So, somewhere in the archives is a sorta transcript of a sorta actual conversation my mother and I had only using the word “so.” We could tell what the other was really saying from each so’s inflection. OK we were a bit extreme but we weren’t alone in using the word “so.”

I’m having a hard time focusing on my memoir and I can’t blame 92 degrees at 7PM. Actually that I can–weather like this makes me hyper. It’s good for house projects. Don’t ask. And don’t ask about my need to drink seltzer with ginger powder. That was an integral part of a post I threw out and means absolutely nothing in this one. Oh the vanity of the long time blogger.

No I have been going through a crisis of “my birthday’s in a month and a few weeks and I haven’t accomplished anything important with my life.” It’s a pivotal birthday. One that makes 50 look like a walk in the park.

I fear that I’m becoming old and my experiences aren’t relevant anymore. That the gist of the stories buried within these pages are sooo yesterday.

I understand why I’m going through this and a lot of it has to do with being burnt. I thought it was almost four years ago that I found out about non verbal learning disorder (nld) but it’s only been going on three years. The same year I decided it was time to get out of Dodge, renovated to sell, sold, bought a house, renovated, lost a lot of my resources, and well….It finally hit me this past month….

I no longer live in Manhattan. As crazy as it made me it was my identity. If I accomplished nothing with my life I was a great New Yorker. Yesterday I saw an ad for menupages and almost began to cry. I consulted it as if it were the bible. With menupages you didn’t need to have ten restaurants on speed dial though of course I did.

It’s different here. I couldn’t really serve my Anna Nicole Smith Trailer Park Dinner, that later became the Anna Nicole Smith Memorial Trailer Park Dinner. I no longer eat hamburgers, wouldn’t serve on the styrofoam containers, and people here are a bit more politically correct in someways or at least more material in very strange ways. The Anna Nicole Smith Memorial Trailer Park Dinner wouldn’t be funny.

OK honestly only Rafe found it funny. Lucia was aghast that I would serve company on styrofoam, but I would use company napkins. Made of paper yet pretty.

Now I use real plates, and cloth napkins and it’s better for the environment but I’m beginning to feel that we’re doomed anyway so why….

I didn’t use these things often in New York as I owned neither a dishwasher nor a washer/dryer. I don’t miss that part. No not at all. Though I’ve been trying to find a clothes line and can’t find one at Wal Mart. I might have to go online. It will be so nice to have clothes dried outdoors.

I like it here. I certainly like being able to walk to the beach when I want or not walk to the beach and read in one of my decks. I like the friends I have made and the friends who are coming.

But Pia doesn’t live in New York anymore, has done absolutely nothing of worth with her life, and was already an adult when her parents, who had children late for then, were her age.

For somebody who has done nothing of worth with my life I’ve done a lot in the past three years and am so mentally fatigued I can’t tell when I’m writing something good or not. This is a half pity party. Half just the truth. I don’t use “so,” on my own. I use “just.” I’m going to stop that. Just as soon as I find what’s left of my mind.

I want to write fiction as I love it but feel a memoir has a much better chance of being published. I’m just so over myself

Click the photograph to see the filthy signs. Read them and try not to be offended. “Pray for more dead soldiers.” How frigging sick! “God hates you.” Not my G-d. Mine is a just one.

Sage linked to a much more explanatory coherent post he wrote several years ago. I was too angry.

Westboro Baptist Church came to North Myrtle today and I went to my first demonstration in the South.

As a New York Jewish liberal I don’t often talk religion or politics here with anybody but my friends from home. It’s easier and I don’t really want to.

I say all this as I had problems understanding why Westboro was picketing churches, especially an Evangelical one. After all don’t they have the same basic aim? To baptize people into Christ’s love so they can go to heaven?

Then I realized the word love isn’t a word anybody associated with Westboro would use. Love is a concept they wouldn’t understand. They understand hate and only hate. It’s difficult to get anywhere near their mindset.

There are people who go to Barefoot Community Church I consider to be friends. It’s a church I have spent much time in, not for religious events. So I hope that nobody from Barefoot is offended by anything I say or do.

I will be demonstrating on Friday when Westboro hits schools and other public buildings because as a Jew I know how Hitler began. He was a radical fringe idiot people said “don’t listen to. He’ll go away.” Six million Jews and countless other people later he did.

I come from a long tradition of protesters.

Being silent sounds good. But turning the other cheek doesn’t work. I was raised on stories about my great grandparents and grandparents escaping the programs of Russia, about the Scottsboro Boys, and yes I was a young teenager during the civil rights movement who wanted nothing more than to be old enough to be a part of it. I proudly worked against the Viet Nam war but never once disrespected a troop and find it insulting when people assume that all of us who protested were against the troops.

I love North Myrtle. I put a lot of time and resources into my home. I have been developing a good life here.

I hope that my beliefs are respected also. It’s not me who is preaching hate. It’s not me who boycotts troops funerals or calls every American who doesn’t have Westboro’s beliefs “sodomizers” and “murderers.”

This is my blog. It’s not protected under The First Amendment. That means I can delete any comment I want to. Fortunately I don’t get the comments or the readers I once did. But this post–this post is important to me as I will not sit silently when messages of hate are being spewed in my front yard.