Around nine years ago I wrote a fast letter to the New York Times ironically supporting a psychologist I would end up blogging with at Psychology Today It was the first letter I had ever written and actually sent–by email which makes everything easier. I forgot about it until later that day when I was in my brother-in-law’s car. I assume we were going to dinner at some truly good Long Island restaurant. I missed the phone call but began screaming when I heard the voice mail.

OK I easily impress myself. An editor wanted to know if it was alright to print it. No, I wrote it to fill up bandwidth Several days later, very coincidentally, I was offered a reporting job, not for The Times.

Yesterday I was reading an article on NYTimes.com about Facebook and just had to comment. I knew it was too late to make “readers recommendations” and sent it off without editing or editing some more, In all five comments I have submitted in the past several years I only checked one and that made “readers recommendations.” For some reason I checked and it was an “editor’s pick.”

1177 Comments
NYT Pick
Dec. 13, 2011 at 4:54 p.m.

last week I was the object of derision on a Facebook group for people with an invisible disability. But without Facebook I would have never met so many people who share the same disability
For the first time in my over 50 years on this earth I’m learning to accept me for me thanks to Facebook
My family is closer than ever thanks to Facebook. I’m in touch with people from my entire life span. Seeing myself through their eyes was eye opening, humbling and wonderful.
A lot of people on Facebook are dedicated to being real. You just don’t have to tell what you had for lunch or who you had sex with when. Facebook is there for you to make your own experience with.

Damn I should have edited it. I should have edited it!
Yes I didn’t use my name nor did I link to a blog as many people do but….This means goods things are around the corner. The whole year has been great. Overwhelming but life affirming; filled with writing recognition and family old and new!!!

The sad but adorable irony wasn’t lost on me that I then went on Facebook and updated my status–even before calling my sister or best friend.

I will be back with a Chanukah post–The Miracle of the Ipad–an absolutely true story about how my Ipad might have saved my life. It’s more exciting than this post and never once mentions a newspaper. My sister called my Ipad story, “a sign from God.” She wasn’t sure about what!

I have no right to be sad when I live at the beach, have some resources, and a life some people would look at with disdain–too self centered; and others with envy–self centered, beach, people to laugh with, a Manhattan Upper West Side apartment that if not mine is there for me when I want or need it.

Yet every year this time of year comes and kicks me in the tuchus with stunning strength and an alacrity I’m always shocked to feel.

I’m lonely; I miss my mommy, and my daddy too–though he will be gone 20 years this coming 3/31.  Actually I miss him more than ever–and never know what to call death though that’s what it is to me.  I can’t believe in passing to another life in another side but it sounds so inviting I would love to.  I can’t believe in the big sleep and one day the Messiah will come though I will always identify myself as Jewish for reasons I have discussed too frequently.

My Mom–well Courting readers know too well how she fell 33 days after 9/11, lived for fifteen minutes while she cried into her Companion button that didn’t save her, she wanted to live.

I’m not John Gunther.

I can’t think of expressions like Death be not proud.  hell I studied that book at least twice: once  in elementary school or junior high,  and then again high school, and really have no idea what the expression means. For death, something I was too familiar with at too young an age, has never lent itself to the grandeur in that statement.

I’m jealous.  Of all of you who have lost loved ones in the blogging/facebook era.  People, often strangers or semi-strangers, reach out to you with plaudits and condolences.  I’m jealous but don’t begrudge you it.  I love that mourning has become something people can do so openly and with so much companionship (tune “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” prepare to puke.)

I can’t help it.  I belong to the sardonic life school.  Because I’m so frigging nice which apparently is fashionable, I embrace irony to keep me from being the sucker I truly am—but I really don’t want to go there now.  I don’t miss having kids or having a partner but either or both would have made life so much easier during both my parents deaths

You’ll never know what it’s like to take the LIRR alone (train from Great Neck to Manhattan) after planning your mother’s services with your sister and brother in law, not knowing what to do, and literally running into a crazy woman in what was Gristede’s that year.  A large basement super market that never had people in it.  I would go when I couldn’t deal with Fairway, Zabar’s, or even Citerella.  Invariably it would change names every year.

It was famous for being in the Ansonia which is not only a famous apartment building, former home of Plato’s Retreat, now classy,pre-war, too ornate for my tastes but….and mostly famous in many circles for being the supermarket closest to the Ansonia Weight Watchers. The supermarket had all the right foods.

What do I do when I’m waiting for a funeral, and all my friends are mourning buildings?  Rhetorical question.  I become embittered and then try everything to lose the bitterness for I have always been called a “lady” when not being called other names.

Empathy flew out the city when my mother died.  I don’t fixate on that; I have forgiven and moved on.

But damn last night in a rare sleepless night I realized exactly why I reacted so badly to a house fire, in another person’s home, that awaited me when I arrived home this past Monday 9/13.

The smell.  It was the same once wonderful smell of smoke that wafted uptown into my apartment that week.

Obviously it’s something I will never forget. Scents are visceral; remembered long after memories are gone or the mind might be robbed of intellect.  I wouldn’t want to forget.  I only want to remember when I want to remember.  Tomorrow (Friday night through Saturday evening–Yom Kippur, the traditional day of mourning.)  I don’t believe in God, dislike organized religion yet view my Jewishness as a culture that has survived too many years of people trying to wipe it out.

I think I was a bitch when my mother died.  Demanding.  Scared,  Unhappy.  Trying to hang onto my youth though I was no longer young.  Yet doesn’t a person have a right to be all that once or twice in a lifetime?

OK many other times.  To be brutally honest menopause changed me into a much better person.

But I always gave 200% of myself and would have done anything for people that I loved and they knew that.  I was too accepting of faults; would put up with things until I could no longer stand to be around the person and then end the friendship.  Sometimes a friendship of many years.

I believed, and believe, in Karma.  I was just going to say something and realized how critical the statement was of me and couldn’t say it.  One thing I have learned in the past nine years is that it’s up to us to be kind to ourselves; that in this journey called life in educated America, we call the shots.  I, and I alone, am responsible for me and my happiness.  For you who have known me a half decade or a lifetime–that’s obviously much progress.

I try tricking the sad season into not coming each year, and each year I’m a bit more successful.  I’m already not looking forward to 9/11/11 for I can imagine what Christine O’Donnell will do with it–she’ll probably make it into a tragedy that happened to her and people who don’t believe in masturbation alone.

I believe when people talk about wanting to forget they want to forget the polarization and politicizing.  The event itself, it’s American history we all lived through.  I would no sooner forget it than I would my mother’s death (bad example, I mean her life) or President Kennedy’s assassination though I will always see it through the eyes of a thirteen year old who thought herself much smarter than she was.  Or maybe I was smart then and each year since have declined a bit–I waver on that.  I blamed the assassination on me.  It’s the first major event I remember taking responsibility for.  It was President Kennedy’s first trip that I hadn’t been following.  As I was involved in Unpopular Girl Eighth Grade Things. Oh how I wallowed in unpopularity.  Wore it like a badge….Who knew that I would grow into an eighteen year old people (boys) would love to be with?

My mother did.  She never lost faith.  And my father thought I was the smartest kid who just had to try a bit harder–in every area of life. He thought me beautiful and managed to make me feel proud, embarrassed and sad all at once.  For my beauty was always marred by my talking with my hands or being sloppy.  Or something truly minor in the larger scheme of life but to him it was the world.  So I have no perspective.

When I turned 25 we did have that rapprochement that allowed me to become the person he told his problems to.   Though really those days began when I was 20.  Things happened that made my father lose faith in life for a short while and my mother asked me to come home and be with him.  I did because by coincidence I had been to a rally that put down middle aged white professional men.  And I thought, “but I’m demonstrating against my father,” and I couldn’t be radical anymore though I could be anti-war and wanted equality for women etc.

Oh daddy, how you would have loved Mad Men. Peyton Place for another century.  Actually they refer to Peyton Place. It’s almost too clever yet just right.  Reminds me of the time we were visiting one of the Bob’s in London.  They were two years behind and we gave plot summaries.  That night was the first time you didn’t let me meet Mick Jagger   I do understand now, of course.

The character’s are like your friend/clients.  The ones mommy disdained but entertained.  Served them chopped liver and they kvelled over what they called pate.  She smiled sweetly.  Nobody knew how cutting she could be.  How she could force me to re-examine my like or dislike of people, my ethics, my beliefs with just a few words chosen wisely

She wasn’t one to endure foolishness but some of these people actually paid daddy in a good year.  Sometimes big time; sometimes–well I have an original oil painting and the romance book cover it graced.  Sometimes daddy would insist the pot in his big time poker game go to whoever was starving or destitute  or sick.  How could you not love a man like that?  A man of valor and  great compassion.  I miss his friendship as I miss hers.  I was so blessed.  Honestly few people ever have that opportunity.

My cousins Gena and Tina did.  This past Saturday celebrating the life of their father was a wonderful experience.  I do get a warm and fuzzy feeling when I think about it but know how hard it is for them to lose such a wonderful father.  Our mothers, sisters in so many ways besides biological, did pick great men.  Though their father won the sanity award hands down!  And yes he knew how to make them feel good about themselves without lecturing on what they were doing wrong.  (Please understand I forgave my father years before he apologized to me unbidden about two months before he died., suddenly of a stroke so it wasn’t a death bed apology.  Or maybe it was.  But the important part is that I had understood he couldn’t help himself and appreciated him for himself for a long long time.)

This post, meandering and woeful as it is, is dedicated to the memory of my Uncle Jack who read everything I wrote that was published or I blogged.  It’s a bit harder to write knowing he won’t be reading. Though I should feel less censored, I don’t come from a family where people had to censor themselves and I thank ya’ll for that.

Someday I will have the sad season down to a science.  Probably in another 20 years though I always next year! Or whatever is remaining of this season–less than a month to go!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••Oh right, New York was never the same after 9/11.  More beautiful than ever with incredible parks and the High Line–I have to download pictures–it’s the priciest most artificial place and I love it when I don’t hate it.  But I blame Karl Rove for everything.  So the shit I should eat–agreeing with him about O’Donnell is unbearable.  Vote Democrat in November even if your candidate is Alvin Greene.

My brother in law’s father died at the end of June.  Between Irving and Jack I have no older men left, in my life,  and feel so strange

This post is raw and needs much editing.  Yet I want it out as it epitomizes blogging as I knew it in the beginning.  And makes me feel like Yes I Really Am A Blogger!

Every morning, seven days a week, I do five miles in 29-32 minutes on my Exercycle. It’s not enough exercise. So this morning I enrolled in North Myrtle Beach’s Boot Camp I hope to be in the best shape of my life by next July 19 when I will be as old as Bruce Springsteen.

Then I read this advert for an online class on branding yourself. By the end of the class you and your art will become a brand. Nowhere does it ask for work samples. Actual talent might be an impediment to successfully branding yourself.

Yes I know that’s another word for marketing but it sounds so today. I can picture myself taking a cattle brand and doing my own tattoo as I’m my own brand.

Hell I am a brand, or was. Pia Savage, LLC. Has a nice ring to it. No depth but a great tone.

I became a bit caught up in revising and revising and throwing out entire books because as I learned more I liked my work less. Maybe I just wasn’t branding myself correctly. The Pia Savage part was working. My blog, well, it went through stages. In the past two years I haven’t been focusing on it.

I must find my brand, and have it visible and not in some private area where I would feel more comfortable. My energy needs to be publicly displayed for public consumption. I will no longer be a bloggerslashwriter but a compilation of chakras, chants, colors and cravings I won’t hesitate to shout out.

Instead of taking the time to perfect my product I should be branding my product. My product will be amazing. I will have the best pitches, stationary, email, resumes, handshake, vocal tone, web presence–surely that part must be the easiest. There’s only a blog or several, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter (if only I cared enough to remember my password) and by the time the class ends I’m sure there will be at least ten other social networks I will just have to join.

Product? In the number one blog on Technorati that I’m not going to link to I read you shouldn’t spend more than 20 minutes on a blog post. I’m betting that writing a novel has the same formula.

This sounds much less fearsome than North Myrtle Boot Camp. Or not.

The ending of this post blew me away. Perfect little story.
I really don’t like my post nor have I liked most of my posts recently or longer. In keeping with my new philosophy of branding myself I can safely say it’s just a minuscule part of the much larger brand

I don’t usually wish I were in my 20′s or 30′s now but I do today. So that I could fill these pages with pictures of moi and write pithy sentences mistaken for oh so clever because back then I could recite the phone book and six out of ten people would be enthralled.

In October of my freshman year in college I forgot I had to give a speech the next day for speech class. It could be on anything I wanted. Fortunately I didn’t have to take the remedial speech class “losing your LonguyIsland accent.” I so wish I had a copy of the catalogue to show that I’m not making this up.

I was helping my boyfriend and his friends roommates guys he sort of knew and I was to know much better then he did* clean their new house on the Long Island Sound. House sounds grand. It was a basement apartment. Over them lived the biggest dealers on the Island but we didn’t know that yet. Or maybe the guys did but I sure was clueless.

My mother only used cleaning products like Ajax. I found myself enthralled by the Pine Sol bottle. It smelt so good. It was a liquid. It wasn’t on the Savage family approved list. As much as I lusted after my boyfriend I think I lusted after this bottle more. It was in the province of “I don’t have to be like my mother, and when I have my own apartment I’m going to use all the fancy cleaning products I can find.” I know–pine sol? I’m just telling this story not editorializing.

I read the back of the bottle to my boyfriend and his roommates. They loved it so I read it the next day. We had many friends in that class and they all reported back to my boyfriend. I was a complete success and got an “A.”

Unfortunately I never went back to class again and failed it. I, Miss Priss & Proper, do everything as soon as you get it, never let a bill sit, treat life as if it’s one big test, was a total screw up then.

But I can’t remember ever having so much pure fun. Well yes I can but that was the first time since grade school life was uncomplicated yet complicated.

*It was complicated.
I’m having the 9/11/dead mother thing again. After I got over thinking she was my father’s appendage but loved her much anyway, she became my go to person for just about everything. And in the revised family history I was always perfect.

I’m really looking forward to the illumination of the Shagger’s water tower. Sheet, I’m turning into the Sylivia Miles of North Myrtle Beach. Look her up. Oh she was a kinda actress turned older who would go to the opening of an envelope I can’t believe who came up with that line. Wiki has been wrong before…..

Ever since last week’s Mad Men I’ve been singing songs from Bye Bye Birdie. My parents said I could see any Broadway play I wanted to for my tenth birthday. No choice. It had to be Bye Bye Birdie. For some reason my mother thought it was about juvenile delinquents and “researched” it. As we read the same sources–The New York Times and The New Yorker I found this strange. Of course she found out that it wasn’t about delinquents. On my birthday, July 19, 1960, we went to the Brooks Atkinson Theater to see it. Can’t believe I remember the theater but it was a momentous event in my life and we didn’t take my younger sister which made it all that more sweet. (Sorry Elka)
Two years later my grandmother died shortly before my sister’s tenth birthday and I guess my mother wasn’t in a celebrating mood. Elka was going to see a play for her eleventh birthday–November 24, 1963. Unfortunately all theaters were closed.

For a brief while there really had been Camelot. I have a friend who argues that the most significant happening in 63 was the arrival of The Beatles and he makes some valid points but then I ask if he divides our childhoods into “before” and “after.” The security that we all felt, and it might have been fake, faded quickly away. Maybe it’s better for children not to be so innocent, but we had a rude awakening. I think our (cohort) behavior later in the decade answers that question.

And can you imagine having all theaters closed two days after a president’s death now? Basically everything was closed. The bowling alley wasn’t and my parents made me go bowling. I missed Jack Ruby killing Oswald but did see the birth of the instant replay. I never did fully forgive my parents for that.
I wasn’t in love with Robert Kennedy and had a hard time forgiving Teddy Kennedy for what happened around my birthday in 1969. However, he turned into one of the best damn senators and I realized that he had paid the ultimate price a Kennedy male could pay–he could never become president. Being a big believer in universal health care–I think it a marker of a civilized progressive affluent country, and a fervently fearful person as I pay premiums for my whole body but it’s only partly covered, I hope his death brings people together. I’m afraid it won’t. I have already seen Kennedy satires ( I liked the Dead Kennedy’s) and they just ain’t funny, right now.
(A bit of politics–most Democrats never wished Bush dead, gone yes, dead no, nor compared him to Hitler and I find every Republican who silently condones either Teddy Kennedy jokes or Obama equals Hitler statements filled with blame and shameful) End of politics.

Cooper has a Pet Clark (as she says) song from Finian’s Rainbow up this week, and it stirred something in my soggy brain. Then I read Bob Herbert in the New York Times and I finally remembered one of my all time favorite songs, “Look to the rainbows.” I used to be a romantic and it’s about the most romantic of songs. I couldn’t find the Dinah Washington (I think) version, but Patti Labelle’s is damn good. I prefer it to Aretha’s.

Herbert uses this line “Follow the fellow who follows a dream,” as an epitaph for the Kennedys. It’s always been romantic to me and I loved this song in secret as I was damned if I were going to follow any man, but yes it’s perfect and it’s perfect for any man who follows any woman also. And I no longer secretly love it
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGOBQ63Gc7k&hl=en&fs=1&]

Here’s a beautifully written opinion piece on Ted Kennedy that goes into much much more. It shows how words might be distorted and made whole again. I might not agree with the “distortions” but….

I unpacked my last two suitcases yesterday. Then I remembered why they were still packed. (I still have about four boxes–Mexican things, cd’s, dvd’s, and books–no shelves to put them on.)

The bureau which was supposed to come immediately has been back ordered four times. The items I didn’t need and were supposed to be back ordered came immediately.
I received an email stating that the bureau was being shipped on a certain day and should have arrived at least two days before I called customer service. This was the fourth email referring to a new delivery date.

The customer service rep assured me that this is normal and she knows not only the furniture business but retail in general, the Internet, and all customer service a lot more than I do. (She said this with no knowledge of who I am or what I do or have done in my life. It struck me both funny and sad that a person would make assumptions so readily.)

Obviously I should understand that they didn’t mean what they said in any of the four emails. She actually stated that and then stated that she understood this process so much better than I ever could.

I don’t expect to be treated as a total idiot. If a person is lucky enough to have a job right now, they damn well better treat every person who calls with dignity. I have no idea why the bureau was back ordered so many times nor why I got an email saying it was being shipped when it wasn’t being shipped, and neither did the customer service person.

I furnished my entire house off the Internet and didn’t have one other problem. I don’t do ebay or Craigs List but I’m kind of an expert on finding things in a store and buying it on the Internet. I usually save much in shipping and taxes that way plus any extra “internet only” sale–and there usually is.

When I was in New York I went to “high end” (as they call themselves) lighting stores and noticed that they all used the same catalogue. That catalogue’s even larger on the Internet–over a thousand pages. It took three weeks of three hour days and three days of eight hour days to find the simplest lighting in the world.

It took five minutes to find the perfect dining room pub table, chairs, and sidebar–and two days of looking in stores and two days of looking online–just to make sure.

I kept the pivotal furniture from my apartment in Manhattan–the couch is in the study; the coffee table in the guest room and the bed, uh, in the bedroom. I haven’t furnished the sunroom yet–just stuff from my apartment and I used furniture from Kroger’s for the downstairs deck. I want both the room and the outdoors to be truly special and haven’t figured out what I want yet.

An all white sun room. OK I ran out of steam and can’t stand the thought of paying anymore money for anything here.

In the suburb I come from the worst, very worst thing you could say about somebody is “they have no furniture.” It implies and infers a world of things. Here I can tell people are confused by how sparse I keep most rooms. I like bold colors. I like collecting things. If I could live without furniture I would. This is all in defense of “I know how furniture stores work and I sure know how the Internet works.”

I no longer get angry when I speak to stupid people. I ask to speak to their supervisor who in this case asked whether I wanted a store credit for $75 or a credit on my credit card for $57. I chose the later as a store credit is meaningless.

That still doesn’t solve the problem. My bureau hasn’t arrived and I have two densely packed suitcases of clothes in the washer, dryer or waiting to be placed in one. Fortunately I have huge closets and a former night stand with six drawers that’s in the bedroom walk in closet. Unfortunately I find organizing closets on a par with going to the dentist.

I just began the litigation process over my plumbing problems. This isn’t the way I wanted to begin in a new town. Fortunately I have bought built up a lot of good will here. I don’t feel as if I’m doing it just for myself (or I would never do it) but on behalf of single women everywhere who have the audacity to upset what some men and I guess some women believe is the natural order of things and buy a house.

Having to be in litigation depresses me. I really would rather forgive and forget which is why I invented the “this isn’t just for me” excuse. I believe blogs were invented so that I could get whatever is bothering me out and go on with life.

In this case I can’t–then I remember that I was denied full coverage in health insurance though pay as much as somebody who has full coverage. I couldn’t work on that because just then I got a notice from the IRS stating I owed them my life and spent three and a half weeks finding obsure information so that my accountant could send the results to them in a timely manner. Then I found out he forgot to send it…I always thought he was a good dependable accountant. His letter to the IRS made it seem that both of us were working on it for months as it was so complicated and so wrong in so many places. No I worked on it for three and a half weeks.

I know you’re thinking any person with a modicum of intelligence could have worked on the IRS notice and the pre-existing conditions at the same time. I couldn’t work on two tedious things, one (the health insurance) that was set up so I couldn’t answer their questions properly. It just angers me so much that I’m willing to pay–and I know I’m being selfish in only looking at the “me” aspect of this. But one major sickness and everything I have….

I try to stay healthy so I won’t have to be denied claims. I refuse to feel stressed as that could lead….so if I whine into my blog please excuse it. I do feel stressed. I try not to bring up the disability I suffer from, as I have accomplished so much despite having it. It’s another unsolved problem and there are times I just want to bury my head in the sand.

I knew I had to get my apartment on the market by the end of January at the latest for it to sell in a reasonable timeframe and at the price I wanted. But I was only the owner and couldn’t fire the contractor as he had too much of my money.

You’ll get it back in the sale
No I won’t. Listen to me.

But of course he didn’t. It was all about his needs and his wishes. I should have never tried to do him a favor for I might suffer dire consequences.

My 6 by 12 windowed marble bath has the wrong kind of marble. It’s not Carrera so what good is it? The huge reglazed tub isn’t a modern soaking tub so…? Oh the kitchen problems–they will truly haunt me.

I have only myself to be angry at am so I am. I knew I had to get on the market by January but who am I? Only somebody who saw what was going on and didn’t act quickly enough.

I’m angry at people who treated their homes as if they were a cash machine. Not talking about the people who got sucked into teaser mortgages but the people who thought the party would never end.

There are so many of them and we waste time feeling sorry for them? If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it. Simple. I hate to feel like a Republican on this and I do understand why the bail outs have to include people who weren’t acting responsibly.

But I was. And I’m paying for their partying like it was 99. The New York real estate blog delights in the fact that apartment inventory for sale is at an all time high. The other night I was reading it and realized exactly why I hate it and why I’m leaving New York. People don’t look at things in terms of people anymore but in terms of figures. If it can’t be quantified it’s meaningless.

They have no respect for the history of New York. No knowledge of New York’s social history. Had to Google rent control and rent stabilization. Didn’t know why it began. Youth is no excuse.

I could and have written long research papers on how modern New York came to be. I was so tempted to ask if they knew who Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs or Robert Moses even was. But I never comment on large blogs, and am not about to begin.

They didn’t understand the history of the Bronx–how Mose’s Cross Bronx Expressway cut it in half and White people with some money moved to Riverdale; White people without money moved to Coop City which had been a great amusement park, Freedomland, for a few years. They didn’t know parts of the South Bronx have become more surburban than bona fide surburbs.

They, not all of course, thought rent controlled apartments and stabilized ones are government subsidized. Not even the rent stabilization board is a government agency but why let facts get in the way?

Many new condos and rentals are truly government subsidized as they get tax abatements. The same person thought rent controlled and rent stabilized meant projects when it just means the rent is controlled or stabilized. The program began after World War Two to keep the middle class in the city. It’s far from perfect. I wouldn’t believe in it but nothing has taken its place.

Most people I know who are stabilized make between 40K and 100something. Have no real savings outside a 401K, are in “the helping professions,” exec assistants, paralegals, or in the arts. They have no savings not because they spend money wildly but because Manhattan is truly horribly expensive

But it’s a great city and these people are part of the reason why. I lived in a stabilized apartment for sixteen years. The first year the lease was in my father’s name as I had been irresponsible. The next year it was changed to my name and my name only. My boyfriend Zachary wanted his name added. Not even when we were truly in love would I do that. My best friend didn’t add her husband’s name when she was married–which was fortunate as he almost sued to get the apartment. It’s not the stuff of myths that people get divorced and divide the bedroom with markers.

My building had a great landlord. He sold it and the new owners tried to evict as many people as they could. They did evict both my neighbors. They sent me an eviction letter claiming that the lease was in my father’s name. It wasn’t but even had it been I had been paying the rent for the entire twelve or thirteen years I lived there and was obviously the tenant. No way could they evict me.

They could make my life hell and they did. This is an article about more modern day hell

I had five major floods they refused to take care of. They imported cheap prostitutes to live in one apartment next to me and drug dealers in the other. Whoever wanted to could sleep in the lobby and vestibule. This was during crack days and I was the first person in the building to leave in the morning.

I could have waited for them to buy me out. But I grew scared so I left. I sent the management letter a certified letter saying I was breaking the lease a few months early. They sent it back, and had the frigging nerve to call my elderly mother and tell her I moved without a return address or phone number. That was of course absurd and she told them so.

I should have bought that year–91. I could have a bought a large two bedroom dirt cheap but I didn’t want to profit off peoples misery as the housing market was down almost as much as it could be.

I used to believe in karma. I’m not sure that I do anymore. I want my apartment to sell and soon. I don’t need the realtors to tell me about their other apartments that are moving. What does that do for me?

And I hate this weekend. I have neither a mother nor a child. Am I supposed to retreat for the weekend?

The Town of North Myrtle will be 40 tomorrow. They’re having a concert with The Beach Boys without Brian but with Dean of Jan & Dean. If they do Mother’s Day things, somebody might have to ball me from jail.

First please read me in The New York Social Diary.

It was a bright and windy day. I was wearing two or three year old MBT sandals with sport socks for the fashionable nerd lowest part of the body look; Gloria Vanderbilt jeans–we go back to the 70′s, just washed and looked pressed; a pumpkin spandex and cotton Talbot’s tee. I was also wearing a jean jacket though I know they’re so yesterday and Kate Spade sunglasses. I was carrying two insulated nylon bags as food shopping was involved. Though many of my friends make fun of my love of MBT’s, they stop when they try them on–and if they can afford them buy a pair. My hair is Southern blond highlight; my nails just have clear polish but are perfectly manicured–Southern–got over my fear of going into a Southern nail place.

The overly long clothes description is essential to the story. I walk. I am a New Yorker. New Yorkers think nothing of walking 60-100 blocks just because.

But I no longer live in New York. I live in North Myrtle Beach.

There are walking trails here. There is the beach. And yes I feel grateful to live near the beach. But this area is very beautiful and sometimes I need to walk into housing developments, around parks, on Route 17 and Main Street. Main Street’s kind of funky. It has overpriced boutiques, restaurants, a shag shop and a store called “Two Blondes.” Route 17 isn’t beautiful but it has many stores and is the same Route 17 that’s in upstate New York. It’s the North-South Route 66 though so much less famous.

I was walking for hours. It was one of the first days where the weather was beautiful. I felt almost on vacation. My fears about living here were fading.

I was plotting stories, and truly getting a lot of work done–in my head but writers do work in their heads, and I think best when walking.

I was at the end of Main Street about to cross to go to Kroger’s when a man in a road workers uniform and holding a sign said something to me. I was a little befuddled as it was Sunday and I didn’t see any road work. Then I realized he was holding the sign to direct non-existent traffic into the mega church parking lot

I made sure I only said “no, thank you,” and not “no, thanks, maybe some other time,” as I really don’t want to be converted, and I leave no room for that possibility. He could have been inviting for coffee for all I knew as he was looking me up and down but not in a sleazy way. I smiled. I’m sure he didn’t hear me as we were four lanes away from each other and I have a soft voice in the best of times.
Some of you know my smile is worth the net worth of a tiny country. It’s perfect in its imperfection and I smile constantly. I also look horrible if I don’t.

I shopped in Kroger’s. Nobody fainted when I said I wanted to bag my groceries in my own bag. I walked through a few housing developments and found my way back to Main Street where I became so engrossed in looking at stores, the sky and how it reflected the beach I didn’t turn on my street but walked almost to the end. This is where it became weird.

A man got off his bike. I realized he was the same man I had seen at the mega church and began to say hello when he said:
Are you alright?
I have no idea what he’s talking about and begin mentally checking myself out. My mouth was parched. I had forgotten my water bottle and finished the water I bought sometime earlier.
Yes thank you.
No are you really alright?
Yes why?
I saw you walking before and here you are again.
I like to walk.
Do you have any place to go?
Hello do I look like a homeless person? I suppose he thought I had all my worldly goods in the insulated bag, and the Nike nylon bag I carry instead of a pocketbook when I’m not going to see people or for an appointment.

For some reason I didn’t say that or sound angry. I asked him what about me made him think that I was homeless.
You’re walking.
I wasn’t aware that’s illegal.
He repeated that because he saw me walk so many places he knew I must have no place to go.

If he had just turned it into a joke and said “it’s so rare to see somebody walk here,” I would have laughed and felt better but I guess that’s what we do in New York. Or I do.

I guess I was the one who was supposed to turn it into a joke or thank him profusely for caring or said my name and counted backwards from 100 by sevens (a dementia test,) but I’m sort of vain and have never been taken for a bag lady before.

I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable but I was convinced two policemen were going to come any second and arrest me for vagrancy. Logically I knew I have excellent ID, a platinum Amex, a bank/debit card and a cell, though I wasn’t sure how the cell would help me–it does have a lawyer programed in–helpfully with the word “lawyer.”

I was convinced that despite all this evidence of stability, and house keys, easily found in my jean pockets, I was going to be arrested for walking.

The man walked away, and got back on his bike. So bike reading is OK; walking isn’t. Have to remember the rules.

I walked home more than slightly humiliated. As soon as I got in I went to a mirror and inspected myself for signs of a homeless person. My lipstick–lip gloss–slightly pink was still on. I looked like a normal person.

I was doing what should be encouraged–walking with groceries that weren’t in plastic bags–and did weigh enough to be considered weight exercises. Sometimes I walk to the IGA in Cherry Grove, miles from my house in Crescent Beach, and walk back laden with groceries on the beach and even in the water. It impresses my friends.

I have found the exercise/weight program that I love and actually works and I think it’s illegal as it consists of walking with packages.

It’s April, the green month, and here in North Myrtle Beach, greenest city in the South I read, somebody stopped me for the high crime and misdemeanor of walking.

I go out walking after midnight…I stop to see a weeping willow….I go out walking after midnight

There are two new 3WW’s below this. The second one is better and shorter, Dawg with coat of shiny hair The other blog is a true WIP. We’re not having a good day in anyway. It’s Groundhog Day at The Savage house–and probably will be for a few days or the rest of our life.
UL asked me to do this. I don’t tag people. If you want to do any or all feel free.
Five weird things about me: that will be hard. Five places that I would like to visit or visit again. Five things I never imagined at 25. I’m going to begin with that one. Read more…