We lived in a small four room garden apartment when the 60′s began.  But my parents believed in partying.  Every month was cause for a celebration so New Years was a big one.  Usually they had large parties.  But I guess they decided to usher in a new decade with some of their closest friends.

My parents are in the third row.  It’s hard to recognize my Dad without the moustache he would grow in 69 and have for the rest of his life.  Oh if my parents only knew what the 60′s would wrought, they would have doubly celebrated!  The good, bad and the never talked about again.  I can’t imagine what it would be like to go from their culture to mine–sex, drugs and rock & roll

In lifetimes filled with great decades my mother said the 60′s was her favorite.  Because she finally felt grown-up! Two daughters who were too be teens in the 60′s.

They began traveling the world in the 60′s and never stopped.  If a country was open to Americans, they were there.

My parents began a small chain of stores in the 60′s.  One that specialized in clothes for the junior high set but was bought by all age groups.  My father being father to two daughters who were never satisfied with the clothes our mother bought us saw a need for this group to be catered to.  My mother just loved selling clothes.  Later we would go to Loehmann’s and the saleswomen would embrace her for when my mother was there they didn’t need to do their job.

My sister and I disliked the clothes in our family stores, and can still imitate our mother trying to give us more and more and more….

Though my father would deny it later we all loved the Kennedy family, and our world shook with the assassination.

But I have a friend who has been arguing for years that the decade really began with the Beatles arrival on American soil.  More and more I see his point.

My parents loved the changes, the 60′s brought,  in art, theater, movies.  Music–well 30 years later my father was still trying to understand the part it played in my life.  Though they loved the Simon Sisters (yes Carly), Simon & Garfunkle, and most of all the real Thanksgiving song, “Alice’s Restaurant” by Arlo.

We were a close family.  Though my father would have loved to go to school with me and be actively involved in all my life, he let me go to the 67 Moratorium in DC.  It was, I believe, the largest anti-war demonstration to date. I was a senior in high school then and had to take the bus with people from Great Neck.  We arrived back at 4 AM and my parents were there.  I believe they had been waiting since Midnight.

In retrospect it was the day my father ceded control of my life.  I thank him for that.  Giving your child the gift to make her own mistakes can’t be easy.  I always knew that.  And he was forever trying to take back his authority!

It wasn’t until 1976, another wonderful decade, that we were to have the grown up great relationship we both truly craved.

My mother?  She always knew that if you wanted your daughters to be your friends you had to let them fly.

I thank my parents for introducing me to all the arts, culture, great food and the world.  Today I choose to remember how wonderful they were.

When did everything become an issue?

I came home from the eight days of Thanksgiving and wanted to chill with TV.  I tried turning it on.  Nothing.  After 20 minutes of playing, the TV went on.  I noticed the Time Warner commands and fonts were different.  The TV kept going off.  I called Time Warner:  It’s your TV

“But my TV is only six months old.  I’ve had cable since 1980.  I know a cable problem.”

“IT’S YOUR TV.”  (Some complicated explanation that I knew was meaningless.)

Every day I had problems turning the TV on though it would stay on.  The DVR would constantly freeze.  The picture would freeze.  But every time I called Time Warner I would be told it’s my TV and they wouldn’t send somebody.

Finally it wouldn’t go on at all.  I insisted they send somebody.  Fine but it was going to cost me $60 because it was the TV.  I waited for the appointment.  Nobody came.  The appointment had never been put in the system.  It was my TV after all.

The technician came.  “I understand that your TV has issues.”  Well yeah in life I have many issues,  but I never knew that an inanimate object has issues.

It took the technician two days to fix all the problems.  None of the signals that only the cable person looks at were on the right settings.  There was something wrong with the outside wiring that had been put in six months ago.  The technician said that many people had TV/cable issues after the upgrade.

My TV has never looked so good.  The picture’s sharper and doesn’t freeze.  Nor does the DVR.  Most importantly I can turn the TV on without going through 20 minutes of playing with every button, rebooting, and fervently hoping.

Time Warner sent me an email asking how the customer support on the phone was.  I said they were horrible as they refused to listen to me.  Somehow this became translated to “the customer service people are excellent but the technician was horrible.”  And I had given him the highest grades on the survey they sent me.  Moral: never answer emails asking for feedback.  Never fill out surveys.

Here’s a link to an article I wrote for The Long Island Press’s award winning series: Our Children’s Brains.  Of everything I did this past decade this article was personally the most meaningful.  If I increased awareness of non verbal learning disorder (NLD) just a bit then I did a lot.

I meant to end the year decade with a salute to bloggers because I think we’re at the forefront of a major revolution in communication.  Without blogging there really couldn’t have been Facebook.  Without Facebook there couldn’t have been Twitter.   I don’t know whether I fear or look forward to what comes next.

I began this decade, and I believe decades truly begin when something significant happens, in deep agony.  True the Trade Center had imploded and my mother died suddenly the next month but it was more than that.  I felt as if I were losing my grip on sanity.  I didn’t know about NLD then.  Had I known when I was a decade younger, ha, the worlds I might have conquered.

But I have to remember that I put this blog together and if I have been harping on its former glory lately it’s because it opened doors I never knew existed.

I became friendly with Bone over four years ago.  His writing amazed me and still does.  He keeps getting better.  But it was Bone the person who helped change me.  When we became friendly I realized that I didn’t have to fear the South.

My first three days visiting here I was more than a bit scared.  Actually it rained the first two days and I was glad I could bring my incredible rain making skills to a then drought stricken area.  (Not glad I have that talent now as this is shaping up to be the rainiest December on record.)

The third day I ventured out and nobody bit me.  North Myrtle, so familiar now, seemed like another country.  I knew the New York metro area, South Florida, parts of New England and California.

This is a new world.  My world now and I go into a new decade knowing I can face whatever comes.  I might be a decade older and one of the oldest known bloggers but that never stopped me….

I thank you all who have taken this journey or parts of it with me.

I wrote a truly long post because I began as a long winded self-absorbed blogger.  I’m going through the blog one post at a time.  Not a fun project, but I must do it.  Again I thank Cooper the magnificent.

Courting’s undergone and still undergoing major retuning.

Last week I watched Julie and Julia.  I’ve never been a Meryl person.  I have always appreciated her brilliance but many of her performances have left me feeling nothing.  I watched Mama Mia with eyes and mouth wide open amazed that she would subject herself to that role when I seriously doubt she needs money and her kids aren’t in the pivotal ten to fourteen year old range that would love the movie.  Abba is a band that has always reminded me of the worst of pop.  No it’s not even pop.

Her performance was a revelation.  She not just captured Julia Child but made me love her.  Stanley Tucci!  Wow. He made a little, ugly to be honest, man into one of the sexiest men I have ever seen.  I was captivated.

I have read a lot about how Julie’s (Amy Adams) story was horrible but I’m a blogger and in some ways it could have been my story.  These are the exceptions:  Amanda Hesser of The Times went to her house for dinner.   The book taken from the blog  turned into a best seller.  The subsequent movie was one of the top movies of the year.  And she wrote a new memoir about the affairs she was having during that time that did almost ruin the movie for me as she and her husband seemed so solidly together.

Oh yes we have so much in common.

When I began Courting I didn’t realize people read blogs.  She knew more, and knew enough to have a theme but at first didn’t know if anybody was reading. When her husband read that she was the third most read blog at Salon, they called the people “fans.”  When I became the most read blog at that place we don’t talk about it I called the people who read “readers.”

She felt obligated to post everyday.  My readers know my verbal diarrhea though it has tapered off. Somebody from The Christian Science Monitor called her.  Somebody called me.  You can see we have a tremendous amount in common. She was coming up to her 30′s.  I was in that place called “used to be 30something when it was on.”

It’s not that I’m ashamed of my age.  I’m just so darn immature that I have a hard time believing I’m going to be 60.  Therefore all my friends have been on notice for months they better come up with one giant celebration because it is an age to celebrate.

Julie got nasty comments. Blogs were begun just to diss me.  But hey any publicity….Not frigging true.

Unlike Julie I didn’t get a book contract.   But my life changed as dramatically.  As much as I talked about moving from New York I was scared.  I know New York.  New York knows me.  We went together like seltzer and vanilla syrup in egg creams which contain no eggs, but seltzer, syrup and milk.  I have an incredible support system in New York.  Yes I had been living the life so many dream of down to the luxe doorman building in the heart of the Upper West Side.

But my dreams had changed.  I knew to continue living the life I lived I needed more space in a way less pricey place.  I didn’t count on a house.  That never entered my radar until I found North Myrtle Beach and realized I was capable of buying, renovating (not with my own hands) and maintaining a house.  My house isn’t architecturally significant.  I could get a lot more house that has higher ceilings, is fancier, and has more room for much less money just across 17 but it wouldn’t be a five minute walk to the beach or a two minute walk to the center of town.  My house has decks, lots of decks and I love decks.  It thrills me to sit outside in the middle of the night looking at stars.  It thrills me to be able to run to the beach for just a few minutes whenever.

I haven’t been a “good” blogger these past three years and I’m not just talking quality.  Too much was happening in my “real” life to seek out new blogs, to make new blogging friends.  Julie didn’t have to comment, email, chat up people.  I’m not saying that all that is bad.  It was difficult for reasons my readers are all too aware of.  The problems I had were all interrelated (something I had intuitively known) had a name, and I operated at a level where I had compensated for almost everything.

Blogging brought the problems back. I couldn’t master the computer language of blogging, HTML.  I couldn’t blog socialize as much as many people wanted yet I couldn’t set limits.  I political blogged long after I knew it wasn’t healthy for me.  When I found out about NLD I began to take charge of my life.  Yet I had never felt “disabled” before.

Damn I was smart.  I had been eligible to skip grades but my parents didn’t believe in that.  People always took me for bright.  Yes I had gone through this before but blogging once so great for me began to make me feel like a collection of symptoms.  It’s not OK to have a space to pour your heart out into, unedited.  Since I generally wouldn’t talk about my friends in the present, blogging about NLD filled up space and let me vent.  Something I probably needed to do.  But will never know if the venting led to feeling worse.  I very much believe in the power of positive thinking, and not dwelling on problems, yet….Did it have to be so public?  I love having less Google entries.

So I lost readers, didn’t court new ones, and do you know how many blogs have begun in the past three years?  Many millions.  When I was “on top,” I think there grew to be sixty million.  I alone had five.

Yet it was the greatest feeling in the world in the beginning.  People read me!  People who weren’t classmates or relatives.  An illustrator/cartoonist said to me: “you have the feedback I have always craved.”  I was shocked as I’ve known him all my life and thought he was a person who shunned the spotlight.  And he makes mucho money.  But I knew what he meant.  There’s nothing like that first feeling of wonder; of going to a from “blogger to writer” seminar knowing I had a higher Technorati rating than the speakers.  Yes of course I looked.  I was hung up on stats then.  I have always resented that title.  I was a writer a long time before I was a blogger.

I didn’t know how to handle that recognition.  It came out of nowhere and at times, many times, felt undeserved. At times it made me want to jump up and down with joy.  Other times I wanted to ask people if they knew who I was.  Like they cared. I lived in New York where everybody really does have their fifteen minutes or their best friend did.  Everybody was famous for something real. Not having a money losing blog.  Everybody was younger and better looking than me.  I take that last one back.  But I had begun to feel that I was living in a theme park and I just ain’t a Disney or Rouse production person.

My life was unsettled.  Maybe I will never have that recognition again but hey, I’m prepared for anythng.  I’m settled now.  Everything I have done in the past three years has been to improve my life.

So Julie went onto fame and fortune and I went on to home ownership.  OK she’s lived my dream.  My dream didn’t die.  It went on hiatus.  The long drawn out saga is over, and the fun’s about to begin.  Stay tuned.

My next posts will be at the max half this length.  As usual I reserve the right to change my mind.

I will be playing with themes for awhile.  This is the first time in years I’m psyched about my blog!

Courting is undergoing a major face lift and body re-build.  There will be a new blogroll. Good understandable pages, meaningful categories and more. It will be the blog it should have been had I known or understood what a blog really was that first year.

Somehow I think having new innards, and an easy to navigate blog will vastly improve the quality of the posts.

I wish I had thought to copy my old stats,  Technorati status, and had the many awards people gave us.  However they’re remembered virtually.

Great theme.  This reminds me more of me now.  The old theme was me through the decades.  Many decades in one theme.  The pinup will return.  She is vital to Courting though I never felt like Superwoman when the pinup sort of stood in for me.

I can’t thank AlphaWoman, Cooper, enough.  AlphaWoman because she is in so many wonderful ways.  This was a magnificent gift that must be paid forward.

I made the commitment to continue exercise boot camp, five mornings a week, four weeks on, one week off and so on. I did this despite having the muscle memory of a gnat–though they probably somehow learn; I looked up brain exercises for muscle memory and really couldn’t find any. Well they were all about exercising the brain and then I became really scared because what if my brain isn’t capable of learning anything new?

(Oh I never should have put myself through grad school in geriatric social work. Note to self: It was public policy you craved but you had to go for a program that granted licensing and you were all crazed on alternative living arrangements for when you turned 80 in 40 years. Something strange in that thinking that I don’t want to analyze.)

Greg the instructor is the first gym person who has ever tried to understand me and I so appreciate that. I don’t dare dream that I will actually be able to master much. That is strange as I have my various Academy Award speeches at the ready, my best selling money making book fantasies, and some that I’m not going to share.

This morning I couldn’t make it through all of boot camp. I became dizzy and it wasn’t even entirely or mostly the exercises. It was post nasal drip which made want to vomit though I didn’t.

I will be spending the weekend drowning myself in ginger tea. I buy it in New York as I love it and sometimes even make it fresh from ginger stalks that I freeze. I was going to make apple sauce with apple cider for the liquid and some fresh ginger or unsweetened dark chocolate cocoa, or both.

But if there’s one smell I hate it’s fresh apples. It’s made me ill my whole life. Yet apples cooked in any form is one of my favorite smells. That’s another thing I have never tried to analyze. It’s weird even for me. (Ended up making soda from my soda machine and adding ginger tea to it. Bubbly, tangy and no sugar or sugar substitute. Heaven.)

I wasn’t going to try to make latkes. I’m not a potato pancake kind of person. It’s not strange being in a place with few Jews for Chanukkah. When I was a kid it was a kid’s holiday, not one of the major holidays I have begun to know so well because I recount them to Bone each year. And because each high holiday has both its story and the story of how my family celebrated or cast our sins away or…..When you come from a family that wants to be traditionally Jewish in a strange way but one parent is an agnostic and the other an atheist and then they switch roles, holidays are a bit memorable.

I’m a believer. In something. Don’t know what yet and no all you great people of North Myrtle, I will go to your churches for the experience but I’m not convertible. My aunt describes herself as a Jewish Buddhist and maybe someday I will do the same. Though she’s been one for 30 years and somehow I can’t imagine at this stage of my life wanting to chant. But two months ago I couldn’t have imagined boot camp so…

Yesterday I looked for my menorah. It’s a Pia menorah. Frosted Lucite and I think beautiful. I found my salt lamps. The framed copy of my first cover story! (Thanks RW) There were five of six amazingly beautiful drinking glasses I bought at the most wonderful glass store on the Upper West Side, and a few other things that obviously aren’t as important to my life as I thought they were when I first got them. Except for the framed cover story of course. I didn’t find the menorah.

Since I didn’t find the menorah I can’t put up the Christmas lights I almost bought yesterday. I have a Pine Tree in front of my house that would be perfect. Oh maybe if I find a Star of David–in white as I can’t imagine using colored lights. I remember when they first began using all white lights around Madison Avenue and how both classy and majestic the aura around the streets became.

I love this time of year and in the most startling of all my admissions Christmas music is among my favorite. Good Christmas music, not “I saw mommy….”

But this week belongs to Adam Sandler [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrd9p47MPHg&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

I walk home from the grocery store. People always offer me rides and I refuse. Which actually isn’t nice when it’s somebody I know who really really wants to drive me. Yesterday I was carrying three bags filled with such things as a head of red cabbage, acorn squash, a bag of red onions (I’m into colorful vegetables) and much more. It was the first time I almost couldn’t make it and was too contrary to call a cab which would have been the sane thing to do.
I was a block and half away from home when a man was getting into his car. He offered me a ride and I gratefully accepted. I told him where I live–a major street, just a block….”I don’t know it. We just moved two months ago and I’m still feeling my way around.” “Oh where did you move from?” “We lived in Myrtle Beach for eighteen years.” I restrained from saying I thought he had to learn his way around The Grand Strand, and that my street abuts his. He then went into a long discourse about the differences between Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle. My favorite part of the discourse was when he said “I would tell you more but you’re such a lady.”

He’s right. Not about me being a lady particularly but the differences between the two cities. North Myrtle does everything it can to make living in it a pleasurable experience. Who can’t love a city that has festivals for every occasion it can think of and some more. Nobody gets the Irish/Italian festival but the music’s good.

While shag music still reigns here there’s more rock and soul. I don’t feel comfortable talking about Myrtle Beach’s problems as I’m such a lady.
••••••••••••••

My health insurance will go up $185 a month beginning in January.. I don’t qualify for the “healthy habits” discount as I take psychotropics. I’m trying to get off them but need a doctor to help and insurance here won’t cover that. Apparently being in therapy or taking medications for bioneurological problems aren’t healthy though many people would go off the deep end without them. It’s crazy because my answers to the other questions make me a great healthy habit person.

The letter said the insurance went up so much because of the dramatic rise in health care costs in the past year. I do believe they mean the cost of lobbying. I assume the dramatic rise is because they assume some form of health care reform will pass.

Though I will be paying almost $700 a month for health insurance much of my body and all of my mind isn’t covered. And as I have stated often I have never been seriously ill. It’s ironic that I was supposed to prove I haven’t been hospitalized as at the worst moments of my depression over NLD I asked to be hospitalized. I also asked to be sent to rehab. I would tell doctors it felt like an untreated brain injury. They would disagree as I’m so cognizant. Now of course it’s known to be a brain injury.

I pay as I have resources I would like to keep. This policy covered the most hospitalization and stuff like that I could find. In New York the limits were almost limitless. Not here.

While the odds of me being hit by a bus in North Myrtle are almost nil, being hit by a car is a distinct possibility. (I, being my father’s daughter, take uninsured drivers into account.)

I’m still glad I moved here. It’s a whole different world than the ones I’m used to and most of the time I love it.

I’m sick of NLD and sick of health care reform. Start or continue the party without me. There is much else I would like to focus on. And I’m a lady. I have no idea what that has to do with anything but I think it means I’m not supposed to be political. Oh can the whole lady bit.
•••••••••••

The whole time I was in New York I was obsessed with the color blue. My sister painted my old bedroom an exquisite blue, so beautiful I can neither really remember it or describe it. Yes it was weird when they first bought the parental manse but time and many changes have taken the weirdness away.
Lucia’s (the best of best friends) kitchen is a true sea blue, if your sea is in a very hot climate.

I couldn’t stop talking or thinking about redoing my living room. It’s pink and took ten coats to come out right. The downstairs bedroom is an ice blue. The study is turquoise and the guest room is teal. Obviously I love blue.

Then I came home and loved the coziness of the pink. I also said to myself: you’re so frigging crazy. Painting the living room is an excuse not to write. You spent the last two years moving. It’s time for some peace, and even more to get serious before you’re demented or somebody beats you to the weirdest story. Anyway you don’t have the money and every time you begin a home improvement project the stock market goes wild.

Yes, I’m the reason for the recession. Me, me and only me. It’s enough to make me ignore my house but I love it and weirdly I truly enjoy the “burdens” of home ownership.

The heating and AC guy was over today for the winter checkup. He said everything was perfect, and didn’t try to sell me something to enhance the performance. The exterminator came next. He didn’t tell me I had termites (I know he checks and gets a commission if he finds any.)

In New York both people would have tried to sell me a thousand things and would have had their hands out. OMG, was I supposed to tip them? I can’t help but think about the $1200+ I would be doling out this month in tips.

I enjoyed seeing people in New York. The city itself I wasn’t so crazy about. My last night I had a dream that I owned a cottage but couldn’t remember where. Great Neck? A cottage would be way too pricey. The Hamptons? In my dreams literally. It became a nightmare. I woke up and remembered; I do own a cottage, I do. In North Myrtle Beach SC. Oh the relief.

And I have a living room that will stay pink for a while. Hopefully the country will stay out of red.