I was going to delete my previous post but what the hell? We’re all entitled to a sick pity party especially when the weather’s dreary, we’re congested, hungry and tired, and next week, we’re having minor surgery that’s only the beginning of a year of surgeries.

They’re not covered by insurance, not extreme make-over results, and we (me and my thousand persona’s) get to pay. Why am I doing this? Why am I in the second year of paying way too much attention to my health when it’s not going to make a difference.

Life will go on. I’ll still find reasons to be miserable. I’d go back into therapy–only was in it most of my life, but it’s expensive and I need a therapist who can cut through me and not end up wanting to be my friend. I’m very good at making friends.

It’s men I have trouble with. I know. Who doesn’t? Lesbians, and men who like women for two. Though even those groups must…

It’s been so long since I’ve been in a relationship I’m beginning to feel like a spinster. The funny thing is that I really like straight men. Some of my best friends…..I just can’t get into the dating thing. Always hated dating.

Once I fell asleep, for a sec, into a bowl of pasta. Fortunately I woke up just before hitting the pasta. Wouldn’t have wanted to get my chin dirty. Couldn’t have cared less about the date.

Another time at a very pricey restaurant, I was eating salmon in a sauce. The salmon tasted funny, but I thought it was my date that was off. Not. The next day I was walking into walls at work and somebody had to escort me into a cab where I barely missed throwing up on the cab driver.

I really don’t like dating. I like relationships. But I’m so bad at them I’m scared I’ll still have the same lousy taste I had ten years ago.

I liked relationships because I only stayed with men who were good in bed. I love sex. Gave up one nighters a long time ago; not worth anything and meaningless. Now that I think about it: Do I want a meaningful relationship or do I just want sex on demand–my demand?

Have to think about it. Might go for sex without strings. Might not. Oh well, I have at least six months before I can do anything. God does time go slowly; yet fast.

Sex and time combined equal the new black.

Can’t think of anymore meaningless cliches I can make up without taxing my brain that wants so badly to be put on autopilot.

Stumble it!

God help me, I used to be sweet. Sweet as in truly nice; sweet as in the whole world was going to be mine someday; sweet as in I understood that I had to wait my turn, pay my dues before the world turned up en masse at my door stop. Sweet as in I played hostess all the time because it was the right thing to do. I didn’t go so far as to befriend the homeless; but I came close.

I dreamed I lived in California and was indicted for some crime. I’m not sure what crime; it wasn’t murder or dealing drugs but some sort of felony. I wasn’t allowed out on bail because I had no substantial ties to the community.

Then the dream morphed to Centre Street in Manhattan, a street I know well from jury duty and Law & Order. I was happy. The judge was an old friend of the family. In real life he’s dead, but in the dream he began singing and tap dancing with a cane.

• You don’t deserve bail
• You don’t deserve to live in this society
• You blew all your chances to get married
• You never had a baby
• And you still expect me to
• let you roam the streets
• Tough
• I see you argue that you have
• substantial ties to the community
• So you own an apartment
• And have a little business
• And have never committed a crime
• against another person
• You think that makes you
• superior, or worthy of
• freedom
• when you don’t know the meaning
• of the word
• worthy people have chutzpah
• Worthy people go out and get what they
• want. They don’t wait to deserve things
• You are so lame.

He danced around me pointing the cane so that it ended in my eyes. Justice is blind, he said, and justice serves those who can manipulate it.

I tried waking myself up out of this nightmare; but instead became more immersed as he recited every one of my failings and how my parents only pretended to not care that I was best at turning down marriage proposals.

“You see this is what happens to girls who get cocky. Not that you acted cocky. You just thought that you had time. Your punishment is a life consigned to almost making it. To almost being published big time. Everyone around you will live good lives while you will watch. Because damn you, sweet is syrupy gobbledygook.”

Then I realized that this wasn’t a dream but real life. There might not be a hell up there or down below, but there sure is one on earth and I’m living in it. He changed the punishment to make it an example.

I have to watch the people in Africa and Arab nations who have nothing and are being mutilated and/or gang raped. I have to watch the bad everywhere. I can only intercede to help the rapists, thieves and murderers. That takes ten hours of the day.

For the rest of the day, I come back to the USA and have to sit at the feet of people who have made it through it chutzpah, wash their feet, dirty underwear, and do whatever things they want me to do–perfectly in two minutes flat. If not I don’t get to sleep. When I do get to sleep I’m only allowed to dream about my past and the roads I didn’t take that would have led to sure fired success. I can dream about the people I helped mutilate and kill; listen to their begging, and say “sorry, I’m only following orders.” I can understand and speak all third world languages. I’m not allowed to speak, understand, or dream in English–except for the commands, of course.

They wake me after an hour and I have to begin my tour of world hot spots, come back to the faux celebrities and do their bidding’s and start all over again.

My other punishment is eternal life on earth’s hell. I will watch from a distance the children I love grow up, make mistakes, and die eventually and I won’t be able to do a damn thing about it. They’ll probably die in the most horrid of ways just to make me feel even worse.

They finally told me my crimes. I cared too deeply about other people; I didn’t have a child–me who could have been a breeding machine. They showed me pictures of what my children would have looked like. They showed me movies of my lives with the various men I rejected.

• Snob–for the crime of rejecting decent but not exciting men you get another eternal life.
• Idiot–for rejecting exciting men you get to be their grand children’s slave
• For being truthful you get to help begin another holocaust
• For trying to spare people’s feelings you get to have one good dream a decade, and then forget it
• For never being in debt you get to see your family and friends from a distance in heaven all together wondering where y9u are. Then you get to watch them forget that you ever existed.

It doesn’t matter. Once you’ve licked Joan Rivers feet, there is no further place you can possibly go down. Actually there is; they invented a machine that makes me feel good for one minute a year and to remember that feeling. They invented another machine that probes my brain and makes sure I feel properly tortured.

And this all began because once I was genuinely sweet. Let my story be a warning and wake-up call to the three sweet people left on earth

Stumble it!

I just read about a woman who claimed to have a school superintendent license (oversees principals in New York) when in actuality she didn’t even have a license to teach school.

That’s chutzphah. I kind of admire it. I have a Masters in Social Work and a license issued by New York State and I haven’t exploited is as I don’t feel worthy–school, my internship, and the licensing exam were way too easy.

Yes I know that all of the above was supposed to give me confidence and a license to shrink, but I believe in Groucho Marx’s old adage, “any club that will have me….”

Of course when I graduated in 1996, a new college graduate could easily command $40,000. I, with 20 years professional work experience, a graduate degree and a license (then technically called a certificate) found myself fighting for a job that paid $28,000. Now I could hope to make $40,000 three years post Masters Degree. That’s totally screwed up.

I’m not going to detail all the good social workers do or how I put off going to social work school for many years because I hated the title. Thought that it sounded do goody and wimpy. Guess I still do.

But I will find a way to exploit my license. It’s the exploiters who get the gold in this country. Only they’re usually called visionary entrepreneurs.

Stumble it!

I’m tired of reading things by people who hate W that begin with (or somewhere in the middle state) “As a Christian..,” or “I am a Christian.”

I don’t get it. Does being a Christian make you a better person?

If I began something with “as a Jew…,” people would make immediate assumptions. That I support Israel, that I hate all Arabs, that I’m rich….
Until a few years ago my closest friend assumed that some people gave my father money to go to college when in actuality he had a math and basketball scholarship, but it was the depression so he had to support his parents and go to night school. My friend wasn’t sure what people, but she knew that Jews support each other. In the ideal we do, in reality….

I feel that if W wins the next election, and I assume that if he doesn’t win it with votes, he’ll find some way to win it as he did the last election, we’ll all have to sign loyalty oaths to our nation. That would be sick enough, but in it we’d have to sign our loyalty to Christ.

Maybe not in the next four years, but in the four years after that when another Bush becomes President. Soon our elections will become symbolic and Barbara and Jenna will each have their turn with Paris Hilton as Secretary of State because our country will really be run by some white men who have sworn allegiance to the new monarchy.

This was my nightmare last night. Just thought I’d share it, in the American way of sharing our feelings while not confronting our problems.

Stumble it!

Last night I came home, and called almost everyone I love. Nobody was home or answering his cell. I had never felt so lonely or uncared for, though I knew it wasn’t true. People have lives and their lives go on when I’m not around.

It’s just that everyone, including me, wants to feel special, and for a brief moment in time I felt particularly unspecial, unloved and uncared for.

We can’t read each others minds. I guess I was waiting for the welcome home phone calls I usually get.

I hate this time of year. September into October used to be an exciting time for me. I could live with the memories of 9/11. It’s history and horrible, and everything everybody has said more eloquently than me.

I have a harder time living with the memories of my mother’s death. Was I a good daughter that month? Was I bitchy or nasty to her? Why did it happen so fast?

When I walked into the funeral home and a woman screamed out “it’s the wrong daughter,” I felt it as a metaphor for my future though I knew that was irrational. I had never been the wrong daughter and certainly couldn’t have been after death.

But I began to understand why people stay with people they no longer love, and why people have children. Children make you go on and give you something bigger than yourself to care about.

It’s just that every September through October now I feel wrong; as if I were put on this earth by accident (I was) and have remained one despite all the good times I have had, and the people who have loved me.

I want to regain the joy I used to feel at the little things in life. I want to be me, but an even better version. I want to do worthy things; I want to do stupid things. I just want to do, and not feel hurt or pain at every little thing every September 11 through October 14.

Now I find it easier to stay in a shell this month so as not to offend people. I’m tired of that. I can try to change my behaviors, but the feelings stay.

I’m tired of making excuses for the friends who deserted me when I needed them so desperately three years ago. Yeah, we were all hurting, but my mother died and it was so not cool for me to mourn.

I’m tired of writing about this. I sound like a 33 RPM record scratched and played at high speed. I want to sound like I’m in a sound studio.

I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m jet lagged.

Stumble it!

I know that New York can survive without me, but can I survive without it? Last night I spent all night debugging my laptop and blogging instead of being out. Bad.

this morning the headlines in The LA Times said 9,000 people were arrested. Was early. Saw the famed Santa Monica farmers market being set up. Justly famed as I had never seen such beautiful vegetables and fruits. Any other time I would have stopped, taken some pictures with my photocam, and flirted with the farmers.

Instead I ran around looking for the real Times, The New York Times. Had breakfast at a restaurant I’ve been looking for, for some time. Incredible pumpkin pancakes. Read parts of The LA Times.

It was good. Columns made fun of the Bush girls, Republican reporters and even the saintly Laura. But I needed the real thing.

Passed some women who had set up a Kerry/Edwards table. Asked if there were any events this week. Didn’t know; didn’t know how to help all the people who stopped. I should have said let me person the table. That kind of thing is in my blood. But since I’m not registered in California they weren’t interested. (Bad of them, I am a registered Democrat and I live in Manhattan. I have much more at stake here. They should have understood that this is a matter of life and death to me.) They could have called my editor if they wanted to check me out—am on leave to write a book not about politics. Can’t do my political thing because I’m a reporter not a columnist. Don’t care anymore. It’s the battle of our lives.

Found a Times. Am going to read it now then beach walk to Malibu. First I will put on a coat of diamond chip–looks clear–nail polish–I brought from home.

Am going to wear my Pope looking at Bush button—”didn’t think he was that stupid.”

Stumble it!