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.
••••••••••••••••••••

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!

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 need a place to live. The community should be near the ocean, warm, intellectually stimulating, and have a town center. I must have a duplex and it can’t be over a certain price. Very picky for a beggar.

Then I might stay here. Walking everywhere is good for me, but does limit where I can go. There are many cab companies and they do lower the price once they know you’re not going to puke all over the cab, and will tip-probably too much. New York mentality.

There is actually public transportation, not that I or anybody I know has actually seen any of the buses. And it only operates until 8 PM but somehow I feel that it can lead to more public transportation.

I have always had a noir fantasy about traveling on long distance buses being a passenger in a car, train or plane person

I have been feeling sort of “what have I been doing?” “What was I thinking?” I have only talked about moving in this blog for its existence and thought about much longer. After last week and probably this coming week I really won’t be able to afford Manhattan. I hope my apartment sells. Damn I wanted it on the market by January but due to my own idiocy and need to “help” certain people that became but a dream.

I know I will get over it soon. I understand this feeling of being disconnected, of the anxiety I’m moving to get over, has more to do with external forces that combine to make me feel poor and scared of my apartment languishing And a fear that I will be back in New York bitching and complaining as I waited just a mite too long.

Stumble it!

If I had a countdown clock it would be counting down the hours until Wednesday morning. People keep saying “wow, you’re going to be living in America,” as if life outside of New York, Southern Florida or California requires a passport and shots. So many people have been doing big and little things for me, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude and happiness under the anxiety.
My sister has not just come to terms with it but seems to like the thought of the move.
In 1997, I was self employed. My health insurance premium was $347–found checks when going through files. It’s now over $1200 a month–not because I’m older or have any conditions as anybody can buy health insurance in NY who can afford to. I bought my apartment that year. The monthly charges were $535–now over $1200. Most of the increases happened after 9/11. Yet they say inflation is just beginning. Not in New York.
This all began to be real to me when I canceled my subscription to The New York Times.

This move to a place I didn’t know before last year couldn’t have been possible before I began to blog. I learned so much about people and this incredibly wonderful country that just needs a lot of fixing.

Lucia and I took Little Luce to this Simon & Garfunkel reunion concert when she was eight months old. Her father was scared that something bad would happen–but Lucia and I know Central Park. I don’t know if anything will be in my skin and bones as much as New York, but I’m going to look.

The first concert my sister and I went to was a Simon & Garfunkel concert in Lincoln Center. Our parents sat several rows away. It was horrible that they insisted on coming. I wasn’t going to admit knowing them nor would I be seen talking to them.

This has always been one of my favorite songs. It reminds of being the age Little Luce is now when life was one of infinite possibilities. I’m beginning to feel the possibilities again.

This next one is for the friends I saw last night and a few more. After 30 years, so far I think we’ll be sharing park benches somewhere when we’re 70. It has a bonus song with one of those seminal 60’s words

I will be commenting and posting more regularly once I’m a bit settled.

Stumble it!

Doug, my dawg of wonderful colors is on vacation. But he left an interactive post to help me design my new house. So help me please!!!

This is long and maybe a bit verbose but my heart is bursting. I forgot to say my apartment’s 600 square feet. Everything I did was with tricks and gives an illusion…

In Manhattan it’s always been about real estate and always will be about it. A good apartment with that intangible “wow” factor brings up the apartment’s worth immensely. Today’s consumer might be perfectly prepared on paper, but falling in love is falling in love whether with a person or an apartment.

*Actually I met them yesterday.

Ten years, seven and a half a months ago, on my birthday, I circled the ad that led to the first apartment I found that said to me: WOW, I HAVE TO OWN THIS. Continue Reading »

Stumble it!

Pia is exhausted. She does have the whitest bathtub in town–just reglazed–and can show the prospective buyers the three year guarantee. The Bank of Pia is back in operation as her “contractor” is sick. He kept saying that he would pay out of the money she gave him She wants the supplies out by tomorrow and for the contractor to pay for a cleaning service so the cleaning woman doesn’t have to do anything “dirty.”

Pia thinks her apartment might be ready by next week but damned if she can tell. It’s been so long she can’t tell up from down. Continue Reading »

Stumble it!

I delete spam pingbacks

A good blogger to me is somebody who moderates comments, is constantly reading new blogs, and commenting. I just don’t have the time or mental energy for that. Not now. I need to write and to write I begin blogs. I have a few private ones and one not so secret one.

Courting isn’t going on hiatus. I will be writing and moderating comments but I won’t be commenting until I’m in a different space. I mean that physically. Actually I go through this every few months. I’m obsessed with blogging and admire bloggers who never tire of commenting. I’m not comment crazy and enjoy reading blogs without commenting often but then I’m called a lurker. I don’t understand why “reader” isn’t acceptable and people can’t be happy with people reading their blogs without commenting at times.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••

The three most exciting parts of the State of the Union address to me where:
3) Looking at men’s ties–and I don’t have a large TV or LCD or plasma
2) Watching Ted Kennedy sleep–for one of the few times in my life I agreed completely with David Brooks–on my birthday, or the next day in 1969, he knew he could never become President so he focused on becoming a great senator
1) Watching Nancy Pelosi try to find a proper facial expression–she went through every fake smile I know

I don’t usually link editorials but I loved this one. On what could have been had our president made a different speech six years ago.

CAN YOU SAY PORK BARREL? I ADMIT I KEPT FALLING ASLEEP BUT I WOULD WAKE TO HEAR BUSH TALK AGAIN AND AGAIN ABOUT ENDING OR DRASTICALLY REDUCING EAR MARKED RESOURCES.

Stumble it!

I updated my other blog. I’m doing all apartment stories, past and present, in it.

Somebody close to me believes I have no patience and expect people to do things when I snap my fingers. Most other people, close to me, think I’m a total jerk for having so much patience.

I should be submitting. I’m not for many reasons including paralysis, and fear, not of being rejected but of life itself. It seems as if it’s an endless to do list that I never come close to completing. The new sub contractor is supposed to be here at noon. “Do you have a point list?” my best friend asked. “Uh, if a point list is what’s to be done than I have it.” Continue Reading »

Stumble it!

Beach music–really great beach music. There’s about a 30 second buffer and then some of the best beach music you will ever hear. It will change your perception about beach music. It’s wonderful.

And to certain friends of mine who can’t stop laughing about me living in South Carolina and going to clandestine Democratic party meetings–I should let them tell the jokes but I have a kind of rule in Courting to only talk about my own stupidity–two words–Barack Obama. While we’re all bitching about the economy, I will be bitching in comfort as you take dwindling subways, buses, and have all the old problems come back

It’s been pretty obvious since Bloomberg became mayor he had to take monies from one place to cover another. Did Hillary try to get money for the city? I didn’t hear her screaming for the aide we were supposed to get–that came three years after 9/11.

.Caroline Kennedy on why she supports Obama.
Most of us would prefer to base our voting decision on policy differences. However, the candidates’ goals are similar. They have all laid out detailed plans on everything from strengthening our middle class to investing in early childhood education. So qualities of leadership, character and judgment play a larger role than usual.

Senator Obama has demonstrated these qualities throughout his more than two decades of public service, not just in the United States Senate but in Illinois, where he helped turn around struggling communities, taught constitutional law and was an elected state official for eight years. And Senator Obama is showing the same qualities today. He has built a movement that is changing the face of politics in this country, and he has demonstrated a special gift for inspiring young people — known for a willingness to volunteer, but an aversion to politics — to become engaged in the political process.

Here’s Bob Herbert, the columnist closest to my heart after Frank Rich on some questions for the Clintons.

Still, it’s legitimate to ask, given the destructive developments of the last few weeks, whether the Clintons are capable of being anything but divisive. The electorate seems more polarized now than it was just a few weeks ago, and the Clintons have seemed positively gleeful in that atmosphere.

It’s time to truly think outside the box and only Barack Obama seems to be able to think that way.

The next president is going to inherit the biggest mess, arguably since The Depression. Obama has grace, style and substance. Yes grace and style are damn important. The President has to be a healer. I hate losing respect for the Clintons. After the presidents of my lifetime, Clinton brought fresh air. It’s not the same Bill and Hill. They have changed.

I was an SSI claims rep in The Bronx then. Our zip codes included some of the poorest in the country and some middle class–we were the second most diverse area after Jackson Heights. People would tell me stories…they had done everything right and found themselves in deep debt because of sickness.

The real 90’s of easy money hadn’t happened yet, but I always felt those two years at SSI–then I became a social worker. While everybody else seemed to enjoy the ease my life became mired in other peoples sicknesses, dementia, poverty, sadder than sad stories. My background is one of privilege. I felt compelled to work in these worlds.

I live among the very affluent. I feel comfortable in this world, but random events happen that we have no control over. Including a president beginning a very immoral war. We need a president who can look at the war, economy and health insurance with unjaded analytical eyes.

The more I hear Obama and read about him I know he’s going to age 30 years in eight but he can pave the way back to a great America.

I’m psyched that I’m finally going to be a real American–I stopped feeling superior because I’m a New Yorker sometime ago. I will never forget the state of Iowa again and what it now stands for.

If we’re to regain confidence in ourselves and hence be respected by the rest of the world we need Obama.

Stumble it!

There’s a new 3WW below this. Here’s another blog My friend lives in this building. Great Upper West Side shots–and the building has an all marble wonderful lobby.
There are bad days and there are days you spend two and half hours on the phone or waiting for people at the cable company–and they exacerbate your problem but you finally figure it out.
The most adorable little girl comes up to you in Starbucks, puts her finger in your coffee, the top on and smiles at you. You have reached the point of no return and give her the look you have never given a kid. The coffee could have been hot–she could have scalded herself–but mostly you’re thinking how truly tacky it was that the mother didn’t control her behavior or make her say “I’m sorry.” Two words that go far in your life. That was the better part of your day until you saw a friend.
Jonathan and his wife Wendy are adopting children in a few days. I can and can’t imagine what they’re feeling as I was adopted, and some people that my father’s letter upon adopting me is the best written thing in this blog. As much as I love my father that doesn’t make me feel great.

Jonathan began a meme about what you have done since finishing school. I finished grad school twelve years ago and uh college 20 years before that. I don’t usually do memes, especially since they all seem to involve knowledge of 80’s hair bands and other musical things. Have nothing against 80’s hair bands or what song fits whats mood–but that’s like wearing a mood ring. Changes too often. Or stays the same for a year. Continue Reading »

Stumble it!