I took the writer’s island prompt “ferocious” and combined it with two weeks worth of 3WW..
The first weeks words are: empty, highway, ignored. The second week’s words are: cautious, human, empty
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It took me two days to write this post and I deleted the best parts. Hope I can somehow replicate it. My apartment still hasn’t sold. I don’t want to be the first casualty in Manhattan. This is unedited–just made a change or two for clarity though it’s still probably lacking.
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She told me that when she adopted me and I smiled at her I gave her life. Even during the teenage rebel years, she claimed I gave her life. She claimed she gave me life when she and my father barred the door and wouldn’t let me go to the 68 Chicago Convention where I could have died or “worse.” “Worse” being brain damage. She loved my brain warped as it is. Going to the convention was one of two things she ever forbade.

She picked me up in the station at Great Neck and we drove to that great mother/daughter bonding experience Loehmann’s. She loved to shop. I hated to. On the car ride she told me the entire story of a movie she had seen the night before on TV, Tea and Sympathy We both knew “when you think of me and you will often, think of me kindly,” but neither of us knew where it was from.

At Loehmann’s salespeople rushed to her as if she were an old friend. Something about her invited confidences, big and little. People would ask for her opinions about their clothes. She was always truthful. Though she refused to sew as her mother had made all her clothes, she could tell what needed just a bit of a hem, what needed a dart, what couldn’t work….As “payment” she would say: “This is my daughter. Isn’t she incredible. Doesn’t she look…” I would twirl, smile, put on the show and want to fall into the store floor.

She was a born salesperson. Before I had been adopted she owned a fancy dress drop and from the time I was a young teenager until shortly before that ride four Junior shops. My sister and I had more tee shirts we didn’t want, and still imitate her opening a door to a bureau and saying “here, take this. Take that.” “No, ma you’re exhausting me.”

This was a woman who thought a fun Christmas Eve activity was to go to a new Ikea. I love houseware stores but that….Have you ever been to Ikea on Christmas Eve? Empty it isn’t. It would have been a five Excedrin night had I still done them.

Thing was I can’t remember her ever talking down to me. Oh I was the daughter and she was the mother, but she always assumed I could understand and I loved her so much for that. She was so loyal that if I disliked a girl she found many good reasons to dislike her mother. I couldn’t just dislike the girl or boy actually. I had to explain exactly why.

I began picking the books for her book club when I was twelve. Our favorite book the year before was A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. She had grown up after Francie in the next community Greenpoint and I felt thrilled reading a book that took place so close to her home.

We discovered Capote’s In Cold Blood when it was serialized in The New Yorker I was about thirteen but in books she considered me an equal.

She was a year or two behind in her New Yorker reading but I couldn’t stop talking about it. We idolized Capote. My sister insists she picked out the theme for her Sweet Sixteen–a Black & White Ball but I know it was based on Capote’s party at The Plaza. Our mother had a way of making you think something was your idea when she did all the planning.

Though she was barely five foot tall, she had legs that seemed to go on forever. Her dark curly hair and big toothy grin were irresistible. Growing up my sister and I were always cognizant we had a mother men never ignored. I noticed how happy that made my father and made a note to my future self to somehow become irresistible so my husband would always desire me.

My parents were the make-out couple of Long Island. It embarrassed my sister. My mother said the first time I saw them kiss I applauded. I always was a devotee of true love and they had it in spades.

That ride to Loehmann’s was our last mother/daughter true shopping trip. Our family banned her from the highway or any road as she had macular degeneration. A vain, independent woman she refused to accept that it was a permanent condition. Unfortunately the doctor’s were always promising a cure…

I prefer to remember all the times before.

My father was larger than life and it wasn’t until I was an adult I realized how hard being the “straight woman” was. Dare I say she made him seem funnier than he was?

And gave him class–well, she always said that. She or I were the butt of all his jokes.

She taught me how to seem to listen to the same story for the 2,00th time. How to laugh, nod, speak in all the right places. It’s a skill that has served me well in life.

She accepted everything about me. Part of her job, it seemed, was to tell me that he was only so critical because he loved me more than anything. That he couldn’t help himself….It was great to have uncritical love from one parent.

She was smart. Though she was the only member of her family without a college education, she wrote my father’s papers for him. He got the accounting degree. She got the education. Both she and my father took courses throughout their lives. Both were involved in as many organizations as they could find time for. Their lives made me dizzy.

After my father died she said she never wanted to go to another country again as they had been to almost countries but Viet Nam and Indonesia where they were supposed to be when my mother “had a feeling.” She never had feelings like that. My father’s oujia board had been banned from the house. She believed in the here and now. What could be explained, nothing mystical unlike her sister the Buddhist hippie. Her feeling was right. The week they were supposed to be in Indonesia my father had a sudden stroke and died.

So when Princess Di died and she asked me if I wanted to go to London for that week I was very confused. I had just returned from the Jersey Shore and a week alone with my mother in London was–well my mother was slow. I’m fast. I’m not sure you can measure how many miles my mother walked in an hour. I should have taken her seriously. We should have gone, but I’m not sure she was serious.

She loved making me crazy as she grew older. Her jokes on me were funny and I’m not going to tell them now.

She was a cautious person. She did everything slowly, very slowly. It drove me crazy. She counted every pill in a prescription bottle, and yes counted her change. She was like this as a young woman so when she was older it felt like hell on earth.

My father could tell me to do something and I would “yes” him to death and do whatever I wanted anyway. He would carefully plan my trips to Europe. I would get there and change all the reservations. My sister always did what daddy said to do.

My sister would “yes” our mother, and do what she wanted to do. I could never “yes” our mother. To not be completely truthful; to not follow her advice to the letter….But she gave so little advice before our father died, that the one in ten thousand times she did I had to listen. And I have never been on a motorcycle–the one thing she asked me not to do. It’s coming on bike week here and….

After our father died it became so complicated. She began giving unsolicited advice. It was good–especially the writer part–but fraught with anxiety, and over-identification. I’m still not ready to talk about that time. Oh, she thought I should be a writer as I would read her all my papers in grad school. She had an amazing critical ear. I’m linear in school papers, and all research.

She was so blown away she finally asked why I wasn’t working at becoming a writer. “Your husband said I had some talent but not enough–and took my writing to ten writers he knew to have that borne out.” “But they loved your writing. He was scared for you. It’s such a hard life. And he always dreamed that you went to law school” Yes, I heard that one enough.

I understand now that they both would have encouraged me. My father had seen me fall too many times and encouraged me to pick myself up too often. My mother saved that for the big stuff. It’s hard to explain and I don’t know if I’m explaining it properly but I’m working on that.

It wasn’t that my mother was simple. She was possibly always the most complicated person I knew. She was always the best read, and when she went blind drove the male librarian at the library for the blind crazy. He wanted to send her romance novels. She wanted conspiracy theory books. She always had a great manner and finally said to him: Would you like romance novels? No, neither do I. Send me what you like.” He found himself another member of the fan club trying to please her.

My sister and I call her family comprised of Bohemians, Beatniks, and new age hippies, “the complex family.” Our mother was the one who passed for normal. Our mother was the one married to a former Communist who then bowed to Nixon and Reagan. She could have made a good Republican housewife.

Ha. My mother was the person who asked me two weeks after 9/11 if I thought it was retribution for all the horrible things we had done to other countries. If there is a god, I hope he/she/it forgives me for thinking she had become demented overnight. I know my mother forgave me for saying “some people think that but I can’t.”

I refuse to make her death two weeks later from a fall the centerpiece of her life. People say to me “oh your mother had macular. Must have lived an unhealthy life.”

I wasn’t raised on meat or sugar. My parents preached the evils of cigarettes from the time I was in a crib. My mother did everything right. She just happened to suffer from something nobody knew anything about. She was human. There’s a picture of her smoking a cigarette long before my sister or I were born. My sister held the picture in her hand and refused to believe it. I told her they didn’t photoshop in the 40’s.

One last little anecdote long term readers of Courting know. A few weeks before my father’s death we were taking a walk. He asked me if I knew the most remarkable thing about my mother. I was of course clueless.
She’s never had a gray hair.
Wow daddy that’s truly remarkable.

Of all the zillion things…I called her and we laughed, and laughed. And that’s why I practically live at the hairstylist. My father thought hair dye would kill you though it was overly obvious I dyed my hair–all the reds nature never intended.

After I came from meeting my birth mother, I felt empty. I opened my mailbox and there was a card from my mother. It just said “I love you, I love you, I love you, over and again. It was something we both needed to hear.

Maybe, just maybe I was too blessed in my choice of mothers. Letting go of her was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. I wish that we had just five minutes. That’s all. Five minutes to say good bye. She didn’t even have to be conscious. Just sort of alive. But….

The first copy, the one I deleted was much better. Writing this made me so nervous I couldn’t sleep. It was the first time I could write about my mother the person without focusing on her death. I feel much joy over that. This is a time of new beginnings in my life and I know she would want me to go forward. She was a big believer in living in the moment before it was trendy. When she became blind she had to as she had to remember everything. People say I have the memory of an elephant. I get it from my mother.

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.
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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 wrote this several years ago for my blog. The New York Social Diary just published it and I thank them. It’s a Pia and daddy with some mommy thrown in post.

MizBohemia one of my best blogging friends and best friends is back blogging. We were going to make a raucous at BlogHer this summer since it’s in San Francisco but I can’t make a plan past next Thursday–literally I’m supposed to go to NY for five days for Passover and to catch up with too many people

1300 Iraqi soldiers and police refused to fight in the Basra Offensive. Why are we there?

The great unrequited love of my life Frank Rich has an article about Iraq and Standard Operating Procedure. For some reason it made me homesick. I know one reason is that we consider it our responsibility to see every movie about issues no matter how painful.

I’m probably moving to a very large complex that’s like a city within a city. It has tons of walking and bike paths, three full golf courses, many pools. I’m doing it as I have already met people who live there and are hungry for intellectual stimulation and apparently I somehow provide that.
It has three restaurants and a too cute for me shopping center, with more restaurants and two well known clubs. I’m going to be renting a condo for six months and after I sell and see if I like it here, I have a friend who works for the home company so I can buy, a townhouse, at a discounted price and negotiate more discounts. I can’t believe I’m going to be living in a resort but…it has it own cabana with showers at the beach, and is walking distance from it, I tried the walk the other day and it was lovely.

I haven’t told the people I have met about this blog, and will probably ask my friends when they begin to come in May not to. It’s not the immensely popular blog it was that overtook my life. I need to reclaim my old identity.

I have many plans and just outlined ideas for articles I can write and probably now sell. It might be easier to write about New York from a distance and I will probably be going back every six weeks for five days or so.

The post below this is some fresh fiction and I mean fresh

Stumble it!

I put the posts on top of this in the sidebar category. I’m a bit in love with this post. Here’s what my Dad wrote when adopting me.
My father was a CPA who disliked accountants. Found them boring. He did love accounting. I thought of how ashamed he would have been during Enron, and he would be more ashamed now of accountants role in the subprime mess that is affecting us all.
As usual I thank Bone for the words
Hi Daddy,
Seventeen years and five days ago, we were meeting at Bloomingdale’s, 40 Carrots, for dinner. I was working for SSI, in Jamaica, Queens, and all the subways there went down. Only the truly rich had cells then and it was a bitch getting in touch with you. But I knew you would call mommy, your personal drill sergeant, psychologist, and the love of your life. Oh how you fought, oh how you made up.

When I finally got to Bloomingdale’s,almost three hours later, I saw you sitting on a bed decorated by Ralph Lauren. I thought you looked so old and tired. Funny the things we remember the last time we saw somebody really alive. You said you were just about to leave but I knew you would have waited for me forever and a day.

I don’t remember what we talked about but I know you asked me a question or two about my job. You liked me working for Social Security but you thought I should have been a claims rep for SSA with the “normal” people, and not work for SSI. It was one of our many ongoing arguments.

The following Monday night, you yelled at me because I didn’t want to watch The Academy Awards. You said The Academy Awards was a significant event. I said i had to get up at 5:30 and sleep took precedence. We settled on me recording it, though you couldn’t understand how I could miss such an event, live.

Uh, daddy, Monday had been your poker night most of my life. I know you were an early advocate of multi-tasking, but I could never see how you could focus on an award show when there was poker to play and interesting people to talk to.

It wasn’t the first moon landing, something else we argued about. I never told you that you were right. It should have taken precedence over my teenage love life.

The following morning you yelled at mommy, because she was there, about Kevin Costner being an idiot who didn’t deserve to win. I have always been proud of you for being an early-Kevin Costner hater.

Nothing was abnormal about breakfast, you had a glass of orange juice, wheat toast, fake cream cheese mommy would make out of pot cheese, and a cup of Postum.

Then you went down to your office. I don’t know exactly when you had the stroke. Mommy was going out and she yelled to tell you. You didn’t answer. She went down and found you. Elka and I have always laughed, because that’s what people do, at the thought of 5′0,” 100 pounds, mommy trying to pick you up.

You were supposed to pick Elka up at the train station as she was working for you. You insisted that both of us work for you at different times. You thought that Elka would make a great CPA and envisioned both of you in practice together but you really wanted us to understand the stock market. We do as much as anybody can these days. It’s changed so much.

Nobody picked up the phone at the house and Elka took a cab. By the time she got to the house there was an ambulance and the entire town fire department. I can’t imagine what Elka felt.

I didn’t get any of my famous “feelings.” It was just another day at work. Then I went home to my apartment and called the house. Mommy answered. Something about her voice was a bit off, and I screamed:
“What happened?”
“Daddy had a little stroke. Nothing major. Nothing to come home for.”

You were mommy’s world. For the first time in her life, at the worst of times, she went into deep denial. I listened to her but by the next day went to the hospital after work. I put my hand on yours. You held it up to your mouth and kissed it. Elka claimed that it was a reflex action, but I have always believed you knew it was me.

You gave us so many gifts over the years. The greatest gift was the six days you lay in your hospital bed “like a lox,” as mommy always said. We had time to get used to you dying.

They were going to make us tell them whether or not we wanted life support the following Monday but on Sunday your breathing was different. It was the breathing Native Americans think is the soul leaving the body. I would like to think so also. Elka and Eddie went out to dinner that night. Mommy and I stayed for a couple of hours. As we were leaving I left the room so mommy could be alone with you. I couldn’t help watch her throw her body on yours. It was so out of character I almost laughed.

Not an hour later you died. We never talked about it but we knew you were too considerate to die while we were there, or to hang on any longer.

After they called to tell us, a nurse called to tell us how handsome you looked. You were a very handsome man. Why couldn’t you ever photograph the way you truly looked? Even in your MTV commercial, you looked, well, bewildered.

I think you had too much personality. No photograph could ever capture that.

I’m not sentimental when it comes to pictures or a person’s possessions. The only things I kept were the kaleidoscope Elka and I gave you two years earlier, and the Turkish shoe shine box you carried all the way through Turkey. There’s a long story about it that I can never remember though I must have heard it 80 times.

Possessions are just a token. It’s the real man I remember, and write about so that you will live in your granddaughter’s memory and maybe a few more people will learn about you.

The decade after your death was difficult. Mommy went totally blind. They say a decade begins and ends with significant events. My 90’s began with your death and ended with mommy’s in 01.

I hope there is some kind of afterlife and you are somewhere where Postum is always available. I hope you found mommy and ushered her up. I can imagine you arguing over many things and making up, but what do I know? I’m down here.
You were mommy’s God. Men asked her out:
But how can I when I had the best?

I will always carry you both in my heart and soul.

Love for all time
#1 daughter

I do carry my parents with me. Just wish they could answer a few questions. There is a second part to this letter I will post in a few days.

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!

I was just telling somebody a story about two guys I have known. One intimitely and forever though not forever intimitely, and the other just kind of forever. Both are rather well known in their fields which I will leave as pop culture.

Then I realized, not for the first time, I have had a whole incredible life that’s never been talked about here or will be in a memoir because while I will tell good friends stories about my life as it did happen, I don’t feel comfortable talking about my true personal life–even things that happened many years ago. Courting and hence Google presents a very distorted view of my life.

Sometimes I wish that I were a very different type of person. One who would really say anything rather than giving the illusion of saying too much.
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I put my friend’s letter in about the super delegates because this is an election
unlike one I have ever seen. Here’s an oped on letting the people decide. hey even I’m too young to really remember Kennedy’s election.

I will vote Democratic as I personally believe it extremely important that a Democrat occupy the White House. I believe that Ralph Nader was the true reason Gore didn’t win.

In this current election I have seen people who were totally disenfranchised become involved. I have seen them begin to believe a bit in America as a true democracy. I find that wonderful.

Hillary is a machine candidate, (here’s Frank Rich on her) and here’s something more personal. New York made a remarkable recovery after 9/11 or did we?

Bloomberg who few people truly like but most people respect has moved as much money around as he can. I can’t afford to live in Manhattan anymore and will sell my apartment, shortly, to somebody who does have several million in “disposable” income, and access to much credit.

Is that what we want Manhattan to be? Anybody who has read this blog for any length of time knows that 9/11 changed my life and not in a good way. I don’t have warm and fuzzy feelings about how great the people were. I remember the people and I do speak in glittering generalities as being worn and not able to deal with my personal tragedy.

It was the first time in my adult life I felt out of place. Time heals and I have put my mother’s death into perspective. There should have been help for people like me. I am a licensed social worker who did offer to begin support groups for people who lost loved ones around the time of 9/11 but not in it.

The man who lives upstairs from me is a drunk, fortunately in recovery now. He had to move back to the building as he was deemed a security risk living in The Boat Basin. He fell not once but many times every night for months. I would incorporate his falls into my dreams. Every night I would dream of people falling from The Towers. They would have my mother’s face as she died from a fall. She lived in the city; I live in Manhattan.

Yet I wasn’t eligible for the free help that was given so readily to people who had a second cousin once removed die in the attacks. I can’t forget that. I can’t help but believe if we had an administration that gave a damn–and senators who cared it might have been different. Every person who lived in the city was affected yet we were the only city not to have rallies, not to have the little things that help people heal. It was everybody for herself.

Yes that began my dislike of Hillary. She could have done so much for the people of New York City. She chose not to. She should have been screaming for the promised aid to come to New York then not to Montana and finally to New York three years later.

I will vote for her if I have to but it will be reluctantly.

I’m sorry I’m playing the same old song. I don’t enjoy it. I had to totally remake myself after 9/11. It wasn’t easy and it took time. I did but the psychic scars remain.

Stumble it!

Happy birthday Bone. 35 and finally almost maybe possibly somewhat an adult
I want to thank writerKat for giving me an award for excellence. I live to write and write to live which isn’t a great thing when I’m supposed to be emptying book shelves.
I read Jonathan’s blog once a week–every post. It’s like reading a great serial. He and his wife Wendy just adopted three children. Jonathan shared the process. Now he’s sharing the day to day life, and I can’t help but tear up..
I should edit this to explain my mother asked me to describe what I ate as she ate about five foods–all good for you. She was little and petite.
The plumber asked her for a plunger. She knew he was licensed as the building wouldn’t use unlicensed plumbers but still….Then he and the building handyman told her that she might have to buy a new toilet. Just when she thought she was through with most of this. Just after the tub that practically touched the toilet had been reglazed.

Other women would be apt. Other women would know what to do. High powered execs by day, home handy person by night. She was the only one thinking “daddy, why the hell aren’t you on this earth?”

Not that her father would have known what to do nor would the men she had been with. In her world it was the women who could do the handy work. Just not her.

She thought back to the time she was moving to East 63rd Street and her father had made a graph of the apartment with accompanying little cardboard pieces of furniture. It had embarrassed her. He wasn’t moving. She was, but he talked about “our apartment.”

He turned out not to be intefering, and was respectful of her privacy. She missed him and thought further back to the time he had taken her out of school to see the circus. Later she found out he hated the circus but thought every lttile girl should go.

He took her to Yankee Stadium to see a game as every little girl should….He liked basketball and betting on football games.

Daddy took her sister and her so many places in the name of education, culture, and “they should have the experience.”

The one place he couldn’t get away with a one time or once a year experience was the beach. She loved it too much. She remembered the time she was turning some birthday and had just broken up with somebody. She trudged out to Jones Beach–subway, train, wait for the bus–two and a half hours in all. She walked from the West Bathhouse to the water. The West Bathhouse beach is one of the widest in the world. It was over a hundred degrees at the beach and the walk from the water to the Bathhouse seemed to take forever.

The ride home would have taken at least four hours. So many people trudging to the bus stop. Too few buses to the Freeport train station. She did what any normal girl from the Island would do, she found a phone booth:
“Daddy can you pick me up?”

The ride would have taken less than half hour at night in the dead of winter. in summer it could take up to an hour. It took her parents over two hours. Her father couldn’t pretend he wasn’t angry:
Beach bum. I raised a beach bum. Only a beach bum would go to Jones Beach on the hottest day of the year and it’s a Saturday–all the weekend traffic.
I’m sorry daddy. It was stupid of me. But tomorrow’s my birthday and I wanted to celebrate by myself at the beach.
You’ll stay at the house tonight?
Of course. Have to celebrate my birthday with my favorite parents.
Did you wait in the heat?
No did you know that there’s an airconditioned ice cream parlor in the Bathhouse? I waited there and had a small sundae.
Her mother chimed in
Oh good you were comfortable. Can you describe the sundae?

They went to a diner on Jericho Turnpike. First her mother made her model her lavender halter sleeveless dress with matching Candy mules:
Nice. Sexy but Pia darling if you lose anymore weight, you’ll lose your figure.
That’s kind of the point mommy….
Her father interrupted:
There’s a string hanging from the dress.

They went into the diner. Her parents immediately played “YMCA” and danced to it. Nobody else had parents like this. She spotted people they knew–a major ex boyfriend’s aunt and uncle. They were smiling. So was everybody but her.

She doesn’t remember where they went for her birthday dinner. Someplace with even more varieties of fish probably. She doesn’t remember anything else about the weekend but how her parents saved her from going home by public transportation and then humiliated her.

She would give anything to tell them how much fun they were. She probably did. They lived long enough for her to forge a true adult relationship. Still she would like to thank them for everything.

Her parents had been older though she never thought of them as old. If her father had lived he would be 94 on 2/16. She would have loved for him to have been a part of the Internet revolution. But that became her destiny. Maybe that’s what life’s about. She’s not in the mood to philosophize .

She only wants to see them once more. To find out all the other things they hated but did anyway. Today she just really wants to cry to her daddy.

Oh she’s a real adult, but there are sometimes, you just need your parents, nobody else.

As people who have been reading Courting for awhile know I adored my parents. My father was less handy than I am if such a thing is possible but he was a successful man so people didn’t tell him he needed to buy a new toilet when the plumber didn’t even bring a plunger or special toilet snake–and he did come for a consult Wednesday. It turned out of course I didn’t need a new toilet. The handyman probably told him I’m good for big tips. Not in this case.

Stumble it!

And deleted the whole post by accident or not. Here’s a tribute to Dan Fogelberg. He doesn’t know this but I had him one Constant Comment, Cointreau, pot filled year. Dan Fogelberg had a voice that could sooth a weary soul and a way of playing that was sheer beauty. Guitar and piano mostly, and I think some other instruments. He died on 12/16–forgot to put that in as i’m truly crazed from paint fumes, floor fumes and construction dust.

I am the least crazy for comments blogger alive. if your blog is selling something, written in “English isn’t my fourth language but I will tell bloggers how to blog,” your comments will be deleted. It’s week eight of my apartment renovation and I had some friends, big in contracting but don’t live here, confirm some mistakes. I have to be super nice in real life. In my blog….

I haven’t been great at commenting or reading new blogs or new to me this year. I could say it’s because of the turmoil in my life and that’s true but I’m moving as I want to seriously write. New York is too pricey and has too many distractions. Honestly, and I don’t mean this in a bad way so does blogging. Maybe when I move I will find the time for everything.

I probably began listening to him as I thought he was beautiful but I stayed for the music. I did begin to find him boring, earnest–uh, I can relate. There were times I couldn’t stand to listen to him and wondered why I ever did. I went to punk clubs when I listened to him the most. I guess he was the perfect antecedent. I was also very into Noel Coward and Cole Porter. Today’s been the first time in years I have listened to him. Yes he was “soft” rock but he wasn’t Hall & Oates, two people I could never work up any nostalgia for. (See the advert for their concert or one of them at The Beacon everyday, and wonder “why, why would anybody pay? Yet I know people who would…They’re not friends of mine.)

I don’t associate him with any particular male in my life. He was somebody to listen to between the relationships. I just spent several tears of joy and sorrow hours listening and watching his vids. I put in two but really couldn’t decide. Here’s the page.+

I never put in tribute vids but this fits. “Old Tennessee” is one of my favorite songs. His voice was never purer.

auld lang syne, Dan. This is a Dan Fogelberg type of New Years Eve song. It fits my leaving New York mindframe.

I wish you all hope, happiness, good times, prosperity and most of all health in 2008.

I hope the Democratic party stops being a party of wimps and gets its act together for I know some very jaded teenagers who have stopped believing in anything. To not believe in a great future, I can’t imagine that. I was one hell of a melodramatic teenager but in my heart I believed in this country. In their hearts they don’t and ain’t nothing I can say can change that. I feel the same fears but am too old not to believe in a better tomorrow

Wow. I haven’t put my apartment on the market yet and am half suffering from seller’s remorse. At Nancy’s Wine shop, I told the owner, I assume Nancy, that I was leaving. She didn’t leave, when her company moved, as she’s single, childless and doesn’t drive. Duh. Can I make this work? And I went to the fair at Intermediate School and bought rather famous jams made from honeycombs in the Bronx for friends who will be in tomorrow. I didn’t go into look for a secondhand coat or talk to Sarita who makes incredible glasses as I have too much to do. I don’t even like fairs, but I love this one. It’s at West 77th and Columbus and open every Sunday-

Stumble it!

I’m real nervous about many things so I included the perfect song and video. Perfect for many reasons. I used this blog like a nervous tic today. wrote the bottom yesterday. Work started on the apartment. Now my cable’s out just when I want to retreat from the world and watch totally mindless….
Unless I can think about other things this blog is going to be mostly about selling a coop, and other minutia in life
I totally forgot that I have sold a coop. My mom’s and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. I deleted the rest of the post as I need positive energy. Lots of positive energy. It had a happy ending. My sister and I became closer and we did make money. I spent a good part of my share at the dentists.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I didn’t get my mail yesterday so I didn’t know that my bank had bounced my health insurance check. This was very confusing as they included my balance which was more than ten times the amount of the check. The balance reflected this check as having been paid. With me so far? Good because I’m lost.

By the time the woman said they would refund the $25 service fee I was laughing too hard to listen. She began to laugh, as she tried and failed to come up with some excuse for the bank. I have no idea why I found this so funny tears were coming from my eyes. We were both choking by the time the call ended. She dispensed with the usual formalities as she was laughing too hard. The letter told me that I qualified for a credit line. That I have one and the amount was mentioned a few sentences down. I scanned it in both to keep it and as proof that not every problem in the world is caused by me.

It turned out that they actually resent the check to the health insurance company with an explanation. Still I know I will have to spend an hour tomorrow straightening this out. Epilogue: it’s a dull and dreary day and I can’t deal with health insurance companies. If they cut me off, I will….

I’m truly tired of this bank making mistakes that I have to straighten out. They seem to especially like to bounce or lose then find checks to health insurance companies–the one industry that will cut you off before the due date. It’s no longer a New York bank but is very much associated with New York.

I can’t wait to officially move and cut all ties to it. To truly go on with my life I have to leave the New York area.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Work begins on my apartment tomorrow. The guy I hired, to oversee it and hire the others, is the son of the man who named Talking Heads. My deep love of music and Talking Heads–late 70’s–80’s played no part in this decision really. He happened to see a book an old beloved friend of mine wrote that has pictures of many Village musicians on the cover. He said “that person looks familiar. Is it?” “No he is___” We have been finding that we know many people in common.

I admire women who can take care of twins and three other kids while selling a house, buying a new one, working full time, and are deeply immersed in a new relationship. I’m not one of them. Recently I have begun to give myself permission to be imperfect.

Beginning to give myself permission isn’t exactly allowing myself to screw up. It’s so hard to be imperfect and want to be perfect.
here were many Talking Heads “psycho killer” videos to choose from, and most sounded more professional and more Talking Heady–but only the one from CBGBs would do. Really the New York I love lives on in many memories.

I can’t seem to face up to the facts
I’m tense and nervous and I
Can’t relax
I can’t sleep ’cause my bed’s on fire
Don’t touch me I’m a real live wire
Psycho Killer
Qu’est-ce que c’est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away
Psycho Killer
Qu’est-ce que c’est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away

You start a conversation you can’t even finish it.
You’re talkin’ a lot, but you’re not sayin’ anything.
When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed.
Say something once, why say it again?

Psycho Killer,
Qu’est-ce que c’est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away
Psycho Killer
Qu’est-ce que c’est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away

Ce que j’ai fais, ce soir la
Ce qu’elle a dit, ce soir la
Realisant mon espoir
Je me lance, vers la gloire … OK
We are vain and we are blind
I hate people when they’re not polite

Psycho Killer,
Qu’est-ce que c’est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away
Psycho Killer,
Qu’est-ce que c’est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away

oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh….

Stumble it!

Yesterday I missed the family, our family, Thanksgiving. Thursday I will go to my sister’s in-laws who are lovely people but they’re not my family. I’m comfortable there but haunted by Thanksgivings past, and want new traditions of my own. Finally I want to be the grown-up. How old do you have to be to stop being an adult orphan? When your children reach college age? What happens when you don’t have kids to mark your life cycle?

I’m anxious. At one with Streeteasy.com which has real prices, how long apartments languish for, reductions in price, pictures of apartments, sometimes videos, and floor plans that do or do not have square feet. It lets me see what I should expect. My apartment is larger than some on sale in my building, and smaller than one. It has one more bath than all, and more marble and granite. I know marble and granite’s so yesterday but I’m not going to change it, just buff it. My apartment had its walls skim coated in 90 and they are still in excellent condition. Just look tie died from the floods.

Floods aren’t a bad thing. They allow the steam risers, something I never heard of until last year, to be replaced with the building’s insurance. The building is making a schematic of all pipes. This is a well run building. The super is an expert in floods and in luxe pre-war Manhattan buildings that’s what counts.

It took me weeks to get the nerve to go to the storage room. In my imagination it’s a huge scary place where everybody’s cages are more organized than mine. The reality is different, but I literally get sick before I go down each time. Last week I became sicker than ever.

On Friday I cleaned out the storage cage. Apparently clothes from Studio 54 days are in vogue. Many books were ruined by the basement flood. But I did it. And formed my storage cage theory of life. When you’re ready to tackle the impossible you will. No matter how scary it feels at first.

Today I was too antsy to stay here. I was going to go a movie, one of my Monday afternoon guilty pleasures, but there wasn’t a movie I wanted to see badly enough for $11.75, no Fandango. They’ll be on pay per view soon enough.

I wondered the streets keeping myself outside of stores as I’m into getting rid of things, not adding. This holiday season will be on the cheap. I’m also one with Morningstar.com and don’t see any good signs.

When I point out the newish West 72nd Street subway stop and park to people who aren’t Manhattancentric or didn’t live her then, they don’t see the beauty though it looks like a Nora Ephron movie set. They don’t know it once was called Needle Park, see Panic In Needle Park one of the most underrated movies ever. Logically to me Panic… reminds me of my father as he knew Jerry Schatzberg, the director.

I guess my father knew him during his photographer days as he knew many, but I remember him telling me a story involving Schatzberg and a porn film, Elka don’t read this, that my father somehow was involved with. Apparently people did porn films for tax write-offs but this one was a success. I remember reading an article in Playboy about it. I could be wrong but I’m 99% sure it was Schatzberg though it’s in nothing official about him and frankly I didn’t feel like delving further.

This Island is filled with real people and ghosts. My father’s ghost being the most preeminent. Last week
The Times had an article on high stakes poker games that made them sound sleazy. I don’t know when my father’s game began, sometime before I was born. I do know he met many of his clients and friends through it. I imagined it to be like Felix & Oscar’s game. Though I knew there weren’t people like Murray the Cop. It began at an Ivy League club and moved to apartments. For most of my life it was on Monday night, then Thursday.

My father and I had a standing dinner date. He would go through food phases. One year it was all Shun Lee Palace when Ed, Shoenfeld was maitre de and the nation’s first Jewish Chinese food specialist, though some would argue we all are. He would come sit with us and tell us stories. Probably my father told more stories.

In the 80’s there was a cheap chain of seafood restaurants Hobeaus,(each restaurant had a different name, and once Lucia and I had an inadvertent lobster fight that people applauded) that everybody went to including us, when we didn’t go to Faye & Allen’s or a few other pricier ones. My sister lived in The West Village and my father was determined to eat in every restaurant in it.

Toward the end of my father’s life he began to revolt against pricey restaurants and we would usually go to Ottomanelli’s Cafe a chain of Italian past restaurants based on a butcher shop.

When I think of my father I think of restaurants, poker, New York and so so much more. I went out, and go out all the time, and will never classify myself as a “foodie” a word I disdain as it implies and infers being better than others. When really most Manhattanites live their lives in some restaurants or others. I don’t find it exciting or interesting anymore. There seems nothing left to be discovered. Nothing new. I like bistros, tavernas and diners though I can live without actually being in them.

I’m jaded. I know that. When you live in Manhattan for most of the past 32 years and can’t get excited about restaurants it’s past time to leave.

There are so many other ghosts. I used to have lavish parties when I lived on East 63rd. An old friend asked the other day if I still make rice with vermouth and I had to dig deep to remember that dish I invented. I used to read cookbooks for fun, and substitute ingredients. White vermouth, something I have never been able to abide straight, is great for cooking as it has many herbs.

I no longer eat rice, white or brown, nor do I usually eat pasta my very favorite food.

I’m trying to calm myself down by writing about my father’s ghost and food. It took me a year of searching to find this apartment. I don’t know how many apartments I saw. Most were ordinary and no amount of decorating would change that. Many were put on the market dirty and in much worse condition than I can imagine my apartment being in.

Though prices were much lower then I felt the owners greed. I didn’t feel that when I first saw this one. I saw an apartment that had been lavished with love and respect for original detail. I want the person or people who buy mine to have that same feeling. I want them to walk into the building and think “please, please, let the apartment be as nice.” It was nicer.

I know I will never be a recluse and only the doormen will know my name. I actually tried that and it didn’t work. I have too much of my parents in me. But it scares me that I take little pleasure in restaurants anymore.

I never imagined myself moving to The South. Southern Florida, yes, but I know too many people who I don’t want to reestablish relationships with. Something vapid in their values. Cousins excluded.

I’m antsy and I can’t work on the novel I’m writing strictly for fun. My head is filled with lists of things to be done. I have to decide what to get rid of; what to keep and put in the storage cage so that next week when my apartment is worked on it will be an almost clean slate. Clothes, I can get rid of in a second, but books they are hard.

I hope to look back at this time in six months and think how much easier it was than I thought it would be. I hope the person or people who buy it will be as entranced with painting it and making it into a “wow” statement as I was a decade ago. Now everybody has multi colored walls. I want them to love how secluded the bedroom feels, almost as if it’s part of a private home.

I want them to be haunted by their own private good ghosts, and when the ghosts begin talking too much or stop talking to know it’s a sign. I’m not sure what the sign means but it means something.

Stumble it!