It took me a year of Sundays and weekdays to find this apartment. I never e_pected it to go up 300% in value in eleven years. I was lucky, and I saw many many toads on the road to the prince. Buying a house is scarier as I know the Upper West Side well and feel comfortable everywhere in Manhattan though I can live without the crowds and the prices so I will.
I’m looking for a patio house on the East side of 17 in North Myrtle Beach in specific hoods that I won’t say here. I know I will want to do the floors, bathrooms and kitchen over so I don’t want to pay much. I do have some specific houses in mind but new ones come o the market often. I did let the house of my dreams get away….but there’s always a new dream or house
I wrote a post last night when it was pouring that was pretty good but I deleted it. This isn’t a reconstruction but a reaction to what seem to be general feelings.

In a quick look at non political blogs that talked about Sarah Palin people say not to judge her based on her values. One even said she has good family values implying most of the rest of us don’t. I don’t think that’s what the blogger meant to say judging by other parts of the blog

The New York Times (a paper I will read on weekends forever or until my dotage) public editor was slightly defensive in his defense of the paper’s coverage of her. He did say the FBI hadn’t vetted her before the announcement. Actually only one person asked questions about her before the announcement

By choosing a running mate unknown to most of the nation, and doing so just before the Republican National Convention, John McCain made it inevitable that there would be a frantic media vetting. It turns out that Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it, that she sent e-mail complaining about a lack of disciplinary action against a state trooper who was going through a messy custody battle with her sister, and that she never made a decision as commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard, one of her qualifications cited by McCain

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There’s enough in that paragraph alone to wonder about her qualifications. I don’t care that Todd had a DUI over 20 years ago. I might care that he was a member of a separatist party. Yet if Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin’s plan for New York City to succeed from the state had taken off I might have joined it. That I was only eighteen wouldn’t have mattered in the long run and some people (well, me) remember Mailer not only for his brilliant writing but for his championing of a killer who killed again when Mailer got him out. That’s two things people could use against me before I even hit 20–there’s more but I’m not running for office and understand that we live in Google forever now.

The point is we live in an age when every little decision we make at every stage of our lives can both boomerang and come back to hit you in the face. Only the decision Sarah Palin made not to talk about her daughter Bristol’s pregnancy is neither in the past nor irrelevant to her future. It has everything to do with her “qualification” to be VP and probably President if McCain wins because just look at him.

I’m not Christian. This doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in “Christian values.” It does mean that Palin presented her daughter’s pregnancy in a way that was a slap in the face to everybody who has different beliefs than her. The public doesn’t have a right to know usually. This isn’t “usually.”

As an adoptee I might have liked to have heard her mention discussing adoption with Bristol. I would have liked to have known that her daughter knew about safe se_ because if Palin and McCain do win they will do everything in their power to stop that from being taught to teenagers and any study will show that abstinence only doesn’t work.

People keep telling us to “play nice.” Ask the Democrats who saw themselves portrayed on Recount how they felt as being portrayed as decent, honorable but inept people.

This coming week will be the seventh anniversary of 9/11. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened with Gore as president. For proof of that one only has to look at the 8/6 memo that Gore wouldn’t have slept on.

Bloggers were told during Katrina we couldn’t cast blame and help at the same time. We could and we did.

The USA is one giant mess. We all felt so good and became complacent as we believed that the radical right was a dead force. To have to live with the consequences of that belief is beyond my comprehension.

I and most”liberals” don’t care what kind of mother Sarah Palin is. That’s none of our business. It is our business to care that she’s trying to foist her values on us.

I’m not going to dredge out the original draft of The First Amendment again–the one that very distinctly spelled out that church and state shouldn’t meet. When people haughtily talk about how “under God” was good enough for the founding father’s they should remember that Madison and Jefferson cared more about separating God from government than anything else.

We can’t and won’t give Palin a free pass. We did that to Bush after 9/11 and suffered. If we say anything negative about Palin, we’re talking se_ism.

I have never defined myself as a feminist but I married young and kept my last name at a time when that entailed walking around with a marriage certificate for banks, apartments, even some hotels. The only male I have ever been dependent upon for money I called “daddy” and that kind of went with the job description.

I’m buying a free standing house and one of the reasons I think I’m so into this is because i am an economically empowered woman and owning a house represents the final challenge. One day, in the townhouse, I thought “what responsibility is missing here? Roofs,” and I realized that I could dial a roofer with the best of them. Though my nail tips (long story) keep me from doing anything nail related with the ease I once knew, I can be both the girliest woman and the most strident of feminists in one breath.

Don’t call me “se_ist” when my entire adult life has been about challenges.

Don’t think that the choice of Palin is going to go over well with moderates who were sitting on the fence or leaning toward McCain as too many of them have children. And they want their children to learn about responsible se_.

And if people weren’t around when abortion was illegal, it’s up to those of us who were around to tell them that many women chose to have illegal abortions in unsafe conditions. The daughter of close friends of my parents died of sepsis when I was fifteen. It’s something that stays with you for life. So needless. The parents were affluent, but the daughter felt she couldn’t confide in them. By that I mean the daughter could have gotten a safe abortion.

We can’t go back to those days. There is a very real possibility that if McCain and Palin win we will. I understand that many girls chose to be teenage mothers but in the world I come from that was not an option–just as abortion isn’t an option to Palin.

I believe that it’s up to the individual who is pregnant.

By saying talking about Bristol’s pregnancy is off limits we’re closing ourselves to a much needed debate. No not a debate–we have to keep abortion legal as girls and women will always have them.

We’re letting them win once again by being nice and we can’t be. The future of our country in every way is at stake.
Here’s the unrequited love of my life Frank Rich.

We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women. Most of the rest of the biography supplied by her and the McCain camp is fiction

Fiction–in an era where everything can be vetted–fact checking is a life style, people look something up on the Internet and call it “research” Palin thinks she’s above the rest of us and can re-invent her life.

I went, not willingly but to support a friend, to the modern version of est the other night–actually the night Palin was giving her speech-and they said you can reinvent your life. I thought how wonderful to live in a world you make that has no basis in reality–reframe yes, see through different lenses, but reinvent? Apparently est and Palin have much in common.

Cooper this post is for you. I think Cooper the secret prognosticator should be the tagline of wonderlandornot, and once a week you should tell some aspect of somebody’s future. Or not.

It’s past time for all Americans who truly understand the Constitution to take a stand. We can’t give this country over to bigots who will do our deciding for us.

I was much moderate, but too much is at stake now, and I live in South Carolina most of the time where I don’t feel free to e_press my views. I will, I need time.

I am in New York not South Carolina–where Hannah did touch down in the Cherry Grove section of North Myrtle Beach.

I have never done an interstate move before with storage involved. I’m nervous about that. Is it a self-absorbed lu_ury to write about?.
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I took this post down as it was self-absorbed and whiney. Love the title however. Here’s another self-absorbed and whiney post from my little world

And, i don’t see too many people being judged for their life choices on the Internet. Why should it be different for me?

Why should I have to defend talking about my move? It would be big for anybody–for me it’s as if I’m climbing three mountain peaks.

Do you have any idea what it takes to sell at a profit in a down market? Do you have any idea what it takes to keep money coming in a stock portfolio.

I know those things aren’t important to you. They are too me as i do like to live well. Why should I be apologetic about it?

I wasn’t going to write about my move at all but quickly understand it was blog it or have a nervous breakdown. So sorry if the posts aren’t up to your standards.

Life lessons? I don’t need anymore. I’m neither shallow nor un-anaylitical. i have over analyzed my bumping into a doorknob before i knew what my problems were.

I’m moving to a place where they think you’re crazy if you don’t drive and own a car. I don’t drive and never will–not by choice but by disability. I turn it into a joke. “The world’s safer without me at the wheel.” “I’m like Stevie Wonder. If you get drunk I will drive.”

Do you understand that this really isn’t a joke? Do you understand how difficult this move is for me? I’m leaving the only city I have truly known. I’m leaving a life time of friends, family and memories.

Do you understand that the mechanics of life are much more difficult for me than for most people? Still I do what has to be done, or try.

I need peace and contentment in my life. This city is too crazy and too crazy pricey for that.

Do you understand that when you stood in judgment of me, and you did whether you can see that or not, I wanted to delete you from the everybody I know list.

This week had been about beginning to find peace and then I heard from you and wondered if I’m not understandable. I wondered if people really don’t like me or want to know me. i wondered if people find my writing boring and intolerable. Oh but unlike you I don’t peer deep into my soul. I thought you read my article on NLD. It doesn’t give me permission to abstain from life’s details, but it attempts to show who I am.

When I leave New York ne_t month I have to buy a house. I e_pect that to be easier but i’m the queen of “you never know,” as honestly I never do

I find life’s roads to be very curvy, trees over turned, shards of glass everywhere. Still I walk them.

I could spend my life self-improving or I could spend my life doing with some introspection. i chose the later. I don’t like to focus on myself as I hate becoming depressed. The pain I felt before I knew I had NLD and at various times during this year is diminishing. And like a tooth ache I can’t remember it e_actly.

Did you think you were being clever? Wise? Did you think you were going to make me look deep into myself, face me and come up with horrible truths? That I should peer into my soul and find a vapid horrible person. Honestly I like the person i see.

The one truth I know is that I’m a good person with many flaws. I have tried, more than most, to rid myself of the flaws but like the small lines on my face they aren’t going anywhere

Don’t read my blog if you no longer like my writing. I could ask you many questions about your present life but I choose not to.

You might have accomplished what many have tried. Blogging should be a pleasant e_perience. A nothing personal post should be treated as one.

I’m not sure whether i will put this blog on hiatus or not. You really did succeed in make me feel boring and that I have nothing worth saying.
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Yesterday I crossed the park to the discount high fashion optician. I whispered “do you have Sarah Palin’s glasses.” They were aghast as they hate…but I ended up buying similiar but nicer ones. I had taped the prior night’s Letterman and found it hysterical when he said “wouldn’t Sarah Palin make a great commercial for LensCrafters?”

Then I went for a pedicure as I really couldn’t stand my clear tinged with pink toes. I got deep red. As I looked at the woman ne_t to me who was getting clear tinged with pink…I wanted her color. Then I realized I suffer from pedicure envy.

Once I was a caring blogger who thought I was doing something important. I should look for my post on how I thought blogging was going to change the world. Publishing’s first meritocracy and all that. Maybe it will. There’s a new post below this

Blogging has been great for me. It’s allowed me to meet people from parts of the country I didn’t know well enough before, and realize that people throughout this incredible country are caring, compassionate, and intelligent with beliefs that are very similar but they don’t exactly mirror them.

That’s the problem. We, who are called liberal, don’t think exactly alike. Earlier this summer I wrote about subway searches. I was scared, angry, tired of answering comments from people who do usually think alike, and can’t understand how people on Bring it on! can think differently from one another. Read more…

I still have a blogroll. It just doesn’t show It will later today. I don’t know whether I’m going to put my blog on hiatus until I’m more settled or not. I wanted my blog to glide along effortlessly until I was ready to return to real blogging. However….

I want to scream. All week it’s been too hot to go to the beach during the day. Not that I go all that much anyway and I live less than thee blocks from it. There are always errands; always things keeping me from it. But I go in the evening and walk miles. Last night I looked at the beautiful light falling over the ocean. Duh. Lightening–and not heat lightening.

Today I had to do something for the lawyer. Not my lawyer. The buyer’s lawyer. This might be a buyer’s market but I resented that. It was something stupid–I had to pay something that really wasn’t expensive. But the damn principle. I guess I hate it when people nickel and dime me as I’m so the opposite.

I feel like screaming. The walk made me sweat but didn’t do jack shit for my mood. I walked back with groceries, and groceries, a mile and a half at least and 90 degrees feels like 110 don’t go well together.

I hope to care about something other than this someday. But I thought I was through with renovating that apartment. I have to take the wall unit down–it’s built in–redo the wall and paint the living room. Well no, I’m not going to do it personally. I have a best friend who used to be a girl contractor. Though she volunteered and offered her daughter and all our friends I feel weird. Very weird.

I have to face up to demons, my own personal ones, I have been avoiding for a few years. I have to pack, arrange for the move, and do everything in one month. For so many months life dragged on but i was tied to my computer and cell. Glad I didn’t get a Blackberry or Apple Phone–would have died in the great cell in the sea incident.

I was so tired of waiting and now I don’t know how to describe how I feel other than crazed.
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There is nothing you cannot achieve if you want it enough, and if you keep telling yourself that fact you will be surprised at how quickly your dreams start coming true. Just make sure that what you think you want is what you truly desire. Don’t lie to yourself.

Usually I do feel like this. Today however my apartment is taking too long to go into contract and everything feels out of my control. I will probably feel differently tomorrow or maybe even this afternoon, but I so need to feel control over my life.

Being in control has always been the most important thing to me. I have been trying to learn to live without so much control, and thought that I was succeeding. But waiting slowly for each step with my apartment and then feeling guilty and as if I can’t write about it because at least I can sell my apartment. Why should I feel so guilty about something I have worked so hard for? The contract should have happened already and each hour that it doesn’t makes me think I will have nothing to feel guilty about.

It’s not as if selling my apartment is my end goal, though at times it feels it. I want to sell my writing. I know we’re supposed to be coy about that and if we get a book contract say that was the last thing on our minds, until the first comments come telling us how we didn’t work hard enough or some such thing, and then we’re supposed to say “What do you mean? I had a plan. I read every damn writer. I mimicked their styles. I studied proposals. I did this….”

I’m an insatiable reader. However I’m truly incapable of the master plan. The only way I can get a book contract is by writing a book. I have been.

My blog will be four years old this month. I will probably put in a lot of picture posts once I stop getting an error message when I try to. My article explained my problems. They’re not excuses but it’s hard to have my problems and feel that I’m not excusing myself from things that are so easy for most people.

I hate feeling the way I do. Vulnerable. Sad. Scared. Lately I have been imagining what my life would have been like if I didn’t have NLD and I have to deal with that loss also. The loss of self that could have been, and really should have been. I do feel robbed as I’m so close to “normal” and can truly visualize my more “perfect” self. I try not to do this but I have a feeling that it’s part of the process of reclaiming me.

And I do like me very much. I’m a great friend, sister, relative. I’m fun. It takes very little to get me laughing. I want to be laughing a lot more and hopefully will be shortly. I know I will be as I will be in New York for most of September, friends will be here later in the month, family will be here when I come back.

And hopefully I will get to buy a house. My bff Lucia said that’s when I’m going to turn into a true Puerto Rican as she’ll come down (she was a girl contractor) her sister C will be here, C’s husband W who was one of the original VP’s for Home Depot and a supporting cast–everybody has to inspect everything.

I was going to write a post about how my three best friends and I decided to share our homes when we get older. We will have two Manhattan apartments, a house in North Myrtle, a house on a Long Island Sound town and a house in Sag Harbor.

This way we can remain in control and not be dependent upon the one child among the four of us, or hopefully anybody else. And we will be laughing. A lot.

I lived in New York during 9/11. A big part of the reason I’m leaving is because of everything that happened after. I don’t want to rehash it now but people who have read Courting for years know about my personal tragedy a month later and the help I couldn’t find.

Hillary Clinton was an influential senator who could have done much to alleviate the suffering. Not just the counseling I sought, but she could have helped New York get its promised aid in a timely manner. Montana needed it more. I can never forget her for forgetting about the city she claims to represent. I can’t stand the people who choose to overlook that.

So would Hillary be good in an emergency? Only if it suits her needs.

Here’s a post my nephew of choice Kenny Butler wrote. Kenny represents the successful Black professional family man. I’m proud to have posted it and to link to it now.

OBAMA BRINGS REASON AND INTELLECT. OBAMA BRINGS HOPE. OBAMA CARES ABOUT ALL PEOPLE. HE IS ALL PEOPLE. FOR THE FIRST TIME WE HAVE A CANDIDATE WHO UNDERSTANDS BOTH THE BLACK AND WHITE WORLD. OBAMA ISN’T A MACHINE CANDIDATE.

IF G-D FORBID SOMETHING ON THE SCALE OF 9/11 OR KATRINA HAPPENS I HAVE FAITH THAT OBAMA WILL BE THERE FOR ALL OF US. NOT JUST THE CHOSEN FEW.

The above is the absolute worst blog post title I have ever written. But..
The average apartment in Manhattan stays on the market for 188 days, and that was before Bear Stearns. Have to keep remembering that. Then I feel guilty as I’m not facing foreclosure or being forced to sell. Yet I feel relaxed, so…

You never made it to 30. Then how did it seem you were there all my life?

We never talk about you anymore. We have moved on.

To some you’re a symbol of the beginning of a great war. Not to those of us who knew you well. We loved you for you; Manhattan’s best indoor mall. Manhattan’s largest office complex. A restaurant with the best views and decent food. A high flying lounge with great appetizers, a piano play and wonderful views. Even an observation deck we would go to once or twice, take tourists to, watch tourists go up to. The best damn TCKTS booth in NY. The line moved rapidly and the plays seemed better as the tickets were bought from you.

For several years, in my 20′s, I worked across the street from St Paul’s Church. It felt like such a long walk from your subway stop as it was so windy. I would often stop at Trinity Church to look at Alexander Hamilton’s grave.

In my earliest youth I would meet friends on the concourse for drinks. We would mean to stay for a drink or two and somewhere long after midnight….good thing subways were there and a never ending procession of cabs.

Later I moved up to the pricier places with a view worth dying for. I wanted to grow old with you. Not that I thought about it, except that day in 93, when I lived in an apartment that had a dead on view of you. I spent the night on the terrace looking at Staten Island and Jersey. Actually it was an amazing view seeing beyond your lights. Slightly discomforting but I knew you would be back in the morning.

My sister lived in the building closest to you. We had been together that day. I don’t remember if we thought it was a fire or knew that it was a bombing. We laughed about looking at Manhattan without your lights. Laughed and were frightened.

The new mall that was built was even better. You had more fun stores and better more modern concourse restaurants.

My sister’s daughter and all the kids I knew viewed you as a giant playground. One that was more fun than most real ones.

The “covered bridge” that lead to The World Financial Center had an art gallery for us older ones and pieces of rubber next to the large windows, kids could climb on and look. “Wow, Pia, can I really play on this?” The art gallery had socially significant events–the story of desegregation among other things. It forced you to think as you were walking. That’s the best kind of gallery to me.

That other day I try to forget it. But it’s imprinted in my mind. I can’t forget it, and I had my own personal tragedy the next month, the one that made me realize I would have to leave New York so yes I want to forget.

My heart still breaks for you. But this war, you wouldn’t have wanted it.

You were as New York as any of us. Many of us measured great moments in our lives through you. It hurt so much for so long to look down and not see you.

You had a New York tude. I was supposed to go to the last concert in your outdoor space. Pete the K9 cop was going to hold good spots for us. Janis Ian was playing. Fitting very fitting. We tried explaining how Ian was probably more socially significant than Alanis Morissette or any of the 90′s girl folk singers but each generation thinks theirs is the best.

You were so big. So sturdy. We didn’t realize we thought you would always be the backdrop to our lives. After your loss we realized how much we had depended on you.

People talked about “Ground Zero.” That’s meaningless to me. It’s you, The World Trade Center, that remains in my heart.

I could only find “tributes” to “Society’s Child” but this will do.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwng7JWoTm4&hl=en]

Pete the K9 cop–my good friends the Waldo’s brother-in-law was supposed to go to work at noon that day. He was driving his wife to work when he saw smoke. Before he could get a call, he called. Both he and his dog survived. It’s an urban myth that all dogs died. I know as I know Pete.

He retired, and has a management job at a large security firm. He and his wife bought a large expensive house. Life goes on. He was always a good time guy and still is. But sometimes….

Happy birthday World Trade Center. You didn’t live the long life you should have but you are missed As long as I’m alive you will be talked about as you were. It doesn’t hurt to think of you. I’m numb when I think of that day, but everything after–that hurts. And you had nothing to do with that.

I don’t know how to end this because your ending was so unnatural and so wrong. I’m no longer in mourning for the people or my mother–my personal tragedy. Now I mourn for you.

The Trade Center was bounded by Tribeca and The Financial District. They are the richest zip codes in Manhattan now Perhaps that’s your tribute.

This is my first attempt at Writer’s Island. This weeks prompt is Second Chance.
As always I thank Bone for the words.
Yesterday was the 15th anniversary of the first attack on The Trade Center. I will never forget either attack. The fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq is quickly coming. We’re not honoring the dead by remaining in Iraq.

My printer is throwing a fit so I almost run to FedEx/Kinko’s on a very gentrified West 72nd Street. When it was just Kinko’s I used to feel I was in a Al Pacino movie, and would look for all the lonely crazy people. My cable was down more than it was up when I was a reporter and I thought it would be a fate worse than death not to have friends I could wake up at midnight to use their computer when I had just seen a movie and had a six AM deadline. I couldn’t imagine being in Kinko’s through the night. It seemed so transient.

I have had many second chances in life. It almost seems unfair to be constantly reinventing my careers. Same city–three apartments, same friends, but oh so many careers.

There is only one career I crave and I crave it so much I feel like a vampire sucking blood. Who am I to think I can make it as a writer? Lately I have been reading so many good blogs I think I’m not even a ripple.

On March 5, I will take a 90 minute plane ride to a new world for me.

90 minutes by plane but a world away. A new life. A new chance. I won’t be stressing about things costing more every day, or a woman yelling in Fairway:
You, you deserve to die.
I have no idea why she pointed to me and said that. Neither did the other people waiting on the long line. I could understand the man who screamed at me as I almost went to his check out counter instead of the one just across from it.

He told me that I owed him an apology. I didn’t think so, and I’m the former princess now queen of apologizes. I had already told him I was sorry. He wanted something more. Something neither I nor the other people in Fairway could have given him.

I accept people going crazy in Fairway. It’s built so that the aisles are too small and everything looks dirty though the fish is always ranked first in freshness, least in mercury, etc.

I know people who won’t shop there as they don’t want to be yelled at. They want to be distant from the fracas yet really all life in Manhattan is frazzled.I accept Fairway as a normal part of Upper West Side life.

When push comes to shove, and it does all the time there, do I have to accept it?

I write about Fairway too much as it’s the bane and justification of my existence.

The years immediately preceding and subsequent to 9/11 were the worst of my life. My mother was rapidly aging. She was the person I had always gone to for advice, for validation. She wasn’t at all demented but blind. People treated her as if she was demented. Sometimes they didn’t but she thought they did. It didn’t matter. I heard it all. I had no filter that separated her feelings from mine. I tried to consider her feelings. She tried to consider mine. Yet so many times we didn’t act considerate of each other.

I worked in a nursing home. Surrounded by old age I almost became old myself. I felt adrift and alienated from almost everybody. It should have been easy, for me, to find help to deal with my conflicted feelings. The professionals in the nursing home couldn’t understand how I could let my mother live alone.

I would quote them to them. “She has capability in all areas but sight.” They would tell me that if it were their mother they would insist she live in an assisted living facility or a nursing home. “But you’re the ones literally writing the book on the many types of capability. Don’t you understand, stubbornness? Vanity? The want to live an independent life? I can’t tell a woman with capabilty in almost all areas where to live” No, not in this case. She was blind. That she could distinguish medications by putting different sized rubber bands on the bottles–a home care agency test of cognizance–didn’t matter.

That she was sharp and mindful of all possible problems didn’t matter. Didn’t I know I was a bad daughter?

Therapists outside the nursing home would tell me I had to separate. I knew that but how? I didn’t live with my mother. There were five mandatory phone calls a day. If I didn’t call at exactly nine AM she would get sick to her stomach. They didn’t know what I could do. They just knew her dependence on me wasn’t healthy. I knew that also. They refused to believe I was also dependent. I seemed so strong. I stopped believing in therapy. I knew this wasn’t an easy problem but I needed support. I needed to feel that I was a worthy person.

Oh sweet irony. I had gone into this field to learn how adult children and parents could get along. I had gone into the field to look for new ways of housing when people became old. I had gone into it with many expectations that people didn’t want to consider then.

Now the news is filled with this problem. Then I felt so alone. After her death, shortly after 9/11 I felt guilt, sadness, despair. Nothing but time could heal this.

I became the person I hated. I became a person who screamed in Fairway. My gait is slightly off. It’s not noticeable except when I’m tired or my psyche is worn out. I would bump into people. They would scream. I would scream back.

The supposed 9/11 affect of people becoming nicer; the halo that was supposed to have surrounded this city; it bypassed me. I felt as if I had become a punching bag for everybody with any problem to dump on.

Later I was to realize that no matter how horrible the problem we have a responsibility to only let it out at the right times. That there were few right times then–that this was a city in deep mourning—I truly should have understood that. Yet my need to mourn my mother should have been acknowledged.

I was right in giving up the friends who told me to stop mourning after six days. But I made my other friends responsible for my happiness and that’s always wrong. I felt so sad and distant from the world that once seemed to belong to me.

It was my straight male friends, and one great girlfriend, who were there for me. I can never participate in straight male bashing. One was physically present whenever I truly needed somebody to cry to. He would drive me where I needed to go, and basically translate my language of despair and need to our friends.

Another knew how to make me laugh. He has known me most of my life and knows I would rather laugh than cry, and needed people who understood that.
I hope that there is never another terrorist attack or Katrina type emergency. But if there is all people affected should be given counseling if they want it

I have moved past mourning my mother. Still I needed continuity. My city, the one constant in my life other than family and friends, was quickly changing into a city I no longer knew.

My best girlfriend would walk the streets with me and point out how many people bumped into me and yet I would be the one to apologize. That gave them license to yell at me. She pointed this out and pointed it out until I understood apologizes were unnecessary. Not everything in the world was my fault. I will always love her for that and much more.

The first time I was able to go into Fairway without feeling scared that I would blow up was my biggest victory in my adult life.

I came back to myself. I’m an improved version as I have gone through the eye of too many storms that hit back to back. I did come out of the funnels stronger.

I never yell in Fairway. Even this past Sunday when the store was wall to wall people, when I was told I deserved to die–something I had thought in the horrible years–even when the man thought my “sorry” wasn’t enough, I smiled.

I don’t want to use all my energy just getting through the day.

This past decade wasn’t all horrible. I watched two young girls turn into wonderful young women. I became closer to my true friends. I met many new people. I learned that America consists of more than the NorthEast Corridor, South Florida, and SoCal.

I learned that despite my disability, dyspraxia/non verbal learning disorder, I can move where ever I want to. I learned that I can take the best of me and make it better.

I have a chance, a true and planned chance at a new life. It hasn’t hit me yet. I don’t really understand that once I sell my apartment and buy something new, my expenses will be cut drastically. It hasn’t hit that when people in North Myrtle say something is crowded, I have to look–and never really find–the crowds.

It hasn’t hit that I will live in comfort with a dishwasher, washer/dryer and things other people take for granted. And it won’t cost more than $1200 a month above the purchase price.

Outside of New York I can focus on what’s important to me. I know the first six months or so will be difficult. I will be selling one apartment and looking for a townhouse to buy. A townhouse, a place with steps and room. It feels like a fairytale. It’s not

More importantly, New York, is the city of too many memories. I find myself reframing my mother’s final years. I wasn’t a bad daughter. I was a daughter who helped allow my mother to live her final years with the dignity she so badly wanted. Somehow it’s easier to understand that outside of New York.

New York was my dream city in my 20′s and 30′s. I have changed. New York has changed. Change is good. Change keeps cities thriving and people growing. New York has a chance to remake it into the model international city. I have a chance to devote my time to my passions, and I have many.

Really I’m just a simple girl from Long Island gone country.
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I can’t comment right now so don’t feel the need to. ..

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.

I delete spam pingbacks so don’t even think about it. Actually you can’t as I turned pingbacks off. Tired of deleting them. Don’t know who pings to everything I post–at least twice but they don’t even get the name of this blog or my blog right. which would be the only thing saving them–but I don’t like blogs that are made just to ping articles and then sell products that would land in any persons spam

Cooper has great Obama posters.

Here is Frank Rich. on the “Kennedy myth.”

Here is Nicholas Kristof on “Christian evangelicals.” I don’t think that Kristof understands that many liberals talk about the radical right–no religious denomination–for a reason. We are intelligent people who can separate the good from the bad.

I care about the zealots losing power and believe that they have.

It does upset me that so many minority group members in New York are planning on vote for Hillary. Fact: Downstate New York has long supported Upstate. Any good she has done for Upstate has been mitigated for what she hasn’t done for Downstate.

She’s a carpetbagger (I was never in love with Robert Kennedy) who has had one aim and one aim only since she began to run for president, uh that was a typo I will live in–since she began to run for Senator. Read more…

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.

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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.