March 19 Iraq War Blogswarm 3/19/03–3/19/08:
Here’s a Bush marking the five year anniversary slide show. I’ll save you the trouble, because who actually wants to look at him?. He said we’ll stay with the course while he acknowledged the cost has been much more than anticipated. Of course all the costs are much more. As I remember the war supposedly ended about six weeks after it began
Courting Destiny began as our way of protesting the RNC in New York in 2004. Our original url, freenynyfrombush.blogspot.com is one of our proudest partial lines. We didn’t know that some crazy radical rightists thought they ran the blogosphere, and yes we can admit it now, made us kind of cry. We wouldn’t back down then and we’re certainly not going to back down now.

Bush came into New York on Friday. If you haven’t read Gail Collins amazing article about his stupidity read it now. His statement reminded me of Karl Rove’s remarks when he came to New York, the city that was attacked, and said “liberals want therapy for terrorists.” Actually Bush is stupid and dangerous; Rove is pure danger–not in a good way. Wasn’t going to let the fifth anniversary go by without some Rove Rage. He might have resigned from the administration but his legacy lives on.

I am a New Yorker who can’t afford to live there. I’m a liberal who wanted nothing more than to see Bin Laden beheaded. I’m a Democrat solely because I won’t vote for a Republican now.

I wrote this story in my head while walking down some country roads. North Myrtle is the beach, burbs, country and city all in one. i didn’t want my fiction return to be dark, but 3/19 is a day for darkness It’s a 3WW. I added the words that Bone supplied. It’s a first very rough draft. Actually I don’t like this story. I want to write lighter more fun things. But today has never been one of my favorite days–began a long time before the war and I remember everything about today, five years ago.

Saw a screening of a 9/11 film with a friend in Times Square. It was too soon for me. Had to review it and have no idea if it was good or not.

Six weeks before my sister and I had to run around finding money to pay estate taxes on our mother’s estate. We wouldn’t have had to pay taxes two years later. It’s hard to feel good about paying a bit for an unnecessary war. Many people have paid much more in other ways.

America is so troubled. I almost think a person has to be disturbed to go into politics. Don’t think most parents want their children to grow up to be president anymore.

Two of the words were very easy. One was very difficult.
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Allie could barely remember a time Jay hadn’t been in her life. Her older sister Suzie had taken him to Allie’s Sweet Sixteen, in 1970. Allie was jealous at her own party of her beautiful eighteen year old sister who was hanging onto the most gorgeous man she had ever seen. Jay had long curly dark brown hair, and a look in his dark blue eyes that entranced Allie. He had recently returned from Viet Nam and was attending Suzie’s school.

Suzie soon moved into Jay’s apartment. Allie smoked her first joint there, and barely minded when she watched them shoot up. Suzie said all the hip kids at school did. Jay had moods where he would get real quiet and suddenly begin screaming and banging walls. Suzie said smack mellowed him.

The moods got worse and no drug helped him. Suzie and her friends brought him to the VA which immediately admitted him. His roommate was an 80 year old shell shocked World War One vet. Jay seemed to get even more moody but the VA said there was nothing they could do. Continue Reading »

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.
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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!