Life goes on

I spent all weekend writing.

And my writing became darker and darker.  Yet I feel as if I’m not even a pebble that ripples through a lake that finds a tributary that finds a river that finds an estuary that works its way into the ocean–or something like that.  My waterway geography is a bit rusty and I’m from Long Island.  No excuses.

I have been staying away from TVs. Studies done after 9/11 showed that people who watched the most were the most depressed.  It’s just common sense I guess.  But there wasn’t the Huffpo then, and despite all the reasons I have never liked Arianna I find myself drawn to her paper as its coverage is the most dramatic and I think “no Pia, stop!!!.”

I miss home now.  Home being New York where I understand the people and they claim to understand me.  It’s not that I don’t like it here.  This is my home now.  But my closest friends here won’t be back for another two and a half weeks.

I wish I were a better person. One who could roll with all the punches and not feel so much.  But I do.  And then there’s the matter of the rapidly disappearing money.  Which is insignificant but it would have been safer under  my mattress.  Long story for some other time.  Maybe.

So I really have to focus on whether the world is falling apart or not.  Because maybe the world will come to an end in 2012, or I have heard the coasts will fall into the sea in October and now anything horrible seems possible no matter how crackpot the theory, and then I wouldn’t have to worry.

But I like to think I have focused on living a healthy good life so it could be a long and good one.  My own personal screw you to malevolent forces.  But it’s so hard.

I just have to remind myself I’m not even a pebble.

The last thing I really remember was wanting to write something exceptionally witty on the Groupon Superbowl commercial for Twitter.  This was to prove: my ability to write short wonderful retweeted things, show my disdain for Groupon (yes I got the intended joke just didn’t find it funny) and destined to make me famous.  Ha!

You know the one about going to the doctor perfectly healthy and two days later….I went for routine blood tests (fine) and even had the doctor check my lungs as I’m weird that way (fine.)

Two days later I began coughing.  And coughing.  And have never coughed so much in my life.   Only it’s not from my lungs it’s from my diaphragm which is getting such a great workout I could barely get out of bed.

In the past three days I’ve had the time to re-evaluate my life.  I kept telling myself I was sick and everything was under a cold/flu haze but still.  There are times that I feel as if I’m intellectually dying here.  I don’t miss the ice or the grit (not that cities are anymore) but I miss being able to walk 24/7.  I miss stores that assume you want delivery.  I miss great take out.  OK I would kill for good chicken in the pot and I don’t eat chicken.    I miss classes that I can take or not take.  I miss dark haired people like me who constantly question everything.

I can’t live a virtual life.  It’s just not me.

I miss saying no to dinners and sometimes saying yes.  I miss not having to make elaborate plans to do just about anything.

I don’t understand the South’s hatred of public transportation.  It’s ironic because so many of the homeless began with jobs but their cars died and it spiraled from there.  Don’t they understand that economic growth happens to areas that are prepared and being prepared includes public transportation?

I know I’m feeling better tonight and will probably be feeling almost healed tomorrow, but I so miss feeling part of a community.  I’m the different one here.  And no I’m not going to change my religion, change my politics, change my belief that we have free will, and sometimes that leads us to great places and other times not so great ones but it’s always our choice. (Which is going to be at odds with somethings I write for Psychology Today but I’m writing the different sides of me.)

Well it’s Thursday and I ventured the few blocks to “town” today.  I was hot.  I was cold.  I couldn’t wait to get back home and into bed.

If I bring two shopping bags with me, am I bringing one for show?  I always wonder about this as they put all the groceries into one bag though I always ask for them to use both or let me do the packing.  For once one bag left me breathless and I had to stop in the middle of the walk home and redistribute everything.  The bags felt weightless.

Before I grocery shopped, I spoke to the pharmacist I have a not so secret crush on who told me to keep drinking liquids, and agreed with me that going to the doctor was iffy.  For some reason the coastal part of Horry County is the hardest hit by the flu.

When Eldon drives me to the doctor he waits outside so he can laugh at all the people who come out while waiting to have a cigarette break–as they’re coughing.  I think that’s the reason.

The newspaper says it’s because we get so many tourists but I’m from New York and have never seen such a virulent outbreak.  And if you don’t have a tissue or something that will pass for one, cough on your elbow.  Thanks.  Signed a public service announcement!

I am feeling better.  Actually have an appetite–the one thing I liked about this was not eating!

I’m back to liking the South!  Just need some down home NY cooking, and some New Yorkers!!!!!  CLo and W, my former landlords, here, are coming in three weeks.  Let me go as I’m beginning to babble!

Friday: It’s raining again.  Yesterday was the first day since last Sunday it didn’t rain and before that I can’t remember.  It feels as if it’s been raining forever.  I’m bored but I’m still sick.  My sinuses are still clogged.  I don’t think I will need the newest version of my will because of this but you never know.

Tomorrow begins a spate of warmer sunny days.  Please, please!!!  I moved here thinking the weather while still cool in winter was decent.  Then every winter has been “the coldest winter anybody can remember.”  Tired of that.  Tired of people who don’t believe in climate change.  If they don’t believe the industrial revolution and everything that happened after was enough to foul the air and….They deserve the ramifications.  The rest of us don’t.  Let me go before I lose my last two friends or something.

My first blog post in Psychology Today

Almost six and a half years ago this began as a blog about my life and interests. My friend said “let’s begin blogs.”  I almost asked what one was but had heard of Anna Marie Cox then known as the Wonkette.  I am very political.

Somehow people enjoyed my stories and my blog took off.

I lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan then in a luxe doorman building I wouldn’t have been able to afford moving into in 04. Read more…

The thing is my great-uncle cut his finger off because of “blood libel.”  He didn’t want to be conscripted into the Czar’s army and have to shoot his own relatives or any Jew.  My grandparents and their parents somehow escaped to England where they took ships to America.  We never knew how they escaped as they wouldn’t talk about that part of their lives, or their lives in Belarus.  “Past is past” they would say.  America was their future.  And their children’s future.

But my parents told us about “blood libel.”  I can’t remember when I was first told that people in Belarus thought Jews used the blood of Christians in matzohs.  My parents, both born in Manhattan, would have only known if people in their family told them.  They knew so little about their parents lives before New York.  “We didn’t ask then.”  “If we asked they wouldn’t have told us.”  Or I might have read about it.  A friend might have told me.  It could have been conversation around the court.  I don’t remember but I always knew the truly horrible concept, if not the name.  I do remember reading The Elders of Zion.  My father gave it to me.  We talked about it.  It made me ill.  So did Henry Ford. (I think I wanted to know why we never had Ford cars.)

I know both my grandfathers came over on the same boat and were roommates for awhile in a boarding house.  They didn’t meet again until after my parents began dating.  I always loved that story. I had wanted to give my mother something with both their names on it as tangible proof that my grandfathers knew each other. But when I found the boat I could only find my maternal grandfather on it.  I’m sure my paternal grandfather used a fake name.  It sounds like something his family would do.  “Blood libel.”  Until they reached America, they didn’t want to be known as Jews.  We were raised on the few stories of the pogroms my parents knew, and my maternal grandmother would tell stories.  Except about the week she was caught in a pogrom, separated from her family and saved by a family of “friendly Christians,” as people who helped Jews were known.   She was eleven.

I can’t believe that even Sarah Palin knew the history of the phrase she was using.  Yet she used it in a way she (or more probably her writer) thought was empathetic.  It never is.

I hope that this past week brings back unity to this country.  I hope we have all stopped to examine our own behavior and beliefs.  I know; I’m seeing too much good in people.  But people are basically good.  Who wasn’t sickened by the shootings?  And President Obama was everything I had hoped he would be, for two years,  last night.  He made cry in a good way.  He made me proud to call myself American.

And I’m ready to put this issue to bed.  I have to focus on all the good that’s happening in my life right now!  Did I tell you I totally lost my ability to write?

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Etta James is only 71–too young, way too young to be suffering from dementia.   She has cancer, too.  I think this is one of the most beautiful songs in the history of songs

I must thank Cooper.  When I look at this I feel such immense gratitude, and further words fail me.

This is a difficult post for me to write.  I have many religious friends.  I respect their rights to believe whatever they want as long as it harms nobody.  But when Westboro “Baptist” Church came to a town, and the counter-protesters were greeted with more disdain than the protesters–I kept my real reaction under wraps.  I can’t anymore.

First, in a large city like NY or in another political climate, I would have ignored them.  Here where most people wore red to vote, I felt it important to show that Westboro is an anomaly.   I’m not sure the congregants at this church realized how sick Westboro is. I think they thought the counter-demonstrators were the ones to be scared of and that made me sad.

I don’t believe in either heaven or hell.  I don’t believe in the big sleep where one day the Messiah will wake all Jews up.  I don’t believe my lack of beliefs condemns me.  And if it does, at least I have acted upon my principles during my one lifetime on earth or anywhere probably.  I would so like to believe in something bigger than us.  I can’t and don’t consider that a character flaw.

I understand why people in big cities ignored Westboro though I don’t think they will anymore.  Westboro is a sick sick sick group of fanatics who condemn every person, every church, every school that don’t believe in what they believe.  Which is 99.99% of us.

I got over it when a group of people counter-demonstrated members of Westboro who were picketing a nearby church last spring and the church had the police escort us far far away.  Though many in the police told us they supported us–being Vets and all.  Cars drove by honking their horns in support.  We were right to express our disdain.  There were Jews who lost family members in the Holocaust.  “By the time they came for me, there was nobody left to speak…”  There were people who just wanted to show their disdain against a false church.

I was told by members of the church that turning the other cheek is better, and how many people they baptized that day.  I wimped out and said “that’s great.” (It’s in a post and comments somewhere.)

I should have asked them if they know history.  If they understand that this incredible yet flawed country was based on the principle of religion freedom.  I could give history lesson going back to the Pilgrims, a little William Penn and then onto more modern history.

I could explain that my family came here as they weren’t allowed to have a profession, own land or do many things we take for granted. (Though I’m not sure about the land ownership anymore.)  My mother cried the day we bought our house.  She so wished her mother was alive to have witnessed that.  We were finally fully American.  All we needed was to switch from Miracle Whip to Hellman’s and to begin eating white bread.

Living in America is both a privilege and a responsibility. We are still the nation most people want to immigrate to.  We have tremendous natural resources (I will leave taking care of them for other people to discuss.)  We have tremendous wealth.  Yes it is centered on the top one percent and that has to stop but we do have opportunities most people never have.  I can list everything that’s bad about this country but in my heart of heart I’m glad to be American.

We have the Constitution.  Lately a lot has been said about “liberals wanting to change it.”  Where? I do think that public figures have a responsibility, a great responsibility to not make inflammatory remarks.  From the first time I saw Sarah Palin’s now infamous MAPP I was sick. She incites on purpose and then stands back and says nothing. Some people here think Palin’s a role model.  My role models don’t have “targets.”

My role models try to do the right thing and unfortunately that means being silent.  We can’t be silent anymore.  People who aspire to political office should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us.  They should voluntarily sign pledges saying that they understand “crying fire” has consequences.  They should understand that’s not meant literally, but that many people don’t understand nuances.  If people understood nuances would we have to use LOL all the time and colons with parentheses to show a smiley face or other things?

I hope we begin national dialogues.  I hope Sarah Palin understands that her MAPP wasn’t an innocuous fun exercise but something people could take literally.

And when Westboro comes to town we should come out enmasse to show that their power lies in bringing people together, against them.  Nothing else.  I stopped being over Westboro when they attempted to picket Elizabeth Edwards funeral and now when they plan to picket the funerals of people killed in Mesa.  Yes they have First Amendment rights.  So do I.

*The church I’m talking about has beach baptisms in the summer.  They have them near where I sit but I can’t say anything as it’s within their First Amendment rights.  It’s not within any rights for them to bring a car and park on it the beach but….So why do they think they can hamper my First Amendment right to peacefully protest by having police take us far from the church?

Yesterday as I looked at the assorted pick-ups parked in my court cul de sac, it finally occurred to me that I went from living a sophisticated Manhattan life to one that The Dukes of Hazzard would be proud of, not that I have ever seen the show or movie.  Nothing against pick-ups; I have become very used to riding around town in Eldon’s only cleaned on Christmas and his birthday truck that’s chock full of instruments of the contractor/handyman/bar designer/floor installer trade.  And my next door neighbor’s is downright pretty.  The Professor is a retired judge turned law school professor.  Whenever I call him The Professor he chokes with laughter as most people around here think he’s a retired handyman.  He likes people to think he’s an uneducated redneck and does a damn good impression of one.   He has long white hair that’s thicker and frizzier than mine if that’s possible, and wears shorts and sandals even in the dead of winter.  I only know his profession as my neighbors on the other side are both lawyers and they know people who know people who know him.

I’m not a New Yorker anymore!  Not only am I not a New Yorker, I moved to the wrong Carolina*, didn’t move to South Florida, California or any of the four other places Upper West Siders’ move to.  When I’m not freaking about losing my bragging rights to Manhattan I truly love it here.  But the transition’s taking a long time.  Though most of my “problems” are truly stupid.  I’m freezing because I forget that the landlord can turn up the heat!

Will I ever call myself a Southerner?

*Asheville, Chapel Hill and even Charlotte are on cool lists. Oh, I forgot about Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach– a mini Charleston that’s also a TV & film production town and one of the most beautiful beaches anywhere.

I was in the zoo at Grant Park, when a bee became at home between my fingers.  I frantically jerked my elbow and fingers.  The bee flew off but the stinger was inside me.

“CLo,” I screamed,  ” a bee bit me.”

She thought I was remarkably calm.  I was as I was in shock.

My finger felt rigid and hurt but I was breathing properly so we did touristy things.  OK I had never been in a Trader Joe’s before my trip to Atlanta.  That night we went with W to Piedmont Park where we saw The Eagles.  I began remembering different phases of my life–passing The Hotel California in Paris in my 20′s and wondering if the song had anything to do with that hotel–as The Memory Motel in Montauk inspired The Stones song–that was before I knew The Hotel California in Santa Monica.

I loved Miami Vice and always associate Glen Frey with it.  I had taken CLo’s sister and another friend to South Beach the year before and said “this will be the next big thing.”  They laughed.  I wish I had the courage to act on my beliefs–as in buying property.

I was young, and Miami Vice was a new type of show.  Glossy, showcased houses, a very hot actor (Don Johnson,) and great music.  “You belong to the city,” came from that show.  It was the first action series for the MTV generation and I guess I was part of the original MTV crowd.

Being a good New Yorker I was very familiar with Europe, the Eastern seaboard from The Cape and Boston to DC, then South Florida but had only been around the country several times.  I thought about this at the concert as I made a bucket lists of concerts I want to go to before I die or the group does.  My finger was throbbing.

The next day we went walking Piedmont Park and the surrounding areas–I think you can only learn a place on foot. It was weird that my body felt so stiff when we were continually walking.

That night I went to see one of my goddaughter’s–CLo’s daughter Thai who lives in CLo’s old loft, downtown.  CLo and W live in a stunning loft in Midtown.

Thai’s loft can only be compared to BUPPIE Friends.  She’s 40, her friends are all ages and in and out constantly.  We went to a Pan Asian food where you pick out the food and they cook it.  It’s a lot more adventurous than the Mongolian Grill in North Myrtle.

The thing about CLO, W, Thai and her assorted friends is that they’re all interesting.  Into books, politics, music, TV yes TV, all kinds of culture, good food and physical activity because it’s fun.  I so needed to be with people who care about the things I care about.

But by the time we got to dinner I was nauseous and I looked at my right hand.  It was all red and a third larger (all swollen than my left hand.)Thai gave me some Benadryl and the swelling went down.  It came back but is much better.  My body no longer feels stiff.

I was so happy to be in a city that wasn’t NY I never complained.  The only go to NY–Myrtle Beach, Myrtle Beach-NY, at least 20 times in the past three years curse is over.  I so needed to be around people from all over the world who aren’t suspicious of, even if just a bit, of people who don’t look or act exactly like them.   We all type people and I need “PBS lady,”  “former punk,”  “dark haired men with wry sardonic senses of humor,” “arty woman,”  “hippie dippie,” and more.  Oh I need to be accepted for me without reservation.  Here  I have to work too hard at being accepted and that’s never fun.

Especially for somebody who has spent much of her adult life being embraced by people, and still is by city people.  I can no longer be  quiet about my politics or agnostic but Jewish beliefs.  Yet it makes life so much easier.  But is it worth it?

I realize a lot of my focus on NLD the past year has been because I’ve been online too much.  I personally need  in person classes, book readings, and a whole lot of mental stimulation.And of course writing the book brings up all the bad stuff.  I think I can have that under control if I stay aware.

Oh I loved Atlanta and plan on going back frequently.  I’m not going to NY for any part of the Thanksgiving to New Years scene–I think.  I’ll be working on my book and I need a break from New York. I would love to see New York as a true tourist and just go too frequently. I know that is a problem many people would  love to have.

I probably will be posting excerpts or the sheet I thrashed out or threw out.

I had a facebook sticker of the Steven Colbert/Jon Stewart rally up.  A good friend here who should have known better asked if I was going to the Colbert march for anger.

I’m going to Jon Stewart’s rally tor sanity as I know first hand that sanity needs to be restored.  There’s way too much anger in this country.  I’m proud to be a Democrat in a Republican stronghold.  If you live in NY you have no excuse not to go as Ariana Huffington’s chartering free buses!!!!!!

I feel a zillion pounds lighter than I did last week.  And the bee inflammation is much better.  Itchy if you must know.

Thanks Thom for the words

The following isn’t my book but the side affects of it.  Or how my hair is turning gray at record rates because this book and life leaves me emotionally drained.  And when I try to get in touch with NLD groups and/or coaches nobody gets back to me or tells me I’m too old.  Funny but I thought this was supposed to be the prime of life. I didn’t mean for this post to be so all around the world with Pia.  I’m not a bad person or a bad writer and yet I’m back to feeling everybody else deserves more than I do–no matter what I say later in this post. it’s the outcome of years of trying too much yet being told I wasn’t trying at all and if I just did….I tried making this private as I didn’t want to trash it but don’t want to subject people to feeling they have to comment

I’m so tired.  Lord am I tired of trying.  I fear that my old age is going to come earlier than it should so I do everything I can to stave it off.  However how do I know that dementia or Parkinson’s or something akin to either one won’t happen?  I could appear demented at eighteen–hence the title Space Chick with the Electric Hair.

You make a mistake.  You get angry sometimes for a second then shrug it off.  I make a mistake.  I get angry then angrier.  How do I know it won’t happen again?  Sometimes it happens for the 20th million time or so it feels.  I can’t absolve myself of guilt, of fear, of so many ordinary things.  I can’t let go of stupid mistakes that anybody can and does make.

“Relax,” you say: “picture yourself relaxing on a beach…..”  Idiot!  I live at the beach and my problems aren’t in my head–they’re neurological.* Thanks Lillian, Bill for that sorta analogy.  Two more adults with non verbal learning disorder (NLD). *Actual brain malfunctions rather than emotional I should clarify.

No matter how much I relax I have to live in the real world and the real world isn’t relaxing.  I have to be on constant guard that my gait is good.  That I don’t look spacey.  That I do everything correctly.  That I don’t take too much time counting change or scanning in items in the store.  Little everyday things aren’t little to me.

Anxiety is a killer and I have high blood pressure to prove that.  Perfect blood tests.  No physical reason the doctors say.  But blood pressure that was off the roof because I wanted to go off Klonopin and no doctor would help me–I no longer have great health insurance.  Pre-existing conditions. ANXIETY.  The insurance company claimed I was lying about never being hospitalized.  But I haven’t been.  Yet I can’t prove a negative.  ANXIETY  can cover so much–high blood pressure, then anything to do with the heart or a stroke or I can go on and on.

I’m under insured (but pay double in premiums each month just to help me lose money, and because I’m too scared not to be insured ) doctors no longer find me “remarkable,” “hilarious in a good way,” or “wonderful.”  But a frigging charity case they probably hiss at when I leave.

Me, a charity case!  I can’t be.  I’m not the one that should be ridiculed.  We should ridicule a system that won’t stop pre-existing conditions for adults until 2014.  Of course health care might be overturned and then my premiums that cover so little could go up to the sky and I will be totally uninsured.  And it’s not fair for anybody including me who has paid into the system forever.

I never thought about these things when I was young.  Youth seemed endless.  True I could never absolve myself of the guilt I constantly felt.  Mea culpa, mea culpa!!!!!  I delighted it seemed in taking blame.  Used to make “funny” remarks about it.  “I would apologize to a street lamp.” OK I have!  I used to tell people I began World War Two. It seemed funny at the time considering I wasn’t born then.

I used humor, some sort of ability to make people like me and my personality as a cover.  I came of age in the late 60′s–70′s.  It was OK to be different.  It was more than OK; it was great.  I look back at the life I led in disbelief.  I can’t believe I was not only comfortable working in a huge room with 240 people but one of the stars.  I can’t believe I not only went to huge parties but had them twice a year.

I watch Hoarders and think “this could be me.”  For I don’t have an organizational bone in my body.  And I was messy.  Very messy.  I went through an entire relationship without once letting him into my apartment.  True he was my boss and I didn’t really like him.  True we went out to dinner one night and I got trashed.  Didn’t mean to but….Ended up in his bed and woke up from my black out screaming at him.  I ran from his apartment scared that I would run into somebody I knew for it felt like half my world lived in that building in the late 70′s–early 80′s.  People who played important parts in my life lived in The Atrium–which I later called the Melrose Place of the Village because it felt so interconnected and scandalous .  Though I have to say I was the scandal a third of the time.

Most of the time my apartment was half-decent. I love having company, and don’t buy because it fulfill needs.  I bought because I had no place to do laundry.  I bought because I loved the way I looked in clothes and lived near many interesting stores.

I loved the use of candles instead of lights so people couldn’t see too closely.  My apartment was built in the 20′s and hadn’t been renovated since then.  When I moved in the fridge was one step up from an ice box.  I bought a new one.  But the apartment had no amenities, was hard to clean for anybody, and not walking distance from a Laundromat. What it had was pre-war charm (without light), 12 and a half foot ceilings, a huge archway, and a renter who would get everybody drunk or stoned when they walked in–lighten up it was the 70′s and uh 80′s.  I also cooked in those days and nobody turned down my food.  Most of the time I went out.  Most of all it had location–just off Fifth Avenue in the East 60′s.   I loved that apartment and would probably have waited to be bought out if there hadn’t been five floods in three weeks that destroyed it–and building management wouldn’t do a thing.  I of course thought the aftermath of the floods somehow my fault and didn’t press too hard for them to fix everything.  Idiot!!!!!

I taught myself organizational skills.  It didn’t come easy and I let a dresser draw and part of a closet be disorganized.  Places where I can just throw things to later put them in order.  But my kitchen, bathrooms, living room, and guest room are all immaculate.  Even my study is always “company ready.”  Honestly I have myself convinced that the Horry County police are going to come in at any moment.  I know how irrational that is.  But here people just stop over and almost demand entree.

I bought my apartment on Riverside Drive because I could see its potential for organization.  It was the first time in my life I organized an apartment or anything rather than have it control me.  I do consider an every two week cleaning woman one of life’s necessities for me.  In the city Zobedia understood me and was incredible.  Here my cleaning woman does the minimum but I pay her much less and love her politics and wit–not too many white women voted for Obama in my small beach city.

*******

A friend asked in a post “who reads blogs anymore?”  It feels, to me, that there are hundreds of blogging associations most of which think you should put your personal blog to bed and blog solely for them. Never!

At the same time I like facebook for socializing and yes linking my posts. Twitter scares me as it entails looking for subjects and more.  Honestly I just want to write.  I don’t want to do all the periphery stuff but I will if it means an old fashioned book contract.  I know I’m not organized enough to self-publish.  So why do I think I’m organized enough to be published?  I waver on that one but believe that not enough is known about a disability that has affected every aspect of my life.  As I said I don’t know if it will affect my mind–in different and worse ways than it has already.  Though it can be argued that people with NLD have poor judgment, I have always been known for basically having excellent judgment and I’m not going to argue with a lifetime of assessments. More than anything I fear my judgment going.

I read yesterday that people with NLD can’t focus on books and get fidgety when read to.  They were talking about kids.  Knock me over with a spoon and some codeine.  I loved being read to and taught myself to read before entering Kindergarten.  My older by a year boy cousin couldn’t believe I could read so fast so he  tested me with a boy book he knew I had never read.  Yes I really could read both fast and with perfect comprehension.  I’m sorry if this doesn’t jive with some for profit learning center for kids and people with dementia but uh….

I’m not being vain when I say there are few adults who admit to having NLD and fewer that can write like I can.  I really want to write edgy fiction.  But I feel compelled to get my story out there.  And honestly when people without NLD write about it they generalize or get subtle things wrong.  When parents write they write from their perspective.  Which is OK.  But I am a writer.  I have a compelling story.  I hate pitching it.  I hate having to sell myself on FB, Twitter etc.  It feels like much clutter being added to my day.

I realize we live in the era of shameless self-promotion.  I’m good at having a bold facade–something I always was in real life too.  Distracts from the mess inside and I was vain.  It ends there.  I stopped reading blogs looking for “followers” on networked blogs–and if you said you were a follower of mine rather than a reader I would hand you the Kool Aide. Anyway, people promote blogs–that they sound proud of and have nothing to be proud of, IMHO.

I do yet I have so much trouble being a part of this whole new world—and I was here long before many or most bloggers.  Not just in the regular world but in the blogging world.  I feel as if I missed my chance.  I missed it because I was too overwhelmed.  Now I’m ready yet is the world still ready for me?  I feel weird posting this.  It’s as if I can’t absolve myself of sins real and imagined.  I hiss at myself and both ridicule me and hold myself up to ridicule.  But I’m as worthy as any mother of any child with Asperger’s (the disorder de jour) or person with bipolar disorder–another disorder that gets much play in the blogosphere probably because it’s easy to understand!  I want to make NLD easy to understand and I almost promise to keep the posts shorter as I was until last week.  I’m tired of having to explain NLD.  I’m tired of writing about it but being obsessive….

I’m sorry well maybe a little for the length of this. I’m going away tomorrow for a long weekend and have much to do so if you comment on this I won’t be around until Tuesday at the earliest

Tomorrow is the ninth anniversary of my Mom’s death.  Sunday would have been her birthday.  It would have been nice to celebrate on 10/10/10.  This is my Mom in her later years.

I  am so exhausted from a ten day trip to New York–which I love but god I have to get to Europe   It’s a bit tiring.  This always going to NY thing.  It really is rinse, spit, repeat–even if you love that it gets tiring.  Especially when the beginning of the trip is waiting for the hurricane that never happened and the ending, well, the ending was in a class by itself.

First, I’m obsessive and have a tendency to imagine the worst but thought that was in the past; that I worked through the reasons I did that.   I wasn’t crazed about my house on this trip but did call Eldon twice.  As always he was watching the house.  I’ve never called him before from a trip.  I called three times including once from the airport on the way home because I just had a feeling….

When I came home we were driving down my street.  I saw a few blocks blocked off with fire trucks and police cars.   It looked like the house on fire was in my court.  I managed to get to a close street that was blocked off, and a safety agent was directing traffic away to Main Street.

I gave her my address and asked if it were my house.  She said: “I don’t know.  it might be.”

Frigging bitch.  I freaked as we drove down Main Street.  I finally was able to get out and walk to my court–thank god for suitcases with wheels.

The fire was in the court just above mine.  A very nice elderly couple was coming home from the beach to find out that their house was “gone” in the interior.

I’m exhausted,  beyond happy that it wasn’t my house, guilty that I feel that way, and a little angry that the safety officer didn’t call on her cell to find out what house it was.  I spoke to the fire and police in charge and they defended her saying that she had just been called in.  But isn’t it their responsibility to make sure that people coming home know if it’s their home that’s been lost to fire or not?

I found out why I love Facebook.  I wasn’t up to communicating directly with people.  Facebook gave me a place to vent, to be comforted, to explain why I wasn’t contacting some people directly though I had promised to call when I arrived home.

This was my worst nightmare–coming home from vacation to a burnt house.  Fortunately it was somebody else’s home, unfortunately for them.  And I will bring this up to city officials.  Damn, just saw the Mayor’s husband and didn’t even think…..

I am missing New York something fierce tonight. It was an incredibly hot day; one where my temper was as fierce as the weather. Then we had another tropical rainstorm which lingered into evening–not very tropical but I guess welcome.

My garden has been suffering. There are some potted plants that need to be watered maybe six times a day in this heat and I just can’t, but when it rain inches in an hour or two, the rain overwhelms the plants.

This summer isn’t a “nobody remembers one like this,” but there hasn’t been one with so many consecutive hot days. It does cool down a lot at night, now, and that does help.
You can almost feel summer ending though it’s so hot and that’s sad too.

The thing about New York is it’s all about possibilities. My move to South Carolina coincided with the worst economic times since the depression, yadda yadda….I was supposed to save money not lose it!

I don’t regret the move. I love my new friends, my house, having a new life and being so close to the ocean.

I bought a safe today as part of my hurricane preparedness plan; the other part is buying plywood as I live in what FEMA considers a low risk area but then I have to ask myself questions about FEMA and do I trust them? Then I remember that there’s a fairly new admin and I get even more confused as I’m not sure how much of FEMA consists of career civil servants and do they really make the policies etc? I remember how Social Security, a former employer of mine, could have five regulations for one situation and non superseded any other. As a claims rep you had to use your judgment, and decide which is the best for the individual. Though you have three months of training, every office has its own training and biases on rulings.

I would assume a hurricane’s more clear cut but then I remember Katrina and others and….

I know because I live east of Route 17 I have to evacuate if the hurricane is over a certain category. I have all sorts of plans and back-up plans mostly involving train rides or riding it out at my friend Lil Red’s house in Little River.

I have never thought so much about hurricanes but the storm two weeks ago woke me up to the very distinct possibility……

It’s the sad season for me, though this year I barely feel the familiar dual sadness of what September signifies for everybody and October for me. And not feeling that sadness brings its own mixed feelings for it means I have moved on, and left both my parents beyond somewhere. For when I grieved so arduously for my mother I also had my father. Now I have neither. Carrying them in my heart is very different.

Finally I know the age you are no longer an adult orphan. It’s the age you leave all the grief for whatever reasons. In my case I think it was because it was just too damn hard to carry it with me.

No it wasn’t New York I was missing tonight. It was both the life of sadness and the happy life before it I was missing. And yes I still can write but truly believe I need cooler weather. Even with the AC on my brain has been on melt.