She’s High Maintenance But Thinks That She’s Low Maintenance: Stolen from a TV season finale

This is a part of a poem that my dad saved.

Mary Poppins was a
junkie, and
if, you can’t
trust, Marry Poppins. who can
you
trust?

Remember how clever I thought it was when I wrote it.

‘m writing a memoir that’s framed around my father and my deepening friendship as I went through the world’s longest adolescence. It’s been fifteen years since he died. We worked through our problems several years before he died, and he apologized for many things several months before he died. That was strange as I’m the only one in the family who ever apologizes.

I make up for the rest of my immediate family, and my mom was a lady who loved him something fierce, but she taught me to laugh at him. Sorry Elka my sister who doesn’t read Courting but is told about it. Writing about our father and knowing that people who knew him reads this is strange.

No two people saw my father the same way. The thought of my father around a political blog scares me. When he graduated from NYU in 1939* he followed Sidney Hook to The New School where he somehow began to take Earnest Van Haag’s classes. Thus my father became an Existentialist, but I’m not sure that my Dad understood what the word meant.

He was a CPA who taught me compassion, ethics, and the need to always be productive. The last can be a curse. I know that my dad was a better than good CPA, poker player and investor, all roles that required excellent reasoning power. I know this as nobody could have his success and some of his clients without it, yet he was both obtuse and usually wrong in real life issues. I said “yes, daddy,” and did whatever I wanted to do

It was my father who was really into me finding my birth mother, and he did accidentally find the last piece of information. Of course I pursued it. Maybe I needed to meet her to understand the difference between judging a stranger only related to you by birth, and judging your older daughter for whom you would walked across an ocean

He was obsessive and had anger management issues. One night I stayed over and heard him going ballistic on an airline clerk. I was scared that he was going to have a stroke or heart attack

He did have one massive stoke that killed him. When I heard him yell at the clerk I realized that he had only recently stopped yelling at me like that. Sometimes I would scream back, more usually I would freeze. Still other times I would pretend to listen,

Doing this book is the hardest thing that I have ever done because I have to relive much. I pull up memories, good and bad, of my Dad and my family that would rather stay sepia tinged. The problem is that I relive feelings, both mine and my father’s. He’s easy that way. It’s not a depressing book at all, but I have to be in the moment then to remember

The book begins when I’m 25, it goes back in time but personally I think the interaction between adult parents and children is more interesting. That’s probably biased, and I know childhood stories can be fascinating. I even write some.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a parent early. I can’t imagine not having been a member of my family.
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This post was very different originally. I lost it. It was much better and for some reason had anecdotes about the summer of 1985.

It was the second time today that happened to me, and I think that’s telling me to get to the damn beach, or something. I have been hearing tons of dental implant horror stories. Have two more appointments, don’t know when yet and am very anxious to finish this.

At this second in time my only two priorities are to finish my dental work and to finish my book. I have many posts in the archives and many I never posted. Please remind me that blogging is my last priority right now. I hope that I can reach a point soon where I actually enjoy socializing without thinking after two hours about all that I have to do.
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I would like to thank everybody who commented on the last post. I prefer to just write a post and see what happens from there than to moderate comments. Only come in when it’s vicious. If I have accomplished anything with Courting, it’s civility

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The title? You thought that I was low maintenance? Which leads into; this month will be the end of two years spent at the dentist. It better be in the first half of the month. I am my father’s daughter.

Many of my photos upload “no thumbnail” and I can’t make them larger. Others won’t click larger in some browsers. Would make me so happy to put photos here. If anybody has any suggestions.