Thanks for all your suggestions. I’m not using my favorite name which is biblical and not often used because I would like to save it for a future hero of my dreams, imagination and lustful thoughts.

It has to be a name that I like much, and I like strange or unusual names, or names that are common now but weren’t then. So I chose Zachary. Everyone but me will call him Zach because I have a weird dislike for nicknames. I don’t know why; it’s not something I have spent much time analyzing but obviously am now. So I will stop.

Zachary wasn’t the last man I lived with, loved or was engaged to. While I found it easy to love again, I found it difficult to trust, and was never sure if it was me or the man or both.

I promised myself that in writing our story I wouldn’t let new knowledge, wisdom or thoughts play a role. Am not sure that is possible so I might look at it from all angles. Maybe my only true talent lies in memory; in remembering how I felt at a certain second in time, and why. It is a talent that I hate as pain is remembered as much or more than happiness and in truth my life has had many more happy minutes than painful ones.

I am doing the thing that my writing teacher tried to wipe out of me; I am writing outside and around the story rather than diving into details. But in this new blogging medium I feel a certain peace and a certain knowledge that I can work outside of so called acceptable parameters.

Confusion races through my mind. Why are stories supposed to be told in a certain format? Who set that rule? Then explain how in one country in one century we could have a Faulkner, Steinbeck an Updike, , Capote, Thomas Wolfe, Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson and so many others who broke rules with gusto and love. Yes, love for form, beauty, charm, ugliness, detail, a million little and a thousand big things.

Words enchant me; words terrify me; words fill me with longing for other places, other people, other lives; anything not mine. I’m not an adjective person yet I remember the first time I read John Updike’s Rabbit Run and was blown away by feeling that I was with Rabbit at the basketball court. While I’m in the state of Pennsylvania (metaphorically) and on the subject of John’s; I remember John Ohara’s stories about boys becoming men, and their mother’s, younger than I am but oh so much older and dowdier, feeding them breakfast, and not giving great doses of wisdom. Dorothy Parker, how could I have forgot her? Big Blond has always been the most perfect story to me. Yet I’m not home, haven’t read it in years, and all I can really remember is the woman sitting at her dressing table. But the image of her making up and brushing her hair has stayed transfixed and fixed in my mind forever.

Do we live in an era when everything is supposed to be homogenized, easily digested, and from the same formula? If that were true than why is there room for so many different style blogs to be popular , and why do people seem hungry to read and learn from one another?

Maybe these are questions that will be laughed at by people who think that they know what makes good and/or sellable writing; maybe they seem juvenile. But I have spent so many years being told how to write that I sometimes forget to focus on why I write. I love the written word.

On this wordy note, I will end to spend tomorrow walking on the beach, not really thinking about anything and thinking about everything at the same time.

Then I will find a bookstore and hope that it has some books by Will Cather because I need a Southern woman writer fix. Maybe it should be Joan Didion because I am in California. Sometimes even reading is confusing.

Zachary didn’t read many books; he was more the alt newspaper type. But he was proud that I did.

Stumble it!

Just heard an ad for Moses Asch’s Folkway Collection. Every recording he has made is in the Smithsonian and can now be downloaded. Omigod I lived with a man who made two records for Folkways and can be forever downloaded. The future is here. Soon all our lives will be available forever somewhere.

Should think of a good name for the bum. After all this time, I no longer blame him for every problem that’s happened to me, or to the world.

Things I loved about the bum, in the beginning:
He cared about the world
He was compassionate
He had a sense of humor–though not the best sense of humor I have known in a man I lived with
He was adorable
We looked like each other
He told me the worse joke that I have ever heard, and I couldn’t stop laughing
He was filled with schemes and grandiose plans.
He borrowed $10 from the first man I had ever loved to take me out
He had two albums out before he was 25
His song lyrics were exceptional, she thought when in much lust
The first man I had ever really loved and a singer then just called Lucinda played matchmakers.
He adored my family
He made me see The Jerk
Underneath it all, he was the sexiest man I have ever known
He made me feel like the most beautiful sexiest woman in the world, ever.
He loved my friends, especially Lucia.
He tolerated double dating with Shelby. This wasn’t usual.
He introduced me to some really cool people.
He was from New Orleans, and he was Jewish. This was very important to my parents.
I knew a girl he had gone to high school with. We both hated her. My dad knew this girl’s father and grandfather and hated them.
He loved my family, and liked spending time with them more than I did.
He was very sexy.
He was a rebel rocker/folkie
He introduced me to the music of Tom Waits, and actually exchanged phone calls with him
Sex was magical.
He so believed in me.
He cared about my opinions.
He made me feel safe.
We could spend days alone together and never get bored
He tried to make me stop feeling guilty about everything.
We looked like we belonged together.
Sex was incredible.
He let the world know how he lusted for me.

I’m trying to put this story together in a coherent narrative because it deserves to be told languidly and with truth. He has a name. I can no longer call him the bum because I only called him that as a defense.

When I found out that he had killed himself, I went around for days, maybe weeks or months boring everybody with “I’m the bitch who killed…”
I wasn’t of course. People kill themselves out of a despair I can’t really imagine. Intellectually I understand that, but when you loved somebody, almost had his baby and then devoted a good part of your life too hating him, it’s hard to seperate yourself.

Bear with me while I work this out. This story is long,and I feel a responsiblity to tell it properly.

I might take breaks from it, and finally tell the story of how I became a charm school dropout. A couple of weeks ago I demonstrated for Lucia the proper way to bend down. Both knees creaked. Yeah we’re getting older. But we have had more interesting lives than Britney and Lindsey. Really.

I’m going to be away for a couple of weeks, but will have laptop. Then there is the first ever Savage family reunion. I just know that fave sis will tell everybody I have a blog and it’s called Courting….And then I’ll feel funny talking about them. But I will.

I’m trying to think of a good name for the bum; it has to be a ’50’s name; and suitable for a New Orleans Jew. This is the kind of detail that bogs me down, and stops me from actually getting to a second draft and submitting my work places. Open to all suggestions.

Stumble it!

Nice girls go heaven; Good girls go everywhere was embroidered on one of the pillows in the store on Madison. It was red with white lettering. Yes, I still can picture it perfectly, many years later. Even remember where it was in the store window. Didn’t want the pillow; it would have looked stupid in my studio, with archway that was really a room, and huge kitchen with medieval appliances. I’m not the embroidered pillow type.

But I promised myself that I wouldn’t turn into a nice girl when I turned 30, or worse, in my 40’s. In the burgeoning Korean groceries on Lexington, I would see shriveled women in their 40’s buying one can of tuna. I was sure that they shared it with the cat.

But after the years of the bum, I didn’t want to be in a relationship. One night stands had lost their luster; and I should have known better in a world where AIDS was first being known. But every six months or so I would be in a club; usually the original Lone Star on lower Fifth Avenue, dance the night away, and meet some handsome stranger who would be a stranger again in the morning.

Lucia and I went out often together. Our favorite restaurant/bar was One Fifth where the drinks were pricey, the appetizers very good, and the men exceptional. Since Lucia and I loved to talk to each other, men flocked to us. Sometimes we would acknowledge them; we would always let them buy us drinks. We really weren’t looking for men and that was the sole reason that they liked us, I think. But we weren’t unfriendly.

Okay I was much of the time. I have made up a list of the bum’s good qualities which I will post. Really need to give him a name. He’s been dead since 1989 so I could use his real name, but I would rather not. Blogging’s good for the bum and me. It’s letting me tell our story slowly and not in order. For years I could only write about the day we met: endless variations of one story.

It took a long time for me to realize that day was so perfect, so filled with life and hope, that I almost had to fixate on it. Ironic that I talk about the hours before we met the most. When my friend who was buying the club where a thousand careers were launched would approach me to tell me that this producer or that musician wanted to meet me, I would just look at him blankly. No wonder his pet name for me was Idiot. At work it was Princess Perfect, because I would tolerate imperfection in anybody but me. Sometimes I would think of myself as the Perfect Idiot Princess.

Of course I am talking about a boy (the soon to be owner) who recently asked me, which bridge he pretended to drive over with his eyes closed, when we were barely out of our teens. He’s still proud of that. Yes, it sometimes makes me laugh. Okay it can crack me up. When Little Luce was ten, she tried to pull that on me when were crossing Broadway, and I didn’t make her hold my hand for the first time, I didn’t fall for it. Her mother would do things like that too. Gawd, I must have auditioned my life long friends, in a past life, for stupid brilliance in playing practical jokes.

Lucia wasn’t in the club, on Sunday, May 20, 1979. She had moved out of town several months earlier though she would pay frequent nocturnal visits to New York during her away years.

Lucia and the bum liked each other a lot. Everybody liked the bum; he was charming. Charmed the pants right off me that first night; Gloria Vanderbilt jeans to be exact. I had stopped at Macy’s on my way to the club and had bought them, changed in the store, and had my Williewear Lavender tiny waisted, flared pants in the Macy’s bag along with the lavender tee with purple leather strings and beads around the piping. So I even had fresh clothes to wear the next morning.

I was a supervisor at Summit then, and we ran into my assistant who couldn’t stop laughing. He had suspected I was more than this ditsy but bright girl who could train anybody. We had hired over a thousand people in the past few months. Almost anybody who wanted the job could
have it. I was literally given the brain damaged and the not quite on this planet people to train; anybody decent would then be taken out so that I could have the next herd. While I was paid more money, I was held to the same standards as every other group, and trained all the supervisors in my division on new methods . Plus the normal supervisory duties. Still I loved my job; I felt like I was helping society, and many of my best friends still worked there or had worked there.

When we had been coders, a bachelor’s degree was the minimum requirement. We were all really actors, writers, and artists waiting for the big break. Hell, James (Angie Ralph’s husband) was waiting to be called to be a fireman. Fortunately he was laid off from Summit, and took the NYU three month computer course with some of the other guys. All are now computer consultants.

The bum belonged in the world that was New York in the late 1970’s. I have always blamed myself harshly for loving him when in reality I have been trying to rewrite history. Not just our personal history, but the history of our time. It’s something that I always accuse other people of doing.

Stumble it!

Whenever I go to Rafe’s hair salon, I feel a tinge of nostalgia. His salon now is just off Madison in the 60’s. I lived just off Fifth in the East 60’s. When I lived there I never thought of it as my ‘hood. It was the world’s hood, and I merely occupied 450 square feet of it. Yes, for anybody who reads me regularly, I am more into square feet than most people. Many of us don’t say how many rooms we have but how many square feet.

I was walking down Madison about five this afternoon, after having my hair colored. It was in the 90’s, and the avenue was empty. Took me right back to the late 1970’s when I was a fresh faced girl, already almost divorced, with a penchant for getting herself into trouble. But I had a baby face and a slightly ditsy manner; like a younger, brunette Goldie Hawn. I could hide behind my face; people always mistook me for innocent.

Madison Avenue was filled with old ladies stores then that closed for the month of August. There was a woman’s hat shop that made me laugh as the hats were so pricey and even more ugly. Another store made pillows; the kind of living room pillows with cute messages on them. “The queen sits here.” I laughed even more at that store. There was a store that sold everything you would need to ride a horse, except for the horses. I’m sure that the owner could have helped you with that one. On my corner was an art gallery that was managed by two older twin sisters who dressed and wore their hair identically. Their bouncer/everything else employee was a large imposing man with a shaved head years before it was fashionable.

Madison Avenue was quiet then; never busy at night, but in August it was as deserted as a European city was then. Though I had only moved off Fifth to placate my father, I was charmed by the old fashionedness. It was so not me, yet I had quickly become a part of the fabric of the neighborhood. Everybody loves young girls, though I didn’t quite consciously understand that. I did understand that it was the end of an era; my generation was beginning to leave its mark.

We were going to be the trendsetters and the leaders. all of our lives we had been told how special we were. We were baby boomers who had never known a depression. The people I knew experienced hard times from a distance. No, our hard times were different; or maybe talked about more. I had grown up with at least three kids who had killed themselves. Maybe that had always been covered up before.

I was actually thinking all this while looking in store windows. Don’t know if I could have lived there if Lalique had been there then, though it’s not my favorite glass at all. When I’m on a glass quest, I will find beauty in almost all glass

Though I was engrossed in memories, I am a New Yorker so I’m always looking at the people. Norm saw me first; he look bewildered as if he knew me, but wasn’t sure from where. I change my appearance bimonthly; my hair has a life of its own. There was a reason somebody had once called me electric haired chick. My face has never changed; but I constantly change the amount and type of make up I wear.

Omigod, that’s Norm. Sheet, he must have only been in his 40’s then; always thought he was old. Right he had white hair, and daddy who must have been much older didn’t. My father had a moustache; always thought that Hal Linden would be perfect to play him in The Savage Family Chronicles, or Pia tells almost all, but only about herself, not really.

“Hey Norm, it’s Pia Savage.”
“Oh it is you; you haven’t aged a day.”
“Liar.”

If I had to run into my former landlord, it was good that we met when I came out of the hair salon. His face was doughy. for the first time I realized that he had once been magnetic looking. Though it was way too hot, he was wearing a summer suit of raw silk without a tie, and obviously soft black Italian loafers. I was wearing an orange Talbot’s tee, a blue denim pencil skirt, and blue with orange Merrel’s sports sandals. What can I say? I live on the Upper West Side, and Talbot’s does make the best tees. We talked for awhile, but all I could think about was how my life has been defined through my hair and my clothes. When I had moved into Norm’s building, I wore vintage 30’s and 40’s dresses, and almost the complete Diane Von Furstenberg line for work; at night it was vintage or all black with metal jewelery for the complete punk look.

Now almost half my wardrobe is from Talbot’s; the other half is way cooler, but I always find myself putting on the Talbot’s clothes. I like the quality; it does feel right. But it’s Talbot’s.

Stumble it!

It’s been brought to my attention by myself and several people I respect that lately I have been attacking without being provoked. Sort of like a poorly trained pit bull. Only said pit bull would probably be more discrete.

There were many reasons for my absurd attack mentality. Do believe that political blogging wasn’t good for my soul.

I must have been brought up in parallel universe. In the world I come from arguing about politics is as natural as breathing. But we didn’t personalize it; we didn’t tell people that they were mentally ill because they disagreed with us. Nobody accused us of hating our country because we disagreed with a president or a policy. Well there were the Viet Nam years but that was different somehow. And there wasn’t blogging. I never had to add to all my statements: “I support the troops.” Because why wouldn’t I?

I love blogging. Think it’s an incredible medium and we haven’t begun to scratch the surfaces of how it can possibly help communicate. That’s communicate, not put down people because you disagree with them. Though I began blogging last August I did it rarely until November. Now I understand why a person could critique my workshop writing so harshly and thoughtlessly. She was a blogger.

She did cross everything out save one paragraph about sex and said, “there’s nothing else worth reading.” She also crossed everything out in another submission and said “this is worthless.”

True story. Yes we live in New York; yes only the most fit survive. Guess what? I continued to make excuses for her to my closest friend in the class. We all need to feel validated; but do we need to feel it at somebody else is expense? Did she think that critique was in anyway helpful?

I like people despite….I’m always the one making excuses for their behavior. It drives my friends crazy. Lucia once said “she’d find an excuse for Hitler if they ever met.” Never and she knows that. But I have a need to understand and like people. Its the frigging Social Worker in me.

And you know what? I like that part of me; I like getting to know people from all over the world and the country. I have discovered that red state people can be even better than blue state people.

I love discourse. Just like it to be done respectfully. Don’t like my words changed; don’t like comments that I’m responding to changed to make me look stupid. So I turned into a pit bull.

I do live in a city that’s running on empty. It was obvious to me for a long time. Then I read the 7/25/2005 issue of The New Yorker, now I’m more scared than ever. We pay the costs of 9/11 over and over again. We can’t afford to. I remember the days of Ford to City: Drop Dead which he never actually said, but meant, and it did make a great newspaper headline.

Private conservatory money and old bonds make the city look good. What’s going to happen when people don’t want to give their money to this city anymore? Does anybody want to buy bonds that pay four percent–at the most? Yes damn it, this does affect me. And yes, I am hung up on if 9/11 truly was America’s Tragedy then all of America should pay. Except for service people in Iraq and their families. They are paying; many more in sheer numbers, are paying the ultimate price than did firemen in New York, and their families made millions.

This is a blanket apology to anybody and everybody I might have unwittingly hurt. Doesn’t include those people who oh so love to goad me. Won’t work anymore. But I’m really not giving political blogging up because of you. I’m giving it up for two far more important reasons: 7/7 brought everything home. No it didn’t change my politics. It did help me realize (once again) how precious life is; and therefore I’m going to spend the summer concentrating on things that are personally enjoyable and important to me.

And yes I sure do support the troops. I would list all my blogging buddies who have husbands or sons in the military, but that would be a rather long list. Those wives and mothers know that I care, and frankly, their opinion of me is more important to me than any person on the radical religious right.

My love for this country has grown since I began blogging, and have been meeting so many wonderful people who don’t live in my city, state, or in certain parts of California and Southern Florida. I was very provincial when I first began blogging. I’m not anymore.

I reserve the right to dissent at any time. End of speech.

Stumble it!

September, 1978
Ellie invited me to dinner at the studio she shared with Lucia. I didn’t really like Ellie. She was a project: recently separated diabetic from another planet, badly in need of friends. This was a typical conversation.

“Hey Ellie, how are you?”

Ellie, eyes glazed over, hair in need of brushing, stooped posture would then mumble.
“How do you mean how am I? Physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually?”

I would then put my fingers through my hair, split a few ends and try to think of a witty yet appropriate reply. As there was none that I could think of, I would move onto a less open-ended question:
“What did you do last night?”

Ellie would actually think about this for awhile before mumbling a reply. When she coherently invited me to dinner, I was so shocked that I accepted on the spot. Then I spent the next week trying to think of a way to get out of it. But….

The apartment was a top floor walk-up on West 94th Street between Amsterdam and West End. It was Lucia’s; while tiny it was brightly decorated with posters of yellow cabs going up one wall, and on top of the bottom bunk bed. There was a loom and weaving Lucia had done. Though I had worked in the same room as her for a year, I had always been a bit star-struck in her presence.

The bright colors, minimal but nice furniture, the weaving, photographs, and hand painted objects suddenly humanized Lucia. it turned out that she had made dinner; fish in a tomato sauce. Being a good guest, I brought some pot, and Lucia rolled them into the most beautiful joints I had ever seen. That was a feminine art I had never been able to master.

That, and some wine, began us talking:
“Lucia is it true that you dated Mike O’Byrne last spring?”
“Yes..?” Lucia looked perplexed.
“Just broke up with him. We were keeping it quiet since he got his big promotion. ”

My friend Shelby had moved back to Miami for a couple of months and the girlfriends I had made at work weren’t soul-mates yet. But something in Lucia’s eyes told me that I could talk to her.

“You were dating him? for how long?”
“Since June. Waste of three months.”
“How come nobody knew?”

Rumors traveled faster than I could chug a 48 ounce glass of Diet Coke when hungover, at Summit. Once when very drunk the prior March, after the layoffs, I had found myself in bed with the project manager. Yes I had blacked out. Nor am I proud of that or what I did. I looked at him, screamed, found my clothes, quickly got dressed, and ran out of his apartment. While I didn’t tell a person, he told at least ten. I gave up trying to understand men after that. Lucia knew of that incident of course.

I decided that I could tell Lucia the truth.
“He should come with a sign that says ‘hi, I’m Mike. I’m beautiful and smart. I hate kissing and love to dress up in ladies lingerie, but I’m still the worst f–k in town.’ Not that wearing ladies lingerie should make him good.”

Lucia couldn’t stop laughing. That was the first time I was to hear:
You’re so funny; you’re so funny,” as Lucia waved her perfect arms. The perfect exterior was just a facade. I could tell from how hard she laughed, while waving her arms in a strange sort of disco duck dance. I loved this girl; my line wasn’t that funny.

Ellie went to bed while Lucia and I talked until the sun came up. Mike was the most significant of the guys we had dated in common from our job, or friends at work. We went through the list giving each points for things that I would rather not repeat.

Turned out that she was giving Ellie a free place to stay, while she got herself together. Thus began one of my biggest motto’s. “Others talk; Lucia does.”

A few months later after Ellie began turning tricks at Under the Stairs, a jazz restaurant a block or so away from their apartment, I coached Lucia in the “you have to leave, Ellie, speech.”

Lucia is truly a good person, and sometimes that really angers me because gives everybody who needs a place to live a space during the most desperate hours, unless they would begin turning tricks, which isn’t too likely among our age group now. I often still call her Saint Luce. What saves her from sainthood? Many things that I will eventually get to.

It feels like we have had one continuous phone conversation for almost 30 years, and another in person conversation.

While I was in awe of her looks and aura, she was in awe of mine. We should have learned then to appreciate our selves. But no. We had to learn the even harder way.

Stumble it!

This Fish needs…and I share a birthday. Until I began blogging I had only known one person, Katie Ralph, who shares my birthday. Katie was born six days after Live Aid, in 1985. Katie’s dad, James, Lucia and I had worked together; Angie his wife and Lucia had been best friends since sand box days. Then I came along.

James, Lucia and I worked in an office that took up a floor, in a large building that overlook St. Paul’s Church. We knew it for its beauty and some other things I have mentioned elsewhere, and will not repeat today. We had no idea that it would one day become a symbol of hope for the world; then it was our personal devotional center no matter what our religion.

Self: make up another 100 categories and actually put all the posts in all the pertinent ones and I can have Courting Destiny: The Index Honestly that would make me very happy. Then I would know exactly what I wrote ,and how to order Courting Destiny: the series. I want fiction indexed because if I read something about a character on page 5, and on page 222, there’s a flashback to that scene, but a discrepancy, I will not only remember it but be bothered enough to look for it. This is a strange characteristic for somebody who never filed a paper correctly in her life until plastic file envelopes came about. A plastic file for everything! And everything on computer!

Back to story please. Lucia worked across the floor from me. People kept on telling me that the two of us had much in common and I should get to know her. Lucia’s tall; her hair was long and perfect; she was lanky with legs that went on forever, and breasts that our friend Patrick said “looked up to god.” I’m shorter and curvier. Nobody ever believes it but I really am shy. People would have to come to me.

Our work room was divided into groups of fifteen with a supervisor. It was a temp job coding documents in a mega series of lawsuits. Thirteen years, two companies and many promotions later, I would leave the industry, but I had no way of knowing that it was anything more than getting paid to make new friends then. Everybody was around my age. It was college redeux, and once again I was a star.

I would walk around the room often and stop to visit groups filled with guys who thought I was hot. Even I believed it sometimes. James was a guy’ s guy. Still is actually. We both thought the other was hot.

Now that we’re family; we laugh about it. We’re not family as in blood relations, but as we’ve known each for so long, we’re never not going to know each other.

Summit Inc, our company, was a straight girl’s dream. While James was living with Angie, the seven other straight guys in his group were all very single.

I had never dated so much in my life. As in college I felt like a kid in a candy store with too vast a selection to chose from. While I have always realized how lucky I was, I never quite understood why. I was constantly telling myself to be extra careful about what I wished for.

part two: will be a story about how I became friends with Lucia.

As often as I have had times of extreme popularity, I have had times of who is this girl? Why is she so weird? Not talking about Junior High and not afraid to talk about it.

I did a special weekend post for Bring it on! It doesn’t sound like anything you would expect from me. Maybe the later part. Read it please!

Stumble it!

I was in my favorite full service, beautiful, incredibly expensive pharmacy on the Upper West Side this afternoon. Somebody began talking about the dearth of full service pharmacies where everybody knew you; treated you with great respect; and took insurance. I heard somebody respond that the only other really great one had been on the East Side across from her old pharmapsychiatrist. Four people asked her, who turned out to be me, the doctor’s name; three had gone to him; one wanted to but he was too expensive. Nobody looked at us as if we were crazy. In New York, 2005, psychotropics can be a necessity.

I fall into the category of early adapter. Okay not for MP3 players, but I have DVR’d everything for years. Gave up TIVO as it was too distracting. I would make it guess the name of obscure Albanian films; it was my type of a computer game. So I was a real early adapter in the psychotropic market and that makes me just like two thirds of the people who live around me.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody that I live in Manhattan, am generally liberal, am a cultural Jew, and am a reverent believer in the Constitution and the First Amendment.

However I have never judged a person by their politics though lately on that other blog I feel like I have been reacting too comments to vehemently; here too sometimes so I’m taking a political blogging break. Courting is my child and…You know I really like people who have strong beliefs. I don’t care if they match mine or not as long as they’re not off the wall. I have been categorized as an off the wall, liberal/Socialist/Communist French loving idiot and that doesn’t bother me at as it’s so far from the mark.

I live the American dream, know and appreciate it. It took me a year to find a coop. I rejected one in the Beresford; much larger than this one, it needed much renovation and faced trees on the street. It was across from Central Park, and I had lived on 63rd off Fifth for many years. I wanted to live near Riverside Park and the Hudson, in an apartment with city views.

Of course Jerry Seinfeld moved to the Beresford the next year. Read that after he passed his board interview, he jumped up and down, and screamed:
“I’m a Beresford boy. I’ve always wanted to be a Beresford boy….” Continue Reading »

Stumble it!

Last night was the first night in weeks I didn’t need air conditioning. Hate room air conditioners; love my Sharper Image bladeless fans with Ionizers and a mode that sounds like ocean waves and lulls me to sleep.

Last week I dreamed that I was living in a house in Queens with a carpenter; a really beautiful Tudor house with much glass and the carpenter looked like a combination of Jon Bon Jovi, Kevin Bacon and Daniel Day Lewis, a few years ago. He broke up with me. I’m not sure if I really woke up and told myself to redo the dream, or if I was sleeping when I said that. But I redid the dream and guess what? The outcome was the opposite, and actually went 20 years into the future to show that we were still together.

Last night I dreamed that I was in a room with Woody Allen, doing everything possible not to have sex with him. It was kind of sickening. Have no idea what these dreams mean. Not sure I want to know what last night’s dream meant.

On another subject entirely recently I have been reading many new or new to me blogs. Frogma is one of my favorites, because it’s about kayaking on the Hudson River which is my backyard. Not that I see it from my apartment view; but I do get the salt air. Here’s to somebody who lives the total Manhattan experience.

Stumble it!

I was just going to leave yesterday’s post up for the rest of the summer, and change the date, but, uh, not only would I be doing something stupid, I would be aging way too rapidly.

THANKS ALL OF YOU FOR HELPING MAKE MY BIRTHDAY GREAT!

Thank you all; never had an Internet birthday before, and I recommend it. Wasn’t going to do, but it’s a great experience, and one that I hope to repeat many times.

Last night was so great! Yes, it really was. But before I get to that, I think being born in the midpoint plus a few days of July is incredible. When I was a kid, I had to have my school party in June because, yes, we didn’t have school in July. I would also have my personal birthday party for my ten or so best friends in June. Fave-sis and I went to sleep away camp for six weeks each summer. It always seemed to begin on July 21 or 22nd.

While I logically knew that my parents didn’t arrange this, it felt like they did. Or, more probably, my dad told me that they did, and I believed him. We would have our extended family party on my birthday with whatever friends happened to be home. Then in September we would have a private just the four of us adoption day dinner at my favorite restaurant, Patricia Murphy’s, in September. Patricia Murphy’s had a giant aquarium, and beautiful gardens. They also had women dressed in colonial costume who walked around giving popovers and sticky buns. I only cared about the popovers which I thought were magic.

Though I had been adopted in November, it was too close to my sister’s birthday, and my parents wanted her to have the full birthday experience without my big sisterly interference.

I have to admit that I still believe the entire summer is my birthday, and nobody can ever dissuade me of that feeling. Summer’s always been magical; it’s the time of the year that anything can happen as long as it’s fun and preferably near or on a beach. I will never outgrow the feeling that summer brings great adventures and promises of future happiness. I love seeing summer through the eyes of kids–real and grown up ones.

Yesterday was the first time I didn’t buy every paper or look up my horoscope everywhere I could on the Internet. Think that means I will have an uncharted year. Know it doesn’t work that way but leave me to my delusions please; or maybe my illusions; or my truth. Fave niece made me a card that she was so nervous would be late, it arrived three days early and asked three times if it had arrived on time. That alone would have made my birthday.

Yesterday was the most oppressive day of the year. It was so oppressive that the heat went straight into my nose, but last night, the humidity broke just a bit to make it tolerable. Had been thinking of going to Cafe Luxembourg, Compass or another very trendy neighborhood restaurant. But I was in a weird mood, probably brought about by going out too many times during the day. Didn’t even try to make reservations. Continue Reading »

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