Courting Destiny

I have met the most wonderful bloggers over the past five years five months.  Though I complain about the comments that tired me of this, I have been the recipient of more incredible comments than any person has a right to receive.  I thank you all.

I  can’t do this anymore.  I write because I love to write but writing is the least of blogging.  I can’t focus on writing for publication when as a blogger I’m supposed to find “followers,” a word I hate as it sounds as if the follower should be holding my dress up.  I couldn’t care less about my Alexa ranking.  I lost my Google page rank “5″ then got it back then lost it.  Too confusing.   I could never understand Google Analytics and leave that to the people who want to monetize their blogs.

According to Technorati, I have an authority of “1.”  That would be  an audience of one–me I think and is impossible but…I only looked because a friend looked at his.  He still has a Technorati ranking.

I enjoy commenting on Facebook and a few blogs.  I can’t spend hours a day reading and commenting on blogs.  3WW a word exercise I love took me over twelve hours, to both read other blogs and comment on them,  and I wrote my post in 20 minutes.  There’s no enjoyment or payback in that. (I love some of the blogs but the time spent….)  If I were to do three or four word exercises it would take 36-48 hours out of my week.  That’s a lot of writing I can be doing.

Something else–there are so many blogging groups and associations my head spins just thinking about them.  Blogging has become too big for me.  Should I spend money going to blogging conferences?

I can’t blog for Blog Critics, Technorati, to name a few and as I keep mentioning also write for real publication.  And real publication, to me, has to mean something that pays actual money and not pennies.

People in other professions don’t give everything away.  I know! I know!  Anybody can write.  And that’s true now.  Anybody who has access to a computer can put words to screen.  But do you want to read them all?

I will be keeping Courting going and weeding out “bad” posts.  So people who care about things like Technorati don’t have to worry about losing my pitiful–I don’t even know what to call it.

I realize that I’m going against the grain and that I’m probably committing blogging hari kari.  But anybody who knows me knows I’ve done that before.

I wish I could say it has been fun.  I rue the day I found blog explosion and an audience though I wouldn’t trade the friends I have made….Even more I rue doing political blogging.  That’s something best left to people who really don’t care about creative writing and I care very much.

Political blogging is best left to thick skinned people who enjoy getting comments telling them they’re mentally ill etc.

So I guess I’m starting from the beginning.

With a blog yet blogless, I leave it to all the people who love having pictures of people they might never ever have actually exchanged an email with on their blog theme. (The followers)

I will be writing more than ever.  Just not here.  If I change my mind and anybody who knows me knows I’m prone to that, please remind me that six years ago I was being published regularly.  Major publications were asking me to re-submit.

Then I began a blog…..Nobody had heard of them.  All my friends made fun of me but at first for a few months I loved it.   I did.  Then the nasty comments began and the fun ended.

I’m sorry if I sound like a spoiled bitch but I’m so tired of the blogging world.

This ad ended it for me.  Just did.  It was so crassly commercial.  Most people who take that course won’t make two cents on a dollar expended for the course.

Here’s a link to an article I wrote for The Long Island Press’s award winning series: Our Children’s Brains.  Of everything I did this past decade this article was personally the most meaningful.  If I increased awareness of non verbal learning disorder (NLD) just a bit then I did a lot.

I meant to end the year decade with a salute to bloggers because I think we’re at the forefront of a major revolution in communication.  Without blogging there really couldn’t have been Facebook.  Without Facebook there couldn’t have been Twitter.   I don’t know whether I fear or look forward to what comes next.

I began this decade, and I believe decades truly begin when something significant happens, in deep agony.  True the Trade Center had imploded and my mother died suddenly the next month but it was more than that.  I felt as if I were losing my grip on sanity.  I didn’t know about NLD then.  Had I known when I was a decade younger, ha, the worlds I might have conquered.

But I have to remember that I put this blog together and if I have been harping on its former glory lately it’s because it opened doors I never knew existed.

I became friendly with Bone over four years ago.  His writing amazed me and still does.  He keeps getting better.  But it was Bone the person who helped change me.  When we became friendly I realized that I didn’t have to fear the South.

My first three days visiting here I was more than a bit scared.  Actually it rained the first two days and I was glad I could bring my incredible rain making skills to a then drought stricken area.  (Not glad I have that talent now as this is shaping up to be the rainiest December on record.)

The third day I ventured out and nobody bit me.  North Myrtle, so familiar now, seemed like another country.  I knew the New York metro area, South Florida, parts of New England and California.

This is a new world.  My world now and I go into a new decade knowing I can face whatever comes.  I might be a decade older and one of the oldest known bloggers but that never stopped me….

I thank you all who have taken this journey or parts of it with me.

First the Monterey Pop v Woodstock debate. I wasn’t at either but did see every showing of Monterey Pop the day it came out. I recorded Woodstock the other day after i realized I have only seen snippets, but only seem to watch HGTV or health care reform centered shows.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqWVOSSmPpc&hl=en&fs=1&]
Hi you old faithful friend. I gave you a little party the other day as keeping you up for five years marked a milestone in my life. It was the longest I have been ever able to do anything. Now that you’re five there’s no telling what we’ll be able to achieve together.

Blog let me be honest. There are a few rivals for your affection. First is Facebook. FB is usually fun. If only I could be pithy clever…sort of like Bill Maher who I spent last night watching, with a group of friends, while eating Southern food. We kept rewinding and I still couldn’t remember all his one great one liners on the subject that seems to have overtaken my thoughts–health care reform.

He did ask, and blog you and I have wondered the same, what plans the Republicans have if they hate our plans so much. The only one I can remember is McCain’s “you can take your insurance with you.” As I was paying $1300 a month because I lived on the UWS and had a faux-Rolls life style, that wouldn’t be doable on a greatly reduced income.

OK blog you’re asking as any sane blog would, what does this have to do with FB? Many people seem to plan their days around putting in pithy clever or pithy zany remarks. If I could remember all the awesome amazing incredible interesting thoughts I come up when there’s absolutely no way to write them down–in the shower, on a walk in the beach usually in the water, or when I half wake up at night, the world would know how truly clever I am. I know, I know, everybody says that, but….

Big Question blog: how are you going to help me? We, you and I, lurk in blogs where bloggers who call themselves writers use “your” when they mean “you’re” over and over again. We’re never sure if that’s done on purpose as some kind of weird affectation that seems to work. People just love these blogs that, well, aren’t very well written. Or, we think, interesting as the bloggers uh excuse me writers don’t know how to tell a story or stand away from the pack and let their quirks show. They are super-friendly, often with alcohol inspired blogging names, attend blogging fairs and often write about subjects that were tired three years ago. Yes there is no such thing as a new subject but there should always be a new way to say it.

Blog we have traveled some roads less taken together and some roads most people wouldn’t brave at all. Let’s find a straighter road, not the most traveled, but not apart from the crowd and finally achieve something that will bring in some dinero.

There are many times I wonder why I have a blog; it often feels so 2004. For the past two years I have been going through the motions, yet my blog has become my place to talk out certain things in my life.
Find out what my disability is, check. Blog about it, check.
Prepare to sell apartment, check……
Spend six months selling apartment, check…..
Buy house, check…..
Renovate house, check….

Decide my birthday present to myself will be ending an addiction, check……

I didn’t know if I was going to blog about this. I know it seems as if I let everything out but I have an entire life never mentioned here and I thought this would be another thing not for public consumption.

I’m glad I did though I obsessively edited it after it was posted as I have a wont to do. Obsessively edited the words but I, Ms Fact Checker made a totally retarded mistake that I freaked about as it was further proof of me losing my mind. I knew Grace Slick wrote “White Rabbit.” I know what she wrote; I know the difference between her and Joplin as well as I know pretty much anything, but in two places in the Internet I found lyrics that said Joplin wrote it. I thought it strange but didn’t think to look further.

I’m kind of upset about that as I’m sort of an expert, in my own mind, on that time and music.

I used to have many readers and when I look at the stats every several months in my CPanel am shocked that people still reading Courting as I do nothing to pimp her.

Courting will be five in August and I was a slave to her the first several years. A blog, unless it’s bringing incredible self satisfaction and/or much money should be the blogger’s slave. It took me awhile to understand that.

I thank you, everybody who commented the other day. It wasn’t easy for me to post and I know it wasn’t easy to comment to. I seem to love to make things difficult.

I’m trying to simplify my life. It wasn’t fun to sell an apartment or to buy a house in 08. The world was going crazy. Blogs and all media had gone from a “I have so much and let me show you how financially successful I am” mode to “I am a great American and won’t spend a dime more than necessary” mode.

I always say I put my apartment on the market just as Bear Stearns imploded and closed just after the fall of Lehman Brothers. I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing. I wasn’t sure buying a house while the stock market went back to free falling was a good move.

I no longer trusted my judgment. I looked at everything I had done in the past 20 years under a much more critical spectre. I knew I was lucky in many ways; I was financially secure (or thought I was:) Have amazing friends, of many decades, who tell me when they think I’m off kilter.

My closest friend sent me an email yesterday; subject line: how is my crazy friend? I deserved that. The day before was spent on the phone with her–me convinced I was going to go into convulsions at any second though I had no symptoms. Well my muscles did feel as if they were contracting….

Then there are the bloggers. All I can say is thank you. Writing about my addiction and my attempt to get off the pills hasn’t made it more real but putting it down in black & white and having your support is an incredible blessing.

This blog will be continued. As I’m no longer its slave most of my screen time will be spent writing for publication. No excuses.

I have always been my own muse. This solves a lot of problems such as the weekly pay check Bone demanded. (Kidding, he asked nicely.)

As my own muse I have always been conscious of the quality of my writing. Lately it doesn’t meet my own pitiful standards.

Is it because I have always refused to go to BlogHer? It’s always on the same weekend–my birthday–one of the few weekends of the year I insist on being with people who love me as I think birthdays are to be celebrated not spent trying to impress hundreds of strangers almost none of whom know or care that once this blog was well something more than most blogs. And I can’t blame them for not caring.

I do think Blog Her should have a revolving summer weekend policy as I’m sure other bloggers have birthdays, family birthdays, reunions, vacations–and yes somethings are more important than blogging. Summer fun being paramount.

This makes me sound flaky and not serious but anybody who knows me knows how important writing is too my life. Blogging’s something I became caught up in and now am addicted to and it’s a better addiction than heroin so….

This hasn’t been an easy year. I’m establishing a new life in a new city. A friend from New York called my move “drastic.” It is very different and perhaps I’m in denial when I say that it can’t be drastic as I go to New York often. I have homie or go to friends here. But really how many times a week can you see the same friends? We have our assigned dinner seats at each house; games we only play with each other–both real and head ones and….CLo’s daughter Niece Kelly and a friend of theirs–a funny Gay male (are there any others?) are coming tomorrow night. We’re all in a tither to entertain them. I have known Niece Kelly since she was a wee thing and like her mother she adds a lot to her surroundings. That’s a compliment though it sounds weird to me. See what I mean about not being able to write?

I’m making new friends. That’s both easy and difficult. Nobody can replace my best friends. They have been a part of my everyday life for longer than some of my blogging friends have been alive. I need the easy familiarity of being able to look at somebody and know what she/he is about to say. I need to be able to just look at somebody and burst out laughing….

I don’t feel sad that my blogging muse has dried up. I feel horrible that I can’t seem to write a coherent sentence unless it involves a complaint about a plumber in which case I did the lawyer’s work for her–the tech writing gene never leaves.

more than most people I know how difficult it is to make it as a writer. I need no lectures on that. I do need a cheering squad–and that’s the horrible thing about blogging and once having been rather well known. It makes you feel “you deserve,” when you deserve nothing that hard work doesn’t bring.

I’m willing to do the work but the words don’t seem to come out and I keep reading how you should never take things from your blog though I think I began a damn good memoir about me and Jeffrey or me with Jeffrey as the background

I was doing a writing exercise and that helped but about five weeks ago I read a comment complaint in a blog about people who write more than one screen and want comments. The author of the post emailed me to tell me that was about me and wow!!! I haven’t been able to write since. I know an excuse when I write one, and it might be that I have had much company, that the weather’s finally sultry and great for beach going–though I try to write every day from 9AM until 3PM.

If somebody could define a screen for me I would be ecstatic. There are screens on Blackberries. Then there’s my 24″ Imac. I know people who use 40″ or even 56″ high def flat screen TV’s as their Internet screen. So what’s a screen?

And why do writing exercises seem to favor poetry? They say prose is acceptable but when four fifths of the posts are poetry it’s a poet’s site, and anyway poets know what a screen is.

I’m being silly I know. In part because in nineteen days I enter the last year of a pivotal decade and while I don’t fear the decade coming up I do fear the next or the one after that. I’m a bit confused on that subject too.

Oh lighten up Pia!!!!!!!!!

This isn’t a complaint about blogging. It’s just become real difficult for me to write and I need to blame something as I can’t stand the thought that maybe I really am too old or something

I don’t particularly like Maureen Dowd but I think a special place in hell is reserved for Karl Rove who should have been tried for crimes against humanity.

I never get why Republicans are supposed to have great senses of humor but Democrats–why Maureen is dour; and Letterman, I fear gave in too quickly to Palin–a woman who wastes no breath as she spits out hate.
I don’t think he went too far. When you parade your children publicly they become fair game. Bristol’s supposed to be an expert on teenage pregnancy. She’s eighteen….and I love Letterman so…
Read more…

It’s 8/8/08 and I know this is supposed to be a great luck day and maybe it will be, but personally I can’t wait until 9/9/09 as 9 is my favorite number. In elementary school I was sent for further counseling for loving the number 9 so much.

You can read about it in the book. it makes me laugh as I know there was nothing sinister or sick about my love for 9–it has the “n” sound which is still my favorite. I think they were trying desperately to find bad neurosis in me as I did have problems and they couldn’t accept that my inability to learn many things despite my IQ and my clumsiness etc DIDN’T have to have a neurotic basis, OK psychotic, as they couldn’t find a physical base.

I’m exhausted. So much has happened since the beginning of July. I’m proud of my LIP article. It was a coming out of sorts as I sent it to every living relative. My relatives were always great to me–well my one year older boy cousin and I had a sibling rivalry–according to our Aunt A–but when we grew up we liked each other. We really like each other. Not that we’re close

My friends are my family and my sister and her family of course and my b-i-l’s family–this is getting even more exhausting.

But my family of friends are taking over my move which is happening exactly when I thought it would. (Note to self: rethink The Secret,no don’t–it was a combination of market forces, pressure on the realtors to deliver, and much else.)

I will celebrate when it’s all over. I’m overwhelmed by everything and overwhelmed by gratitude to my friends and that includes blogging friends–Alphabet Girl Who Is A Woman Now you occupy a special place in my heart–for keeping the faith and much more.

OK. I’m a bad blogger. Last Friday night my blog disappeared and while I got it back I still haven’t reinstalled the links and much else. Too much is happening in my life. Most bloggers do respect that. I find it amazing the bloggers that will de-link you immediately, not even caring about karma and really showing that they couldn’t care less about blogging as a community.

I stopped caring about links over a year and my lack of them shows that. The blogroll will be back up shortly. I apologize about that.

I plan on enjoying the next two weeks as I have to go back to New York on 8/25 to finish getting ready to move. Lucia has taken over responsibility for getting the built in wall unit down, rebuilding the wall, and painting the living room.

My sister thinks I should move to a college town, me being a great mind in need of constant stimulation and all that but I’m beginning to build myself a nice life here. I’m confused. I think I can start a book club or writing group through the library, and a writing group on the Internet.

I was going to write a post or hopefully article on what I would have done differently when I bought my apartment. Then I realized two things. Eleven years ago the info on the Internet today wasn’t around, and I didn’t buy my apartment as an investment but as a place to love and live in. Guess what? I’m going to buy my patio house as a place to love and live in also.

Me thinks I’m beginning one of those great periods of life that used to happen to me every other year for three to five years—then once a decade if I was lucky. I can’t decide if the time when Courting was hotter than hot was a great period of life or was an interesting anomaly. I don’t exactly tell people when I meet them for the first time that I have a blog and once it was taught in at least two universities and I’m a side note in blogging history.

I don’t explain why I don’t drive. Since I have been moving during the oil crisis I have been using that to my advantage and saying that I’m experimenting with living in a town with zilch public transportation without a car or valid license. Myrtle Beach actually has Greyhound buses that go everywhere, and there’s a new bus company that goes many places much cheaper and is very luxe.

I didn’t reinvent myself through my blog. I was honest but it did help me see that a person can reinvent herself, shake up her life, and become the person she was in her 20′s and 30′s before life became so complicated but without the baggage and torrid self examination

When women talk about the 40′s and early 50′s being a wondrous time, and how being over 30 brought peace and contentment I wonder about them. Did they just stop living? Were they really that together and I was missing a lot? Did they have elderly parents who were becoming more dependent and thought that was a picnic?

Life doesn’t have to be as hard as it was for me. Now that more people have aging parents, it’s not a verboten subject. My best friends found ourselves moving away from each other during our 40′s for many reasons. We have found our way back to each other, and this is a subject I might explore in my blog because if there was a mistake to be made I made it. Fortunately they love me anyway.

Thanks Bone for the words.

Thanks Cooper, Wombat, MizzyB and Doug the dawg for that incredible post. Shayna, yours too. It also made me tear up. As a blogger I never know if my words make any sort of impact. You five and the person in the first paragraph have been my blogging solace and inspiration since almost the beginning. You make me feel that I can do it and I can’t thank you enough.
On a political note, Cooper has a post about FISA and Doug wrote a verse inspired by her post. Great blogging can inspire bloggers to take risks and go places with their writing they might not have gone. That’s my insipid line for the week. Tomorrow starts that great national holiday, ten days until my birthday. My best friend’s coming in. We’re going to a free concert. Know excactly what she’ll say–will point to all the people and say “I invited them just for you.” It’s actually a very funny line when said in Central Park with two million people singing “happy birthday” to Central Park, or any fireworks after the symphony. (Central Park and I do have the same birthday and I’m very very proud.)
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It would be inappropriate if this became a blog about NLD. I have it. In many ways it does define me but it doesn’t define my writing. Perhaps the lack of order or non-linearness in many posts

I never knew I could write fiction until Bone began 3WW and found that not only do I have a knack for it but often it calms me.

(I am a great researcher who can extrapolate pertinent information quicker and better than most. If that’s contrary to what NLD should be, I’m sure that in ten years there will be a new disorder that will take into account all the variables. Or diagnoses will be done by computer programs with new ones added to the DSM-Vxx all the time.)

My life is about much more than this disorder. It’s a rich life, but as in every life there is much room for improvement. More than one person has said after reading the article they had no idea why I’m so bright and have such great social skills yet have such a difficult time in life. It hurts; I can’t deny that–not that they said it but the truth of that statement

I have learned that there’s no shortcut to a wonderful life. As I have always been somewhat of a snob and an elitist I won’t settle for less.

One thing I have learned is that blogging can be overwhelming for anybody. The social skills called for are similar but different to real life ones and I do become overwhelmed so until August or Lucia goes home….

I’m sorry if I seem obsessed with NLD but I have done so much research into it this year and writing it down crystallized it.

Courting3.0 should be ready in about a month and I will be back to fiction and other things.

I don’t usually pay attention to the many newspaper articles here that tell you to fill a hole in the sand if you make one as I’m not very big on making holes.

I was walking on the shore line. There was a very pretty castle. I didn’t see the accompanying hole that goes down to China as water had filled it. I fell.

Everybody knows you just get up from a hole. Not. The sand and water were whirling. I was caught up to my rip cage. When you swim if you’re in a riptide you swim to the side. But when caught in a hole, I had no idea what the hell to do. I didn’t feel fear; I felt angry. I finally pulled myself out.

The entire North Myrtle roving lifeguard squad stood and watched. A very nice old couple came to help me,

I didn’t need any help. My pride however….

The old couple and I talked a few minutes. The head of the North Myrtle roving lifeguards came over. I was out of the water. The lifeguards were watching me when I was in the water. I will be nice and say that I didn’t look like I needed help. Must have looked worst after I dug myself out.

That was me in the dark lime tee and white clamdiggers–the white clamdiggers that looked transparent. I felt like America’s biggest idiot.

My cell was in my pocket. I hear it might dry out. It has my life. Fortunately it’s Verizon–they don’t use Sim cards and I have a back up cell. Sweet talked the man at Circuit City, on Broadway in Manhattan, into doing that.

I live about four blocks from the ocean. It’s usually a beautiful walk. I spent it in fear that somebody I know would pass by. Fortunately most people I know in my immediate hood come for weekends except for the very nice mommy and three year old daughter, Isabella. Isabella became my newest bff Saturday.

My neighbor, Jimmy and his wife who I have had three conversations with and have gone from thinking she works with Alzheimer’s patients for thirteen hours a day to knowing she has Alzheimer’s thirteen hours a day weren’t home fortunately. They spend their time peering out the kitchen window and would have come out.

She’s a very proper Southern lady, and I thought I was losing it as I don’t understand two thirds of the things she says but W the male half of my landlord/friend combo can’t understand her either and W understands everybody and everything.

When I got to the townhouse I faced another dilmena. How do I get into the house of extraordinary cleanliness without tracking in sand? The outdoor showers near the beach don’t work. I tracked in sand and spent the next hour cleaning. Yet my Teva’s never even made it into the house.

The towels are in the dryer. My body hurts in places I didn’t think fell into the water.

I had been resisting going out all day. From the moment I woke up this morning something–mainly my head said “stay in bed.” But did I listen? It was a beautiful day. I was supposed to get some personal news that has been delayed until tomorrow. I was attempting and failing to be productive as the news I didn’t get yet is important to my life though mundane to the world.

When I get one of the “you must go out because it’s beautiful and there’s a beach with an ocean less than a five minute walk from your house, but I really want to stay home,” urges, I’m going to live less dangerously and stay home.

If I make any sense at all let me know. For the record my head didn’t touch water. Actually I went into kind of an altered state and made sure that my hair didn’t go anywhere near the water as I didn’t want it to get frizzy.

I called my two bff’s and my sister who claims I sound salty. Not in the cursing sense.

I will never laugh at those articles again and will go around the beach telling people to fill their frigging holes.

If this sounds familiar I was walking on what passes for the beach in Cancun and fell into a sandbag. That was a minor stumble and only my camera was ruined not even my pride. Really nobodies pride can be ruined in Cancun. Oh I do feel better. I think the shock is wearing off.

I want to thank Cooper, Patrick, Doug, and last but not least by any means MizzyB for this incredible post that makes me cry but not from pain.

I was going to write about my weekend with Bone. It was a wonderful experience. After Bone left North Myrtle, he found out that a post of his was in a book. Coincidence? I think not.

My body might be turning black & blue but my heart is filled with adoration for these five bloggers. I met other bloggers first but in my revised blogging history they were the first.

I don’t really like to talk about my political blogging experiences. It’s the reason I don’t moderate comments. I have learned things from each of the above bloggers.

I don’t want to get soppy. I never meant to even get wet today, except for my feet and in the shower.

Let me stop before……

Oh someday I will learn my own categories and explain them.

I hesitate to ask this as I know how many people can’t sell at any price–but I have been living like a grad student for most of my adult life.

Please hope that one of the people who see my apartment this week decide that it’s for them at around the price I ask. Need the vibes
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Congrats Bone! He submitted to You’re Not The Only One and was accepted.

I so wish that I wrote poetry as these words seem to be perfect for it. They’re almost too easy, too cliched for me: I’m dizzy with all the change in my life. Can somebody give me a key to understanding the world as damn it I don’t?

If I wrote the above in poetry it would seem profound. Writing it in prose seems whiny. One of the earliest posts in this blog was partially in poetry but that was posted 9/04 when exactly one friend read it, aside from the people who stumbled on it at Blogger and would occasionally leave me comments telling me to move to France and other such things.

I felt much freer then. I had no expectations. Then I had many. I became blog obsessed. Writing for two blogs 24/7 will do that to you if you allow it to and I did.

In recovery now she tries to get on with her life. Dizzy from too much sun, she has to change her mindset, and find the damn key, the only one around to this house.

She has an article coming out in July that she hopes will help people understand her more. She asked for somebody else to write the article as it’s not a subject she’s in love with but she wants awareness of the subject. It’s not one of the usual “mental” disabilities. As long she’s baring her soul and letting the key to her heart out….

She hopes that she can fashion a book around it. She has another book based on something that almost happened. She feels dizzy with possibility. Really she has a migraine but that’s not one of the words. And a change is coming. Might as well be positive.

She hopes that people don’t think of her as a dizzy broad with a big mouth. Her mouth is small and she’s soft spoken. Even soft spoken for the South. The key to understanding her is knowing that she’s not her blog. No not her blog at all. Some people view her as a person who can change personas with the wind. Really the key is that her blog is one small part of her.

This change to South Carolina has been good for her. The temperature is higher in New York. She likes hot weather and sort of wishes she was there for an early June heat spell as they have always been magical. She fell in love during one. She doesn’t really talk about him here as he was truly nice. They almost got married but….Understanding all the marriage proposals and how she didn’t want to change for each man is another key element to understanding her.

Men would try to change for her. That man wanted to be known to her as an East Indian James Dean. He would come to work in his best Dean imitation clothes. He never had to change clothes at work or after.

They, she and him–not his clothes, were key to the operation of the office and could dress and do what they wanted. She remembers him with much affection. His mood swings made her dizzy then. She did have an ability to pick men who could change moods with the turn of a key.

Really now she wants what she has wanted since she can remember. She wants to hear one song, just one that holds the key to life.

She won’t be participating in the next two 3WW’s as she’s going to New York to witnesss a big change in her favorite seventeen year old’s life; high school graduation. She has to see her favorite almost fourteen year old before last summer at real camp and real high school.

She has been accused of being an eternal optimist as if that’s a bad thing. OK, they also call her Pollyanna and Miss Mary Sunshine. She’ll take the optimist label thanks.