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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 thought the Writer’s Island prompt on Helen Hunt’s new movie rather serendipitous. I love Helen Hunt–except for the year there seemed to be only three actors–her, Kevin Spacey and Nic Cage
Then because writing this thoroughly depressed me and it’s cool and very windy out I wrote using the other prompt “outrageous.” But for me that’s commonplace.
She was expecting me to be married not divorced. She was expecting me to have children not be childless. She was expecting me to complete her. To be the one to live the life she could only dream of.
She refused to understand that the life I was living was one I had chosen. Unlike her I had degrees, and a life not centered around parents wants and wishes.
I didn’t just have desires, and dreams but plans and action. I had a professional career. One that had stopped being satisfying. I needed as much love as I could get from as many people who were willing to love me. I sort of understood that my semi-breakdown the year before and the resultant tests that typed me “learning disabled to the max” had knocked some life out of me.
Still I tried. Still I functioned. I wanted desperately to like her. I wanted desperately for her to like me. I didn’t act needy. That had never been my style. Neediness made and makes me uncomfortable. I might have acted the opposite. No guidebook told me what to do. I had no experience in matters such as this.
Unlike today there weren’t coaches who guided you through every step. My luck–to be a pioneer in the modern age. It’s a constant battle and I’m never truly sure why. It was the 80’s. Oh sweet beloved 80’s, so much of my life happened then. You weren’t sweet, really but beloved–even the horrible was good. I was young and pretty. Looks counted with everybody but her; she made it clear she didn’t like my looks. She refused to be seen in public with me. Not because I was ugly but because I was the image of her mother. But her mother was pretty and I was…..
She would find me selfish for running into and then out of her life. It wasn’t me she desired but some perfect creature I could never be nor aspired to be. She was the one who lived in a dream land
I had a choice. I didn’t have to call her “mother.” And so I didn’t.
The woman I called “ma” to be sort of snarky or “mommy” most of the time had that honor. And she was honored to love imperfect me.
Uh, dear email, radio, TV and more–since Easter I have been bombarded with Mother’s Day ads. The only mother I care about is dead; I have no children, and usually don’t care. But I spend a lot of time hanging out with and giving presents to other peoples children. I have gotten one present from one girl–ever and it was lovely, but Mother’s Day is a day I suppose I should sleep through.
People are looking at my apartment though it isn’t selling. I will take it off the market in June if nothing happens.
I just looked at my Technorati for the first time in many months. I have no screen shots of when I was a 2,500-5,7000 rated blogger, so who would believe it? Guess you had to be there.
Is this “outrageous” enough or is just me as usual?
I was never physically addicted to cigarettes. Basically I liked having them around and holding them and sometimes lighting them and sometimes smoking them. I would feel dirty and scuzzy if I gave into this urge but…..
This is me with my parents when they were old and I had late 80’s hair as opposed to mid 80’s hair which was bigger. We had just had a Passover for about 40. It was to be our family’s last one but we didn’t know that then
We took down the post we wrote on Barack Obama as we don’t want to add fuel to…in any way. We hope that people have the sense to realize that pride in ones racial or ethnic background is a good thing as long as it isn’t used the way Hitler or white supremacists used it. We know that any group Obama is part of would use pride for the good.
That directly leads to how we cut our blogging teeth. We were innocent in the ways of blogging back in 04 and part of 05. We didn’t realize that the radical right wanted to rule the blogosphere and found ourselves in too many fights with them
When we were asked to defend our moral relativist stance we could only say that our parents teachings, our education, our experiences, and most of all something inside ourselves knew right from wrong. Now our favorite and most hated newspaper The New York Times has a cover magazine story on moral instincts. I said “favorite” and “most hated” as it is both, and this article would agree with me.
I have never seen life in black and white but many shades of gray. This article shows why. I say, jokingly some of the time, that I have a built in guilt meter–again just read this article.
Morality is much more complicated than biblical teachings. Our brains are hard wired, usually, to do the right thing. Now that much is being learned about how the brain operates we’re learning about how morality takes place in it, and our morality is fashioned by our brains, our experiences, the communities we’re part of.
The article is much more complicated than that and very worth reading. But yes I was right all along. Our inbred guilt meter–we’re half Russian Jewish/half Irish Catholic, and were raised in our family of choice, a wonderful, funny, smart and oh so anxious family. Our guilt stood no chance. We have been learning to feel less guilty and less anxious as we want to ive a long and healthy life. We know that anxiety played a role in both our parents deaths/ They covered in public so well, nobody but me really knew the extent of their anxiety. Our sister was too learn more about our mother in later years but we were the older daughter.
We knew the first question was a trick one as we have long not thought Mother Teresa to be the saint people thought she was. She healed people but did nothing to better their life conditions.
We here at Courting are unapologetic about the people we have angered. We do wish we had spent less time trying to be rational when we were dealing with irrational people and just said what we think.
For a whole other side of me read my new blog. If you want the url please ask. As this blog is very new and we haven’t been pimping it much, we’re amazed by the number of hits it’s been getting. It’s about a single subject and can be funny. It’s fun to write and is very cathartic. It’s not political or issued based. We might actually include a link to the URL in a few weeks.
It got an incredible comment from the matriarch of a royal blogging family. TLP or Tan Lucy Pez We’re not usually pithy or clever enough for her. It’s OK. We have dreamed of this day
Reason number nine for not voting for Hillary: She speaks out of both sides of her mouth. She claimed much experience as practically being a member of a cabinet during Bill’s presidency. Now she says the opposite.
We speak in the royal we in this post as today we feel like royalty. The things we intuitively thought about morality arre being given a true scientific basis.Sometimes we slip into the first person. What can we say? We’re human.
We probably won’t be leaving for South Carolina until 2/6 so we can vote on 2/5. We will be a legal resident of New York until the apartment sale closes and that might be sometime in 2010. We say sort of jokingly and hope we’re not jinxing ourselves.
This was the first time I could say that I owe my birth mother nothing. Nada. Zilch. I’m glad that she had me and that’s as far as it goes. I feel very liberated and incredibly good.
I should explain that I stayed at the home with my birth mother and her mother for three weeks. This is so unique that I have never heard of any other adoptee in that situation.
My father and I were enthralled by that. But really she knew she was going to give me up. I lived with a foster family until I was exactly four months old. Had to be tested. I was a “perfect” baby. I had pneumonia at thirteen months. The doctor brought an oxygen tank into my house as my parents thought I had been through enough separation–parents couldn’t stay with babies in hospitals then. That might have been when I “got” non learning verbal disorder. Then again it might have been a problem with my brain, during gestation, that wouldn’t show until later. Somebody left a trying to be clever comment saying that adversity should teach. Gee, I never thought about that.
I’m enjoying writing my 3WW each Wednesday. It’s the first completely pleasurable writing experience that I have had in a long time.
I hope to take it in directions that you can’t imagine yet. I never knew I could write fiction until I began 3WW, and never dreamed that I would be able to write something like this. It uses my very vivid imagination, and I hope, my encyplodic knowledge of James Spader films.
I write it in advance and put in the word. They do add something.
I’m also writing about selling a coop and finally coming to terms with my birth mother’s rejection of me. I’m not talking about when she gave me up for adoption, I always felt good about that. It was hard for people in the adoption movement to understand that back in the 80’s. They didn’t understand why I didn’t embrace and further reach out to a woman who didn’t like me.
It wasn’t my responsibility to make her like me. I came fully formed. It was her responsibility to meet me half way in every sense if she wanted a relationship with me and she failed to do that. She wanted me to become somebody I wasn’t and will never be. It was she who had unrealistic expectations. I’m sorry about that, but nobody can expect an adult to become your dream daughter. Or for a child to be the person you want her to be, for that matter.
My parents accepted me when I did everything possible not to be easily liked–the adolescent rebel stage. They found that to be normative. They loved me for who I was, not for who they thought I should be. I understand that it’s different for a birth mother, but I owed her nothing. I was polite, sweet and all that because I am. I tried and that’s all I could do.
I could never say that before I read Identical Strangers
Elyse and Paula were more like me than any adoptees I came across in my search. Their book had to stir up many feelings I wasn’t prepared for and did. I’m glad as I needed to finally work through that.
I realize my reaction to the article I quote is a direct reaction to experiences that I had as a child, and to the “adoptees movement” of the 70’s and 80’s who never met an adoptive parent they liked, and felt that all adoptees were hurt by the mere act of being. But if a celeb dies and their children or one child was adopted, the obit still mentions that. If an adoptee kills or rapes, it’s always mentioned. By that thinking if an adoptee accomplishes anything it should be mentioned. But why would adoptees bring it up? I wouldn’t if I didn’t have a blog. My ex-husband found it much more fascinating than I did. He found my matter of factness about it intriguing. The constant use of the word “adoptee” might by itself bring its own set of problems.
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I was going to write a warm and fuzzy post about David Berkowitz’s capture on August 10, 1977 as he had held the city hostage, and now it was no longer in fear. Then I read this:
Scott Weinberger, a WCBS-TV reporter, interviewed Mr. Berkowitz recently to make the 30-year anniversary of the killings. Mr. Berkowitz, who was adopted as an infant, said that as a young man, he felt guilty after he was told by his adoptive parents, incorrectly, that his birth mother died while he was born.
David Berkowitz was a sick person. His adoptive parents sound like idiots but that’s not the point. He and he alone was responsible for his actions. He might have inherited “bad” genes; he might not have been nurtured properly.
I feel oh so earnest and stupid when I get into one of these things but I remember going to “adoptee rights” meetings where people would totally negate their adoptive families.
“I met my birth mother. She’s in a mental hospital for life and I have seven half-siblings all with different fathers but now my life is complete.”
Yes that’s simplistic thinking. I had to listen to it without throwing up. I did walk out. I went to a meeting when thinking was supposed to be a bit less simplistic. A woman asked a panel what to do as she had found her birth mother but her adoptive mother was old and sick and she didn’t know whether to tell her or not.
A valid question? Not to that panel who went on and on about how they never had liked their adoptive families and how wonderful their birth families were. I’m not going to go into my reaction. It’s in the archives.
I wrote published article on meeting my birth mother that I should scan in. It wasn’t a great meeting.
But neither she nor my parents are responsible for any problems that I might have. They’re mine and mine alone. Yes my Dad was hard on me. But we always loved each other immensely and I was a rather wild teenager.
Not because I was adopted but because of the times I grew up in, and because maybe I did have my birth mother’s rebel streak. My parents weren’t exactly conformists and at times encouraged my rebellion.
Fortunately life isn’t in black and white but many shades of gray–and pink, blue, green….
This was the day from hell. I reached a place in my book where I’m revising, taking out, editing and adding. Today I added a story about my nine year old self fighting with my 45 year old father.
My book isn’t really, Pia, the very early years but sometimes explanation in dialogue is needed. It wasn’t fun to write and I probably shouldn’t have on a day I had no AC, it was in the 90’s and the city was at a standstill.
I probably should have gone to bed and read magazines, but uh, I would have felt guilty
While I don’t think fighting with my father was the most fun I had, I knew even then how much he loved me and cared about me.
All families are screwed up. It’s the families that work out their differences that produce functional members of society.
Being adopted doesn’t make a killer. Genes, nurture, and ones self do. With the emphasis being on the last.
I shouldn’t personalize. I know that. But I am a staunch believer in a woman’s right to choose and one of those choices is adoption. I don’t understand people who are so vain they have to have their own egg or sperm. Yet when they read things like the above quote it gives validity to reasons not to adopt.
Most “satisfied” adoptees never talk about being adopted. I find that sad also. Maybe if more people talked about their “happy” home life, statistics about too many adoptees being in mental hospitals wouldn’t be bandied about so much.
David Berkowitz wasn’t the only adopted serial killer. So were Ted Bundy and Joel Rifkin for two that come to mind quickly. Maybe they had horrible upbringings that fostered their “bad” genes.
Maybe Berkowitz’s parents should have told him he was adopted when he was an infant or small child and not lied about his mother. Maybe he would have been a serial killer had he remained with his birth mother and she was in that most perfect of all situations, married.
Maybe there wouldn’t be a stigma to adoption if records were open and families made every effort to talk to their children about their roots.
Maybe if the word “adult” didn’t have to be put in front of “adoptee,” things would be different.
I am an adoptee. I am an adult. I would rather die myself than kill another human being unless they were physically attacking somebody that I love. Most adoptees feel as I do. We are a true silent majority. That’s sad.
I just pre-ordered my copy of Diesel’s book. Even the pre-order form was funny–as Sage said: a hoot.
Sage has some great photos. He’s a person who does. Unlike those of us who take a million pictures of the beach. The Boat Basin at Riverside Park has new lights. There are entire new parks on the river.
But whenever I go, I get into walking or socializing and forget to take pictures.
I’m allowed to blog because it’s Saturday. My blog. My rules to be broken.
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I am focusing on my book–when I can focus. I don’t want my obit to say: She had so much potential but she wasn’t organized and had ADD. I don’t want to go on meds for it. When I move I want to get health insurance without hearing about pre-existing conditions. If you get help, insurance companies hold it against you. If you don’t get help they say the condition existed and you neglected it.
It has been suggested that I move into a tank for the duration of the book. That’s very appealing to me, especially if it overlooks an ocean. I would put a paypal donation thing but that’s so not me. I could ask for people to design one, but I wouldn’t trust any design by anybody I know. Especially if it involves confined spaces and re-circulated air. Even more if it involves electricity. And I don’t want to think about electricity and water § Read the rest of this entry…
Courting was the top Google search in “don’t like an adoptive family.”
This is sadder than sad. It’s sickening
This is a big deal to me. Usually I ignore Google searches that are so wrong. Usually I find them funny.
This is personal
It negates my life.
I understand that just reading the summary shows my true feelings. But I have gotten comments I didn’t understand, and deleted, until I saw the Google search they came from. Some people only read the header and feel compelled to comment. Yes, they’re idiots–don’t even read the summary. Or decide that the Google search term is more valid than the written document. Idiots!!!!!
If I’m overreacting, this is one week of the year, I’m entitled to miss my parents who I loved very much. They always made a big deal over birthday month. My mother made sure that my six week sleep away camp didn’t begin until a day or two later. She didn’t have the power to start and stop camp dates. But it was important to her that I spend my birthday, my real birthday, not my date of adoption at home until I was about thirteen.
They were my only family. There are many times that I wish my father hadn’t been so curious and practically found my birth mother for me. I have written too often about the problems that were supposed to be caused because I was resistant to being adopted. If as much time had been spent on looking for the real problems, I might be an improved version of myself
Being adopted wasn’t central to my life. My parents didn’t believe in secrets and thought it might benefit me if they told the school etc. There were years on end when we all would forget about it.
I came of age with the adoption movement and it was very “in” to hate your adoptive parents. Though I had two adopted friends who didn’t as most adoptees didn’t. The disgruntled usually are more vocal. Things like ADD weren’t really ADD in adoptees but part of the adoption process. I did link to an anti-adoption site in that page. It says more than I ever would willing to say.
I have been to meetings where people almost physically attacked both adoptive parents and agency reps.
“Oh, Pia, you had a unique experience.”
Damn straight. Every family is unique. Mine happened to be more unique than most.
Maybe that’s why I loved my family so much.
My blogging friend Jonathan and Wendy, his wife are adopting. Jonathan writes about the process. It’s intrusive. It’s difficult.
My mother told me that they were asked about their sex life.
“Well, Pia, they had to know that we had one.”
Anybody who spent half hour with my parents knew they had one. Aside from the make out sessions in not upscale restaurants my sister and I were privy to, they had a look about them….They didn’t find that question or any intrusive. They accepted them because they wanted a child that badly–
Oh on Thursday I will also post My father’s letter upon adopting me. I keep trying to explain to Bone that I can’t put it in a book about my life as it was my father’s words–I will put it in somewhere.
I’m not going to sue Google as my sister suggested. I am going to send them that page and a strongly worded letter suggesting that they get their robotic whatevers to make sure that the phrase on top of the page actually match the documents.
Oh, I’m thinking of my blog as a document. Maybe my sister….
In the response video to the Fox one, most or all of the speakers are Catholic. Have nothing against Catholics. Almost all my good friends are. However, if all or most were Jewish, it would be labeled a conspiracy, and somehow good for Israel. If most were Muslim, Hindu, Sikh….Why is everything about religion in America?
Somewhere I saw “Cooper” as a Technorati tag. Yes Cooper.
A prologue to the paragraphs on moving. A Loehmann’s is moving into my immediate neighborhood. I did what any self respecting daughter of a woman who thought Loehmann’s was a true bonding experience and reached for the phone, as she would have died. Then I remembered….
As exciting as my Mom would have found it, this sealed the moving deal. My neighborhood is over crowded on the most quiet days. Loehmann’s is a destination store. We don’t need more people walking in the neighborhood. This isn’t the Upper West Side anymore. It’s the Broadway Mall and enviorns. I’m sorry but I don’t find it fun to be trampled. If I did I would have moved to Soho. Nine years ago there was still a neighborhood feel, here. Now….
I wonder how the people who are buying the condo’s in the Apple Bank for Savings–2 to 4 mil–will take this. Or are they planning on having limos take them everywhere to add to the congestion in the streets?
And Lucia, my best friend, who never saw an item of clothes for $29.99 that she didn’t like? Not only will she spend all her time in the store, I will have to physically restrain her from buying junk as I did a few weeks ago in Mandy’s, a store I personally find repulsive. Yes I had to restrain her…Fortunately Mandy’s has a large selection of fake leather belts I could use for bondage….Threw that in to see if anybody actually reads this
I am planning to move. So far it’s between Santa Monica/Venice and Miami. I love hot weather, the ocean, humidity when it’s over 80 degrees and hate humidity when it’s under 80–give or take a few degrees. I hate rain but love thunderstorms, don’t mind hurricanes, earthquakes or other natural disasters. Sorry, Chandira, Seattle is out because I would have to drink even more coffee than I do unless there’s a long–like 20 years–drought.
I don’t drive and don’t plan on driving. Safer for humanity. Santa Monica/Venice are navigable on foot with good bus systems, and Miami, well it’s always been like a second home. Love the tropical humidity. My family and friends are real big on Miami as it’s a quick Jet Blue plane ride from here.
Any suggestions for any other cities? They have to be near a coast, preferably as close to the beach as possible. Hawaii’s out. No offense to anybody who lives there or loves it, but the one time I was there I had a great time but never felt quite at home. I can live among Republicans as long as they’re tolerant. Actually for a short time Coronado and La Jolla were in the running. They still might be, it’s San Diego proper that weirds me out–again no offense meant.
If you were going to start over given the above conditions where would you move? And I’m at the debating selling or keeping my apartment stage. That’s the hard part. Were I renting I would be out of here tomorrow. Not that I don’t love New York…love it with all my heart. But I so need to live somewhere where the sun does shine, where it’s fun to walk and not an exercise in patience or almost getting killed every day by bike riders or Jersey drivers who think that since they can legally turn right on red lights in Jersey, they should be able to do the same in Manhattan. Never mind the people crossing the street. We’re dispensable. Offense is meant to Jersey drivers who do that, and in my vast experience and it is vast, it’s always drivers from Jersey. Sorry Janet, I know you wouldn’t.
Have to go deposit my Star rebate check before the state goes broke or something. And the $57 check the state just sent me will buy me a bag and half of groceries. Wow, can’t wait to spend it.
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I have a question that directly relates to Rush Limbaugh’s idiocy but also goes into American society in general. Okay two questions. Or more.
Why are we so quick to judge each other? And if somebody doesn’t do something exactly the way we want them to do it, why do we assume stupidity on their part? And I include myself in this, as I seem to insult people with some regularity when I write about issues which is a big reason I have stopped. But the election is important.
But maybe more important is how Limbaugh judged Michael J Fox.
I can relate to how Fox was treated too well. Put it on him. He’s the one at fault because he dares speak out on an issue that directly affects him, and some people just don’t want to hear that.
This is long and classic whiny, sort of so here’s the “more” § Read the rest of this entry…
I am a lifer. Can’t help it. Think I found ways to cut the obsession, see the following post.
Actually I suffered from acute anxiety/depression cycles over the past decade first caused by not being able to help my Mom, not being able to live the life I wanted to because of too many obligations, yet I wasn’t married or had kids, then by 9/11 and the personal fall out.
Moving sounded very appealing. It still is way too expensive here, and I’m allowed to talk about that because my once “too affordable” coop’s maintenance has gone up every year–and more since 9/11. Food prices are sad, and you will be sure that I will complain about the weather as I do that so well.
While I am on this truth drug called finding my old life was great and shall be again, let me say this: I am a very shy person underneath it all.
Find that I comment on blogs that comment here because I know they like me, or something. If I get up at six or seven can blog, do my book and comment. I love staying up until two–but as Zevon said, and this ain’t a great example because uh, “you can sleep when you’re dead.” His third anniversary, somewhere not here, will be September 5th–the day I must reenact how Elka, my sister met Eddie my b-i-l. You will see why.
In the cross-cross promotion department, Shayna sings without music–can never spell that “a” word properly on my musical highway project. She has a great voice, is a great person who began the best blogroll in the blogging world.
The very beloved, but sometimes I wonder why he is–just joking, maybe:) Dawg–who was my first real blogging friend is this weeks attraction in the project. Love that the project highlights another blogger each week.
The Dawg, sometimes known as Doug, highlights Shayna in his special guest Wednesday
Being a very shy person, and I can provide references, means that I don’t reach out enough. I do plug a lot, because that’s a good way of meeting new people. But I know them all. Cooper and Jason have a great new picture for bloggers for Darfur. Got the code from Cooper, and have a wonderful eternal flame. Don’t know what the solution is only that it shouldn’t be. Read hell on earth, because it is.
Will have a post on Friday on an incredible NY experience I had today.
I have a list of questions and am seriously interested in the answers.
1) How did you meet the bloggers you like the most—love my blogging friends and hope that they know it
2) Do you expect theme days in a blog?
3) Do you like the unexpected?
4) I’m not good at contests or anything clever, really. I am a good interviewer. But it takes a long time to interview people that I don’t know well. For example I could do MizB without actually interviewing her. But she is a mistress of the unexpected and I don’t cheat. Failed that part in school.
Should I do an interview a month?
5) How important are comments to you, really, in your heart of hearts?
I asked that question because comments have really never been that important to me. I have always called lurkers readers because they are, and I respect that. Would probably be one myself if I didn’t have a blog.
For my sixth and final question:
6) Almost everybody seems to moderate comments.
6A) To the commenter, does that make you feel more involved in the blog, and want to comment more often?
6B) To the blogger: Do you enjoy it? I, who never runs out of words, can never think of clever things to say.
Okay a seventh and final question–or eighth if you’re going to count A+B. My posts tend to be long. Does that attract you? Turn you off? Are neutral?
Not that I’m planning on changing my blogging style, I’m just curious. And if I ask a lot of questions–my many job, four career lifestyle all entailed thinking up and asking questions.
When I was a child, my Dad made me ask questions all the time. When I was eight, there was one question that he couldn’t answer. I had my first crush, on anybody, on Fidel Castro. He was a hero to America then. We even gave him a parade. True in Jamaica Queens which was kind of weird, but a lot of people who worked for the UN lived in Parkway Village which was a large garden apartment complex near there.
Then one day he wasn’t. In my Dad and my private time–in the car on the way to the child psychologist, I asked him why Castro wasn’t a hero but the enemy. It literally seemed to happen overnight.
I will never forget how he played with hair, then chin, and then eyes downcast said:
“You know, Pia, I have been trying to understand that myself. Batista was a horrible dictator. Castro got rid of him. True, he’s a Communist, but maybe Communism can work somewhere.”
I couldn’t believe this. My brilliant daddy who always knew the answer, didn’t know the answer to this. I think I liked it, as he treated me as an adult but he always did. At the same time, if he didn’t know the answer who would?
My Dad had come from a Socialist family; my Mom from a Communist one. My Dad fell in love with my maternal grandmother and Communism. Then his Dad died, before I was born, and my Dad was to spend the rest of his life regretting never telling his Dad that he was right, Socialism was the answer.
Problem was he had turned into a major Capitalist, and then Reagan lover–but ideologically….He actually tried making my Aunt go to the Henry George School.
I own a copy of Progress and Poverty My Dad used to spend hours at Fourth Avenue book shops, and he gave me that book when I was young. It did have a profound influence on how I viewed the world
To try to explain his philosophy would be simplistic. His very famous granddaughter in a very different discipline–the arts–doesn’t do the greatest job, but it’s wonderful to find out how he influenced somebody who continues to influence some worlds, as does her grandfather. She also provides great links.
I say that Henry George continues to influence because there’s still a Henry George School, literally and figuratively. One year, Lucia of all people, got very excited by a brochure she received and was going to take a class.
Does she listen to me? Her best friend? That’s a matter for another time though.
Sar was nominated for best political blog at blogs of summer. She needs ten nominations to make it into the finals. Doug seconded whoever, thank you, nominated her, and I did whatever seconding the seconder is called.
Monday update: Sar made it into the finals. She’s the only person with an Impeach Bush banner. You can vote here.
I don’t nominate people for political blogging awards nor campaign much more than this. Just putting Sar’s nomination out there because Belle of the Brawl is a unique mix. We did meet brawling and have become friends which is why I love the name of her blog so much. Sar provides a place for people to feel safe when discussing issues and that is rare. Love people who mix things up. Life’s about much more than politics and issues. Sometimes we need cruises and James Spader–and Boston Legal better be back on in the fall.
The other blogs include Michelle Malkin’s who shouldn’t really be nominated for something like this. It looks like Sar’s blog is the only “left” leaning blog.
Yes, I’m off politics and issues for the summer. So this post is a mosh pit of issues
Bush’s veto of stem cell research was beyond sick. This is why I love Frank Rich, and wll make this into a page.
It’s not a choice of IVF babies or research. There would be more than enough for both. As an adoptee I admit to a strong prejudice against people who are so ego-filled that they won’t consider adoption. Am strongly pro-choice. But that’s not even the point.
Bush purposely paraded kids who would have been born and clouded the issue. The snowflake babies.
This country cares more about the rights of the unborn than the rights of the already living.
William F Buckley equates stem cell research with moral guidelines that Hitler might use. No it’s the opposite. It’s to save lives, not kill them. That didn’t link properly. Found it in Yahoo news or wherever somebody I once had respect for might write.
Hope that none of the Bushes ever develop a condition that might be cured or controlled with something derived from stem cells.
If you have ever seen somebody you love develop a debilitating condition and be told by all doctors that it might possibly be cured with stem cells, it hurts and that hurt never goes away completely because so many other people have or will develop conditions….It doesn’t make sense.
Bush is pandering to people who have no respect for human life.
If they did they would want Michael J Fox and millions more who are suffering from Parkinson’s disease to possibly be cured. So many other conditions. I’m a baby boomer with a vested interest. As an adoptee I really don’t know what conditions I might develop. As a nursing home social worker, I saw the sickest of the sick.
People with advanced Parkinson’s, and so called Parkinson’s dementia would answer your question 20 beats later, because they weren’t really demented, just in another time space. To know that they are aware of this is horrible.
I couldn’t work with older people anymore. It wasn’t the dying that disturbed me. It was the quality of life. Sometimes when people hear that I could no longer work with the very sick elderly, they think I lack compassion and guts. Of course these are the same people who think “old people are cute,” and dementia is a second childhood. No, most people fight it for years, even after it’s advanced.
I make no apologizes for not being able to handle something so sad. At the same time my Mom was aging too rapidly from Macular Degeneration. You don’t know how many times we were told, “stem cell research.” My mother died a tragic death that haunted me for years. While it doesn’t anymore, it’s in her memory that I care so passionately about this. Also hope to live until I’m old–a full and wonderful life.
Lyn who is sponsoring the blogs of summer has a very different take on this. Read her at blogging out loud. Please respect her blog.
And boobs. I have them. Therefore I have joined a new blogroll called bloggers with boobies. Don’t have to have them, just like and/or support women who do. Breast cancer is a subject for another time.
Pandering to the radical right is wrong, and I’m scared that this will give many people license to think that they can troll. Don’t even come here. I delete; and somebody else has the password for those rare times I’m not in front of a computer;
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