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’m not participating in 3WW this week as I’m going to New York to see friends and family and eat too much food I wouldn’t usually eat as it’s Passover and my sister is a great cook.

I hope to have news about my apartment soon.

I will say that if Obama is an elitist, then I’m____. He said what many of us say and/or think including people of faith. I used to say I would give people the Second Amendment if they would give me The First Amendment but…..The First is being slowly and not so slowly tampered with while the Second remains intact.

Boston Legal was incredible tonight. Nantucket, the Island, wanted permission to make a nuclear bomb. To truly over simplify they wanted to show that because of the present admin, every country has permission to make one–which means the country can use one The Judge was really incensed as Pakistan probably has one and that’s the country Bin Laden is probably hiding in. Of course he couldn’t grant Nantucket permission. My personal favorite line was “who will save us? The Vineyard?” I guess I am a Northerner.

Meanwhile, Shirley’s (Candice Bergen) father has end stage dementia. She had to go to court to get an order to let him have a morphine drip. Again this is a bare outline. Alan (James Spader) did a brilliant summation and talked about his best friend Denny (William Shatner) who has the very early signs. Someday Alan will have to make decisions about Denny–who unknown to Alan was watching the summation.

I have worked with many people with all different stages of dementia. I have also worked with people who were about to die yet they couldn’t get hospice care which would have allowed them a morphine drip. I have screamed at nurses and doctors.

The nursing home argued that this would set a bad precedent as so many teens and middle aged people try to kill themselves. Alan said it should be done on a case by case basis.

I disagree. Every person who is considered “terminal” and is or might be in dire pain–they argued that Shirley’s father was too far gone to feel pain–she said his agitation showed that he feels pain–should be allowed to have morphine drips. If they become addicted, so? The slight fallacy with her argument is that people with mid dementia become agitated simply because they are so confused.

I cried watching Shirley. She talked about what a great man her father had been. Now he was a shell. I have always said the greatest gift my father gave our family was dying within five days of having a stroke.

He died over Passover, his favorite holiday. My father discovered religion when we went to a seder in Mobile, when I was fourteen.

Now I live in North Myrtle Beach only it feels so North. Everybody is from somewhere else. I spoke to a woman from the Jewish Center, who invited me for a seder though I’m not really a believer. I thought that was very nice. Especially since I told her so–but many Jews aren’t. It’s a cultural thing for me.

She told me that if I just go 20 minutes South from here I will be in the real South. Maybe, baby.

Stumble it!

First please read me in The New York Social Diary.

It was a bright and windy day. I was wearing two or three year old MBT sandals with sport socks for the fashionable nerd lowest part of the body look; Gloria Vanderbilt jeans–we go back to the 70’s, just washed and looked pressed; a pumpkin spandex and cotton Talbot’s tee. I was also wearing a jean jacket though I know they’re so yesterday and Kate Spade sunglasses. I was carrying two insulated nylon bags as food shopping was involved. Though many of my friends make fun of my love of MBT’s, they stop when they try them on–and if they can afford them buy a pair. My hair is Southern blond highlight; my nails just have clear polish but are perfectly manicured–Southern–got over my fear of going into a Southern nail place.

The overly long clothes description is essential to the story. I walk. I am a New Yorker. New Yorkers think nothing of walking 60-100 blocks just because.

But I no longer live in New York. I live in North Myrtle Beach.

There are walking trails here. There is the beach. And yes I feel grateful to live near the beach. But this area is very beautiful and sometimes I need to walk into housing developments, around parks, on Route 17 and Main Street. Main Street’s kind of funky. It has overpriced boutiques, restaurants, a shag shop and a store called “Two Blondes.” Route 17 isn’t beautiful but it has many stores and is the same Route 17 that’s in upstate New York. It’s the North-South Route 66 though so much less famous.

I was walking for hours. It was one of the first days where the weather was beautiful. I felt almost on vacation. My fears about living here were fading.

I was plotting stories, and truly getting a lot of work done–in my head but writers do work in their heads, and I think best when walking.

I was at the end of Main Street about to cross to go to Kroger’s when a man in a road workers uniform and holding a sign said something to me. I was a little befuddled as it was Sunday and I didn’t see any road work. Then I realized he was holding the sign to direct non-existent traffic into the mega church parking lot

I made sure I only said “no, thank you,” and not “no, thanks, maybe some other time,” as I really don’t want to be converted, and I leave no room for that possibility. He could have been inviting for coffee for all I knew as he was looking me up and down but not in a sleazy way. I smiled. I’m sure he didn’t hear me as we were four lanes away from each other and I have a soft voice in the best of times.
Some of you know my smile is worth the net worth of a tiny country. It’s perfect in its imperfection and I smile constantly. I also look horrible if I don’t.

I shopped in Kroger’s. Nobody fainted when I said I wanted to bag my groceries in my own bag. I walked through a few housing developments and found my way back to Main Street where I became so engrossed in looking at stores, the sky and how it reflected the beach I didn’t turn on my street but walked almost to the end. This is where it became weird.

A man got off his bike. I realized he was the same man I had seen at the mega church and began to say hello when he said:
Are you alright?
I have no idea what he’s talking about and begin mentally checking myself out. My mouth was parched. I had forgotten my water bottle and finished the water I bought sometime earlier.
Yes thank you.
No are you really alright?
Yes why?
I saw you walking before and here you are again.
I like to walk.
Do you have any place to go?
Hello do I look like a homeless person? I suppose he thought I had all my worldly goods in the insulated bag, and the Nike nylon bag I carry instead of a pocketbook when I’m not going to see people or for an appointment.

For some reason I didn’t say that or sound angry. I asked him what about me made him think that I was homeless.
You’re walking.
I wasn’t aware that’s illegal.
He repeated that because he saw me walk so many places he knew I must have no place to go.

If he had just turned it into a joke and said “it’s so rare to see somebody walk here,” I would have laughed and felt better but I guess that’s what we do in New York. Or I do.

I guess I was the one who was supposed to turn it into a joke or thank him profusely for caring or said my name and counted backwards from 100 by sevens (a dementia test,) but I’m sort of vain and have never been taken for a bag lady before.

I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable but I was convinced two policemen were going to come any second and arrest me for vagrancy. Logically I knew I have excellent ID, a platinum Amex, a bank/debit card and a cell, though I wasn’t sure how the cell would help me–it does have a lawyer programed in–helpfully with the word “lawyer.”

I was convinced that despite all this evidence of stability, and house keys, easily found in my jean pockets, I was going to be arrested for walking.

The man walked away, and got back on his bike. So bike reading is OK; walking isn’t. Have to remember the rules.

I walked home more than slightly humiliated. As soon as I got in I went to a mirror and inspected myself for signs of a homeless person. My lipstick–lip gloss–slightly pink was still on. I looked like a normal person.

I was doing what should be encouraged–walking with groceries that weren’t in plastic bags–and did weigh enough to be considered weight exercises. Sometimes I walk to the IGA in Cherry Grove, miles from my house in Crescent Beach, and walk back laden with groceries on the beach and even in the water. It impresses my friends.

I have found the exercise/weight program that I love and actually works and I think it’s illegal as it consists of walking with packages.

It’s April, the green month, and here in North Myrtle Beach, greenest city in the South I read, somebody stopped me for the high crime and misdemeanor of walking.

I go out walking after midnight…I stop to see a weeping willow….I go out walking after midnight

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!

I was one of the many thousands of girls, in the early-mid 60’s who couldn’t stand being a “good girl.” As I was about thirteen, too young and scared to do anything about my status, this song stood in for me.

It wasn’t one of those annoying sweet songs. And I will take it over present day pop any day.

It broke boundaries. It didn’t sound like any other song. It told a story. The Shangri-Las’ were one of a kind. More like the “angry young men” in British films than the Beatles. I always was a Stones girl

It made me daydream. It made me want a bad boy so badly. That it was by girls from Long Island, not Brooklyn or some place girls were known to be bad only made it that much better.

Mary Weiss is restarting her career.

I have a CD of early 60’s death songs that has a bonus track; Leader of the Laundromat. I think that’s supposed to make a statement but I have never figured it out.

On Monday I’m having my hair dyed and highlit. For the first time in over 30 years my hair is being touched by somebody who isn’t a good friend. I think that means I’m settling in.

Stumble it!

That was the title of a post I wrote yesterday. I was so excited because I changed the battery to a smoke alarm. The smoke alarm is in what many of you call the “spare room.” There’s a smoke alarm in the master bedroom, another in the hallway over the stair case and two more downstairs. It went off when I took a shower in the master bedroom.

In New York we name all of our rooms. Actually we give five names to different areas of the living room. Here’s the study (pretend there’s a picture of a desk). Here’s the dining room (see imaginary desk,) This is the library. Over there is the sitting area, and that section is the actual living room.

I was feeling very proud of myself. In New York I would have gone to the house phone, spoke to the doorman, told him it was an emergency and have the handyman come up. I do have much higher ceilings in New York.

Did I mention I’m scared of heights and equally scared of live wires? When I first opened the smoke alarm, I saw live wires and almost fell off the ladder. But I went on. I had to. The smoke alarm had stopped its long siren call and went into a one a minute high pitched sound guaranteed to drive a person crazy.

This morning I took a long shower. The smoke alarm in the computerspare room went off. I can’t imagine that steam from a shower set it off….I’m calling a handyman. The high pitched sound hasn’t happened. It might. My BFF, Lucia is convinced it’s only a matter of minutes.

I haven’t been here three weeks yet and I’m relaxed. Or as relaxed as I’m capable of being.

I had some business that occupied most of my time for the two weeks before I came here. Everything was finally finished Saturday and I was able to go to the beach, two blocks from my house, in March.

That is worth everything to me. I think I love it here.

I have been watching the complete first season of Friday Night Lights. Dillon is a small Texas town where everything revolves around football. Personally I find football to be incredibly boring, and have been to exactly one game in my life. Friday Night Lights transcends football.

I forget that I’m watching TV and feel intimately involved in each person’s life. It’s an amazing show that deserves to be renewed for a third season. The first three episodes can be slow at times but are necessary to set the stories up.

I also have the first complete first season of 30 Rock, Gone, Baby, Gone, No Country for Old Men, and four of James Spader’s best films.

I’m not watching as much TV as I had planned to. It’s so beautiful here and I feel compelled to be outside as much as possible. This particular area feels like the North Fork of Long Island but with a real ocean–can’t help it I’m from Long Island and tend to compare places to places I know. It’s very country like.

When I’m inside, it’s even fun to clean. I was running the dishwasher and washer/dryer every day but have come down to earth.

Life is good and getting better every day. I reserve the right to change that last sentence.

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!

We’re having some problems getting this post to work. We don’t care.
My apartment’s going on sale today–the week that The New York Times officially called the Manhattan housing market not good. Some people, basically everybody we know, called us obsessive for renovating a perfectly nice apartment. Since the paper of record says you should renovate to sell, they call us foresighted.

Our host company had problems. We don’t know why the “iconic” pinup is gone. However….We have it back.
We’re too happy to have our archives to bear a grudge. It’s just that when we said we were going to shake up our life, we wanted our blog to be part of our new life.

We hadn’t realized Courting is our real home. As long as we have our blog we can live anywhere. Not true but it sounds good.

We lost some posts that talked about our very chaotic move. Briefly it took fourteen hours to get here. We arrived to a disaster. The townhouse next door had their water heater in the attic. It exploded. Our friend’s downstairs kitchen, dining room and living room floors had to be replaced.

Bobby our newest BFF the project manager said fixing this house was like “what’s that show?” “Extreme Home Makeover.” “Right, hon.”

Bobby accomplished in two days what took us four months to do to our apartment, and we didn’t have to constantly give him more money and tell him not to take out the recessed lighting in the kitchen as we like it and we wanted to focus on the things that bring in money–a reglazed bath tub, new paint, great sanded floors, new door knobs. We knew what to do and what not to do, but we only own the apartment.

Basically we spent four months being contractor to the contractor and totally appreciate professionals. We did bring in a professional but he too had his hand out constantly. We understand how high the cost of living is in New York and that people think if a person’s renovating to sell they will make millions. We know our apartment has limitations and won’t. Hence we wanted it to look as perfect as possible. We’re so happy to be out of the city of “gimme, gimme more.”

We did take our own furniture, rearrange and “staged” it amazingly, if we must say so ourselves. Our mother’s best friend, an interior designer, always told us we had the eye and whatever else is needed to be an interior designer. We didn’t think it intellectual enough and were scared of graphs. Now we could do the graphs on computer and think it a great occupation.
•••••••••••••••••••
We would like to remind people as it doesn’t seem to be talked about that in less than two weeks the US will have been in Iraq for five years. Five years too long.

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!

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!