Some days I still don’t believe that I left. It feels weird. Not quite a vacation; not quite a life.

Stumble it!

Sometime soon a book is coming out. The author and I were in a class together. I wrote a story. Doesn’t matter what it was on. Two weeks later she wrote an almost identical story.

I wasn’t supposed to think she stole from me but was “inspired by.” If being “inspired by” paid bills or garnered something I wouldn’t care. Maybe she did think of it on her own. But I would never hand in something almost identical to another person’s two weeks later. Now the story doesn’t belong to me but to her. I have no idea if it’s in the book or not. It was in the very first draft.

I stopped taking classes as I grew tired of teachers telling me after class how they would save my stuff for last as it was always interesting, and they loved reading my work so so much, etc. I was always the one who almost made it. Somebody else would.

I grew tired of that world. The world of New York where people all think a certain way. Problem is I don’t know how else to think. Or how to think as I don’t just look at the bottom line.

I have wants and needs also. But I’m supposed to smile and applaud when somebody else makes it and I can’t anymore.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Wouldn’t it be nice if I figured out what the hell I’m doing? I saw a free Beach Boys concert without Brian but with Dean of Jan & so I’m kind of feeling like the Little Old Lady of Pasadena except I’m not really old, not little and not from Pasadena. I have only been there once actually.

I don’t usually feel lonely or alone. Ironically this struck after firming up plans that begin next week. Now I’m doubting myself. Wondering what I’m doing. Why am I here when the weather hasn’t exactly been anything to boast about except for Friday and Saturday and I had bronchitis and am scared that the extremely windy conditions are going to lead pollen straight to my nose and bronchial trachea.

It’s hard to admit loneliness when I have always been so independent but I have always had friends to run to. I’m writing about parts of my life that weren’t the best and do make me depressed but I’m getting paid to do this so…It’s as if non verbal learning disorder is a verboten subject.

It’s not Asperger’s and it’s not bi-polar so who cares? I do. I just didn’t want to be the face of it or the voice or whatever. It makes me problematic. I’m the person people love but just can’t hire. Except for this article and I do feel grateful about that.

Yes people contact me and ask if they can use a post for this and pay me, and they would love to use more. But uh my archives….I’m a compulsive cleaner–the disorder that NLVD or NLD brings had to go somewhere. It went into my archives. I had to teach myself everything. I was my own life coach and it’s not easy. I don’t dissolve into pity parties often. This isn’t one. This is what life’s like with a disorder few people know about, and nobody is going to give me points or a break for having overcome much as the disorder is so invisible. It only hurts me.

Do you have any idea what it’s like to be the one who almost makes it? What about my feelings? I don’t exist just to cheer others on though I love it when people I know make it. I want to be cheered on. I’m overly honest, I know and am breaking many rules by writing this post

What can anybody do? Banish me from New York to South Carolina?

This isn’t bitterness talking nor is it envy. It’s facts. I’m just a bit too much work and there is always somebody who might not be as talented or might be more, but can put together a perfect package.

I can’t even do a proper outline so I have to write a damn book before shopping it and I don’t want to spend my days and nights immersed in the worst times of my life when I could be listening to beach music in clubs.

I’m older than the person who wrote the book that’s coming out soon and have been telling that story for many many years. I want credit. Or I want to understand why I’m supposed to feel good about inspiring?

What’s in that for me? I’m sorry if this isn’t sportsman like but I have worked damn hard. I’m talented. I want also….And most of all I think a person should have the decency not to hand in a story two weeks after somebody else handed an almost identical one.

That made me feel as if I’m worthless. It was a slap in the face as if I was invisible and hadn’t read two weeks earlier. Only she counts. Push me to the side and pretend I don’t exist.

No this isn’t how Columbines begin. It’s how self-doubt festers and dreams die.

If you don’t know Jan’s story, it’s one of the most tragic in all rock history. “Dead man’s curve” is scarily prescient. Dean is 65 if a day and drop dead gorgeous. At least from a distance.

Stumble it!

This is an article about how New York was saved in 1975. No thanks to the federal government Continue Reading »

Stumble it!

I knew I had to get my apartment on the market by the end of January at the latest for it to sell in a reasonable timeframe and at the price I wanted. But I was only the owner and couldn’t fire the contractor as he had too much of my money.

You’ll get it back in the sale
No I won’t. Listen to me.

But of course he didn’t. It was all about his needs and his wishes. I should have never tried to do him a favor for I might suffer dire consequences.

My 6 by 12 windowed marble bath has the wrong kind of marble. It’s not Carrera so what good is it? The huge reglazed tub isn’t a modern soaking tub so…? Oh the kitchen problems–they will truly haunt me.

I have only myself to be angry at am so I am. I knew I had to get on the market by January but who am I? Only somebody who saw what was going on and didn’t act quickly enough.

I’m angry at people who treated their homes as if they were a cash machine. Not talking about the people who got sucked into teaser mortgages but the people who thought the party would never end.

There are so many of them and we waste time feeling sorry for them? If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it. Simple. I hate to feel like a Republican on this and I do understand why the bail outs have to include people who weren’t acting responsibly.

But I was. And I’m paying for their partying like it was 99. The New York real estate blog delights in the fact that apartment inventory for sale is at an all time high. The other night I was reading it and realized exactly why I hate it and why I’m leaving New York. People don’t look at things in terms of people anymore but in terms of figures. If it can’t be quantified it’s meaningless.

They have no respect for the history of New York. No knowledge of New York’s social history. Had to Google rent control and rent stabilization. Didn’t know why it began. Youth is no excuse.

I could and have written long research papers on how modern New York came to be. I was so tempted to ask if they knew who Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs or Robert Moses even was. But I never comment on large blogs, and am not about to begin.

They didn’t understand the history of the Bronx–how Mose’s Cross Bronx Expressway cut it in half and White people with some money moved to Riverdale; White people without money moved to Coop City which had been a great amusement park, Freedomland, for a few years. They didn’t know parts of the South Bronx have become more surburban than bona fide surburbs.

They, not all of course, thought rent controlled apartments and stabilized ones are government subsidized. Not even the rent stabilization board is a government agency but why let facts get in the way?

Many new condos and rentals are truly government subsidized as they get tax abatements. The same person thought rent controlled and rent stabilized meant projects when it just means the rent is controlled or stabilized. The program began after World War Two to keep the middle class in the city. It’s far from perfect. I wouldn’t believe in it but nothing has taken its place.

Most people I know who are stabilized make between 40K and 100something. Have no real savings outside a 401K, are in “the helping professions,” exec assistants, paralegals, or in the arts. They have no savings not because they spend money wildly but because Manhattan is truly horribly expensive

But it’s a great city and these people are part of the reason why. I lived in a stabilized apartment for sixteen years. The first year the lease was in my father’s name as I had been irresponsible. The next year it was changed to my name and my name only. My boyfriend Zachary wanted his name added. Not even when we were truly in love would I do that. My best friend didn’t add her husband’s name when she was married–which was fortunate as he almost sued to get the apartment. It’s not the stuff of myths that people get divorced and divide the bedroom with markers.

My building had a great landlord. He sold it and the new owners tried to evict as many people as they could. They did evict both my neighbors. They sent me an eviction letter claiming that the lease was in my father’s name. It wasn’t but even had it been I had been paying the rent for the entire twelve or thirteen years I lived there and was obviously the tenant. No way could they evict me.

They could make my life hell and they did. This is an article about more modern day hell

I had five major floods they refused to take care of. They imported cheap prostitutes to live in one apartment next to me and drug dealers in the other. Whoever wanted to could sleep in the lobby and vestibule. This was during crack days and I was the first person in the building to leave in the morning.

I could have waited for them to buy me out. But I grew scared so I left. I sent the management letter a certified letter saying I was breaking the lease a few months early. They sent it back, and had the frigging nerve to call my elderly mother and tell her I moved without a return address or phone number. That was of course absurd and she told them so.

I should have bought that year–91. I could have a bought a large two bedroom dirt cheap but I didn’t want to profit off peoples misery as the housing market was down almost as much as it could be.

I used to believe in karma. I’m not sure that I do anymore. I want my apartment to sell and soon. I don’t need the realtors to tell me about their other apartments that are moving. What does that do for me?

And I hate this weekend. I have neither a mother nor a child. Am I supposed to retreat for the weekend?

The Town of North Myrtle will be 40 tomorrow. They’re having a concert with The Beach Boys without Brian but with Dean of Jan & Dean. If they do Mother’s Day things, somebody might have to ball me from jail.

Stumble it!

Am I the only person who thinks Gail Collins looks like Laura Bush but has great things to say anyway? This is about the Supreme Court and equal pay for women. When it comes to money, I can be called a feminist to the core. The most senior woman at a corp made less then the most junior man. McCain would–read the article. It did make me remember why I’m a Democrat

This article shook me to the core. I’m reprinting it here as it’s so unbelievable, yet so America in the millennium.

The PEN American Center, the literary organization committed to free expression, is honoring an American most people in this country have never read or even heard of: Laura Berg. She is a psychiatric nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital who was threatened with a sedition investigation after she wrote a letter to the editor denouncing the Bush administration’s bungling of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war.

That’s right, sedition: inciting rebellion against the government. We suppose nothing should surprise us in these days of government zealotry. But the horror and the shame of that witch hunt should shock everyone.

Ms. Berg identified herself as a V.A. nurse when, soon after Katrina’s horrors, she sent her impassioned letter to The Alibi, a paper in Albuquerque. “I am furious with the tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence of this government,” she wrote. “We need to wake up and get real here, and act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.”

Her superiors at the hospital soon alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and impounded her office computer, where she keeps the case files of war-scarred veterans she treats. Then she received an official warning in which a Veterans Affairs investigator intoned that her letter “potentially represents sedition.”

It took civil rights litigators and Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico to “act forcefully” in reminding the government of the Constitution and her right to free speech. The Department of Veterans Affairs retreated then finally apologized to the shaken Ms. Berg.

Even then, she noted, one superior told her it was preferred that she not identify herself as a V.A. nurse in any future letter writing. “And so I am saying I am a V.A. nurse,” Ms. Berg soon boomed out in a radio broadcast. “And some of my fire in writing this about Katrina and Iraq is from my experience as a V.A. nurse.” Thus declared Ms. Berg, well chosen to receive the new PEN/Katherine Anne Porter First Amendment Award.

•••••••••••••••••••••••
We need a president who will begin to undo the horrors of the past seven years. It’s more than a recession, a wrong war, the bungling of Katrina, Iraq and I will add 9/11. It’s the consistent undermining of our Constitution and its Amendments–the foundation upon which this country was formed.

More people would listen to Laura Berg if she identified herself as a VA nurse than if she didn’t. As bloggers we pat ourselves on the back for saying such profound things as “f–k Bush.” We believe we’re incredible for stating the obvious without putting our lives and/our careers on the line.

We’re not. Laura Berg is.

Stumble it!

I just cleaned my cpanel of all unnecessary junk and went from having a filled disk to having much space. Feel much better about blogging and life in general. There is something about a clutterless life
Lately I feel self-conscious blogging not to prompts. I had a post mapped out in my head about when I was a little girl my father would take us to a client who had “girly calenders” and other pin-ups hung up in the back of his store. I found them revolting. When I was a teenager I was much more verbal about my hatred. Then I discovered noir films and pulp fiction and had to begin liking them. The other night I saw a movie about Bettie Page that I had meant to see when it was out. It left me with many questions I can’t quite verbalize. With some exceptions, I’m not sure there’s room in the blogosphere for discussions like this. It seems so compartmentalized and theme centered. It no longer feels like home but I’m having problems with that concept also.
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Cooper has an amazing image that she lifted from somebody and I would have taken from Cooper but my custom WP blog doesn’t do images.

I need images. I’m going to a shagger’s parade tomorrow. A year ago I never heard of shag music, and now I live in its home.

I have been spending way too much time reading this real estate blog where it is to some peoples interest to talk up the death of the Manhattan real estate market. As I’m selling an apartment….I write long, nuanced and rational responses that I don’t post.

Why don’t I post them? I was a political blogger for two years and too quickly learned that people don’t want rational, nuanced comments. They want to play up their views or to be snarky and stupid.

I so much prefer discussions in real life with people who might not hold my views but understand the framework of an argument. I so much prefer people who have many interests, and aren’t hung up on one POV or one minor point.

I almost feel like posting my comments that I delete here but it feels snarky to remind people that Manhattan actually has a real estate market.

I priced my apartment too high and reduced the price. Does this mean I’m in defeat? No it means I always knew it was too high but when a person prices an apartment it’s not just between her and her realtors. It’s analogous to Freud’s theory of sex; that when you’re sleeping with a person it’s not just the two of you but all four of your parents are in bed or wherever with you. Personally I have never bought into that. But my parents had a “healthy” attitude about sex so.

When you have a desirable apartment in a good building, everybody you know becomes involved. Had I priced it at the price it’s at now I would have heard forever how the realtors and I were lazy. This has nothing to do with the comments I never left. Hell, they’re too personal to post on a board where I have a screenname nobody knows, so I’m not going to post them here.

Leaving Manhattan was the best decision I made since my decision to move back. Even then I wanted to leave the New York area but I had an elderly mother who I loved very much. If I write about my father more, he was easier to write about. On the surface my mother was a cute suburban housewife. Under the surface…..I’m trying to write about her for Mother’s Day and it’s so hard. She’s not somebody I can easily categorize. I can’t really write about life lessons my mother taught me. She taught me everything. I don’t want to reduce her to a series of cliches.

Since I left Manhattan seven weeks ago I have been given a series of opportunties. I had unlimited energy when it didn’t benefit me; I have to get the motivation and energy back. Because the rest of the year is all about me, me and more me.

I do have a zen type feeling about my apartment. It needed to see me. I had staged it too well and took all the personality out so that anybody could picture herself there I bought it a flower box, flowers and arranged with somebody to keep refreshing the flowers.

The day before my meeting with the coop board, my bff’s daughter, Little Luce, then six, walked around the building touching it for luck. Now she’s seventeen and the next time I go back will be for her high school graduation. I didn’t dare ask her to touch the building again but somehow it came up and she’s going to….

Because I can’t wait to sell so I can buy here. For the first time in forever my life’s going to be doormen free. It feels so liberating.

Send out vibes, whatever. I need this new chapter of my life to go seamlessly.
•••••••••••
Actually it angers me that many people I know view this as a permanent vacation or “you’re too young….” I believe we’re given chances to remake our lives or make them better or live where we want.
I strongly believe that I was given a gift and had to leave Manhattan to make the most of it.
Life in New York is filled with tension. Once I thrived on that but it all became too much for me. I couldn’t help but overhear this cell conversation:
Hello Beautiful. Busy Busy. Can’t talk. Busy busy. Kiss kiss.
That’s not the mark of a successful person to me. It made me tense up–she was screaming so that everybody on that block of West End Avenue had to listen.
The hair salon I go to here–weekly–has a sign “please turn off your cells out of consideration for the other clients.” In New York nobody would listen to that. When I go to the salon there I listen to the sounds of 30 one way conversations. Everybody has to out important each other. The only acceptable answer to “how are you?” is “busy.” I began to yearn for the days when people had actual conversations with one another in salons, in stores, anywhere….

Stumble it!

Are they the walking comatose?

28% think Bush is doing a good job. No comment.
Comments are off. There’s nothing to say.

Stumble it!

Hi Daddy,
This has become the country you feared. America, land of easy money, no income and subprime mortgages, and so much more tha would shake your sometimes rational CPA’s mind, and moral center.

Bear Stearns went under a couple of weeks ago and in this info at your fingertips world, every frigging, let me call myself an expert, has been imparting negative psychology to make bad situations even worse.

I wish that I hadn’t thought 40K so much money when I bought my apartment and spent 40K more so I could have had a luxe apartment with an incredible kitchen.

People who can’t cook and have never set in the kitchen still like to have “name” stoves, fridges and dishwashers. It’s been status to live like a king, since you died seventeen years ago today, even if you have to postpone paying bills, and/or tap into your equity or what might be equity someday.

40K more is nothing today; chump change. Though tomorrow it might be everything.

I don’t know if you were negligent in your guardian angel duties or it was meant for so few people to come to my open house so I could lower the price and somebody like me, somebody who pays her bills

Stumble it!

I put the post I wrote on the sidebar as I wanted this to be front and center. If this bores you don’t read it. I have to get it out.

The real estate blog I read was filled with people exuberant over the “death of the Manhattan real estate market.” One man in particular has been all over the threads and in posting so much spreads negativity.

He has a very vested interest in seeing others suffer as he wants to buy at depression prices. He cashed out. Or something. You never really know who commenters are. I gave up on political writing for large blogs a long time ago (as defined by the “youthful age of blogging”) because so many commenters had an agenda and would refuse to listen to any other POV. They and a few other people know everything and they know it well.

If they did, they would understand that a bad housing market is good for nobody as is a bad stock market which does go hand in hand. I caught this man talking about putting 250K into the stock market instead of a down payment. He mentioned putting it in one stock that would pay eight percent therefore paying $20,000 a year in interest.

In that one statement he showed ignorance in everything that he was trying to be an expert in. Nobody puts or should put that amount of money in one stock, one stock fund, bond etc. The 250K–put in a diversified portfoli– might go up but will probably go down. Therefore eight percent is eight percent of a lower number that is probably constantly changing and can’t be reliably predicted this year. He created a perfect stock market scenario which is exactly the opposite of what he says for the real estate market. You can’t have it both ways.

But what do I know? And for the record I don’t comment on that blog. It’s not worth it.

These people don’t seem to understand that that many of us bought not thinking of an apartment as an investment but were forced to by the very media that now tells us we never should have thought that way. And the psychology of entitlement that pervaded this country.

I never bought into that. I have never felt entitled to anything including being comfortable with my own intelligence and/or talent. This lack of feeling entitled caused me to wait too long. Or maybe not as I priced my apartment too high for me to feel comfortable with but I did that to see if anybody would bite. It was a couple of days before Bear Stearns went under but that was one event that shouldn’t cause an entire city to give up.

I know longer no what a fair price is but I know it’s not 100% less than somebody with a comparable apartment who sold last month. I have bills to pay and a life to maintain. Unfortunately it is that simple. I don’t have a mortgage so I can afford to be more flexible than most people but….

If my apartment doesn’t go into contract in x amount of time I will take it off the market. I can’t afford to pay maintenance and rent indefinitely. A strict coop board might be forced to let me rent me out.

Personally times are very different for me than during the last recession. I’m older. I can’t afford to wait ten years for housing prices to spike back.

I think new media and the affect of it on MSM can be very dangerous. People should bear some responsibility for what they say and not be content saying “the public has a right to know.”

The public doesn’t have a right to feel fear needlessly. And so far much of what’s been happening in Manhattan specifically is very fear generated. It might be a one industry town–the stock market–but it is different for many reasons I don’t have the time to go into now.

Tosay is seventeen years since my father died. That day was also the day the government officially said the stock market began its long trip upward.

I refuse to give into either fear or depression so I’m getting my hair done. Of course it’s pouring and very cold for the South.

I think murdering a contractor who took my money and stopped working and kept begging me for another chance would be considered justifiable homicide. I don’t want to get into that mind frame.

We are all in this together and we have a responsibility to look for answers that help all of us, not feed our own agenda.

Stumble it!

I’m just in love with that title and concept. It opens the door to so many possibilities. “No, it wasn’t me who….I was under fire in Bosnia.”

I know I’m a bit late with this but I had to stop a war earlier this week. Gail Collins didn’t. Continue Reading »

Stumble it!