready to do battle. Fell asleep again for about five minutes. It looked like it was going to rain.

Not that I’m a wilting flower or anything but I had two days worth of two different newspapers, and coffee. Yes I am a wilting flower and run at the first sign…..

I came in and was drawn to the computer. Now I have to walk cross “town,” and will sleep when I’m dead as Warren Zevon said. Always hate that he said that as…..

Stumble it!

I feel like sheet. I relaxed and was allowing myself to truly enjoy my life. I’m sure I guess this will be straightened out but I have visions of me in prison stripes. Not pleasant. I always feel like apologizing for my blogging as if I write horribly and have nothing interesting to say. Good things are happening in my life or would have been if I didn’t have to worry about giving my soul, and all my worldly goods, to the IRS.

Forgive this self-indulgence. My accountant never sent it in as it was lacking one figure and it was tax season. He told me he was going to guestimate and send it. I know the IRS isn’t going to come for me etc etc but I needed to know that it was a mistake on the IRS’s end.

I had a perfect weekend and was too exhausted last night to get my mail. Should have waited until Monday. If you read Courting with any regularity you know that I received a notice from the IRS in February as I was preparing to move

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I deleted the rest of this post because it was sad and self-indulgent and I kind of resent feeling that other people can be as self-indulgent in their blogs as they want to be. But I have a weird gallows sense of humor that doesn’t always translate well on paper.
I wish all the work I had done for my audit hadn’t been lost in the mail or lost in the IRS and I hope and know it will be straightened out.

I’m really sad and feel horribly sick because they think I never responded when I spent a month getting the information and it wasn’t easy. A lot was the IRS’s problem–they asked for things under names that weren’t on 1099’s–they didn’t cross reference my payments with my 1099’s. Many items had so little information on them my accountant and any person in a brokerage house had no idea what they were asking for.

Some things were my fault and I always intended to pay what I owed. A brokerage house that I do business with was taken over by another in mid year and I never got the first’s 1099. As I was renovating my apartment to move and had no space to organize stuff I didn’t realize I never got it and thought it was all on the company that took over the new one’s.

This notice was for 07–before I lost much money. So if I have to pay what they’re asking it’s–I can’t even imagine. I can imagine being in jail wearing prison stripes. I can imagine paying the rest of my life for some stupid mistakes, for my accountant not sending or them not receiving the info and letter explaining everything.

I was so happy. There are some amazing things about to happen in my life. But I need money…..

I felt so diminished when I got this notice and then I thought of the Madoff’s and people of his/her ilk who couldn’t give two shits and she’s not being charged with anything. I thought of all the people I know who brag about not having paid taxes for two or more years as if that’s something to be proud of when I think taxes keeps this country going–but you should pay as little as you legally can.

My dad was a CPA and getting this letter this weekend brought the hurt I never let myself feel after his death because my mother was frail to the forefront and I missed him like I never did before. And I missed the type of CPA he was. He would gladly take a call from somebody he might have inadvertently screwed–or maybe the letter is in IRS hell–but he would have accepted as his problem more than mine because he sent out the information and thus would have been responsible for its arriving at the IRS

I hope I have that type of accountant. I feel sick. I’m ready to turn myself in. I had to count the zero’s in the notice three times for it to sink in. If I did owe that amount of money I would have nothing left–and I don’t think a job at Wal Mart would cover my expenses let alone start to recoup the money. If I did owe it I would pay it but I don’t owe it. I can’t believe how sloppy the IRS notice was.

Do they have email in prison? Blogging? Twitter? Facebook? Will anyone of you write me? Visit me with a saw in a cake (ha ha). I know I’m totally exagarating but I need to get this out.

I was becoming such a calm happy person. i have always said simplifying my life is the single most complicated thing I have ever done and I keep getting more and more proof of that

Stumble it!

My court or cul de sac or enclave, whatever, is off a sort of major road. Sort of as it doesn’t even have stop signs yet. An old lady who lives in the court can’t believe I cross the road all the time. I can’t believe she drives so…..

About four PM the rain stopped and the sun came out. Really came out as in the rain we’ve been having off and on and enough to ruin days has gone somewhere not here.

I couldn’t believe the amount of traffic coming down my street. I went to the beach and walked to Cherry Grove pier and back. Here’s the thing. I saw groups of African Americans, East Indians, Latins. In three Junes I have never seen that before and it was wonderful. Well I have but I’m related to them not by blood but by long term friendship that has become family.

The beach past the Cherry Grove pier, way past is incredible. So’s Cherry Grove. It looks like an actual beach town. I didn’t move there because I’m so darn practical and didn’t want to pay more insurance, but I love it and walk around Cherry Grove as much as possible.

This is going to be a bitch of a summer. I hope to have much walking around. walking on the beach, sitting on the beach, going into the water, writing, and company time but I also have unpleasant things to do that I’m not going to write about other than it cuts into my time. I wanted this summer to be perfect but I guess that perfection is a goal never really achievable and I’m not going to go all new agey on you.

The air was perfect this night two days before the Summer Solstice Sand fine for walking barefoot with cute Crocs in my bag. (Yes there are cute Crocs.) The ocean was warm and I wish I had my bathing suit on as the waves were just right.

I walked back via Main Street. I realized that no matter how much time I have to spend on the unpleasant things, ok a law suit, I will always have early evenings.

There was so much I thought of saying when I was walking on the beach but my mind’s fading now. Tomorrow begins a heat spell—I guess a lot of people came for a long weekend. It’s really going to be the first time rain doesn’t get in the way. I have gotten used to the rain. When my cousin was here for a wonderful visit we would get to the beach by eight in the morning so we would have beach time and really we had more than enough though it rained almost every day.

I do so love it here. But when I go to New York, sort of unwillingly, for nine days in July I’m going to find the cash cab. That’s CLo, W and my summer game. We DVR it and play along. We can easily watch six or more episodes. We’re all excellent. I finally found a game I’m truly good at–it tests general knowledge but I’m sure if I got in the cab and was alone I wouldn’t remember my own name. It’s fun when three or more people get in because they discuss everything sometimes to the point of going from the right to the wrong answer. Two young men who had that particular New York look of “could be any ethnic group,” got every question right and they had some tough ones. I’m bad at body questions. We all thought the answer was “nodules” and I forget the question but who knew the head had so many sinsues?

I become New Yorksick watching it. But in New York I wouldn’t be able to say “I want to go to the beach” and be there in five minutes.

Wow I had a life time goal of moving to a nice beach town before I was old and I guess I achieved that.

Stumble it!

If you don’t have a Twitter account get one. One world; one election; people united all over. It’s frigging incredible, and this is one time I will say, I am glad I have lived long enough to bear witness to this.

I’m turning off comments. Twitter your feelings.

It’s finally summer here and in three Junes this is the most crowded and diverse I have ever seen North Myrtle. I will write a post about that

Stumble it!

Paul Krugman and I would make a great team if only he were aware of my presence.

I have always believed that the radical right is equally or more dangerous out of office than in power

It’s not surprising, then, that politicians are doing the same thing. The R.N.C. says that “the Democratic Party is dedicated to restructuring American society along socialist ideals.” And when Jon Voight, the actor, told the audience at a Republican fund-raiser this week that the president is a “false prophet” and that “we and we alone are the right frame of mind to free this nation from this Obama oppression,” Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, thanked him, saying that he “really enjoyed” the remarks.

What will the consequences be? Nobody knows, of course, although the analysts at Homeland Security fretted that things may turn out even worse than in the 1990s — that thanks, in part, to the election of an African-American president, “the threat posed by lone wolves and small terrorist cells is more pronounced than in past years.”

And that’s a threat to take seriously. Yes, the worst terrorist attack in our history was perpetrated by a foreign conspiracy. But the second worst, the Oklahoma City bombing, was perpetrated by an all-American lunatic. Politicians and media organizations wind up such people at their, and our, peril.

Krugman’s a Nobel prize winning economist but he can’t stay away from politics and I can’t blame him. We have an African American president. I think he’s a force to be reckoned with and will be above the kinds of scandals that disempowered the Clinton admin. But McConnell is the Senate Minority leader. For worse he represents the mainstream Republican party. Jon Voight’s remarks were sickening and should have been disavowed. They weren’t. No wonder why Angelina (Jolie) is estranged from him. The Republicans I have known–mostly are or would have been proud of this moment in history.

America took a fundamental leap forward this past year. Let’s not go back. And we can never discount the importance of fringe groups.

Stumble it!