I moved the very long preamble to the post to the bottom. I keep adding to it. This might end up being my New Years post, nah….I linked to an article on the Jessica Cutler lawsuit because it reflected my post
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This is fiction. It’s written fast and not edited. The microwave timer goes off after 25 minutes and I stop. Figuring out names takes too long as I love and find meaning in names

I find myself more and more enamored with fiction. Next week I’m going to give myself an hour so that I can do a lot of dialogue. Subject to change of whim or priority of course.

Manhattan, present day

He hadn’t come last night. That was all she could think about as she paced her living room. He hadn’t come nor had he called, and all his numbers went straight to voice mail. They had missed their reservation at Jean George, a restaurant that he liked.

She hated anything in any Trump building on principle, and this was in that really obnoxious hotel across from the Time Warner Mall, a company she hated but a mall she could actually spend time in. The food was great, the room was airy and pretty in a modernistic way, but she hated the building. He made fun of her hates, and principles, and was always asking where her PBS bag was.

She should have been scared but she was angry. He had done this too often before. In the eleven months they had been together again, he had stood her up three times.

She wasn’t sure that the first time counted as he had been stuck in an elevator, and couldn’t leave the pregnant woman who had been in the the car with him until she had her baby in Lenox Hill Hospital. Her water had broke in the elevator, and he felt responsible. It had made the news. The woman had called him “my hero.” He hadn’t delivered the damn baby. She had bought a baby present for them, attended the bris and once a month they would visit the woman and her baby. Her husband seemed to be another piece of furniture. Was she?

He was so proud of that damn baby. He acted as if he had conceived and delivered him. Yet when she asked if he regretted not having kids, he said no. She wasn’t sure of that. He was still attractive. Many younger women would love to give him a kid. She never let herself think of things like that.

The second time he had fallen asleep. his phone had been off, and he hadn’t charged his cell. That counted. He had done similar things too often in the past.

The third time his car had broken down on the top of a hill, and the phone battery died. That was her favorite. He could summon help, he could stay at a motel while the car was being fixed but he couldn’t remember to call her.

She wasn’t going to take him back. Not this time.

She was sick of being treated as if she were a play thing. When they were young it was different. Cheating by mutual consent, she called it. But they had divorced and made new lives for themselves.

Eleven months ago they had ran into each other at the AMC 68th Street, as they came out of different theaters. They had laughed, talked and spent the night at her place. It seemed so natural to pick up again after fifteen years. Both were newly divorced, again. She hated dating. He excelled at it but claimed that he didn’t like it. She never believed that.

They had an easy rapport. But when he wanted her to move in with him she refused. It was more prudent to wait. Maybe this was a rebound thing. Maybe they had unfinished business from their first go around. No maybe about it. There was much they had never discussed.

If she went to his apartment she would feel like a fool whether or not he was there. If she went to his studio, she would feel even more stupid. When she was a teenager she would look for him everywhere. Once she found him with a girl who looked exactly like she did. All they could do was stare at each other.

She hadn’t given him choices then. It was come back to her or die. Now she wasn’t going to give him a choice. Only this time she was going to break it off forever. She didn’t need a man who couldn’t remember to call.

They hadn’t been teenagers in over half a lifetime. She had never been so glad that she refused to live with him. Maybe he wasn’t cheating, but he wasn’t respecting her. That was cheating in a way.

The phone rang. She snapped at her mother and then felt foolish. It wasn’t her mother’s fault. Maybe it was. Her mother had always liked him, and after they began to date again, made no attempt to hide how much more she liked him than Roger. No it wasn’t her mother’s fault so she forced to listen to fifteen minutes of minutia about the baked apples her mother had made for desert the night before for the ladies after the mah jong game. Her mother used to make fun of women who played mah jong before she had become a widow.

Widow, something she would never become. Twice divorced was good enough. She put on her leather jacket, and got ready to take a walk. When he called she would break up with him. She would never date again, would volunteer at PBS, and have her mother teach her mah jong.

She thought that she should be a bit scared but was too angry. She wasn’t sure if she was angry about now or then. Why do men love unresolved issues? Why do they think that they can just pick up again, and this time it will work if they won’t talk about what went wrong before?

Though she had never been big on men who wanted to talk about every little thing. They tended to care too much.

She went to Riverside Park and walked downtown until she was almost at Chelsea Piers.

Her cell played his song “bad luck in dancing school.” She turned the phone off.
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I did wonder if there would be Warren Zevon ringtones. But that’s the beauty of fiction. Who cares? And they would be nice.

When I heard Bush speak about Ford today, I lost it. Couldn’t stop laughing when he talked about how Ford helped a divided nation heal. Is he delusional? The people of this country haven’t really been divided since Katrina but the federal government is a joke, and seems to be seriously intent on dividing this country again. We must get out of Iraq and soon. New Orleans must be rebuilt. New York rebuilt itself without the help of the federal government. People should remember that. Bush should know that.

New York is all beautiful glitz, especially now for the holidays. Stores are expensive. Basic necessities of life are much more expensive than elsewhere. Yet most people get three percent raises a year. Wall Street artifically inflates the “salary” economy by a bazillion percent. My apartment expenses alone are going up 40% in January. That’s frigging major. I think about leaving so much because I don’t want to go broke eventually, and won’t somewhere else. If I buy an apartment in Santa Monica, my monthly carrying charges would be much lower. The apartment cost would be similar. Food–let’s not even go there.

President Bush didn’t do one damn thing to help New York. Let’s never forget the terrorist risks Montana has. Like my coop, the city of New York digs deeper and deeper each year. The only thing that’s saving it is Wall Street and the housing market. I’m proudly doing my part. While my expenses are going up so much, my income is remaining the same.

According to Technorati, I’m an “A” list blogger. I don’t care. That and subway token won’t get me on the subway. What I did find interesting was that in their sample blog list, they didn’t have one “A” list personal blogger.

Personal blogging is writing without a safety net. It’s not easy to talk about a life without hurting people, and maintaining some privacy, dignity maybe. I’m not an entertainment, tech, prod placement, political–well that’s debatable but Courting does take some courage.

I think that pure personal blogging is losing its edge to blogs with images, youtube videos, songs, and that’s not what I’m about. Though I love photography, it’s something I do for me, more than for my blogs. I do enjoy podcasts and will do more of them. At my own time, when I’m ready–I had to delete two Imac podcast photo blogs that I spent days on because every image in my computer seemed to be captured.

I don’t want to be a “high ranked, high authority blog.” I want a blog that people care about. It did take me a long time to understand that people actually read my blog. I so so much appreciate that.

I wrote this before I read about the law suit against Jessica Cutler Her blog is as really nothing. She can’t talk about her day to day life. That leaves her with nothing to say, and the quality of her blog reflects that. It’s being able to work around the perimeters of “I had sex with,” that separates writers with a good blog from bloggers with just a blog selling slutty stuff.

I, sans laptop will be away for eight days in the middle of January. It will be the first time in four years I won’t have a computer on my back in an airport. Before I blogged, I was a reporter and seemed always to be in the middle of a story when scheduled to go away. I pulled two all nighters the nights before my friend’s wedding in the Bahama’s. I’m told I was very funny. I don’t remember and I wasn’t under any substance influence. No I do remember. I get punch drunk tired and become the queen of oxymoron’s.

How can I go away after complaining about my expenses? Not going broke yet, and am single. My family and friends have teenage, college, grad school, and maybe living expenses coming up for their kids. I don’t. Sometimes being single and childless is incredible.

I was going to trash my gmail spam which is essentially every company and organization except for guilt inducing ones,plus normal penile errection things, online poker, people telling me I had won a million dollars the usual, and only had 367 in 24 hours. This is three to four times less than normal. I assume companies and orgs are on vacation plus real spammers. For some reason this does warm my heart.

I don’t have the heart to put in Spam, spiritual centers and Democratic politicians, but the thought has crossed my mind. I have gotten this youtube video from John Edwards almost hourly for the past six hours so here…

And I saw Dreamgirls at the Zeigfeld and it was so much better than any Broadway show I have seen in years. No I didn’t see it on Broadway. Saw Thank you for smoking, and after all I have learned about product placement since blogging, wow. Would have been great anywa.

Stumble it!

This article is my worst nightmare come true, and last week I would have been beating myself up about not staying at a secure job with benefits.

Elvira Black has a great shot of Edgar Allen Poe’s house in the Bronx. The poem is pretty good also. The Bronx is one of the most misunderstood counties in the country. It’s small yet has everything including incredible apartments that look like building on Central Park West with good reason. Same architects. It’s a wonderful place to explore, and if winter continues being like spring, maybe I will. Then again…

obsessive computer use has yet to be classified as a clinical mental illness, such as alcoholism or eating disorders. Marathon Web surfing and electronic gaming sessions could be a symptom of a pre-existing mental illness, psychologists say: A person suffering from depression may spend countless numb hours flipping through Web pages, much as they might spend sleepless days lying in bed. A person suffering from an anxiety disorder may bunker themselves in the anonymity of online postings and instant messages to avoid dealing with people face-to-face.

If you’re worried that it won’t be classified as one don’t worry. Nobody has interviewed me yet about it.

Personally I think that an Internet obsession can be a good thing, and create new good behaviors such as disciplined writing that serves to help a person write things for profit if she doesn’t want to go broke blogging.

There are times in a persons life when she needs a blog and an audience. I will never forget 2006, the year I made some of the best friendships of my life. Blogging can be maddening. It takes time. And the interaction is as real or more real than real life friendships because boundaries can be broken.

This isn’t about Internet sex. It’s about Internet friendships, and the boundaries are the questions that straight males and females don’t usually ask each other. Women’s magazines love having male columnists so that women can better understand men. That’s bogus. The interaction between straight people of opposite sexes in blogging is real.

Yes I have very recently focused too much on Aspergers in my blog, my real life, and my other writings. But I needed to come out of denial about it. Many miscommunications with people in emails, mostly of political ilks, helped me realize that while I had mastered in face and phone communication when I was eighteen, except at large family gatherings, I couldn’t interpret many emails.

People with Aspergers are supposed to miss nuances and I often do, generally comically. But I need nuances to understand things fully, and many people don’t write with nuance. Yet other people are so good that they write in layers, and I love that.

I was falling into the symptoms of Aspergers, and believing that I suffered dramatically from each one. Stream of consciousness writing even if it wasn’t on that subject helped me deal with it, though at the time I felt as if I were breaking down.

Now I’m at a point where I have to be more structured so I have turned to short timed fiction. That microwave timer goes off in twenty five minutes and I’m through. Okay the breakdown was last week, but that’s almost last year, and it was structured

At times emailing becomes overwhelming and I apologize if I haven’t answered some or more. I used to be email obsessed but that was so mid 06.

Internet obsession has its purposes. I would assume that it’s healthier for a peson to sit at a computer all day than to lie in bed. Though any true bipolar wouldn’t be at a computer, during depressive episodes. Maybe this is a way for a person to come out of a situational depression that’s healthier than medication.

Personally I’m much more familiar with anxiety. I went through seven oral surgeries in my first twenty months of blogging, and blogging helped me be a model patient. I’m becoming less anxious in many ways, except when I’m overwhelmed.

I saw my new comforter in daylight this weekend as I gave myself permission to relax and to read, something I need to do to feel whole. My new comforter’s beautiful thanks and so was the view from the bedroom.

But I almost never get tired of the act of writing. There are so many stories that I haven’t told or have alluded to. I can write them now and write them well because I have had two years of blogging and bitching about blogging and everything.

It’s been a high colonic, or purging of my mind, and I have taken some of you on the innards journey. We have all survived. Uh, that was one of the grossest sentences I have ever written.

If I never knew that I had Aspergers does that make it less valid? Actually yes as I never lived an Aspergers centric life. I don’t plan on beginning one now. Though it feels so good to give into staying home sometimes and not feeling guilty.

Blogging about it gave my real life family of friends and relatives time to adjust and understand that I want to leave New York not because I want to leave them but because I just see it as healthier and cheaper for me.

My book is totally not Asperger-centric as that would be to deny my life of its many many experiences. Things happened. I might think so outside the box I’m in another crate. That doesn’t make my experiences less valid, less real, less interesting or anything else. As always I reserve the right to change my mind.

I don’t do New Years resolutions because they beg to be broke and if you read Courting you know I don’t do well with them–especially my own rules for me. I set goals and don’t tell. I’m a bit behind in some areas and ahead in others.

Blogging can be an obsession but it can be a much needed one that does serve to make a person more productive, more whole, more in tune with people, with trends and politics.

I don’t want it to substitute for magazines, newspapers and books Call me environmentally unfriendly but nothing will substitute for them to me. Blogging’s just a new way of communicating that lets us explore so many subjects with so many people.

People will always find outlets for negative behaviors, unless there’s something healthy about going broke buying from the QVC channel, going broke at a casino or through a bookie. People will always find new ways to embrace disfunction but don’t make this into an all or nothing because it’s so not.

My real life friends and family thought blogging to be the sickest of all behaviors. Then I got some mainstream publicity and suddenly blogging wasn’t that sick. Frankly, it’s helped my relationship with all the people in my real life.

I’m more sentimental about family and more willing to compromise. Learned that from many bloggers. Thank you. My friends have been spared having to listen. They can read, or one can read and discuss it with others.

To succeed in anything takes persistence, luck and talent. Blogging is one place where that can come together. Sometimes, even I have begun to believe in me. Okay I believe in myself about half to two thirds of the time. That’s a hell of a lot better than it was.

Stumble it!

Here’s a link to Frank Rich’s column on “you” being Time Magazine’s person of the year. Personally I felt that I should have been singled out, but I’m sure that every single person felt the same way, hence “you.”

The thing is that “you” doesn’t leave room for individuality. “You” is a huge assembly line of people who are interested in Miss Nevada, Brittney Spears breasts, and really not much else according to a quick Technoarti search. I know enough bloggers to know that they’re not interested in that at all–well, maybe, some are interested in Brittney’s tits.

I want to believe that blogging can change the world and how we perceive each other. I want to believe that we blog to express who we are. Sometimes I feel that if I changed Couritng into an a pop culture blog I would have it made. But it wouldn’t be me. Though maybe the day of “me” is over and now it’s a collective “us,” not in the good sense but in the let’s all love this today and hate that tomorrow. And that’s ashame because it’s coming together despite our differences that make us a good and cohesive “you.”
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Can somebody explain why a Jew would think that a Muslim taking an oath to be “sworn” into congress would undermine our countries “Christian” values. I, a Jew, assume that all Jews ask for an Old Testament when being sworn into office for its religious meaning, the incredible symbolism that Jews can be full citizens–and I’m not going back to last year to rehash infamous, in my own mind,”Gratitude to Christians” post.

There is a third reason that a person would use a religious document of his own faith, even if he/she or me are agnostics. I had to testify as a representative of the nursing home, and the only bible they could find in The Bronx County Supreme Court was a New Testament. It just didn’t feel right.

It didn’t mean that I love this country any less than a Christian does. It meant that if I were too worship it would be with The Old Testament. It’s comforting though I have very little personal history with it.

My sister thinks we’re Consertative Jews and nobody has ever had the heart to tell her that since our parents didn’t belong to a temple until we were teenagers…We were almost killed the night she announced to my brother in law and I that she was half-Kosher. We had just begun driving away from Joe Stones Crabs below South Beach, and crabs are the most unKosher of foods because they define it. they’re pure scavengers.

My b-i-l was laughing so much he almost crashed the car. Stone Crabs are the single best food, especially at Joe’s with amazing creamed spinach and a to die for mustard sauce. She of course meant foods from pigs but she does eat pancetta.

I’m listening to Christmas music as I write this because I love it, and actually want my friends to play it, instead of rock, on Christmas to go with the homemade eggplant parmigiana, manicotti, and many other Italian foods. As they’re vegetarians and I basically am there’s never that pesky meat in sauce problem. That said I went to the building’s Christmas party specifically to eat Puerto Rican pork roast, the real name escapes me.

We’re a multi-cultural country. Why aren’t we celebrating that? The truest reason for my inability to leave New York is because I know of no other place except for Cambridge that embraces diversity without screaming “we’re diverse, we’re diverse.”

I have friends who are half East Indian Hindu and half Turkish Muslim. One had children with a Swede, the other South American. This is natural selection at its best.

We’re all American. I hope that we never lose respect for our roots while we forge what was and shall be again, an amazing country.

I am Jewish. As I have been planning a trip to Cancun, I have been reading Jewtopia It’s sickeningly true and I think very funny.

I use airline miles, and it will be a hotter day in hell if I’m forced to ever fly coach. I insist on oceanfront rooms at not oceanfront prices and except for last summer usually end up with a suite. My sister and I were trained to complain as an art form.

My friends used to think it classless of me because I would always ask for a doggy bag–hey at least two meals there, and would send back food if it wasn’t prepared exactly as ordered. And no beet could come within ten feet of my food. Now my friends do it more than I.

We learn from one another. I have learned from so many of you. To list each person would take a long time, and I would probably leave out a few key people and begin to obsess. So thanks for teaching me about America. I didn’t know the America outside NY, LA and South Florida, with NJ, Baltimore and a lot of New England. But you brought me into your worlds.

You taught me tolerance. I wasn’t, really. How could I be? I’m a real New Yorker who has the good fortune to live an over-priced life in the middle of Manhattan for most of the past 31 years, on January 2nd.

I really did feel superior when I began to blog, but so quickly learned that I’m not. I used to go to Europe all the time because of the history, and I felt at home in Britain. I still love it, but America is my country and I want to know it. I’m not being America-centric but I know other countries better than I know my own. It’s the political blogger in me that put in that last phrase. I find much more tolerance and true caring outside the political spectrum. The comments I got on my Gratitude post were amazing. Not in BIO, but in Pandagon, should really get the link.

Thank you. I’m able to tell my relatives and friends that many many people in red states don’t believe in the present administration and the war in Iraq and so much more. It feels good not to be a superior New Yorker.

Have a wonderful, Merry Christmas. Celebrate every holiday, or none

I don’t understand why so many Americans, not as many as my friends and family think, but enough believes that to be an American, you have to act as if you’re descended from Puritans. Cos most of us ain’t.

Stumble it!

Have been having problems loading WP. First time for everything. Here’s a link to an article by Adam Bellow, who spoke to his father Saul while still alive, found that funny, about “pamphlet type publishing” as publishing houses don’t want to take chances on unknowns as in bloggers.

have just been heavier than quick sand lately–that sand doesn’t count, and I’m getting into the spirit. So here it goes. Fast, unedited, fiction. Oh, just like all my other posts

Hammertoes, she definitely had hammertoes. She had no idea what hammertoes were and wasn’t about to look it up, but her big toe had begun to hurt the night before and was really hurting now.

She had been at a party last night. A man who smelled of onions walked up to her:
“You, you have a blog.”

It wasn’t in her preferred conversation list but it had gotten publicity and people found it amusing. Only in New York would a blog be considered amusing, This man however:
“You’re taking away work form real writers.” He said with much contempt.
There were two things wrong with his statement.
“I’m a real writer.”
“No, you’re a blogger. Real writers don’t blog.”
“And you know this because?”
“Bloggers aren’t writers. And no real writer who give away the cow…”

She wasn’t a rude person. Really. She was a nice person with an aching toe.
“And your name is? What do you write and where should I know your name from?”

She said this in one breath so that he couldn’t interrupt her. Speed talking was one of her best skills. She wanted to rush home and message her toe. This was her seventh party in five days and she couldn’t handle them anymore.

“Owen Brody,” he said as if she was supposed to recognize his name.

“Uh, see ya, Owen,” she said as her friend motioned her to join him, and say good night to the host.. Her friend, James, was rather known, and Owen’s face dropped.

In the morning the first thing she felt was her toe hurting. The second thing she felt was James. She forgot about her toe.

But she took four subway rides coming and going from the Upper West Side to Soho and back, and on each train she stood or sat across from a an advertisement for bunion and hammertoe removal. From the picture she deduced that hammertoe was a condition where dirty dinky dark sand would somehow become embedded in the top of feet and this operation would remove it.

Her toe wasn’t dark, and it felt soft not topped with dirty dinky sand. Still, it couldn’t be a coincidence that her foot hurt and she stood across from an advert for hammertoe removal on four subway rides in less than four hours.

I’m really into fiction, and will take requests on topics. I will be putting New York street holiday photos in my new photoblog if I actually get out and take them tomorrow.

Happy Winter! Every day gets longer now.

Stumble it!

More troops needed for long struggle? Aren’t we supposed to be getting ready to leave Iraq?

I wrote an email to a friend about Aspergers. I’m just beginning to understand the impact it has played in my life, and plays. Bear with me please. My book is so much funnier for the stories I can now tell on myself. Here is a list of FAO’s that I will put in the Aspergers page.

Of course there is a spate of books coming out by people with Aspergers. So busy not really believing it…but my book is different as it’s my story. And my life is still my life. Still a bit different than most people with some extraordinary people in it, including my father. It’s both in letters to my father looking back through the knowledge I have now or am learning, and my experiences–as in being taken for a very high class hooker because a madam had lived in my apartment, for 25 years before me, on East 63rd Street. God, does denial cost.

I will probably put three word Wednesday in on Friday. This has been an extraordinarily exhausting time

You have the Noah’s of the world who think I’m incredibly funny, pretty, bright, interesting. On the other hand you the people who would say in presence “there’s something off about her.” Stage whispers.

I’m perfectly normal looking. The only time my balance problem shows is walking down steps, not up them–love walking up steps that have something to take you down

I think too fast. Or I don’t think. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t put the cap back on the toothpaste because I’m on to something else–it’s a real brain problem, not laziness.

The last thing I am is lazy. And I’m extremely proficient at things like assessing people, managing, am a great tech writer or was. Think it would drive me crazy Great at logically dividing work. I’m ultra logical but would have failed logic in college if my teacher hadn’t had a crush on me and let me give out grades. We didn’t end up having a last two weeks of classes–threats of race riots–1969–so we just got pass, fail—next spring too–Kent State

I used to shake—but only in my head. I did constantly move—but that was endearing except to my father

I can’t learn games –except for scrabble etc

I’m not athletitic but have excellent swimming form–the wives in Riverdale hated it–used to be able to skate, can bike ride–but Lucia and I are scared to ride in Manhattan, and I used to constantly.

I bump into people,. Very hard to explain that type of spatial problem–can’t figure out the proper space

But I’m not the obnoxious type of Aspergerer who gets into peoples faces. And people constantly bump into me. I say “sorry” automatically, and sometimes they yell at me.

Can talk too much or too little.

Nobody in my wiriting class suspected anything which is why the first draft I had a panic attack over left them baffled. Rather my writing did as I left out so much.

Usually pass for normal. But I’m not. And nobody has ever given me a break. I’m not going to get much social security since I would burn out so much–and haven’t worked for money in five years.

Should have had my mother put me as an employee, pretend to pay me, and I should have paid the taxes There were times before she had an aide when she only wanted my help. Became very depressed because my life revolved around old people–old people lived in my building, worked with them, my mother–four fifths of her building was over 75

People expect the world from me. Like my ex-friend,the wife in my soap-star-couple/best friends-to-go-on vacation-with, really believed that I was going to save his job by writing for the soap. It was incomprehensible to most people, I didn’t know soap writing, and it was too boring to watch. I have a disorganized mind and people with organized minds couldn’t understand it.

Have always attracted attractive “popular” people. Was the girl all the girls who sat in the dorm wanted to be at my first college. I’m so many contradictions. Think they’re all Silicon Vally EVPs with husbands to match–would be their revenge. But I was nice to them–only treated people who went to my old high school horribly. Since this time I was the one with the power

We moved in seventh grade and I went from seventh through twelfth with all the same kids. They wanted to be my friend at first. I misread all their signals. Well not the girl who told me if I dared so much as look at a guy she would kill me–looked like she could–first day welcome to the gilded suburb.

Didn’t see that I was attractive and he was looking at me intently–told me years later, what he thought. Believed her.

Never noticed men looking at me. Yet I have been told that all men would–well construction workers but they would whistle and say things. And when I was in my 20’s and 30’s was always taken for a generic soap star. It didn’t make things easier. Actually harder because the packaging was wonderful, though I could find a thousand flaws.

I’m a very good reader. Always had the highest scores in my grade. Not math, though. Excel at standardized tests and essays. Not teacher’s tests–they mostly hated me in high school–except for the cool ones who all got fired and I was never allowed in the better teacher’s classes. My parents were actually told that the worst American History teacher needed a few good history students, and I was the best.

My parents were stunned. They told me then they said “but it’s her only good subject.” In NY for an academic diplomea you take Regents–one fifth of the whole grade and if you pass the Regents you pass the course–got a 98 in American History–lowest was an 88 in Geometry. So yeah I’m smart. And not sure about Regents rules now.

Was very sloppy and messy. Am totally disorganized. A file cabinet to me means throwing things in a plastic bag. Have never screwed up, yet though. Tax wise. Need to put all my assets together—they’re in too many places and it’s not good for somebody like me.

Good enough with money to know that buying this apartment for cash instead of taking a large mortgage as I was advised to and putting it in the hot 97 market was a better investment, or a safer one. Ensured that I would always have a semi-luxe roof over my head.

Scared that this problem might intensify with age. Sometimes it feels that it does. And when you’re young and cute the world’s wide open even if you don’t exactly notice.

There’s something missing in me, and I don’t know how to describe it. And it scares me

Thank you for being a good friend. Hope you still are. Get nervous about that.

The working title of my book is Coming Out: No Not That Way

I need to leave NY. People get snarky–had to use a key pad at the bank–no numbers and it started with QR–weird–couldn’t put my PIN in–the woman was rude and it made me angry
–but I didn’t show it because….

Have so much potential. I deserve a good life, I really do.

Just feeling sorry for myself, but maybe I have a right to

Stumble it!

Elvira Black wrote a great post about the new New York.

My upstairs neighbor Henry, the drunk who doesn’t look like the preppy drunk I had imagined, has been falling in his living room. Yesterday the intercom buzzed a long long hard angry buzz. It was the doorman who accidentally pressed my bell instead of Henry’s. He used to get wake up buzzes that went on for an hour, on and off, until I complained because they woke me up. Now I think he gets “are you alive calls?”

Yes he is alive and I can’t complain anymore because I would be considered to be an unfeeling bitch as I was when I complained after he moved back. I really don’t like being disliked, but I need sleep, and take the noise reduction headphones off in my sleep.

He kept on falling at four AM so I was up. Couldn’t fall asleep until six. The drilling began at seven thirty. I paid a premium to live in a quiet area. Well five thousand more, 1997 dollars than I thought the apartment was worth which roughly translates to $50,000, 2006 dollars.

Now my next door neighbors who rent and thus don’t have to pay 36% more in January, and get building services for free are having their apartment completely redone–and there’s drilling. It feels as if my whole life is drilling and listening to my neighbor fall. It’s like living in a dentist drill or John Malkovich’s brain.

There is enough stimulation on Broadway a street that I can’t avoid if I want to get anywhere by subway or buy anything.

Today is the annual greasing of the palms day, or legalized exortion day. The day I over tip every building employee. I don’t mind over tipping everybody but the super who had a starting salary of 80K a free two bedroom apartment, free g&e, free cable, and complains though he “delegates” all work. I feel like this day should be part of a Festivus celebration. The airing of the greasing the palms.

I was in deep denial about Aspergers until this past weekend when I actually copied an Aspergers org’s page for the first chapter of my new book. Am starting from the beginning. Made an Aspergers page, if anybody is interested.

It’s very scary to me to have to view my life under this lens. It’s also very funny at times. And no I’m not telling the stories. But I have a much richer book because I have many never told stories that are both funny and add to understanding how Aspergers affected me. I can only speak for myself, and I’m sure that while there are universalities to all stories mine might be more interesting because of the people in it, including and especially my father. And because I have met so many great people. Then again I could be delusional.

Can’t imagine how much I would have freaked if I actually had to type these things, rather than just copy them. Thing is I’m still the same person I was before I was diagnosed. Nobody ever treated me as if I were dumb. I’m not.

Nor am I all the symptoms and different people have different degrees. i do have learning disabilities which are a whole different thing, and an added problem. But I have done well in life despite these problems. Maybe they added a layer that made me more interesting or complex or something.

When I Googled Courting yesterday, and I do occasionally, some idiot who doesn’t have comments or a home page reviewed Courting and gave it a zero. He also reviewed another blog and part of his complaint was that she didn’t have comments.

I mention this because he specifically mentioned my disabilities. That’s f–king sick to me. I do believe in Karma, and….I have never understood the need to review blogs just to be nasty.

I won’t link to that blog or say its name. Will never give a person satisfaction, increase in hits or the chance to diss me further.

I wasn’t going to put in the Technorati A list thing that a friend sent. Since this person essentially said that I was the queen of shameless self-promotion, I included it.

I understand that people think it fun to put down somebody who has a blog people read, and that the person is open about problems only makes it more fun, so it doesn’t hurt.

Please excuse my absence from reading most blogs. I’m sleep deprived, going through a “omigod, I really do have this disorder,” thing, and need to chill.

I will have three word fiction tomorrow because that relaxes me. I do love and adore my blogging friends. Oh that’s for next week…

Stumble it!

MizzyB’s doing something on Monday. Didn’t say what but said spread the word.

Coming out of denial about having Aspergers is horrible. I’m supposed to be at a party but fear I will act like a person who has Aspergers. At a large family party yesterday I know that I did, and let me torment myself with all the other social gatherings I have been to this week where I could have been just a bit more….I know that for a person with Aspergers I go to more than enough parties. It’s December, duh…

Somebody told me that I have never described Aspergers. I have linked to it, and will now. I’m that person and I’m a totally different one. Here’s a link to The Long Island Press on central audio processing disorder

I would like to the Press both for giving me a cover story and for making me think. I would like to thank so many bloggers it would take up many many lines. Don’t worry, the book is coming along just fine, and you will be thanked then.

Y’all know that I’m not a rote thinker? That I think outside the outside of ten boxes and a crate?

I just got a phone call from phona thon That was the number on caller ID, and the reason that my listed phone number is now a dummy phone. Ever since I paid Allied Interstate $47 that I didn’t owe them so they would stop harassing me I have been harassed by every company around. One company told me that the domain payment for my blog was over due. Told them to look at whosis. Right I didn’t owe this company anything as I have never done business with them. Sick of too many phone calls a day from companies that want to scam me.

Damn, we’re all Time Magazine’s person of the year. I resent, just a bit, not being personally selected for my amazing contributions to the world of blogging. They include such incredible things as writing super long verbose posts and fooling people into thinking that I have something to say, and…well I’m sure that there are some other things.

If you’re not familiar with my researched posts, and one in ten million people might want to be here’s a link to my best of BIO posts

I don’t have a Best of Courting because I change my mind every ten minutes, but am convening an executive committee to decide for me. As I have a dawg, a bone, a wombat and now an Al, they will probably deicide. How did Al get into that?

I so love blogging and everything that it implies for the future of media, but the future isn’t here yet. I have to conform, just a little, to the world of publishing. Not in my blog but in real life.

I will be going away for eight days in January and for the first time in years–I wrote on vacation when I was a reporter, will be at an exit gate in an airport without a laptop. Savannah Too is crying, but I’m happy.

NEW YORK (AP) — Extra! Extra! The press release arrived with a headline worthy of Rupert Murdoch: HARPERCOLLINS TERMINATES JUDITH REGAN. So ended, at least for now, one of the book world’s most profitable and provocative careers.

Do you think that Regan’s being fired might begin to herald in a new era? One where class and taste count for something?

Maybe the November elections began to show the way to a new, better America. Maybe Regan’s being fired is a sign of the times. Maybe Bill O’Reilly will be too scared to begin a Christmas war this year.

Maybe we are evolving. Over the past two years my personal faith in the American people has been restored. I have learned that we have more in common than what separates us.

Most of us have real morals, not the ones the Republicans tried to strangle us with.

I never cared what books Regan published as I am a First Amendment absolutist. I was angry because she was trying to promote her interview with OJ and the book as something that would heal women who are desperate to feel healed after having been abused.

That kind of thinking goes with Bush believing we’re winning a war that can’t be won, and putting us there in the first place.

Both Regan and Bush believe in the absurd and rationalize it as good for the American people. It’s not, and this country is waking up and beginning to understand that.

Stumble it!

HAPPY HANAKAUH

I bought my first holiday tree. It’s blue, I guess twelve inches tall, and I’m looking for a rhinestone peace sign to put on it, along with a crystal snow flake. It’s on the coffee table next to the menorah. I did think a lot about the symbolism of a tree, and it just seems seasonal to me, as in I will keep it on the table all winter, to pretend that we’re having winter. Weird seeing people on the street in sweatshirts in December.

People say Jews dominate the media. No, but we do dominate the film industry. Read in Jewtopia that De Niro is half. But if we go back in time to when the film industry was new, Jews were first coming to America in large numbers. Jews who were lucky enough to graduate college couldn’t work in most large firms.

As the film industry was new, Jews could work in it. People don’t usually look at history to understand why some ethnic groups dominate some industries. Oh, I’m too tired to write….Lucky for you/

I have no time until Tuesday. Life has sort of caught up with me. Three things to write by Monday, a family reunion and two must make a fifteen minute appearance at parties. I hope that this loads

My blog is loading very very very slowly. Here’s another joke that Lucia sent me that the whole world has probably seen but me. It might not be a joke. I can be slow you know

The Supreme Court has ruled that there cannot be a Nativity Scene

in Washington, D.C. this Christmas season. This isn’t for any religious

reason, they simply have not been able to find three wise men and a

virgin in the Nation’s capital.

There was no problem, however, finding enough asses to fill the

stable.

Stumble it!