I walk home from the grocery store. People always offer me rides and I refuse. Which actually isn’t nice when it’s somebody I know who really really wants to drive me. Yesterday I was carrying three bags filled with such things as a head of red cabbage, acorn squash, a bag of red onions (I’m into colorful vegetables) and much more. It was the first time I almost couldn’t make it and was too contrary to call a cab which would have been the sane thing to do.
I was a block and half away from home when a man was getting into his car. He offered me a ride and I gratefully accepted. I told him where I live–a major street, just a block….”I don’t know it. We just moved two months ago and I’m still feeling my way around.” “Oh where did you move from?” “We lived in Myrtle Beach for eighteen years.” I restrained from saying I thought he had to learn his way around The Grand Strand, and that my street abuts his. He then went into a long discourse about the differences between Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle. My favorite part of the discourse was when he said “I would tell you more but you’re such a lady.”

He’s right. Not about me being a lady particularly but the differences between the two cities. North Myrtle does everything it can to make living in it a pleasurable experience. Who can’t love a city that has festivals for every occasion it can think of and some more. Nobody gets the Irish/Italian festival but the music’s good.

While shag music still reigns here there’s more rock and soul. I don’t feel comfortable talking about Myrtle Beach’s problems as I’m such a lady.
••••••••••••••

My health insurance will go up $185 a month beginning in January.. I don’t qualify for the “healthy habits” discount as I take psychotropics. I’m trying to get off them but need a doctor to help and insurance here won’t cover that. Apparently being in therapy or taking medications for bioneurological problems aren’t healthy though many people would go off the deep end without them. It’s crazy because my answers to the other questions make me a great healthy habit person.

The letter said the insurance went up so much because of the dramatic rise in health care costs in the past year. I do believe they mean the cost of lobbying. I assume the dramatic rise is because they assume some form of health care reform will pass.

Though I will be paying almost $700 a month for health insurance much of my body and all of my mind isn’t covered. And as I have stated often I have never been seriously ill. It’s ironic that I was supposed to prove I haven’t been hospitalized as at the worst moments of my depression over NLD I asked to be hospitalized. I also asked to be sent to rehab. I would tell doctors it felt like an untreated brain injury. They would disagree as I’m so cognizant. Now of course it’s known to be a brain injury.

I pay as I have resources I would like to keep. This policy covered the most hospitalization and stuff like that I could find. In New York the limits were almost limitless. Not here.

While the odds of me being hit by a bus in North Myrtle are almost nil, being hit by a car is a distinct possibility. (I, being my father’s daughter, take uninsured drivers into account.)

I’m still glad I moved here. It’s a whole different world than the ones I’m used to and most of the time I love it.

I’m sick of NLD and sick of health care reform. Start or continue the party without me. There is much else I would like to focus on. And I’m a lady. I have no idea what that has to do with anything but I think it means I’m not supposed to be political. Oh can the whole lady bit.
•••••••••••

The whole time I was in New York I was obsessed with the color blue. My sister painted my old bedroom an exquisite blue, so beautiful I can neither really remember it or describe it. Yes it was weird when they first bought the parental manse but time and many changes have taken the weirdness away.
Lucia’s (the best of best friends) kitchen is a true sea blue, if your sea is in a very hot climate.

I couldn’t stop talking or thinking about redoing my living room. It’s pink and took ten coats to come out right. The downstairs bedroom is an ice blue. The study is turquoise and the guest room is teal. Obviously I love blue.

Then I came home and loved the coziness of the pink. I also said to myself: you’re so frigging crazy. Painting the living room is an excuse not to write. You spent the last two years moving. It’s time for some peace, and even more to get serious before you’re demented or somebody beats you to the weirdest story. Anyway you don’t have the money and every time you begin a home improvement project the stock market goes wild.

Yes, I’m the reason for the recession. Me, me and only me. It’s enough to make me ignore my house but I love it and weirdly I truly enjoy the “burdens” of home ownership.

The heating and AC guy was over today for the winter checkup. He said everything was perfect, and didn’t try to sell me something to enhance the performance. The exterminator came next. He didn’t tell me I had termites (I know he checks and gets a commission if he finds any.)

In New York both people would have tried to sell me a thousand things and would have had their hands out. OMG, was I supposed to tip them? I can’t help but think about the $1200+ I would be doling out this month in tips.

I enjoyed seeing people in New York. The city itself I wasn’t so crazy about. My last night I had a dream that I owned a cottage but couldn’t remember where. Great Neck? A cottage would be way too pricey. The Hamptons? In my dreams literally. It became a nightmare. I woke up and remembered; I do own a cottage, I do. In North Myrtle Beach SC. Oh the relief.

And I have a living room that will stay pink for a while. Hopefully the country will stay out of red.

We finished day four of boot camp. My pressing on is a metaphor for something but I’m too darn tired to figure that out.

It’s as different from a New York health club as a cold is from swine flu. In New York it’s everybody for herself, here there really is a feeling of solidarity. I think boot camp is going to be very good for me but I’m too tired to think. I should explain it’s not boot camp that’s making me so tired but gray skies. Yesterday it rained all day–we met at the park before the heavy rains but I’m a princess and rain and I don’t mix. At the same time I’m a fresh air fiend so I slept with all the windows in the sun room open and the sun room is connected to the bedroom. Sometimes I think about taking down the wall to the sun room but I love that room for itself.

It’s the only room I still have to furnish. I kept saying I wanted white wicker but I realize that I want all different white fabrics.

It’s not that New York seems horrible to me but I find I miss it less and less. It’s been a year today since I handed over the keys to my apartment and in return got a fairly substantial check. Actually two. I’m so glad I was insistent on selling when I did. A year or two earlier I could have gotten much more but now……

I own a house!!!!!!! That still thrills me. And because I’m about as handy as I’m athletic I have a house husband, Eldon. My cousin who is divorced and very handy actually came up with the phrase when she looked at something outside and almost cried out: “you have a house husband!!!!!.” Apparently he has done things she wouldn’t think to do.

Eldon and I redid the front “yard” on Tuesday. A lot of the plants hadn’t taken so I went for more ornamental grasses which I realize is what I really wanted originally but didn’t realize that yet.

I’m not being sexist when I talk about a house husband. My father could have used a house husband. I think, no I know, he was afraid to change a light bulb–electricity can kill you, you know. My athletic smart father looked as if he should have been good at somethings besides taking out the garbage but…..

My mother was handier, and did the little little jobs. Everything else was foisted off onto professionals. Or family friends. So I’m just continuing a tradition.

I think this move is going great and I’m actually looking forward to cold days when I don’t feel obligated to run around and can sit in one of my decks in ten layers and just write. Though I don’t like how it went from AC/beach weather to cold seemingly overnight. I think it’s going to get warm again. I know, we all know,(how could we have missed the articles and news casts?) how colds and flu’s are transmitted but I will always believe chronic weather changes and rain play a part.

Selfishly I don’t want it to rain again until boot camp is over–and my best friend is coming a week from today so it would be nice if it’s warm and sunny. But I don’t want to tempt the gods by asking for too much.

This is a small town, in many ways. Eldon’s been telling me about somebody who goes to boot camp but is away this week practically since we first met.

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…..

I heard a noise this afternoon and thought “the neighbors.” Then I remembered I live in a house I bought during the worst housing market in modern history and have been in slight (OK crazed) shock ever since.

The noise turned out to be thunder. I’m a T&L storm fanatic and miss the ones I saw from my east facing living room and north facing bedroom in my coop on Riverside @75th Street. My apartment was on the ninth floor–the so called “architects” floor for Manhattan pre-war buildings. It gets the best light and yes I loved that part.

Here I have an upper floor deck and deck that wraps around half my house, and I don’t have the magical light and sky that went on forever. It was the best part of my apartment except for the bathrooms, floors, nine foot ceiling, and general adorableness but that began to cloy.

My ceiling @63rd & Fifth was eleven & half feet high but I only had three windows–granted a bay ceiling that had no view and the light had been cut off by the shadows of the old and differently named AT&T and IBM buildings that were actually built during my tenure there.

Here I don’t have the great light. Nor do I get to see spectacular T&L storms unless I run into one of the two upstairs rooms and I do. Also I don’t think they play as well as they did in New York because of the absence of tall buildings. I have seen it from the beech and it’s incredible but I have to get home as I’m scared.

Have to meet people with ocean beach views, and oh I have to invite myself during a storm to a house that looks over the Inter coastal–it’s common to have Inter coastal views. Not as great as the inlets in Miami (I am a fussy guest) but doable.

I knew before I decided to move here that if I lived here I wouldn’t have an oceanfront condo. I haven’t found one I think “attractive.” I look at real estate for a hobby. It’s normal for me to go house hunting as soon as I first visit a place. Between that and walking everywhere I get much more of a feel for a place than most people. I recommend both as low or no cost activities.

Most of the foreclosures in North Myrtle itself are ocean front condos that, I assume, people bought to flip. There are many more “regular” house foreclosures in the surrounding towns. Summer season really ended two weeks ago–school began inland and last week here.

Main Street was very busy at times. Now it feels a bit desolate in evening. So many people depend on tourists and/or newcomers for business.

I’m having Eldon make me a bamboo dresser and bamboo, in front of bed, bench. I have to find white furniture on sale for the sunroom as i want to do one room all in white as a contrast to the color in all the other rooms. Now Eldon must understand I’m not the National Bank of Pia.

People here are hurting big time and currently. It hurts too come into a community and see so many people doing so poorly. I’m not a soup kitchen kind of volunteer. The volunteer work I will be doing entails courts and people who suffered at the hands of….It’s what I do best so.

I feel incredibly insecure and will until new health care legislation is passed. I planned and began this move under one economy….I have developed a love for buying stocks that seem incredible and do or promise to do great things but if I buy them they begin their long descent into failure. People my age aren’t supposed to buy that much stock but I come from a long line, well my father, of people who love the stock market.

Thing was he bought most stocks before the day of the institutional stock investor and warned me repeatedly that an individual doesn’t really have a chance. However….I fear getting sick or needing an operation and the insurance that I pay $505 a month for will refuse to pay. It’s a valid fear these days. I hope any kind of reform is passed this session because frankly I will have more energy to fight for universal health care–a phrase that shouldn’t exist in a void–knowing I’m fully insured.

I’m sorry if I have been harping on this but getting off the meds gives me slight panic attacks and I stay up at night thinking about health insurance when I would rather think about anything else

My friend the former soap star is going to be back for the end of Guiding Light This did make me tear up as I think they treated him like shit. I thought soaps were the medium you could grow older gracefully in, and Jay looked incredible. I will be watching on 9/17 and maybe just maybe will finally be able to understand the show.

This article’s on the death of old media as exemplified by a party Tina Brown gave. Now she has The Daily Beast which I read.

A lot of bloggers went to its launch party. Not this one. I don’t feel very blogger like. Nor do I feel very writer like.

I’m coming face to face with who I am. Smashing head first into the giant thunder cloud she was lost for two decades. Or so some think. Not really. This blog will be five years old next week which isn’t really an achievement but I gave up being a multi award nominated reporter for it.

Not really again. I couldn’t go any further at that particular paper for the most personal of reasons and being me didn’t apply anywhere else–or send in clippings. I have two books and should scan them in but first I have to set up my whole office so that my life can easily be found and one of the bad side affects of going off this med is that I’m ADD’d to the max. No frigging patience for anything boring and most of life is. Though I can clean….and water plants if it ever stops raining.

Tomorrow there is only a 20% chance of rain and I’m going to the beach–the four blocks I live from it? It’s four long blocks when you take a chair and something to drink, maybe something to eat, and a book–hard covered or trade paper, of course.

I’m not doing well if I’m trying to prepare for a lifetime of poverty, but I’m betting on me, to come through for me, as if I don’t who will?

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.

This is a fascinating “obit” for Robert S McNamara.
Here’s Paul Krugman on health care. I’m getting real sick of hearing about Michael Jackson and Sarah Palin.
The humidity’s so thick I want to pick and hold it. Last night, I think, it rained. I think because when it’s dark I close the blinds in the kitchen, living room, and upstairs office (or all rooms that look to the front or side of the court). When I lived in Manhattan I never had to do that. Manhattan can be an oddly private place.

I was recovering from a wonderful weekend. In a world where almost every woman I know didn’t become a mommy until her mid-late 30′s (if she became one) CLo was a mommy in her late teens.

I always treated her daughter as a little adult because I haven’t really met a kid who wants to be treated as a kid. Consequently we became friends when she grew up.

Niece Kelly and a Gay family friend, Roberto–not Hispanic, were in for the weekend. I only bring up the Gay part because it’s a long time since I had one–mine all died and I remembered why I used to like Gay men so much. I kind of specialize in straight male friends but Gay men make me laugh easily and forget that the world has problems.* Niece Kelly and Roberto are Black and if we ran into people I knew I was planning on introducing them as my niece and nephew. I choose to think most people aren’t racist but too many people have said things about Black Bike Week…

Friday night we had a BBQ at CLo’s and W’s. Saturday night I made a BBQ–salmon marinated in V8, horseradish, onions, lemons and garlic–I developed this recipe one rainy day as it’s equally good roasted or poached. I sauteed onions, three types of mushrooms, peppers, and grape tomatoes in a bit of olive oil and when it was two thirds cooked added vinegar–any kind is good. It reduces the sauce and the vegetables can be a side dish or a sauce. I do that with chicken breast that I cook in apple cider, and fishes. I just don’t want it said that I have never given a recipe here.

I made a salad of course, and bought a coconut custard pie–deserts aren’t my thing. But everybody in the CLo&W family loves good pie (and are all in perfect shape anyway) and we’re sort of in competition to find the best. When I saw this one, I knew….and there wasn’t even a slice left over.

CLo & W are on dog with lung cancer duty so CLo drove us a block away from the fireworks and we walked onto the beach with our beach chairs, found a good spot and waited for the real fireworks to begin. They were magnificent. I had been a bit upset the NY fireworks were going to be on the Upper West Side–and I kept getting reports from New York on how they found the perfect spot etc. Of course they left at five PM, were the first people on the closed West Side Highway and the whole evening was devoted to fireworks.

The fireworks here were that way overused word, amazing. I sat there and thought “there’s no place else I want to be, and had I been in New York, I would have missed this.” We sat for awhile after the fireworks but people began setting off homemade ones and we’re citified enough to be scared of homemade ones.

W picked us up and we went back to my house where we sat in the side deck (the one that used to be toilet of Pia but is now all decked) looked at the sky and talked for hours. The house punch (I decided every house should have one) went quickly–firefly sweet tea vodka, stoli vanilla vodka, one quarter more limeade, and seltzer with cinnamon–basically because I add cinnamon to seltzer and don’t care what anybody thinks! The punch works.

I have loved the idea of long languid Southern summers since I first began to read and see movies. The sitting home and relaxing without feeling guilty or thinking “I really should be doing this…” The whole concept is new to me and I love it. I have rediscovered my inner cook and hostess.

If I didn’t have to walk my garbage three blocks to the nearest dump life would be perfect and that’s just a minor inconvenience. North Myrtle does have pick up services but you can’t leave the garbage in a trash can and possums do have a habit of tearing into the garbage. Eventually everybody is going to be issued a “roll” can and a recycling one. Since I tire of asking people if they could drive me and my garbage….

*This isn’t the time or place for a diatribe about AIDS, government inaction and how I lost two thirds of my friends and became very suspicious of “new people.”

I thought at the fireworks and after “this is it. This is the night I have begun to turn into a Southerner.”

I love that America celebrates it birthday in July. Yankee Doodle Dandy being my all time favorite movie–and both James Cagney and George M Cohan claimed 7/4 as their birthdays. So did the author of my favorite song “What A Wonderful World,” Louis! (No last name needed, really.)

I love everything about summer except for the mosquitoes, and flies on food in Little River, the next town over. It’s on the Intercoastal with many good restaurants each having their own live music on Sunday nights. In summer it’s best to sit on the benches next to the Intercoastal and The Crab Catcher and listen to some great music.

I was reading TC’s post on the wonders of summer in Madison, WI. She made it sound so appealing that I was ready to hop a plane….

Then I remembered I’m from New York–and have written extensively on summer in Manhattan. And now I live four blocks from the ocean and am such a beach snob at least once a week I go to a beach that doesn’t resemble Coney Island or Jones Beach. My friend CLo actually calls 6th Street South beach “field six” and she hasn’t lived in New York for 30 years. Field six is the parking field at Jones Beach closest to the beach. You have to get there very early in the morning or after 3PM.

The beach near my house is the main beach for North Myrtle and secretly I do like it. I’m a New Yorker and can find solitude in crowds. It’s also safer–if I venture into the water and somehow get caught in a riptide–well that didn’t happen last week in Cherry Grove but could have and I felt a bit scared. The week before that didn’t happen in the part of Huntington State Park without lifeguards but again it could have….The tide was so low I couldn’t even swim–just float. I thought about going out further but I wasn’t sure how to define “further.” I am such a mass of neuroses.

Yesterday I was melancholy because I felt obligated to go to the beach when all I wanted to do was hang out on one of my decks. That felt so sybaritic. So I wrote that post, DVR’d some shows on HGTV (I can’t believe I’m admitting to that), went out on my downstairs deck–where toilet of Pia used to reside, and played with a chaise lounge until I found the optimum place for moon and star watching.

Today I explored “downtown” Myrtle with a friend. As I’m from Long Island, strip malls are my middle name. Really even Manhattan is one giant one now.

In early evening I went to a soul concert on Main Street. Just about five blocks from my house, an older couple began dancing to Marvin Gaye and then the group Soul Connection put a “Black” spin on some Stones music. As the Stones were originally influenced by American Black musicians, it felt that something had come full circle.

I love North Myrtle for many reasons. One big being its emphasis on music. The Ocean Drive area where I live is all about music. At Mayfest I knew I had moved to the perfect town when Chairman of the Board played. CLo who is never impressed by anything was awed. (Check out their website. I’m impressed and…)

North Myrtle’s about music, the beach, and people having a good time. It’s different than the places I have lived before.

Simpler yet savvy. I almost dread visiting New York next week as I know many people are going to have a two subject conversation–the economy and how to make back money.

I said I might work at Wal Mart to somebody in New York. Most friends get what I’m saying. I’m half joking and half serious about a no stress job that will pay just enough so I can pay my bills. This friend began fighting me. I’m a professional. I’m a New Yorker. I’m from Jericho. I’m….. I told her to relax but she just couldn’t.

I don’t have that same need to accomplish I once had. No that’s wrong. I want to accomplish–but I have lost the need to have status button. Moving from New York allowed this and I’m still moving backwards some of the time.

I live in a place that has seasons but summer is a year round state of mind. Life isn’t about trampling over the next person to get to somewhere, anywhere.

In New York I dreamed of summer the other nine, ten months. Here summer is hotter, summer has more free things to do, summer is sitting on the beach and going into the water not just walking on the beach.

The economy is horrible. Many people are out of work. But the tension level is so much less than New York’s.

I’m learning that I don’t have to stress over everything. It is an adjustment process. I have always wanted to carry over the mental vacation summer always bring. Here the weather might be in the 20′s but it’s endless summer.

Happy 233rd birthday America! 33 is my favorite number. This has to be a great year. (I can be totally irrational when it comes to numbers.)

My court or cul de sac or enclave, whatever, is off a sort of major road. Sort of as it doesn’t even have stop signs yet. An old lady who lives in the court can’t believe I cross the road all the time. I can’t believe she drives so…..

About four PM the rain stopped and the sun came out. Really came out as in the rain we’ve been having off and on and enough to ruin days has gone somewhere not here.

I couldn’t believe the amount of traffic coming down my street. I went to the beach and walked to Cherry Grove pier and back. Here’s the thing. I saw groups of African Americans, East Indians, Latins. In three Junes I have never seen that before and it was wonderful. Well I have but I’m related to them not by blood but by long term friendship that has become family.

The beach past the Cherry Grove pier, way past is incredible. So’s Cherry Grove. It looks like an actual beach town. I didn’t move there because I’m so darn practical and didn’t want to pay more insurance, but I love it and walk around Cherry Grove as much as possible.

This is going to be a bitch of a summer. I hope to have much walking around. walking on the beach, sitting on the beach, going into the water, writing, and company time but I also have unpleasant things to do that I’m not going to write about other than it cuts into my time. I wanted this summer to be perfect but I guess that perfection is a goal never really achievable and I’m not going to go all new agey on you.

The air was perfect this night two days before the Summer Solstice Sand fine for walking barefoot with cute Crocs in my bag. (Yes there are cute Crocs.) The ocean was warm and I wish I had my bathing suit on as the waves were just right.

I walked back via Main Street. I realized that no matter how much time I have to spend on the unpleasant things, ok a law suit, I will always have early evenings.

There was so much I thought of saying when I was walking on the beach but my mind’s fading now. Tomorrow begins a heat spell—I guess a lot of people came for a long weekend. It’s really going to be the first time rain doesn’t get in the way. I have gotten used to the rain. When my cousin was here for a wonderful visit we would get to the beach by eight in the morning so we would have beach time and really we had more than enough though it rained almost every day.

I do so love it here. But when I go to New York, sort of unwillingly, for nine days in July I’m going to find the cash cab. That’s CLo, W and my summer game. We DVR it and play along. We can easily watch six or more episodes. We’re all excellent. I finally found a game I’m truly good at–it tests general knowledge but I’m sure if I got in the cab and was alone I wouldn’t remember my own name. It’s fun when three or more people get in because they discuss everything sometimes to the point of going from the right to the wrong answer. Two young men who had that particular New York look of “could be any ethnic group,” got every question right and they had some tough ones. I’m bad at body questions. We all thought the answer was “nodules” and I forget the question but who knew the head had so many sinsues?

I become New Yorksick watching it. But in New York I wouldn’t be able to say “I want to go to the beach” and be there in five minutes.

Wow I had a life time goal of moving to a nice beach town before I was old and I guess I achieved that.