The part of my heart not owned by Frank Rich is owned by Paul Krugman. He blames everything on Reagan. Yes, finally, somebody who gets it. My best friend has been blaming Reagan since he was in office
I want so badly to be a person who laughs everything off. “Oh, he caused a flood and part of my new bamboo floor to buckle and maybe rot. I will just sue.” But I can’t–either laugh it off or sue without fear that I’m doing something horrible. That my lawsuit will upset the laws of nature, and even if I win, I will be paying in someways for the rest of my life. I’m not a person who sues, obviously.

The plumber who hides under a cloak of Christianity and is anything but a true Christian told me that I had a “slow” (to explain why my water meter wasn’t going bonkers; why there was no mold or any signs of a flood) flood. I asked for a second opinion. He ignored me and opened the frigging wall. Open walls is one of my phobias left from pre-war Manhattan buildings that had too many floods and rodents.

I had to have other plumbers come and clean the flood(s) he literally began. Now my new bamboo floor is buckling, in the flood area, and the planks have darkened. I dislike air conditioning but have to keep the room unnaturally cold in hopes that the planks will settle back to their original beautiful state.

I spent a lot of time and money on the renovation. As this hasn’t been the best of economic times for anybody I made a game out of buying furniture and kept the costs of each piece low. I made myself forget that I love quality. It’s hard to pass furniture that I really wanted and could have afforded a year ago. That said I love everything I own and there’s some solace to working within parameters I set to keep me from over-spending. I don’t really need rattan outdoor furniture. Oh but I want….

Two people from my high school class have died in the past two weeks. Facebook keeps telling me to add one of the people to my “friends.” That freaks me out more than a bit for more reasons than the obvious. (That sounds cryptic because it is.)

The woman who called to tell me said “we’re reaching that age…” “Excuse me,” I answered, “how old was your father when he died? And your mother? Is her being alive at 79 a medical miracle?”

I refuse to consider the late 50′s old but I know many people do and that depresses me. I saw something about Ed Asner and realized he was only about 40 when Mary Tyler Moore began and that depressed me as I always assumed he was ancient. Not that I thought about him.

I thought I closed my New York bank account but apparently closing an account doesn’t ensure that it happens. It’s been that kind of month. And it’s just June 1st.

I have found myself second guessing my move. Not because I dislike the people or are uncomfortable here but for countless small reasons. Too much time spent on the house being the first. Little time to myself ranking up there.

“Nobody has ever tried to rip me off so blatantly in New York,” being a big one. Yes there was the doorman/contractor but I allowed that to happen and knew it.

People assume EldonOne and I are living together as he’s over often. No. We’re. Not.

I bought my first garden hose today with a nozzle that can change settings from a spray to a mist and everything in between. That cheered me. I was using Eldon’s sister’s boyfriend’s next door neighbors. I think the neighbor was trying to get rid of his.

It’s this suing thing that has me crazed. Everything else will seem funny on Wednesday when my cousin comes. The floor can be fixed. I have to go to New York in July so they can do it then. I hope this can be a friendly thing between lawyers but I have heard so many horrible things about the plumber from other plumbers and Eldon’s heard worse things from former customers. He did come highly recommended by people we both know.

I don’t know. Life’s a bitch and if you’re lucky you live in good health.

Tomorrow (Monday) I’m buying things for the backyard, side and all around really, and then will be handing the keys, or bronzed hundred dollar bill & framed platinum card to some lucky person who has decided to buy a house and renovate it, despite all the negative feelings.

It’s a lonely feeling despite constantly being surrounded by people. A feeling of “if I hadn’t bought the house I could have traveled the world. I could have done this….done that….” Not lonely in the traditional sense but lonely in the “there’s no one expert who could have helped me come to a decision.” I think I made a good decision. Here’s an article in The New York Times Magazine by an economics reporter who defends his arrogant and sickening decision to almost willfully go into foreclosure. I know the article wasn’t written to make me feel great but it did.

I need to be grounded and I certainly have achieved that. I’m wedded to this house. And I know there will be times the house tries to tell me who is the boss. But I will know, in my heart, that I did everything possible to make an 80′s beach house into a home for this century.

My sister objects when I say I live in a court though the sign says “court,” and maybe she’s right. It could be an enclave.

I think of my enclave, and the surrounding blocks as Laurel Canyon without the Canyon, debauchery, and crazy people in media. Or Coconut Grove FL in the 70′s without the exotic tropical flora, debauchery and crazed hippies.

I’m doing my best to make it exotic with a large flower bed that looks like a dog ate the flowers but EldonOne assures me in a week the flowers will blossom. I’m sensing a similarity in temperature ranges to Provence as at least four people have offered me Rosemary (I will take it from EldonOne) and I’m growing lavender, much lavender, that I hope to be able to offer house guests as a souvenir of their stay.

Tomorrow I should be getting outdoor furniture,* some palm trees and more tropical flora though this winter was cold, I think I have learned how to save them from frost and snow. I took pictures of the palms I was growing in the townhouse and was going to entitle them “Snow will stick in SC when a Black man is inaugurated president,” but I didn’t really think of that then.

*The outdoor furniture might be difficult. This whole house has been furnished with old (mine) furniture or cheap yet good furniture from the Internet, Target, Best Buy, and uh Wal Mart has played enough of a role for my b-i-l, niece and I to have a running joke. My sister has incredible style and a head for bargains but she’s so not the Wal Mart type. Neither am I or CLo, and yes we know the North Myrtle Wal Mart is where Northerners go to look at the Rednecks and feel superior, enough have told us, but…we have found some incredible things there.

My sister would say “this is so beautiful. Where’s it from?” The answer would usually be Wal Mart. My sister asked when we passed Dietra (I don’t know a person who knows how to pronounce that) Lane “that’s so beautiful. Where does it lead? ” “uh, Wal Mart.”

I don’t know who was the master of suburban planning who designed the Lowes (home store) shopping center and the one next to it (Home Depot, Wal Mart with two small strip malls). You can see them from Route 17, and sort of see the Lowes shopping center but not so that it interferes with anything and can’t see the Wal Mart one at all. I find that incredible.

Bike week has been a bust. Probably much to do with the Myrtle Beach helmet laws and I would think a lot to do with the recession though that’s being underplayed.

The City of North Myrtle is proposing to do away with Mayfest more commonly known as “Beach Boy” day. That would be a shame as it really is fun and I decided to move here last year on Beach Boy day so yes it has a direct incredible economic ramification on the city.

Oh, I try not buying things from China but I would have to give up Wal Mart and really anyplace cheap. So I was looking at a label and something said “made in Pakistan.” Which is worse? I think the later but what do I know?

I will have new pictures in my house photo blog as soon as the outside is finished. My old couch is in my office. I have about four boxes left to unpack and two suitcases. Don’t know why the end is always such a tortoise game.
It is raining. I turn into a congested grouch when it rains. I need my house finished so I can not feel inhibited. I find I do better when I’m away from my computer for a couple of days or more. I’m going to try handwriting though I don’t seem to be able to put thoughts on paper with pen.

Lately I have been having dreams I don’t remember when I wake up but I wake up thinking my mother is alive. 30 seconds or so later I remember and I feel so sad.

I don’t think this has anything to do with Mother’s Day or time dead or anything like that.

My mother would be proud that I bought and renovated a house and its grounds (irregular plot of land or so the deed says.)

This weekend was the first time I could lie in my yard and read. It was so frigging cool. My yard! I’m starting a flower and vegetable garden. Flowers because they’re beautiful and vegetables because I love them, but have resorted to buying frozen here as I don’t find them very good. I am very spoiled. Having Fairway and incredible Farmer’s Markets at my fingertips. I also dialed out a lot. Something I think I have done once here. When I’m in New York though…

My house is slowly becoming a home. I want to share it with family and friends. The renovation, on a budget but using “quality” materials would be an achievement for anybody. For me it’s akin to climbing Mt Everest.

All I have left to do is get outdoor furniture, secondhand furniture for the sunroom, unpack the last few boxes and organize my office. I have an office! And a reading room across from it. In Manhattan my entire apartment was between 615-675 square feet depending on who was doing the measuring. My outdoor areas, not counting the upstairs deck is 650 square feet. Small by some standards. A great sized footprint according to mine.

I take none of this for granted. I’m busting with pride and joy. I would so love my parents to have seen this. Maybe they have…..

Next year Chicago and Earth Wind & Fire will be at the annual Mayfest on Main celebration.
My sister thinks I moved to paradise. Maybe I did.

I don’t understand why categories show when I haven’t clicked them. “Impeach Bush’s” a bit old. “Impeach Cheney for occupying space” would make sense. I don’t mean this post to be a poor me one. My life is great. I would like it to be the best it could be. I do feel I deprived myself of much pleasure but my life has been sybaritic enough. I have excelled in the family, friends, actually be at work areas. Sometimes i was great at job hunting. Sometimes I was horrible at it.

Truly I wish my life remains on the sometimes even wonderful keel I seem to have been getting to.
*I believe that’s from Rhoda–Mary Richard’s (Mary Tyler Moore) Bff. Of course she meant that as in “look out, I’m taking over.” I mean it in “get out your HAZAMAT suits.”

I will be back in a week having seen family, friends and the friends of the Miracle of Facebook or childhood friends I still think about and remember with love. Read more…

Bone entitled this photo “toilet of pia.”

When I was looking from my deck at my barely one fifteenth of an acre irregular plot, I couldn’t help but notice a toilet that came with the house. I gutted one bathroom and took the toilet out of the other. Nobody wants to live with other peoples toilets, I think.

Eldin One was very psyched at my obvious excitement and asked if I was planning on putting in flowers. Of course; ragweed.

Ich bin a Southerner.

Thought today was Tuesday. Put a lot of pressure on myself considering I closed on Wednesday and got here Thursday. In the past two days I have taken literally hundreds of photos of houses.
I forgot how friendly people are here off season. I forgot how great the air smells. I forgot…
I don’t have a rhythm yet to my life. I want to write fiction as I love it and almost all my friends would rather be fictional characters than the
real thing and I can’t blame them. I would say it’s a generational thing but even the young women in my life, my Goddaughter and niece aren’t girls who want to be talked about or seen. I respect that. The right to privacy might not be inherent in the Constitution completely or in ways we want it to be but it is natural.

I’m hoping that if this economic crisis does anything positive it brings us back to values that don’t include watching Brittany’s every move. I think it’s been proven that Katie Couric might be over 50 but is much sharper than somebody ten years younger. (Somebody having initials the inverse of mine. Somebody so much better when played by Tina Fey. Somebody who says she understands the needs of special needs children as she has one. But he’s six months old. Her foray into special needs hasn’t yet begun so she and the people who support her are frigging delusional if they think she knows what’s ahead. Oh my fourteen year old niece says this so much better than I do.)

I’m unsettled. I’m scared in ways I never expected to be, and ways that I did. I knew that I had a limited window in which to sell my apartment and I just made it. I knew the economy was going to go south, I just didn’t know when or how sharply.

Many people think I have it easy and create my own problems. That’s true to a point. What’s also true was that I put my apartment on the market Bear Stearns imploded. When I came back to New York Lehman Brothers went under. As my apartment was in Manhattan and my income very tied into the stock market these events were significant to me.

It’s simplistic and stupid to pretend otherwise. The buyers could have walked away from the contract. People with less money have walked away from contracts with more money

I feel inhibited and scared to say that money is important to me. That I almost wished the buyers would break the contract as this is a time of great economic uncertainty and I could easily get a job in New York. I might have hated it and all the reasons I wanted to leave would have been intensified but I would have felt secure.

I was going to take my apartment off the market when all of a sudden there was much interest in it. I know I probably wouldn’t have been able to make that kind of money for the next five or six years. It wasn’t a million or anything people think when they think Manhattan. On the other hand it wasn’t shabby.

I have been around the block often enough to know how hard it is to keep money. I have lived in Manhattan most of my life so it’s still difficult for me to understand the concept of not spending, spending, spending.

I just arrived here on Thursday, and I intellectually understand that I need time to adjust. I’m trying not to put pressure on myself, but I don’t know how much longer an all cash buyer will have an advantage. I could probably get a small mortgage and buy something incredible but the whole point of this is to be as unshackled from bills as possible. Because I didn’t have a mortgage in New York I was free to do what I wanted to do until the maintenance and health insurance costs became unbearable.

My friends who live here are summer people. Though they can’t wait until I find a house so they can come and approve or disapprove. It’s not up to them to make a life for me. It’s up to me.

A friend appointed me Myrtle Beach coordinator for a project. Nice but I know uh my hair stylist who is very tied into the community but away right now. I don’t feel comfortable asking people to participate in this project when they don’t know me yet. I’m not going to fall back on my “I have an invisible disability that makes strategic planning more difficult for me” excuse as I have proven over and over again I can strategically plan. Yet…

i realize that this project can help me meet people but I also have to focus on finding a house and this is the first time in two years I have had any breathing time.

Color me psyched but scared. Color me almost having a panic attack. I don’t have panic attacks anymore. I found out that they were an actual physical thyroid problem. I do have panicky feelings and my emotions change from moment to moment. I think that’s normal considering there are so many different options in just buying a house. Broker? Foreclosure? Pre-foreclosure? Bank foreclosure? For sale by owner?

Then there’s that project which culminates in less than month. Color me pink, yellow and with gag over mouth. Color me talking incessantly.

I want to buy a house as I do think this is a good time to but I’m scared to spend money. That seems to be a common instinct. Just as I shook my life up, America went to hell….

When I was in my 20′s it was so easy to just pick up and begin new lives. I lived abroad. I lived all over Long Island and Manhattan. I visited my sister for a weekend in Cambridge MA and came back to New York two years later with a college degree. It was very easy for me to meet new people and “bond” but hell it was the 70′s.

No longer near my 20′s this is difficult. I need to be able to structure my time better. I need to stop saying “I need…”

crossposted at ThoughtCafe

What a week. I open the paper and expect to read: world ended.

I put my apartment on the market and went to North Myrtle the week Bear Stearns imploded. I came home to Lehman. I have been losing money all year but never grasped that the two were correlated, or that my losses were anything more than temporary. Such was the size of my investor’s ego. Why was I sure that Manhattan apartments were going to come down without truly bad things happening?

I feel guilty to be so psyched and happy when in reality I should be crazed and staying up all night. Yes I am coming into more than pocket money less than life changing money this week. Every cent was earned and is very needed now.

I was just beginning to understand the economy was truly becoming bad, and was planning on taking it off the market and getting some kind of social worker/legal/research job as I’m licensed, have certification and much experience in all three and sometimes together when I got this bid that was too good to let go. I knew the people/person would pass the board, no trouble and these days it’s important to be as obsessive as I was and let the realtors know exactly what I wanted in bidders. Obsessive might not be the right word. “Single minded” comes to mind. So few could pass a board easily now.

Wow. All that’s finished. I’m mostly packed. The moving van comes Tuesday. I’m leaving the apartment a day early so the buyers can do a walk through in an empty apartment—I’m a bit confident in my product.

Wow. I have three days to play tourist.

I have no idea how I will feel when I no longer own this apartment. I will be staying at my friends’ townhouse and I do so love it but it’s not mine.

It feels so strange to be in a position to buy a house in this time of uncertainty and loss. I refuse to apologize as I will have to do massive economizing and feel like Eva Gabor in Green Acres without the money or the farm. OK I don’t feel like her.

I feel truly great and feel just a tinge of guilt over that

Friday morning update: It feels insane to be so psyched about moving when I have lost so much (prefer to think of it as temporary but I don’t really expect these funds to come back. I didn’t sell when I knew I should and so have only me to blame. My “Pia’s battered portfolio” will be replenished. I thought I was moving so I could live really well and save more.
Now I’m excited about making my first real home, living near libraries that you can take home the best books and older ones probably don’t feel as if they spread disease. My kitchen will be large enough to actually cook in. How novel. I will join America. Hope America joins me. Please forgive me owning a washer/dryer for the first time in these green days and a dishwasher. I have done without all my adult life and I promise to use the washer as a hamper and not be crazy washing all the time. Though the thought is so scintillating.

I still listen to CD’s when home. I listened to Billy Joel “The Stranger,” Brian Wilson “That Lucky Old Sun,” and John Hiatt “Live from Austin T_ ” while writing this. It’s a too true first draft that’s disjointed, and needs much much editing. However I’m stuck between needing to do errands and being paralyzed as I can’t believe the things happening in this country–I am talking politics and the truly sick rumors about Obama that I would hate were I a Republican. And then there is the economy, or isn’t. I should be so happy right now….

It was a beautiful summer day. We left your apartment for The World Financial Center and beyond; not knowing the world would change that day.

Wow, why was the DJ from ‘PLJ playing “Money for Nothing” over and over again? What were those “gold bricks” doing there? We began dancing and the DJ began handing us presents. Mouse pads, tee shirts, towels and more all saying “Windows 95.” We had no idea what Windows 95 was. But the carriage filled up with presents.

Nor did I know the DJ. I listen to your much hated, now, alt rock radio station ‘FUV. You would know the DJ…..

Everybody was smiling at us. You made it so easy. Smiling and waving at ten, eleven months you knocked the socks off people. It was the summer between my first and second years of grad school. I volunteered at the nursing home I did my field placement in for the summer. The Newt cuts had just begun kicking in and I was needed. But we didn’t care about that. OK it was an ego trip that many of the old people, some not even truly demented, mistook me for their 20something granddaughter.

I held you and we twirled until I was dizzy and you couldn’t stop smiling. There were Brinks trucks with gold bricks everywhere. Security guards (out of work actors) smiled and flirted with us. For once I wasn’t river obsessed.

You were enchanted by everything. The same song being played over and over again was hypnotic. “Dire Strait,” I said into your ear, “a seminal 80′s band.”

“Cool baby!” People were constantly saying that. I knew I was supposed to count the times it was said and remember everything about the person who said it. Skin color, hair, face, type of clothes. It really only counted when very funky people said that.

A motorcade of Brinks trucks followed by a gold Rolls with Richard Lewis in it followed. He waved at you. Looks like your daddy so you smiled and laughed even more as we waved back. You made me so ennobled. I would say and do things I wouldn’t normally. People saw the real me not the street face me. Every Manhattanite, maybe every person has one. I wouldn’t know. Manhattan has been the center of my life all my life.

We went to your apartment in Battery Park City and told your mother, my sister, all about the day as I stared at the Statue of Liberty and your mother was amazed and delighted by all the presents. We must have been given at least two of all Windows 95 promotional products.

Windows is coming, I kept thinking. Sort of like the signs all over lower Manhattan in the summer of 67, “The Blues Project is coming.”

Did we even know who Bill Gates was then? I think so as I used the Internet in grad school. Word the word processing program was so much better than Word star which I had begun on twelve years earlier.

The world changed the day we heard “Money for Nothing” repeated over and over again and we didn’t even know it. Though it would be the biggest overt symbolic change in our lifetimes.

Your grandfather told me over and over again the year before he died in 91 that computers and communications were going to mean everything. His time was over and mine was just beginning said he.

I didn’t really understand what he meant. That you and I were together the day Windows 95 was announced to the world, how amazing. That we were at the official announcement, wow. It wasn’t Silicon Alley they made this announcement in; it was the Promenade, the closest river walk to The World Trade Center and Wall Street. FiDi, it’s called now.

We were what people called “comfortable.” It’s an old fashioned term used by people who felt comfortable with their financial status and didn’t need to blast from the roofs “new money.” Not that we were 80′s e_cessive or 90′s rich.

Did we know then that we were going to see the greatest increase in personal consumption? That many people borrowed money to achieve their lifestyle?

Honestly we were going to care, not you but your Mom and me that people seemed to become instant millionaires regularly when we felt investing was hard and tortuous work. Our father had made lost and made several small fortunes. I have always known second acts can happen in your 50′s as I knew my father.

The times between 95 and now were great. My life was changed by computers and communications. I discovered blogging; blogging discovered me. It was a happy though warring marriage for a couple of years.

Seven years ago after Mommy Marian died, I decided to leave New York. But there was always one more thing I could only do in New York. Everybody else would be happy to leave New York to have their whole mouth redone. I had to find the priciest and best dentists around. Fortunately they liked my politics and my fighting the radical right and took 20% off. It was really because I paid cash in advance but, honestly I stupidly thought it gauche to negotiate. They were in what your mother and I have always called “the dentists building, that truly ugly Fifth Avenue building, 800.

Last year I ran out of things I absolutely had to do. I’m not percient but I knew two things: Manhattan apartments were going to sell for last money and something bad was beginning to happen to the economy.

The Monday after your too elegant and wonderful Bat Mitzvah I began to lose money. This never happened to me before and I was both very proactive and very paralyzed.

The apartment will close ne_t week. I have a ticket out of here the ne_t day. Don’t worry I will be back in time to celebrate, I so hope, after the election, for ten days at Thanksgiving–doctors, two birthdays, and the holiday, and for about four days at New Years–the holiday doesn’t feel right unless celebrated in Central Park with our own for the city residents fireworks, a race, bands and free warm drinks. First we make a New Years dinner complete with Black Eyed Peas. There are two more birthdays in that four day period.

Think is Jacquelin we were together for the beginning of the very good times. Those Juicy and A&F clothes you wear like the model you might become? We weren’t the designer “name” kind. It comes to you like the counterculture came to me.

I don’t know what’s going to happen now. Two summers ago I was at the class before mine.’s, at the high school you go to and I’m an alumna of, pre-reunion, and they were talking about the coming great depression. I was making more money than i ever had before, too much I realize now, and I thought “football players. What do they know?” That they had been high school football players 40 years earlier didn’t enter my brain but I thought of Rabbit Angstrom from John Updike’s Rabbit books and felt disquieted. Updike killed him off in the 90′s. The former high school basket player couldn’t find or keep work had become too successful. Car dealerships.

Maybe the boys from the football team were right. I’m scared Jacquelin and not sure if it’s leaving my life for a new one I haven’t really made yet, the economy and my personal losses, both or fear that I won’t be able to successfully start over as I’m too old–no refuse to think that one.

The world is changing again and it’s not going to be the easy world you had your first thirteen years in. Your parents will shield you. It’s a parents job to make sure a child knows what’s happening but to feel secure anyway and your parents e_cell at that.

Your mom and my father was a gambler. Not horses like Uncle Simon and the rest of the family who we’re very proud of which never struck me strange. It was a mark of honor to have family members “go away,” until it wasn’t.

Your grandfather gambled at poker and the stock market. I stayed as far away from risk as possible but i became greedy. Never again.

My second act is beginning. Your grandfather did his best during a long recession. He did it with grace and class. I so want to be like him and yet be me.

I have lost but I am blessed. My belief in only borrowing money from me paid off. I think of everything I could have had if I got just a little mortgage and had a million dollar apartment to sell. Every bank offered me one. When “everyone” does something stay as far away as possible. Your grandfather filled my head with that one since I was a small child.

And so Jacquelin, the stock I bought you for your Bat Mitvah–Apple as we’re not the Windows type, has lost much in value. Follow it. I believe Apple makes a superior product and it might not do well for a few years, but people use Ipods instead of stereos with a good docking system and it could be a great not really pricey holiday item. Or am I so out of touch?

I have been back in New York since the last week of August. Too long. When you come for Passover I will introduce you to my North Myrtle, not the Myrtle Beach tourists know. It’s in better economic shape than Southern Florida and while i love the hot Florida sun and we have had family there since the 40′s and many of my best college friends are from Miami and moved back, I think North Myrtle is the more sane choice. I want to live in a place that wasn’t hot, hot and hotter so it could fall cool, colder, coldest.

Jacquelin, life’s been too good for too long. I never borrowed money, have been late with credit card payments maybe once in the past 30 years and pay in full. While I think many people are “innocent victims,” I can’t help but feel that too many people believed that whatever goes up stays up. I do resent having lived like a perpetual grad student though in a “world class” “big deal” building–things it was called during the dot com years.

I don’t know what’s going to happen now. Though I lived like a perpetual grad student in the apartment amenity sense I have lived well. I plan on continuing to….Though the best laid plans…..

This New Years season I wish for sweetness, sanity and a Democratic mandate at the election polls. I’m glad you “hate” Sarah Palin. When you told me that you’re scared “Sarah will win, because most people are stupid,” I could see generations of Jaded Savages in your eyes.

You volunteer for Habit for Humanity and a Darfur group (I can’t believe my old school has these groups) and you wear designer clothes. Oh I so hope you always can…..

Obama is the new Black
L’ Shana Tova

There’s much about the bail out plan I don’t approve and find scary. But I have gone through about twelve days like Monday in the past ten months and find them even scarier. A bit of me wishes this apartment sale hadn’t gone through as I can easily find a decent job in New York. And while I’m not as scared as I was Monday I’m frightened. I have big loss days and they come back somewhat but never fully. I’m diversified. I sold some stuff to stop the hemorrhaging. Still it was worse than ever on Monday. I really enjoyed this article
. And I know it was my choice to live a life outside the mainstream. I haven’t really really wondered about that until this past weekend. And then came Monday. I’m better now. What will be will be. I’m relatively young, healthy and capable of earning a living. It will be on my terms as the move is so I’m damn lucky and never ever forget that

This has been a seriously weird year as more than anything, almost, I care about my writing. I did get thrown off track when I became a political blogger four years ago but I always kept writing.
Selling the apartment while there was still a market for imperfect one bedrooms became the focal point of my life. I know many writers will say I’m not really a writer as I didn’t practice every day–but I did write things for publication. I guess being out of the blogging game makes everything feel strange to me as it was a centering point. Then it wasn’t….I will be writing more and talking less about it.

In two weeks two days–but who is counting?–I begin a new life.

While I look for a house I will also be a coordinator for
Your Day Awayâ„¢ 2008.

It’s similar to the Make a Wish foundation but for caretakers of people with disabilities. If anybody knows a family, in the Myrtle Beach area, please let me know. Same with hotels, restaurants, uh theme parks and dinner theaters

Your Day Awayâ„¢ 2008 will coincide with the publication of the book “Alphabet Kids: From ADD To Zellweger Syndrome: A Guide to Developmental, Neurobiological and Psychological Disorders For Parents and Professionals” by Robbie Woliver, published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, November 15, 2008.

I have known Robbie since I was eighteen and wrote the intro to the chapter on NLD. It’s some of my best writing ever. Still I have to buy my own copy….

Robbie has always found my e_sistental crises funny, though he was a prime person in the campaign to keep me in New York. A lot of people like me in Manhattan. Sometimes I feel like a caged animal in the zoo

That does give me the right to say I strongly believe in term limits. I understand that this recent Wall Street mess was without precedent and hit too many of us in our pocketbooks. The last thing most people in the city need is a seven percent increase in property ta_es, effective immediately. I understand that property ta_es are low.

However when you sell you give the city 1.45% for any sale over 500K and one percent for any sale under that. Combined with a state ta_ of two dollars for every five hundred, a building “flip” ta_. In my case of two percent, a si_ percent fee to the realtor and assorted other fees the net profit is way lower than the gross.

I think that’s all fair providing that property and other ta_es aren’t increased. You know that the price of fuel and everything else will go up drastically.

That said I can’t imagine loving anyplace the way I do Manhattan and uh Long Island and I hope that my enforced, asked for volunteer job at Your Day Away will help provide a bridge to my new community.

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.