Mothers are usually wonderful people. At least to their families. My mother was perfect, not, but I loved her anyway and think of her many days.

My mother was five foot tall, barely, at her wedding and then again in the last few years weighed 80 pounds.

She was adult. She was mature. In my family you always knew who the mommy was. Though from an early age (mine) she treated me with the respect due a much older person. It’s the way I treat kids I know are hankering to be adult–and they love me even during difficult years, even when older I think in part because of that.

The last five or six years of my mother’s life were difficult. She was frail but her mind was sharp. Sometimes I wished that her mind was a little less….just so she would be less demanding though I knew she would probably be more demanding.

It’s funny to say that in “those days you didn’t talk about aging mothers,” when those days were from 96 to 01. I finished grad school in 96–geriatric social work and really people liked to talk more about dementia, or advanced directives, or basically anything than how to keep a mother independent and at home when she was for intensive purposes blind and frail.

She began only eating in front of my sister and I as table manners were paramount to her. It hurt so much to see an incredibly social person still want to be social but….

The thing was as long as my mother was in this world I knew somebody loved me unconditionally. I knew somebody thought me perfect. I was still the child, though a very adult one, and she was still the mother.

For Mother’s Day we used to give her White Shoulders cologne until she begged us to stop. Then one year she asked for it again. It wasn’t as easy to find. Then there was the Mother’s Day she told us to forget it. My father got real into that and she spoke to none of us for oh maybe eight hours.

My father’s last Mother’s Day he insisted we go to the Catskills to a resort none of us had seen in 20 years. It was fun. My father was healthy or so we and he thought. He just had a feeling and when we have feelings we act on them.

I hate Mother’s Day. People should honor their mothers all year round. We don’t need a Hallmark Holiday basically designed to make all women without children feel horrible.

This was the first time I liked the recession as there were fewer ads in the paper–I DVR everything I watch on TV so…..

But still there are many mother’s I personally like so Happy Mother’s Day.

Just remember I have a birthday in July and don’t get to celebrate Mother’s Day or anniversaries or….God this sounds like a fatal illness.

And I hate all the blogs that celebrate the wonders of mothers with free gifts etc. You can make an impact on a kid without being their mother. I’m not saying that mother’s aren’t the most important people as I think they’re priceless if they don’t impart all their issues onto their kids. Just that Mother’s Day is one day I prefer sleeping through. Neither having a kid nor a mother

I guess I should tell you I bought an apartment in New York in 97 for about the amount I would have spent when we looked in 88. The difference was the building was classier, the apartment more beautiful and more renovated than any we saw but oh so small. Though in my imagination now…

I sold it this past October. I know you thought people lost IQ points for every mile they moved out of the NY/suburb area and had an elaborate formula for the IQ loss, but I could sell my apartment for more money than you would have believed and I saw last year that this past spring summer and fall would probably be the last of the good times.

Though maybe they’re going to come back in a slightly different format. Like a bad TV show remade for a bigger audience.

So much has happened. I wouldn’t know where to start. That’s probably my book.

So let me just say I bought a house. Yes a free standing house–but not being a fool I hired people to do everything. It’s much cheaper here. I moved to South Carolina.

I know you don’t think they let Jews in South Carolina but it was actually the first state to guarantee Jews religious freedom. Yes I know that was a long time ago.

It’s a nice place. I truly like it. My house is perfect for one person who likes both solitude and company. It will be perfect later if I need a roommate or help (and have the money for that–the times they are different than any you imagined in my lifetime.)

I’m one person and while I want schools and things to be great, be real, daddy. Schools in Manhattan were only becoming good in the past fifteen years because of helicopter parents–a mode of parenting you invented. Libraries–we might have the best research libraries anywhere but lending ones…not so good.

I actually like the lending library here. Not that I have joined yet. It’s near my house and I will join after I move two weeks from last Friday. And I want the schools to be good. But I love the low taxes–yes I’m a Dem but…

Our new President talks about redistributing wealth. When I personalize I hate the thought. Everybody we know is educated and to some extent a have. Shouldn’t more people be? I don’t buy the notion that many or most people are meant just to be clerks at Wal Mart. This subject is too complex for me right now daddy and I hear you arguing with me in the background…But I know that you believed people should have opportunities and I do believe President Obama means the same.

I’m burnt daddy. Being audited. I know you taught me never to fear the IRS and I don’t but the paperwork’s a bitch. And my frigging lawyer from the apartment sale in New York still hasn’t sent me the paperwork and I need it if I’m going to do my taxes on time, and you betcha I’m going to have them into the accountant before I move. Though getting my taxes to him a year ago plus a week might have caused this problem.They were very complicated and that week was the first leg of my move. The Bear went under that weekend; I didn’t know if I could sell my apartment.
I honestly didn’t think that if a brokerage house folded into another brokerage house the first brokerage house still has to send you a 1099. And four fifths of the things they asked for they have–under the names listed on my 1099′s. So I’m freaked but not overly. It’s just I wanted this time to be stress free. Or just a bit because life without stress isn’t supposed to be good.

Uh brokerage houses. I hate to tell you what happened to most of your favorite ones. You wouldn’t believe it. As I said Bear Stearns well didn’t really fold but is a shell of itself. When my apartment was in contract Lehman Brothers did fold. There’s so much you wouldn’t believe. Frank Rich who used to be the theater critic explains how much we have all changed. It’s an incredible article and sort of sums a lot up. From theater to OpEd. Life is one big stage, and Frank Rich’s the one man I would hunt down and marry if he weren’t already.

You had your stroke on 3/26 which happened to be your 52nd wedding anniversary. Poor mommy had to live with the best of days and the almost worst of days being one and the same for a decade. You died on 3/31–eighteen years ago. You and mommy were bookends as she died a decade later.

My 90′s the decade of my discontent for many reasons–including many that had nothing to do with you or mommy began on 3/31/91 and ended on 10/14/01.

Maybe next time I will explain blogging to you and how in various ways it remade my life.

My house renovation blog. I was surveying my property; (my tenth or so of a very irregular acre) looked at something and began squealing. “I’m officially a Redneck. Yahoo–Mountain Dew.” Actually I didn’t put that last part in. My coming out as a Redneck made Eldin One and Bone both very happy. They’re Southern so….
I can’t remember the last time I did 3WW I should be moving, into my house, in a week or three and hope to have the mental energy and physical time to truly participate occasionally in blogging things.

Alana practiced smiling in the mirror. She wanted her smile to appear genuine but not as glowing as her normal smile. A slightly tipsy though highly functional Mona Lisa was the effect she desired. After half hour her mouth hurt but she thought she had it down. Burt’s Bees Wax applied liberally to her teeth and gums kept her lips from drying out and more importantly her mouth moist enough for her to talk normally. She didn’t want to have dry mouth this morning. No that would be almost as bad as no smile or her 100 watt one.

Fortunately nobody was in the elevator. She smiled and waved at the doormen as if she were too busy to speak to them for she was. Idly she wondered when her building would become a one doorman one, instead of two most hours. Union rules precluded a reduction in hours. About one tenth of the building residents weren’t paying their monthly charges; another 20% were becoming chronically late and none of the luxe two to five million dollar apartments for sale were moving.

It only took her 22 minutes to walk the 33 blocks south and four avenues east. Being oblivious to people she bumped into helped. Alana ran into the ladies room that didn’t look as if it belonged in the gorgeous art deco office complex. Her face wasn’t too red, but she put some more rosacea cream on. It wasn’t as if Alana had rosacea; her best friend did. Alana’s motto had always been: “you could never have too much make up or skin care products.”

Oh life, why was she going to have to change a lifetime of habits? Could she? Fortunately she still looked great in red lipstick. She had bought many Chanel reds over the years and kept them fresh in her dressing room tiny fridge. Yes she liked this affect. Pale skin, red lips, dark eyebrows and lashes. Alana knew she looked very 40′s retro.

She wondered what would happen in the auditorium the meeting was going to be held in. Would there be a ramble? No, unfortunately, the others, like her were too civilized to duke it out.

Do you call a large room with seats and a stage in an old classy complex an auditorium? The meeting notice had called it a conference room but it sat 500. The meeting was supposed to begin at ten AM. Alana arrived at 9:45, smiling her Mona Lisa type smile. The room was packed. Her sister and cousins were sitting in one of the front rows. Her cousin Tony waved frenetically at her and pointed to an empty seat next to him. Oh Tony, was he going to be a drama queen to the end?

The murmur going through the room was becoming louder and louder. Promptly at ten, her own lawyer, walked onto the stage. Hal looked so dignified with his slightly too long hair, custom made suit, Italian loafers. She remembered from the days she knew him more intimately his penchant for silk socks or no socks. Oh half the women in the room had slept with Hal and another quarter wanted to. In the end, he had been too easy for Alana. Still she was proud of him as he began to speak:
Ladies and gentlemen. The wheels of justice have been moving too slowly for you. I can’t tell you what to do or what not to do but I can present Bernie Madoff.”

As one, the formerly dignified people in the audience moved to the stage. “Yes,” Alana thought triumphantly, “we’re going to avenge the loss of our fortunes.”

I don’t live in NY anymore but am a New Yorker through and through. Bernie Madoff perpetuated the largest fraud ever, the Ponzi of Ponzi schemes. To be Madoffed is to be swindled out of your money. Some of us wish we had that excuse but nobody wants to lose their money that way. I and many people I know are overly fascinated with him. He’s so sick among his many many victims were Eli Weisel and his foundation. Not that anybody deserved… I’m so thankful for what I have left–I’m being audited and am preparing my taxes for this year. It’s very sad. Humor is the only weapon
This is the NY everybody dreams of and that sort of existed for me until the 90′s. Coincidentally I lived three blocks and two avenues from The Apthorp; it’s my favorite building and I’m a too well known customer at the Apthorp Pharmacy. Hooks you because it takes insurance and then you buy $60 candles, home perfome, body lotion. OK. Not you. Me. I couldn’t afford my five and ten dollar prescriptions anymore.
Bone wants it known that it’s a great article and the older O’Neal owns my boat basin. Yes I have a personal boat basin in Riverside Park cum cafe that we no longer eat at often as there’s a place at the 70th Street that makes great hamburgers and has sometimes incredible concerts.
Recession blogs are big.

Ms. Maya Hunt was sitting at her computer watching her rapidly dwindling portfolio. She thought she had $600 every day this year in unrealized (not sold) losses. One 07 statement she had to give her accountant showed 200K in (sold, stock or money market fund never to be seen by her again) realized losses. When times get tough…She poured a triple Absolut and thought she should really invest in liquor companies.

Just as she finished pouring the phone rang. Her cousin Madison didn’t even say hello but began screaming about AIG and Warren Buffet. Madison was walking down West End Avenue and couldn’t care less who heard. She hung up and realized Maya hadn’t said a word. Not even “how are you?” Ill mannered her mother had always called that branch of her family.

Madison saw her pot dealer Frankie who kissed her and began talking about how his brother was walking away from a 300K condo loft deposit. When Frankie and Madison parted ways at 97th Street, Frankie saw his clfriend (client friend) Henry. Damn if Henry wasn’t screaming to himself. Nah, he had a bluetooth on.

Henry, an intellectual property lawyer, was on the phone with his clfriend, Neil, who had just had the last of his margin called. He didn’t know how he was going to tell his wife. Henry tried to sound encouraging as he tried even harder to get off the phone so he could buy some weed from Frankie.

Neil bought a bunch of tulips from a Korean grocery and almost fell on the slushy icing up snow, and walked up the 12 flights of stairs. By the time he arrived in the apartment he thought of something to tell his wife but Maya was sprawled on the couch face down, a drink knocked over and an unlit joint in her hand.

The next will be more relevant to today. I found myself reliving a memory and wanted to write it without including my father’s POV. Frankly his views befuddle me though I understand more than most people. I suppose I will be going back and forth from memory posts to what’s wrong with the world today?
Hi Daddy
Do you remember when you told me that if I went with you to a meeting of the Mir Young Men’s Club, I would meet a bootlegger?

I knew that the club consisted of people from your parents generation and you were the youngest active member. I was eleven and in lust with the lure of both gangsters and FBI agents You had told Elka and me, many times, how when you were a boy during the depression you would go to Montauk with the bootlegger and ride shotgun–which makes no sense considering your youth and your fear of guns.

You probably went once or twice but in your stories you went often and while you didn’t explicitly say you were central to the operation a daughter can dream. And you knew that. After you died mommy told me that half your stories were made up and she was so surprised that I of all people fell for them Of course she wouldn’t tell me which half nor would she tell me how much you embellished. My parents. What jokesters.

Off we went from the garden apartments in Queens to some stuffy over furnished dark dingy, smoky but with doilies apartment somewhere in the Bronx. Everybody but you and I had white hair if they had hair at all and that did include the few women. Before the solemn reading of the minutes they made a big fuss over me.
“What a shana maidela.” “You look just like you looked at two.” I heard that one until my 30′s when the last of them died out and never considered looking like Shirley Temple a compliment. Or even looking like me at two. Note for you if you ever comeback to life: a girl wants to be known for her age appropriate beauty not her toddlerhood.

Then they told me how much I looked like you. And I did. We had the same deep set eyes and smaller than I would have liked mouth. I liked that one because it meant people forgot that I was adopted. Fortunately neither you nor mommy would mention that fact but thank whoever for that meant you too were good looking.

I have never forgotten that apartment or the meeting. There was rugelach (a pastry) during the reading of the minutes and new business. New business basically consisted of discussing who died and was buried in one of the cemeteries The Mir Young Man’s Society had sections in. In the cemetery you and mommy are buried in, The Mir Young Men’s Society is next to The Jewish Actors and even I know some of the names. Once Elka and I were wondering around as you had taught us to and we found Barbra Streisand’s father, between our society and the Jewish Actors.

I don’t remember what else was discussed People sat in folding chairs. The room became hotter and hotter and I could smell jars of schmaltz herring (in a an onion and white sauce, I think) being opened. I still think herring except for kippers a vile and gross food. The smell and smells of tuna and egg salad beginning prepared made me sick and I wanted to leave but didn’t dare say anything. I knew you wouldn’t make me eat anything as you thought the same of tuna and egg salad as I did You were worse as you thought if mommy didn’t make chopped foods you would immediately die.

So we sat in the stuffy stinky room and I wondered where my bootlegger was. I wondered if he looked like a gangster on TV or more like an FBI agent. You let me watch an hour of TV a day and most of my TV time then was consumed by “hip” shows catering to teenagers which I would be in a year and half–77 Sunset Strip Hawaiian Eye and Surfside 6 which took place in Miami Beach and whenever we went I would take Elka and make a pilgrimage to the house boat.

I didn’t know that the houseboat wasn’t part of the show until right now when I Wiki’d it. I’m assuming that you learn about Wikipedia and other things where ever you are. Since you’re not on this earth I can make assumptions or not that I couldn’t normally. I do stick to truth in stories. It’s just the world’s changed so much in the past almost eighteen years and I don’t want to waste time explaining unless I do. (Uh, I sound just like you.)

I don’t know how I was able to watch TV in peace as we only had one set and you insisted on watching with us. Maybe “my shows” took place on your poker, pinochle, civic associations or classes at The New School nights. I think poker and classes were on the same night–more about your life outside work, and your work in other letters.

But I think I also watched FBI type shows and was confused as to whether I wanted to be an FBI agent, not that girls could be, or a gangster. I can’t explain how excited I was about meeting the bootlegger. You had told me so many great stories.

When you introduced me to an old frail man on crutches I wanted to kill you. Somehow I hadn’t accounted for the decades gone by since the depression. Your eyes were smiling. You looked as if you wanted to laugh loudly. I remember thinking “he’s trying to teach me some important life lesson,” but I still can’t think of what it could be. That I hadn’t factored in the passage of time? Daddy we all learn that one when we’re ready. That I shouldn’t expect one thing, when the possibilities are infinite?

I got my revenge quicker than I would have imagined. We went to the Botanical Gardens or The Bronx Zoo. When you looked for parking, on the street, so you wouldn’t have to pay, you the world’s most careful driver, drove the wrong way down a street and you got a ticket.

My bff Lucia and I saw Jersey Boys
A new type of Broadway show that brought me some faith in Broadway. I don’t generally like it or even Off-Broadway anymore. As both are very pricey I can be picky But that’s a whole other post

She wanted to leave when she was 40 in 91 but her father died suddenly and her mother was needy.

Her office on Jerome Avenue in The Bron_ had graffiti all over the windows No matter how often it was taken off it would be back the ne_t day. The strange thing was she found The Bron_ a relief from Manhattan. She knew chop shops were all over Jerome, and she was never more than a few minutes from crack and drive by shootings, but her office was a DMZ. When she would walk the streets, men would come out of the buildings “Ms. Savage, that’s Ms. Savage. She cool.”

Generally she hated that type of attention. The roar of the construction worker, whistle of the Con Ed worker, but there was something almost innocent, something refreshing, in these boys.

She trusted them to keep her out of death’s door. She wouldn’t trust them for anything else and they knew it. Though she smiled and laughed more easily than the other white women she worked with, there was a certain coolness about her. A sort of “don’t fuck with me, mother fuckers,” resonated from her cream turned gold in summer skin

Though she lived in what was then the richest zip code in the city, probably the country, she would count the Olde English malt liquor bottles strewn on the sidewalks as she practically tripped over homeless people sleeping and would make her e-cuses.

That spring or summer a subway motorman went postal and killed a number of people Service on the East Side IRT was disrupted for months. The normal 20 minute ride took two hours.

She was the last legal tenant on her floor. On one side of her apartment the new landlord put $10 ho’s; on he other side small time drug dealers. She had five floods the landlords refused to do anything about and soon she had cockroaches coming from the ceiling. It was vile. It was gross. Call the city to complain and give her address, yeah really. She would hear ten minutes of laughter before they hung up. For years the city had ignored the lack of heat complaints also.

She could take not having heat. But cockroaches, mice and rats that ran from the fireplace once the new 63rd Street subway had opened, that was intolerable.

She could have waited to be bought out but she would probably be dead from something. She was only 40; the best dressed white woman at the Jerome Ave Social Security office where all the other Jews her age acted as if they were going to be eligible for SSI tomorrow.

Her laughter was infectious but half the time she felt it was the hysterical laughter of the soon to be legally insane. When her best friend would come to the office to meet her for lunch at the Paradise Coffee Shop, beloved by generations of native Bron_ites, all work would stop. All the guys wanted to meet her. Only later would they notice the wedding ring.

Claimants would ask for the “pretty well dressed” white girl. “Well dressed” she laughingly told her friends meant that if she were to wear plaid, and she wouldn’t, it would clash as a fashion statement. She was always shocked at how often “well dressed” was applied to her. She was just another city girl.

She moved to Riverdale, The Bron and the high point of her day was walking down the hills of Riverdale, over The Major Deegan and up the hills of Kingsbridge Heights and around The Reservoir that stunk of mold most days.

She wore silk short suits and would put on her pantyhose once she got to the office no later than 7:30 AM so she could do “undertime” or OT in the morning. Not because she wanted the money but otherwise the work would just pile up. She hated that job and didn’t yet realize if she was to remain in New York it was Manhattan she needed.

When the crack/drive by shooting years were safely over she moved back but never loved it as much as she had before the days of the $10 ho’s.

As others dreamed of the city she dreamed of escaping. It wasn’t Final Payments She didn’t live with her mother. Her mother didn’t stop her from doing things, but she couldn’t leave as long as her mother was living on her own. And her mother had no intention of ever giving into age and fraility.

Her mother died a month after 9/11 and it was so hard. She felt wounded and alone. First she couldn’t leave because of estate and patriotism reasons. Then there was another reason and still another.

Si_ years after her mother’s death she began to get her apartment ready. The closing is scheduled for midway between 9/11 and her mother’s death.

Every New Yorker has their 9/11 story. Hers isn’t that fascinating. She didn’t know anybody who died in the attacks but many who lived.

On Wednesday or Thursday she will walk down to the old Trade Center, walk further to the water ta_i to the new Ikea in Red Hook, Brooklyn and come back at night to look at the twin beacons of lights emenating from the site. Her best friend, daughter and some other friends went yesterday but she couldn’t go. They mainly talked about the ride and the food in the after event phone call. The beacons of light will always be meaningful

It’s been seven years. A missing person can be declared dead after seven years. Bankruptcies e_punged, debts cleared. Crimes e_cept for murder and rape are usually no longer prosecuted. Seven is the age of reason. Seven means so many many things, but most of all it means letting go.

She’s made up with the friends she fought with seven years ago, and hasn’t spoken to the false friends.

Her new future awaits not where she thought it would seventeen or even three years ago in Santa Monica or San Diego but in South Carolina.

She’s tired. Oh so tired. It took forever to sell her apartment and sometimes she think hers was the last one bedroom in Manhattan to sell for a half decent price. The doormen saga–she doesn’t want to go there.

She’s tired of people with their hands out. She’s tired of living in a city that’s so pricey and so crowded and people are defeated as living here is hard. Her neighbors are jealous–but there’s no longer a market for their apartments

She thought she suffered from a terminal case of bad timing but it turned out to be pretty darn good.

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

.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks Bone for the words.

I apologize for the triteness of the dialogue. This is a writing exercise and I have too much on my mind and other things happening. I really don’t want to write about my apartment sale until the middle of October–November, however–it’s never ending and there are more things I have to do that are kind of funny.

I loved and felt privileged by the award Cooper gave me. I hope to give it out next week

A couple of years ago this was a nice townhouse complex. Now she wouldn’t even go into the greasy pool filled with foreigners who yelled in strange Asian languages, and all variations of Spanish, she thought as she banged the wall with her broom. Damn kid. Screamed constantly as the kid’s parents talked over her in Chinese or Viet Namese, and didn’t care if neighbors got any sleep or not.

People moved out in the middle of the night. There were foreclosure signs everywhere. Marilee grew tired of banging on the wall. Cigarettes. Damn she was out again. She took a butt from the large silver plated tray that fell. She wasn’t going to pick it up.

Once she had girls to do things like that for her. When she had moved to the townhouse it had been a temporary measure for a girl used to living in 10,000- 5,000 square feet houses with full staffs.

She had moved to Vegas at the end of the Rat Pack era. You could tell a gentleman gangster from the scum wannabes of today. Oh she had been aware that many girls her age became hippies but she laughed at them. They didn’t know about glamour, about gentlemen paying a lady’s bills, about things necessary for a girl’s survival.

Marilee had never made it as an entertainer. Occasionally she would be in a chorus line but it didn’t matter. Marilee and her girlfriends measured success by the size of the rock, the size of the house, the cut of their man’s suit, the silk in the shirt and tie, the Italian loafers and the size of their feet. Still a girl couldn’t gamble with her future.

Marilee became a craps then 21 dealer. Later she became a floor supervisor. Then her rotor cuffs went and she got sciatica; the secret ailments of the Vegas dealer. The money for the seventeen operations ate through her savings. The men who once couldn’t leave her alone couldn’t be found. Still she had the town house and some money in a bank account. One day she would get back. She was keeping the money in the account for facial renewal purposes.

The doorbell opened.
Oh, it’s you. Could you get me a cleaning woman?

The tall girl with the thick brunette hair and smile that could have powered Vegas frowned.
Mother you owe two months mortgage. I’m not going to front you any more money.
Lesley I gave you money for law school. You wouldn’t have the life you have if it weren’t for me. Come to think of it, you wouldn’t have life without me.

Marilee wheezed. The cigarettes were beginning to catch up with her. She sat on a chair and put up her swollen legs. Who the hell did Lesley think she was? When she was a girl she had everything Marilee never had. Lesley was smiling. Marilee remembered all the time she had spent arranging people to take Lesley to the orthodontist. All the money gone to Lesley’s mouth. She looked as if she whitened her teeth to the max. Marilee would have approved if she could stand anything about her daughter.

Lesley sat in a chair across from her mother:
I’ll get straight to the point mother. The other day when you were dead to the world in an alcoholic haze I tried cleaning this mess. You’re not at the top of your game mother anymore. Not even close. I found Johnny’s will. He left everything to me. You spent my inheritance and that fabled law school tuition. You paid for one semester. I had to work my way through school but at least I was a good dancer. Yes, mother people wanted to see me dance. I was a headliner, no thanks to you. I know you told people not to hire me. They laughed at you. You were washed up by the time you were my age and never knew it.

You omitted to tell me that I was Johny’s heir. I found the letter he wrote me. He wanted to know me. You wouldn’t let him. You told me he wanted nothing to do with me. You were scared I might like him more than you. You deprived me of knowing my father and I never can forgive you. How you managed to hide everything for so long, god I’ll never know. You knew he had a dangerous job and could be killed at any time. You’re the ultimate bitch mother.

Your bank account–it’s in trust for me. I had your name taken off. This house is in my name. I’m your landlord mother. I paid off the mortgage, and I might just evict you.

Oh, Lesley, stop being so melodramatic and get me a cigarette.

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If Karl Rove goes to jail, my heart will burst. The arrogant prick thought he was better than any of us. He thought he was above the law and spent five years secretly investigating the former Alabama governor

This would be a law way overdue. Keeping pot illegal is to nobody’s interests. It’s a very selectively enacted law and just serves to give poorer people and/or Black people records.

Thanks Bone for the words. This is more about Dinah

Summer was Dinah’s favorite time to be in New York. Even this summer, the summer of every body’s discontent, people seemed indifferent to the widening recession, stagflation.

Dinah had been young during the first stagflation. It hadn’t affected her personally but she remembered how deeply the subways had cut back. How depressing the stations and trains were. It would take over an hour to get someplace that had taken 20 minutes previously.

People would complain about the trains, about the entire infrastructure in the city, but really did any of that matter? She had friends who lived in Clinton, the former Hell’s Kitchen.

One night her best friend Lainey had spent the night in a car with her boyfriend as she had visitors who had taken over her apartment and made Lainey feel distinctly unwelcome in her own lair.

When Dinah came over the next day she saw a used condom under the car. The hood was known for its ho’s. In the days before people knew about AIDS few people used them. Dinah thought ho’s did sometimes for disease purposes.

Looking at the used condom made Dinah scared but she couldn’t stop staring at it. It was under William’s car but it couldn’t be Lainey’s and Williams. They weren’t that uncouth. She stared and stared until it was about to pour.

She walked up to the sixth floor walk up, meeting an 80 year old woman, a transvestite, and two Gay men on the way up. The heat had the old lady fanning herself and throwing ice down her body. The transvestite was wearing a robe that exposed her body including genitals. Not that Dinah was judgmental or felt sick or anything.

The Hispanic Gay men were chattering a mile a minute. Dinah wasn’t in the mood. She probably never should leave her beautiful West Village hood. At least not when it was 99 degrees and a tenement building smelled of Lysol, cats, pee, and cabbage. Always cabbage even in the hottest weather.

By the time she reached Lainey’s apartment Dinah had lost all reason. Lainey’s guests were away, and Dinah couldn’t help the words that came out of her mouth:
So how was the night of the condom?