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When Bone posts about Paul Krugman I will do a real post again.
I meant for this to be a vacation week. I learned more about heating coils and emergency heat than I ever wanted to know. One of the amphibians, (the other amphibian or TOA,) died. I named the other Clinton, in honor of _ _Clinton. Clinton, never Clint, seems to like being master of his domain. I’m living in fear that the biosphere was damaged and…..This is why I can’t have a dog. I can’t even take the death of TOA.
I have streaming netflick. When it actually streams it’s incredible. Pandora, where you make your own radio stations, is OK, just OK. However YouTube on TV–you might never hear from me again.
I hope I can still write. I fear that wisdom might come with aging (not mine) but words don’t. Then again…I’m starting to use a tape recorder and will buy one that can be plugged into the computer, maybe. I so hate the sound of my voice. It sounds like preppy whispering winds. Yuck.
This week is tax week. It’s the first time I’m going to attempt to do it on my own. The screaming you will hear…..I’m trying to be positive. As I’m trying to be positive, and say I can write this book because I have other books in me but this is the one I know I can sell and the one that needs to be written. Well I’m not sure I can sell it but….
I know ya’all tired of my complaining so….
My sister called the other night to tell me to watch this. We grew up to music from the civil rights era; it was the only music sung at our camp. Our parents didn’t like most music (don’t ask) but made sure we knew about Paul Robeson and Marion Robinson. I realize now our parents gave us an incredible gift. I can’t imagine not having grown up in a family where equal rights for everyone wasn’t a given.
In 91 my father went to the big poker game in the sky. In 01 my mother went somewhere not here.
You hope they reunited but your mother wasn’t betting on it. You think they had some kind of Houdini signal he was supposed to send her if there was something up there and some way of communicating. Houdini and his wife made up a signal. If there was an afterlife she would know because she would receive his signal. It never happened. You don’t know the signal but you know the story because your father was into levitating tables and Ouija boards and more. Your mother made him stop. Still you think she wanted the signal more than anything in later life.
You don’t want to say you have a fear of years ending in “1″ because that sounds so wimpy. And people will assume you’re scared of another 9/11. You’re more scared of the idiots who blamed Obama for the last miss. Big difference between 8/06/01 memo sitting on Bush’s desk and officials who did screw up but weren’t in the Oval Office. Not that you think Obama’s perfect but Bush didn’t inherit two wars, “the worst recession since….,” and all the fallout. He helped cause all that.
You don’t want to say you’re confused about the past decade; it had certain incredible highs and lows like you have never experienced and hope never to experience again.
You hate the way people waffle around 9/11 or make it Todd Beamer Appreciation Day. Most of it happened in New York and that should be always acknowledged. Not that you’re not appreciative of Todd Beamer. But that day really did change your life because your mother became so addled, yet not addled enough to require emergency measures. The day she fell and died not just added to your guilt meter but made it run so fast the guilt company couldn’t keep with it and therefore demanded their overdue payment much later in the decade.
How can you complain when there are so many people with less than nothing? You don’t want to say that your addiction to HGTV has made you cynical. Sometimes people put down substantial down payments but other times they put down five percent or work out arrangements so that the mortgage and/or second mortgage covers 100%. How can they call themselves homeowners? They’re renting from the bank. You couldn’t understand this in the 90’s; you find it unbelievable today.
You’re far from perfect. You have an unnatural fear that the above belief will cause you to lose everything you have. Bad Karma. And Karma is everything to you.
You did big things last year–well beginning in 07. You sold an apartment and bought and renovated a house. It is a big deal and yet you say “piece of cake.” “If I could do this anybody could.”
But not everybody has a disability that causes many people to give up completely, live off other people, work in sheltered workshops despite having multiple degrees. Of course you’re on the highest end of this spectrum. Sort of like having a “bit of Asperger’s.”
Still you never knew. You worked and worked your tush off in your 20’s and 30’s while living in an apartment that was totally unrenovated and required constant care. Your neighborhood was store unfriendly. One of the happiest days of your life was the day a Duane Reade opened five blocks from your apartment. You would get there at eight on Saturday mornings–the only time it wasn’t packed and buy cleaning supplies and much more.
You’re obsessively clean now because you couldn’t be then. You thought it was a combination of laziness and living in an old old apartment that was party central.
Your father thought you could be the neatest person in the world if you only tried. Your father was always yelling. Always telling you how great you could be if only….He didn’t know and by the time he realized (after the damn testing) he only had a few years left. Your father was your greatest admirer and your greatest foe. You should probably be in therapy for life just to understand that relationship.
A friend was just saying he found Elizabeth Gilbert’s story banal because he knows you and you went to Europe by yourself many times and have overcome much greater odds than Gilbert will ever know. He actually called you a “hero.” That was so sweet. Actually he said “you’re much more of a hero than she is.” But…
And so a new year begins. You never make resolutions. You have accomplishments you want to make happen. You’ll work your tush off to make them happen. But if they don’t…..You do have one resolution. Stop using the word “actually” constantly.
We finished day four of boot camp. My pressing on is a metaphor for something but I’m too darn tired to figure that out.
It’s as different from a New York health club as a cold is from swine flu. In New York it’s everybody for herself, here there really is a feeling of solidarity. I think boot camp is going to be very good for me but I’m too tired to think. I should explain it’s not boot camp that’s making me so tired but gray skies. Yesterday it rained all day–we met at the park before the heavy rains but I’m a princess and rain and I don’t mix. At the same time I’m a fresh air fiend so I slept with all the windows in the sun room open and the sun room is connected to the bedroom. Sometimes I think about taking down the wall to the sun room but I love that room for itself.
It’s the only room I still have to furnish. I kept saying I wanted white wicker but I realize that I want all different white fabrics.
It’s not that New York seems horrible to me but I find I miss it less and less. It’s been a year today since I handed over the keys to my apartment and in return got a fairly substantial check. Actually two. I’m so glad I was insistent on selling when I did. A year or two earlier I could have gotten much more but now……
I own a house!!!!!!! That still thrills me. And because I’m about as handy as I’m athletic I have a house husband, Eldon. My cousin who is divorced and very handy actually came up with the phrase when she looked at something outside and almost cried out: “you have a house husband!!!!!.” Apparently he has done things she wouldn’t think to do.
Eldon and I redid the front “yard” on Tuesday. A lot of the plants hadn’t taken so I went for more ornamental grasses which I realize is what I really wanted originally but didn’t realize that yet.
I’m not being sexist when I talk about a house husband. My father could have used a house husband. I think, no I know, he was afraid to change a light bulb–electricity can kill you, you know. My athletic smart father looked as if he should have been good at somethings besides taking out the garbage but…..
My mother was handier, and did the little little jobs. Everything else was foisted off onto professionals. Or family friends. So I’m just continuing a tradition.
I think this move is going great and I’m actually looking forward to cold days when I don’t feel obligated to run around and can sit in one of my decks in ten layers and just write. Though I don’t like how it went from AC/beach weather to cold seemingly overnight. I think it’s going to get warm again. I know, we all know,(how could we have missed the articles and news casts?) how colds and flu’s are transmitted but I will always believe chronic weather changes and rain play a part.
Selfishly I don’t want it to rain again until boot camp is over–and my best friend is coming a week from today so it would be nice if it’s warm and sunny. But I don’t want to tempt the gods by asking for too much.
This is a small town, in many ways. Eldon’s been telling me about somebody who goes to boot camp but is away this week practically since we first met.
Every morning, seven days a week, I do five miles in 29-32 minutes on my Exercycle. It’s not enough exercise. So this morning I enrolled in North Myrtle Beach’s Boot Camp I hope to be in the best shape of my life by next July 19 when I will be as old as Bruce Springsteen.
Then I read this advert for an online class on branding yourself. By the end of the class you and your art will become a brand. Nowhere does it ask for work samples. Actual talent might be an impediment to successfully branding yourself.
Yes I know that’s another word for marketing but it sounds so today. I can picture myself taking a cattle brand and doing my own tattoo as I’m my own brand.
Hell I am a brand, or was. Pia Savage, LLC. Has a nice ring to it. No depth but a great tone.
I became a bit caught up in revising and revising and throwing out entire books because as I learned more I liked my work less. Maybe I just wasn’t branding myself correctly. The Pia Savage part was working. My blog, well, it went through stages. In the past two years I haven’t been focusing on it.
I must find my brand, and have it visible and not in some private area where I would feel more comfortable. My energy needs to be publicly displayed for public consumption. I will no longer be a bloggerslashwriter but a compilation of chakras, chants, colors and cravings I won’t hesitate to shout out.
Instead of taking the time to perfect my product I should be branding my product. My product will be amazing. I will have the best pitches, stationary, email, resumes, handshake, vocal tone, web presence–surely that part must be the easiest. There’s only a blog or several, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter (if only I cared enough to remember my password) and by the time the class ends I’m sure there will be at least ten other social networks I will just have to join.
Product? In the number one blog on Technorati that I’m not going to link to I read you shouldn’t spend more than 20 minutes on a blog post. I’m betting that writing a novel has the same formula.
This sounds much less fearsome than North Myrtle Boot Camp. Or not.
The ending of this post blew me away. Perfect little story.
I really don’t like my post nor have I liked most of my posts recently or longer. In keeping with my new philosophy of branding myself I can safely say it’s just a minuscule part of the much larger brand
I miss my best friend. Talking on the phone isn’t the same as dropping by. I miss New York in summer–always its best season. I miss feeling so comfortable in my place I can complain bitterly about everything.
That isn’t to say I’m not happy here. I was a New Yorker all my life and now I’m not. To deny that takes adjusting would be foolish.
I bought a recumbent Schwinn stationary bike that is a hypochondriac’s delight as it tells you your heart beat and whether or not it’s in the right zone. It even tells you if you’re in shape or not. It almost feels as if it exercises for you.
It’s just different enough from riding a bike to make me long for a mountain bike that I will buy come fall. I have always loved the repetitive foot motions in bike riding. It makes me zone out and mediate I guess.
I began writing an article for sale on shaking up my life by moving from New York to North Myrtle. Then I realized that it’s in incredibly poor taste to write about buying a house this year.
I have climbed personal mountains but my mother always said I had the worst timing. If I lost a job and foreclosed on my home it would be more in vogue. I realize how whiny this sounds but….
I reached a plateau-going-off-the-meds-wise. This isn’t depressing as I think I have done incredibly well but hell it ain’t heroin, crack or even pain killers. Just the single most difficult anti panic attack drug to withdraw from but really it’s nothing
That’s kind of the way I feel about myself right now. In a slump. I’m not the super strong wonderful woman people keep saying I am. If I were I would know how to fix my back deck hose. I would have more flashlights and lights that actually worked in my back deck.
The other night I had company and just after dark we heard what sounded like a water pipe bursting. It was the frigging garden hose as I couldn’t turn the spigot all the way off–neither could any other woman who tried. Actually it was pretty funny as we all ended up soaking wet. Since the temperature was well into the 80’s nobody really cared.
I made “irregular grounds” that looked like nothing into an incredible winding outsidedeck with two dining areas, a living room and just chaises for now. Between my second floor deck and the deck that wraps around the house my outside room the square footage is twice the size of my Upper West Side coop.
The only thing I have left to furnish is the sun room and I’m waiting for the wicker store to go on sale when I will scoop in and furnish it in two seconds. I want an all white room in an otherwise color filled house.
Oh yes I do feel better about myself. I love having a house with a staircase and a small kitchen that is still large enough to cook in. The house leaves a small footprint so why do I even care about justifying my purchase? Or how do I write this article so that I’m a sympathetic character? Never have been great at that. I don’t come off humble enough and yet I’m so apologetic etc.
Neighbors ask for tours of the house which cracks me. In New York it would be quirky normal. In September I’m having an open house for EldonOne and Jimbo–so they can invite prospective clients, and the people who work in town and always asked to see pictures can come over. It feels strange to have a house that’s considered so “showable.” I hope that people don’t think me unfeeling to have renovated it this past year. I couldn’t live in the house the way it was, I did help the economy and I’m sick of justifying this purchase and renovation.
If I climb metaphorical mountains in the wrong year have I still climbed mountains?
I can’t wait until tomorrow when the sun will shine and I will spend the entire day at the beach and think about nothing more pressing than how lovely the waves are. Someday I will learn to write again. I don’t know what’s happened to the one thing I always felt I could do better than most. I think just about everybody writes better than I do and is more interesting. I hope that this is just the pre-September blues, and I will wake up one morning in mid September all psyched about my writing again. I hope that more than anything except for health care reform passing.
I was going to take this post down as I didn’t like it. Then I read it again and I must say I can write. I think it’s blogging I find depressing as I began, pretty much, at the top and always knew I couldn’t sustain that. I think I would rather write for the sake of writing and maybe being published than trying to write posts. I feel the last call, last chance bell ringing/clock ticking something furious.
This is a fascinating “obit” for Robert S McNamara.
Here’s Paul Krugman on health care. I’m getting real sick of hearing about Michael Jackson and Sarah Palin.
The humidity’s so thick I want to pick and hold it. Last night, I think, it rained. I think because when it’s dark I close the blinds in the kitchen, living room, and upstairs office (or all rooms that look to the front or side of the court). When I lived in Manhattan I never had to do that. Manhattan can be an oddly private place.
I was recovering from a wonderful weekend. In a world where almost every woman I know didn’t become a mommy until her mid-late 30’s (if she became one) CLo was a mommy in her late teens.
I always treated her daughter as a little adult because I haven’t really met a kid who wants to be treated as a kid. Consequently we became friends when she grew up.
Niece Kelly and a Gay family friend, Roberto–not Hispanic, were in for the weekend. I only bring up the Gay part because it’s a long time since I had one–mine all died and I remembered why I used to like Gay men so much. I kind of specialize in straight male friends but Gay men make me laugh easily and forget that the world has problems.* Niece Kelly and Roberto are Black and if we ran into people I knew I was planning on introducing them as my niece and nephew. I choose to think most people aren’t racist but too many people have said things about Black Bike Week…
Friday night we had a BBQ at CLo’s and W’s. Saturday night I made a BBQ–salmon marinated in V8, horseradish, onions, lemons and garlic–I developed this recipe one rainy day as it’s equally good roasted or poached. I sauteed onions, three types of mushrooms, peppers, and grape tomatoes in a bit of olive oil and when it was two thirds cooked added vinegar–any kind is good. It reduces the sauce and the vegetables can be a side dish or a sauce. I do that with chicken breast that I cook in apple cider, and fishes. I just don’t want it said that I have never given a recipe here.
I made a salad of course, and bought a coconut custard pie–deserts aren’t my thing. But everybody in the CLo&W family loves good pie (and are all in perfect shape anyway) and we’re sort of in competition to find the best. When I saw this one, I knew….and there wasn’t even a slice left over.
CLo & W are on dog with lung cancer duty so CLo drove us a block away from the fireworks and we walked onto the beach with our beach chairs, found a good spot and waited for the real fireworks to begin. They were magnificent. I had been a bit upset the NY fireworks were going to be on the Upper West Side–and I kept getting reports from New York on how they found the perfect spot etc. Of course they left at five PM, were the first people on the closed West Side Highway and the whole evening was devoted to fireworks.
The fireworks here were that way overused word, amazing. I sat there and thought “there’s no place else I want to be, and had I been in New York, I would have missed this.” We sat for awhile after the fireworks but people began setting off homemade ones and we’re citified enough to be scared of homemade ones.
W picked us up and we went back to my house where we sat in the side deck (the one that used to be toilet of Pia but is now all decked) looked at the sky and talked for hours. The house punch (I decided every house should have one) went quickly–firefly sweet tea vodka, stoli vanilla vodka, one quarter more limeade, and seltzer with cinnamon–basically because I add cinnamon to seltzer and don’t care what anybody thinks! The punch works.
I have loved the idea of long languid Southern summers since I first began to read and see movies. The sitting home and relaxing without feeling guilty or thinking “I really should be doing this…” The whole concept is new to me and I love it. I have rediscovered my inner cook and hostess.
If I didn’t have to walk my garbage three blocks to the nearest dump life would be perfect and that’s just a minor inconvenience. North Myrtle does have pick up services but you can’t leave the garbage in a trash can and possums do have a habit of tearing into the garbage. Eventually everybody is going to be issued a “roll” can and a recycling one. Since I tire of asking people if they could drive me and my garbage….
*This isn’t the time or place for a diatribe about AIDS, government inaction and how I lost two thirds of my friends and became very suspicious of “new people.”
I thought at the fireworks and after “this is it. This is the night I have begun to turn into a Southerner.”
I love that America celebrates it birthday in July. Yankee Doodle Dandy being my all time favorite movie–and both James Cagney and George M Cohan claimed 7/4 as their birthdays. So did the author of my favorite song “What A Wonderful World,” Louis! (No last name needed, really.)
I love everything about summer except for the mosquitoes, and flies on food in Little River, the next town over. It’s on the Intercoastal with many good restaurants each having their own live music on Sunday nights. In summer it’s best to sit on the benches next to the Intercoastal and The Crab Catcher and listen to some great music.
I was reading TC’s post on the wonders of summer in Madison, WI. She made it sound so appealing that I was ready to hop a plane….
Then I remembered I’m from New York–and have written extensively on summer in Manhattan. And now I live four blocks from the ocean and am such a beach snob at least once a week I go to a beach that doesn’t resemble Coney Island or Jones Beach. My friend CLo actually calls 6th Street South beach “field six” and she hasn’t lived in New York for 30 years. Field six is the parking field at Jones Beach closest to the beach. You have to get there very early in the morning or after 3PM.
The beach near my house is the main beach for North Myrtle and secretly I do like it. I’m a New Yorker and can find solitude in crowds. It’s also safer–if I venture into the water and somehow get caught in a riptide–well that didn’t happen last week in Cherry Grove but could have and I felt a bit scared. The week before that didn’t happen in the part of Huntington State Park without lifeguards but again it could have….The tide was so low I couldn’t even swim–just float. I thought about going out further but I wasn’t sure how to define “further.” I am such a mass of neuroses.
Yesterday I was melancholy because I felt obligated to go to the beach when all I wanted to do was hang out on one of my decks. That felt so sybaritic. So I wrote that post, DVR’d some shows on HGTV (I can’t believe I’m admitting to that), went out on my downstairs deck–where toilet of Pia used to reside, and played with a chaise lounge until I found the optimum place for moon and star watching.
Today I explored “downtown” Myrtle with a friend. As I’m from Long Island, strip malls are my middle name. Really even Manhattan is one giant one now.
In early evening I went to a soul concert on Main Street. Just about five blocks from my house, an older couple began dancing to Marvin Gaye and then the group Soul Connection put a “Black” spin on some Stones music. As the Stones were originally influenced by American Black musicians, it felt that something had come full circle.
I love North Myrtle for many reasons. One big being its emphasis on music. The Ocean Drive area where I live is all about music. At Mayfest I knew I had moved to the perfect town when Chairman of the Board played. CLo who is never impressed by anything was awed. (Check out their website. I’m impressed and…)
North Myrtle’s about music, the beach, and people having a good time. It’s different than the places I have lived before.
Simpler yet savvy. I almost dread visiting New York next week as I know many people are going to have a two subject conversation–the economy and how to make back money.
I said I might work at Wal Mart to somebody in New York. Most friends get what I’m saying. I’m half joking and half serious about a no stress job that will pay just enough so I can pay my bills. This friend began fighting me. I’m a professional. I’m a New Yorker. I’m from Jericho. I’m….. I told her to relax but she just couldn’t.
I don’t have that same need to accomplish I once had. No that’s wrong. I want to accomplish–but I have lost the need to have status button. Moving from New York allowed this and I’m still moving backwards some of the time.
I live in a place that has seasons but summer is a year round state of mind. Life isn’t about trampling over the next person to get to somewhere, anywhere.
In New York I dreamed of summer the other nine, ten months. Here summer is hotter, summer has more free things to do, summer is sitting on the beach and going into the water not just walking on the beach.
The economy is horrible. Many people are out of work. But the tension level is so much less than New York’s.
I’m learning that I don’t have to stress over everything. It is an adjustment process. I have always wanted to carry over the mental vacation summer always bring. Here the weather might be in the 20’s but it’s endless summer.
Happy 233rd birthday America! 33 is my favorite number. This has to be a great year. (I can be totally irrational when it comes to numbers.)
The part of my heart not owned by Frank Rich is owned by Paul Krugman. He blames everything on Reagan. Yes, finally, somebody who gets it. My best friend has been blaming Reagan since he was in office
I want so badly to be a person who laughs everything off. “Oh, he caused a flood and part of my new bamboo floor to buckle and maybe rot. I will just sue.” But I can’t–either laugh it off or sue without fear that I’m doing something horrible. That my lawsuit will upset the laws of nature, and even if I win, I will be paying in someways for the rest of my life. I’m not a person who sues, obviously.
The plumber who hides under a cloak of Christianity and is anything but a true Christian told me that I had a “slow” (to explain why my water meter wasn’t going bonkers; why there was no mold or any signs of a flood) flood. I asked for a second opinion. He ignored me and opened the frigging wall. Open walls is one of my phobias left from pre-war Manhattan buildings that had too many floods and rodents.
I had to have other plumbers come and clean the flood(s) he literally began. Now my new bamboo floor is buckling, in the flood area, and the planks have darkened. I dislike air conditioning but have to keep the room unnaturally cold in hopes that the planks will settle back to their original beautiful state.
I spent a lot of time and money on the renovation. As this hasn’t been the best of economic times for anybody I made a game out of buying furniture and kept the costs of each piece low. I made myself forget that I love quality. It’s hard to pass furniture that I really wanted and could have afforded a year ago. That said I love everything I own and there’s some solace to working within parameters I set to keep me from over-spending. I don’t really need rattan outdoor furniture. Oh but I want….
Two people from my high school class have died in the past two weeks. Facebook keeps telling me to add one of the people to my “friends.” That freaks me out more than a bit for more reasons than the obvious. (That sounds cryptic because it is.)
The woman who called to tell me said “we’re reaching that age…” “Excuse me,” I answered, “how old was your father when he died? And your mother? Is her being alive at 79 a medical miracle?”
I refuse to consider the late 50’s old but I know many people do and that depresses me. I saw something about Ed Asner and realized he was only about 40 when Mary Tyler Moore began and that depressed me as I always assumed he was ancient. Not that I thought about him.
I thought I closed my New York bank account but apparently closing an account doesn’t ensure that it happens. It’s been that kind of month. And it’s just June 1st.
I have found myself second guessing my move. Not because I dislike the people or are uncomfortable here but for countless small reasons. Too much time spent on the house being the first. Little time to myself ranking up there.
“Nobody has ever tried to rip me off so blatantly in New York,” being a big one. Yes there was the doorman/contractor but I allowed that to happen and knew it.
People assume EldonOne and I are living together as he’s over often. No. We’re. Not.
I bought my first garden hose today with a nozzle that can change settings from a spray to a mist and everything in between. That cheered me. I was using Eldon’s sister’s boyfriend’s next door neighbors. I think the neighbor was trying to get rid of his.
It’s this suing thing that has me crazed. Everything else will seem funny on Wednesday when my cousin comes. The floor can be fixed. I have to go to New York in July so they can do it then. I hope this can be a friendly thing between lawyers but I have heard so many horrible things about the plumber from other plumbers and Eldon’s heard worse things from former customers. He did come highly recommended by people we both know.
I don’t know. Life’s a bitch and if you’re lucky you live in good health.
Tomorrow (Monday) I’m buying things for the backyard, side and all around really, and then will be handing the keys, or bronzed hundred dollar bill & framed platinum card to some lucky person who has decided to buy a house and renovate it, despite all the negative feelings.
It’s a lonely feeling despite constantly being surrounded by people. A feeling of “if I hadn’t bought the house I could have traveled the world. I could have done this….done that….” Not lonely in the traditional sense but lonely in the “there’s no one expert who could have helped me come to a decision.” I think I made a good decision. Here’s an article in The New York Times Magazine by an economics reporter who defends his arrogant and sickening decision to almost willfully go into foreclosure. I know the article wasn’t written to make me feel great but it did.
I need to be grounded and I certainly have achieved that. I’m wedded to this house. And I know there will be times the house tries to tell me who is the boss. But I will know, in my heart, that I did everything possible to make an 80’s beach house into a home for this century.
My sister objects when I say I live in a court though the sign says “court,” and maybe she’s right. It could be an enclave.
I think of my enclave, and the surrounding blocks as Laurel Canyon without the Canyon, debauchery, and crazy people in media. Or Coconut Grove FL in the 70’s without the exotic tropical flora, debauchery and crazed hippies.
I’m doing my best to make it exotic with a large flower bed that looks like a dog ate the flowers but EldonOne assures me in a week the flowers will blossom. I’m sensing a similarity in temperature ranges to Provence as at least four people have offered me Rosemary (I will take it from EldonOne) and I’m growing lavender, much lavender, that I hope to be able to offer house guests as a souvenir of their stay.
Tomorrow I should be getting outdoor furniture,* some palm trees and more tropical flora though this winter was cold, I think I have learned how to save them from frost and snow. I took pictures of the palms I was growing in the townhouse and was going to entitle them “Snow will stick in SC when a Black man is inaugurated president,” but I didn’t really think of that then.
*The outdoor furniture might be difficult. This whole house has been furnished with old (mine) furniture or cheap yet good furniture from the Internet, Target, Best Buy, and uh Wal Mart has played enough of a role for my b-i-l, niece and I to have a running joke. My sister has incredible style and a head for bargains but she’s so not the Wal Mart type. Neither am I or CLo, and yes we know the North Myrtle Wal Mart is where Northerners go to look at the Rednecks and feel superior, enough have told us, but…we have found some incredible things there.
My sister would say “this is so beautiful. Where’s it from?” The answer would usually be Wal Mart. My sister asked when we passed Dietra (I don’t know a person who knows how to pronounce that) Lane “that’s so beautiful. Where does it lead? ” “uh, Wal Mart.”
I don’t know who was the master of suburban planning who designed the Lowes (home store) shopping center and the one next to it (Home Depot, Wal Mart with two small strip malls). You can see them from Route 17, and sort of see the Lowes shopping center but not so that it interferes with anything and can’t see the Wal Mart one at all. I find that incredible.
Bike week has been a bust. Probably much to do with the Myrtle Beach helmet laws and I would think a lot to do with the recession though that’s being underplayed.
The City of North Myrtle is proposing to do away with Mayfest more commonly known as “Beach Boy” day. That would be a shame as it really is fun and I decided to move here last year on Beach Boy day so yes it has a direct incredible economic ramification on the city.
Oh, I try not buying things from China but I would have to give up Wal Mart and really anyplace cheap. So I was looking at a label and something said “made in Pakistan.” Which is worse? I think the later but what do I know?
I will have new pictures in my house photo blog as soon as the outside is finished. My old couch is in my office. I have about four boxes left to unpack and two suitcases. Don’t know why the end is always such a tortoise game.
It is raining. I turn into a congested grouch when it rains. I need my house finished so I can not feel inhibited. I find I do better when I’m away from my computer for a couple of days or more. I’m going to try handwriting though I don’t seem to be able to put thoughts on paper with pen.
Lately I have been having dreams I don’t remember when I wake up but I wake up thinking my mother is alive. 30 seconds or so later I remember and I feel so sad.
I don’t think this has anything to do with Mother’s Day or time dead or anything like that.
My mother would be proud that I bought and renovated a house and its grounds (irregular plot of land or so the deed says.)
This weekend was the first time I could lie in my yard and read. It was so frigging cool. My yard! I’m starting a flower and vegetable garden. Flowers because they’re beautiful and vegetables because I love them, but have resorted to buying frozen here as I don’t find them very good. I am very spoiled. Having Fairway and incredible Farmer’s Markets at my fingertips. I also dialed out a lot. Something I think I have done once here. When I’m in New York though…
My house is slowly becoming a home. I want to share it with family and friends. The renovation, on a budget but using “quality” materials would be an achievement for anybody. For me it’s akin to climbing Mt Everest.
All I have left to do is get outdoor furniture, secondhand furniture for the sunroom, unpack the last few boxes and organize my office. I have an office! And a reading room across from it. In Manhattan my entire apartment was between 615-675 square feet depending on who was doing the measuring. My outdoor areas, not counting the upstairs deck is 650 square feet. Small by some standards. A great sized footprint according to mine.
I take none of this for granted. I’m busting with pride and joy. I would so love my parents to have seen this. Maybe they have…..
Next year Chicago and Earth Wind & Fire will be at the annual Mayfest on Main celebration.
My sister thinks I moved to paradise. Maybe I did.
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