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3WW is below this. I took this post down as I thought it whiny and self centered. Then I got an exceptional email and this comment from Cooper that was originally on the post below. I moved it. I replied as I now have a blog that belongs in the what do we call this decade? 20/10’s? This blog is a pleasure and I thank Cooper the magnificent for all her work. She’s also one of the few people I enjoy having generational difference discussions with.
I belong to one org that uses the word “wives” to refer to all women as they think the word “girlfriend” has been over used. Girlfriend is one word, or two, that I can’t use enough.
I just saw a blog promoting “mom” as meaning all people who are child friendly. I love kids but I’m not a mom.
I think both these words are regressive and demeaning when used in those contexts. I’m a single childless woman with many girlfriends.
However if companies decided to send me products to test because they think I’m a mom I would gladly accept and break my five year rule of no product endorsement. Only because being a mom is seen as being much more worthy than not being a mom in the blogosphere and I guess being a wife is also much more worthy.
I thought these battles were fought and won many years ago. I thought it was alright to be who I am.
I’m learning from the blogosphere and the world of social networks that really people only said those things. In their hearts they believe a woman, unless a lesbian, should be married with kids. Or be married. Or have kids.
I don’t usually feel lonely nor do I rethink every decision in my life. I’m writing a book that delves into my past and sometimes it hurts to thinks of decisions I did or didn’t make.
But it’s my trip through the virtual world that made me feel lonely this cold cold day. I don’t think people understand the power of words to hurt when they declare all women “wives” or all woman who like kids “moms.”
What I’m really trying to say and failing at, is that by calling all women “wives” and “mom,” my single childless status is diminished. And when I reread that I think “you’re single and childless. You haven’t invented anything that helped humankind. You haven’t done anything noteworthy. You’re a failure.”
Such is the power of words.
When did everything become an issue?
I came home from the eight days of Thanksgiving and wanted to chill with TV. I tried turning it on. Nothing. After 20 minutes of playing, the TV went on. I noticed the Time Warner commands and fonts were different. The TV kept going off. I called Time Warner: It’s your TV
“But my TV is only six months old. I’ve had cable since 1980. I know a cable problem.”
“IT’S YOUR TV.” (Some complicated explanation that I knew was meaningless.)
Every day I had problems turning the TV on though it would stay on. The DVR would constantly freeze. The picture would freeze. But every time I called Time Warner I would be told it’s my TV and they wouldn’t send somebody.
Finally it wouldn’t go on at all. I insisted they send somebody. Fine but it was going to cost me $60 because it was the TV. I waited for the appointment. Nobody came. The appointment had never been put in the system. It was my TV after all.
The technician came. “I understand that your TV has issues.” Well yeah in life I have many issues, but I never knew that an inanimate object has issues.
It took the technician two days to fix all the problems. None of the signals that only the cable person looks at were on the right settings. There was something wrong with the outside wiring that had been put in six months ago. The technician said that many people had TV/cable issues after the upgrade.
My TV has never looked so good. The picture’s sharper and doesn’t freeze. Nor does the DVR. Most importantly I can turn the TV on without going through 20 minutes of playing with every button, rebooting, and fervently hoping.
Time Warner sent me an email asking how the customer support on the phone was. I said they were horrible as they refused to listen to me. Somehow this became translated to “the customer service people are excellent but the technician was horrible.” And I had given him the highest grades on the survey they sent me. Moral: never answer emails asking for feedback. Never fill out surveys.
I have always been my own muse. This solves a lot of problems such as the weekly pay check Bone demanded. (Kidding, he asked nicely.)
As my own muse I have always been conscious of the quality of my writing. Lately it doesn’t meet my own pitiful standards.
Is it because I have always refused to go to BlogHer? It’s always on the same weekend–my birthday–one of the few weekends of the year I insist on being with people who love me as I think birthdays are to be celebrated not spent trying to impress hundreds of strangers almost none of whom know or care that once this blog was well something more than most blogs. And I can’t blame them for not caring.
I do think Blog Her should have a revolving summer weekend policy as I’m sure other bloggers have birthdays, family birthdays, reunions, vacations–and yes somethings are more important than blogging. Summer fun being paramount.
This makes me sound flaky and not serious but anybody who knows me knows how important writing is too my life. Blogging’s something I became caught up in and now am addicted to and it’s a better addiction than heroin so….
This hasn’t been an easy year. I’m establishing a new life in a new city. A friend from New York called my move “drastic.” It is very different and perhaps I’m in denial when I say that it can’t be drastic as I go to New York often. I have homie or go to friends here. But really how many times a week can you see the same friends? We have our assigned dinner seats at each house; games we only play with each other–both real and head ones and….CLo’s daughter Niece Kelly and a friend of theirs–a funny Gay male (are there any others?) are coming tomorrow night. We’re all in a tither to entertain them. I have known Niece Kelly since she was a wee thing and like her mother she adds a lot to her surroundings. That’s a compliment though it sounds weird to me. See what I mean about not being able to write?
I’m making new friends. That’s both easy and difficult. Nobody can replace my best friends. They have been a part of my everyday life for longer than some of my blogging friends have been alive. I need the easy familiarity of being able to look at somebody and know what she/he is about to say. I need to be able to just look at somebody and burst out laughing….
I don’t feel sad that my blogging muse has dried up. I feel horrible that I can’t seem to write a coherent sentence unless it involves a complaint about a plumber in which case I did the lawyer’s work for her–the tech writing gene never leaves.
more than most people I know how difficult it is to make it as a writer. I need no lectures on that. I do need a cheering squad–and that’s the horrible thing about blogging and once having been rather well known. It makes you feel “you deserve,” when you deserve nothing that hard work doesn’t bring.
I’m willing to do the work but the words don’t seem to come out and I keep reading how you should never take things from your blog though I think I began a damn good memoir about me and Jeffrey or me with Jeffrey as the background
I was doing a writing exercise and that helped but about five weeks ago I read a comment complaint in a blog about people who write more than one screen and want comments. The author of the post emailed me to tell me that was about me and wow!!! I haven’t been able to write since. I know an excuse when I write one, and it might be that I have had much company, that the weather’s finally sultry and great for beach going–though I try to write every day from 9AM until 3PM.
If somebody could define a screen for me I would be ecstatic. There are screens on Blackberries. Then there’s my 24″ Imac. I know people who use 40″ or even 56″ high def flat screen TV’s as their Internet screen. So what’s a screen?
And why do writing exercises seem to favor poetry? They say prose is acceptable but when four fifths of the posts are poetry it’s a poet’s site, and anyway poets know what a screen is.
I’m being silly I know. In part because in nineteen days I enter the last year of a pivotal decade and while I don’t fear the decade coming up I do fear the next or the one after that. I’m a bit confused on that subject too.
Oh lighten up Pia!!!!!!!!!
This isn’t a complaint about blogging. It’s just become real difficult for me to write and I need to blame something as I can’t stand the thought that maybe I really am too old or something
Deleted posts is I.
I’m spending money when I want to retreat and squirrel it away. The least the Amish people who are making my kitchen cabinets can do is have it on time, but no. The rest of the kitchen work depends on having the cabinets. I need my house. I have been living without my glass, other things, and furniture since a year ago last November. Oh my favorite clothes too.
I need to buy more furniture. This isn’t the fun experience it should have been. I resent so many people having such a great time in the 90’s and earlier this century and me saving, saving, saving–and now losing losing losing losing. Yes I feel good that I have enough to do this.
Of course I might find myself regretting what I wished for. i might never be able to leave home again
I feel as if every nerve in my body is on fire; sort of the feeling after a toothache. I walked to my house via the ocean. It was lovely. I took many pictures. I tried getting lost coming home but met a new (obviously) friend.
When I saw Recount very little of it was new to me because I had read Vincent Bugliosi’s book on the after-election. I love true crime and Bugliosi had written Helter Skelter plus many other truly good books. I know I have written on how oddly picky I am when it comes to true crime books. I won’t spell out all the criteria they have to meet. His does.
He is also deeply conservative–a true thinking conservative–one of my favorite breed of men so when he writes a book accusing Bush of murder, I have to read it–though I haven’t yet. I love true conservatives who believe in morality–and yes when I was a political blogger I would confuse the radical right by saying such things.
Bugliosi’s book has sold 130,000 copies though it’s getting very little mainstream press. MSNBC and The Daily Show refuse to adv advertise it. A claim of Bush bashing fatigue has been made. I admit to being tired of Bush but we can’t bash him enough really. It should be every thinking Americans patriotic duty.
We’re all being affected by his ineptness; his inability to understand what’s happening in this country; his refusal to accept responsibility for Iraq, the economy and I could go on but why get myself sicker? So yes I understand Bush bashing fatigue but…we’re living in an atmosphere of fear of just about everything.
Many of us baby boomers thought we had it made. It’s neither fair nor right that things we have worked hard for such as a secure older age might not be so secure. I blame Bush. He actually said “someday people will appreciate the tax cuts.” That’s his answer to our economy problems.
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I just saw a picture on a blog of somebody I had a crush on many years ago. It was an unrequited crush and most of my crushes weren’t. My ego was shattered when my then best friend, Shelby, told him about it and asked if he was interested. I wasn’t used to being rejected; I was used to my husband–we were technically married then but not living together–following me around but not in a creep stalking way–that would come later with other men. He would drive me places I needed to go, and we would hang out
It hurt; it really did. But when I looked at the picture I was once again very impressed with my taste in hippie men who somehow made a living through music, but not usually by playing or singing. Though by the time that picture was taken i was into glitter.
No I’m not going to link to the picture. If you knew me then you can easily figure it out. I gave a very vague but good clue.
If you haven’t read this yet, what are you doing at my blog? Here’s the whole cover. I have learned to copy articles since the first cover or probably that was copied but lost in a computer crash. I now back up everything to two places in the Internet and a data stick.
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I’m sort of on vacation and will be until 7/22 as my best friend–I held a contest to replace Shelby and Lucia won–will be here next week. We’re planning on partying like it’s 1999 which is very sad as we didn’t that year. Maybe 79 but we don’t do a lot of stuff…..Life’s complicated
•••••••••••••••
I did go to three undergrad schools. CW Post, my favorite. It was two years of non stop playing. NYU, the first year of the Gallatin school. I had to write eleven essays about what I wanted to do with my life and have two interviews. I’m a good writer and obviously can bull shit well as I still don’t know, and I interview well–one of the intervewers was a long haired man so I was in my element and the other was the director of the program. I wish I could say I was mature enough to benefit from the program but I wasn’t. I did have a job, an almost full time volunteer job and the junkie roommates who also had decided to try out alternate sexual practices. I moved in with Shelby as did her boyfriend who was not fondly nicknamed the Rat. It was a very full year and school did come last for the last time.
My dad was an alumni and his magazine said that 200 students were accepted out of 2,000 applicants. He almost had it framed. To this day I’m convinced they meant 200 students applied for 200 places.
My third undergrad school was Boston University and it was an incredible match. I was one of three undergrads in a grad program in “Urban Affairs.” I loved every second of it. But alas I missed New York and came home to be so rejected by the crush of my youth.
If I rejected you and y’all know who I mean I’m sorry and kinda didn’t mean to–I was oblivious to the obvious and the great life in front of me.
I wasn’t going to put anything in but I can be shameless and this post about my blog captured my heart. I was going to link to each blogger that said something but that will wait until after I hear news about the sale of my apartment. When I will also put in some beautiful older posts about this blog, and get the LIP to put in the article again.
Patience is a virtue I guess and I have it up to a point but my entire life seems to be about waiting and I feel that the old joke about collecting Social Security and whatever at the same time won’t be a joke.
I have no idea why I got into the Italic thing. It was pouring and it rarely rains here suffices I think. This person was in my class. It was the smallest, in student body, public school in Nassau County, and we all knew each other. I just don’t remember him and that’s more than strange.
I had a fascinating two and half hour phone conversation with somebody I was supposed to have known but absolutely didn’t remember-and I’m supposed to have the memory of an elephant especially for my early life. Very early–as in those years after elementary school and before college.
He’s an intuitive healer who told me that I have back problems. “No, never. I have neck problems.”
“That’s how the back problems manifest.”
“Not according to the x ray. I have that problem lawyers love a pinched nerve as it shows in x rays as opposed to whiplash.”
Then he told me that I’m bipolar. He also told me I nothing I could say would change his opinion. I had told him that I suffer from severe anxiety so it’s easy to put depression and mania into the mix.
I know I didn’t sound bipolar. I neither sounded manic nor depressed, and couldn’t figure out a third way a bipolar would sound. I would go for normal if I had to bet.
There are times my voice is very soft and bored sounding though I’m not. But on the phone my voice just sounds young and preppy. Like the average Ralph Lauren/Calvin Klein publicist, but softer I know as I have met more than a few–and in two cases was asked to guess their profession.
I have many problems with people diagnosing people who didn’t ask to be diagnosed over the telephone or in person, actually. He told me he didn’t like clinicians who label everything and then offer cures for much money. Or not with non verbal learning disorder which I didn’t bring up. If he were to guess disorders I would have loved him to guess spatial problems and me having learning disorders. I mentioned the later. He doesn’t believe in them. But he does believe in bi polar which is weird as he told me he doesn’t believe in anything in the DSM-1V.
What was he doing if not acting as a diagnostician?
He didn’t ask for money after he had me walk to cure my back problem. He told me that I would sleep well that night. I sleep well most nights so….I let him talk so much as I was fascinated by his apparent belief in his own powers.
I did let him think that I believed him a bit. I kept wanting to hear more. I am more “educated” in these things than he is and I wanted to be able to tell somebody we know in common why she shouldn’t believe anything he says.
I think he was going to tell me he could cure my bipolarism when we met. Only that’s not going to happen.
I’m at an age when many people have back problems. Actually I have friends who have had back problems forever. There’s always some problem many people will have.
I don’t doubt that some people are true intuitives and might be able to heal. But he told me that he cures cancer on a regular basis. Now if I had cancer and somebody cured it by intuitive healing I would broadcast that. I would want the world to know. If financially able I would establish a clinic for him. I’m factoring out normal treatments as I assume they would stop, or he claims that the cure is immediate. If my cancer stopped immediately I would call every news agency. People might think I’m crazy but I would want to share this with the world.
But when I googled him, and of course I did, I only found complaints.
It’s stupid to try to con people who know more than you do about the subject they’re trying to con you in–and hey anybody who watches Oprah or Dr Phil does.
I loved Sha Na Na.
This was the “other” teenage death song
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9gjCdDu90s&hl=en]
This is more Sha Na Na–as I remember then in the 70’s imitating 50’s music. It’s actually one of my favorite early rock songs from the days I would drink coffee and listen to Murray the K–I was twelve so I can’t be trusted as I was a pre-teen Saturday night (my parents were always out) coffee addict.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJaKv9dgQPU&hl=en]
It’s a beautiful day and this was going to turn into the longest post in my posting history, and I have written some long ones. Tiger Woods just won The US Open and I had no idea how much I wanted that.
That was the title of a post I wrote yesterday. I was so excited because I changed the battery to a smoke alarm. The smoke alarm is in what many of you call the “spare room.” There’s a smoke alarm in the master bedroom, another in the hallway over the stair case and two more downstairs. It went off when I took a shower in the master bedroom.
In New York we name all of our rooms. Actually we give five names to different areas of the living room. Here’s the study (pretend there’s a picture of a desk). Here’s the dining room (see imaginary desk,) This is the library. Over there is the sitting area, and that section is the actual living room.
I was feeling very proud of myself. In New York I would have gone to the house phone, spoke to the doorman, told him it was an emergency and have the handyman come up. I do have much higher ceilings in New York.
Did I mention I’m scared of heights and equally scared of live wires? When I first opened the smoke alarm, I saw live wires and almost fell off the ladder. But I went on. I had to. The smoke alarm had stopped its long siren call and went into a one a minute high pitched sound guaranteed to drive a person crazy.
This morning I took a long shower. The smoke alarm in the computerspare room went off. I can’t imagine that steam from a shower set it off….I’m calling a handyman. The high pitched sound hasn’t happened. It might. My BFF, Lucia is convinced it’s only a matter of minutes.
I haven’t been here three weeks yet and I’m relaxed. Or as relaxed as I’m capable of being.
I had some business that occupied most of my time for the two weeks before I came here. Everything was finally finished Saturday and I was able to go to the beach, two blocks from my house, in March.
That is worth everything to me. I think I love it here.
I have been watching the complete first season of Friday Night Lights. Dillon is a small Texas town where everything revolves around football. Personally I find football to be incredibly boring, and have been to exactly one game in my life. Friday Night Lights transcends football.
I forget that I’m watching TV and feel intimately involved in each person’s life. It’s an amazing show that deserves to be renewed for a third season. The first three episodes can be slow at times but are necessary to set the stories up.
I also have the first complete first season of 30 Rock, Gone, Baby, Gone, No Country for Old Men, and four of James Spader’s best films.
I’m not watching as much TV as I had planned to. It’s so beautiful here and I feel compelled to be outside as much as possible. This particular area feels like the North Fork of Long Island but with a real ocean–can’t help it I’m from Long Island and tend to compare places to places I know. It’s very country like.
When I’m inside, it’s even fun to clean. I was running the dishwasher and washer/dryer every day but have come down to earth.
Life is good and getting better every day. I reserve the right to change that last sentence.
I was just telling somebody a story about two guys I have known. One intimitely and forever though not forever intimitely, and the other just kind of forever. Both are rather well known in their fields which I will leave as pop culture.
Then I realized, not for the first time, I have had a whole incredible life that’s never been talked about here or will be in a memoir because while I will tell good friends stories about my life as it did happen, I don’t feel comfortable talking about my true personal life–even things that happened many years ago. Courting and hence Google presents a very distorted view of my life.
Sometimes I wish that I were a very different type of person. One who would really say anything rather than giving the illusion of saying too much.
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I put my friend’s letter in about the super delegates because this is an election
unlike one I have ever seen. Here’s an oped on letting the people decide. hey even I’m too young to really remember Kennedy’s election.
I will vote Democratic as I personally believe it extremely important that a Democrat occupy the White House. I believe that Ralph Nader was the true reason Gore didn’t win.
In this current election I have seen people who were totally disenfranchised become involved. I have seen them begin to believe a bit in America as a true democracy. I find that wonderful.
Hillary is a machine candidate, (here’s Frank Rich on her) and here’s something more personal. New York made a remarkable recovery after 9/11 or did we?
Bloomberg who few people truly like but most people respect has moved as much money around as he can. I can’t afford to live in Manhattan anymore and will sell my apartment, shortly, to somebody who does have several million in “disposable” income, and access to much credit.
Is that what we want Manhattan to be? Anybody who has read this blog for any length of time knows that 9/11 changed my life and not in a good way. I don’t have warm and fuzzy feelings about how great the people were. I remember the people and I do speak in glittering generalities as being worn and not able to deal with my personal tragedy.
It was the first time in my adult life I felt out of place. Time heals and I have put my mother’s death into perspective. There should have been help for people like me. I am a licensed social worker who did offer to begin support groups for people who lost loved ones around the time of 9/11 but not in it.
The man who lives upstairs from me is a drunk, fortunately in recovery now. He had to move back to the building as he was deemed a security risk living in The Boat Basin. He fell not once but many times every night for months. I would incorporate his falls into my dreams. Every night I would dream of people falling from The Towers. They would have my mother’s face as she died from a fall. She lived in the city; I live in Manhattan.
Yet I wasn’t eligible for the free help that was given so readily to people who had a second cousin once removed die in the attacks. I can’t forget that. I can’t help but believe if we had an administration that gave a damn–and senators who cared it might have been different. Every person who lived in the city was affected yet we were the only city not to have rallies, not to have the little things that help people heal. It was everybody for herself.
Yes that began my dislike of Hillary. She could have done so much for the people of New York City. She chose not to. She should have been screaming for the promised aid to come to New York then not to Montana and finally to New York three years later.
I will vote for her if I have to but it will be reluctantly.
I’m sorry I’m playing the same old song. I don’t enjoy it. I had to totally remake myself after 9/11. It wasn’t easy and it took time. I did but the psychic scars remain.
Life is good. Yes it is. See why it’s becoming good for me personally. Though I believe Horry County SC was the one county Obama didn’t take. I will be there for the general election where I will finally have a vote that counts. In the post below I included Caroline Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama. Caroline Kennedy can say the things many of us feel with more authority simply because she is who she is. I wish I remembered more about her father’s administration and less about his death but I was young…
The post below also has Bob Herbert’s truly excellent article “Questions for the Clintons.” It’s a rare Sunday that doesn’t belong solely to Frank Rich in my house…..
This article is about the death of young icons. Baby boomers grieved when James Dean died in 1955? As the oldest baby boomer was nine, and the peak year for baby boomer’s birth was 1957, this was almost impossible. I was four and rather doubt that I ever heard of James Dean. § Read the rest of this entry…
There’s a new 3WW below this. Here’s another blog My friend lives in this building. Great Upper West Side shots–and the building has an all marble wonderful lobby.
There are bad days and there are days you spend two and half hours on the phone or waiting for people at the cable company–and they exacerbate your problem but you finally figure it out.
The most adorable little girl comes up to you in Starbucks, puts her finger in your coffee, the top on and smiles at you. You have reached the point of no return and give her the look you have never given a kid. The coffee could have been hot–she could have scalded herself–but mostly you’re thinking how truly tacky it was that the mother didn’t control her behavior or make her say “I’m sorry.” Two words that go far in your life. That was the better part of your day until you saw a friend.
Jonathan and his wife Wendy are adopting children in a few days. I can and can’t imagine what they’re feeling as I was adopted, and some people that my father’s letter upon adopting me is the best written thing in this blog. As much as I love my father that doesn’t make me feel great.
Jonathan began a meme about what you have done since finishing school. I finished grad school twelve years ago and uh college 20 years before that. I don’t usually do memes, especially since they all seem to involve knowledge of 80’s hair bands and other musical things. Have nothing against 80’s hair bands or what song fits whats mood–but that’s like wearing a mood ring. Changes too often. Or stays the same for a year. § Read the rest of this entry…
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