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…

We’re having an uncontained large fire. It’s on the other side of the intercoastal and so far on the other side of North Myrtle. It’s a little exciting and very scary.
Day 2) They’re almost downplaying the fire on the news I live north of it. I would put an article from the New York Times in but unfortunately it’s the best I could find

This is for 3WW Here are parts one and two
Is deceit a vital part of growing up? Between ages fifteen and 24 there were many times I did set out to deceive my parents. By the time I was 25, in 1975-76, I was tired of playing word games with the truth. At 25, I wanted to indulge my long suffering father.

I had been “living” at my parents house for six months by January 3, 1976. I put “living” in quotes as most nights I would stay on my friend Shelby’s couch or in some guy’s apartment. I remember the first time I saw cable TV. I can’t describe the guy but I still remember the building, and his living room where WNEW-FM (my radio station then) played in the background while Reuters News scanned the picture tube. It was, I thought, a miracle. I can’t say the same for the sex as I don’t remember it.

When I came “home,” it would usually be two or three in the morning. My parents couldn’t and wouldn’t say anything as they had raised me without a curfew, and I made it to the train to the city and work each morning. They didn’t know about the little envelope of white powder I sometimes used. I never liked coke as a party drug but as something to keep me functioning I loved it.

When I indulged, which was most nights and many mornings and afternoons for I worked at a hand painted tee shirt company where my boss was a junkie; the art director an alkie, and I the coordinator between departments and assistant to the president, I would indulge in my drug of choice–pot. I tried keeping it to a manageable level.

So yes I was deceiving my parents but they were silent partners to it. I “lived” at their house so I could save my money for an apartment. My father insisted on paying for my monthly train ticket.

Years before after I dropped out of college, lived in Stuyvesant Town, and saved my money for an open ended ticket to Europe and Israel, I went to the travel agency to pick my ticket up:
Oh you’re just a few minutes late. A very handsome older man bought it for you The woman squealed. She thought I was horrors of horrors living off an older man. And I was.
Did he have a large nose, too long hair for somebody his age and a moustache?
Yes
That’s no man, that’s my father.

Whenever we went to restaurants and they tried to seat us in the lovers banquettes I made that distinction clear. I didn’t want my father mistaken for my lover and I didn’t want him to buy me things. I wanted the privilege of paying my own way.

I took a silent oath saying I would return anything he gave me. I tried returning the ticket. He was beyond insulted and told me that I could put the money in an Israeli bank account he had set up for me.

I knew then I was bought and paid for. It wasn’t until recently that I understand the pride a parent takes in being able to give. Fortunately I always knew how much my father loved me. Even in the years between fifteen to 25 when we our language was clocked and fraught with many different meanings.
Life’s too short to spend bitching

This is for this weeks 3WW Totally forgot to put it in! Me bad

I always start the story of Jeffrey and me with the day we met. That sounds normal until I remember I never start at the beginning. But that was one of the ten most incredible days of my life–and 50% of it happened before we met.

The allure of May 20, 1979 is simple. It was an incredibly beautiful day in the city everybody loved to hate. New York was supposed to be dangerous . I was out at all hours everywhere and my wallet was stolen once. I had just cashed my paycheck and everybody in my office pitched in to replace it. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else though I dreamed of a beach house.

I walked from my apartment at 5 East 63rd Street, one of the best addresses in New York though the building itself had and would see better days to Folk City, the club that Marilyn, Robbie and Joe were soon to buy. Folk City was on 3rd Street near 6th Avenue then. It was dark and tobacco stained. With a bar filled with talking people. Peggy the lesbian bartender who married a man gave certain friends of the house triples, though Robbie refuses to believe that. I could hold my liquor. But never there. The Roches didn’t write “Face down at Folk City“(read the lyrics. First time I heard the song I cried from joy) because girls were sober.*

It’s easy to say Marilyn, Robbie, Joe and I are old friends. Truth, the unvarnished truth is always simpler or more complicated. When we were very young Robbie and I had been briefly married. We weren’t meant to be spouses. I had run to Europe to start my life over in 1971. I came home not because I missed him though I suppose I did but because I had a premonition a healthy friend would die. Together we couldn’t figure out how to warn him and JohnnyB died as I became engaged against my better judgement and married a few months later.

By 1979 we were long divorced and had become friends. I wanted Robbie to marry Marilyn; and I wanted to fall in love. It’s hard for many people to understand that I wished them every happiness. I liked, and like, them. Marilyn was perfect for Robbie in ways that I’m not. The once overbearing love I had felt for him had long ago turned to love for a friend. I’m human; I wanted what I saw they had. And I saw it before many other people. If I’m devoting too much time to this, I want it out of the way. It’s only important to the story because it took place in Folk City and Robbie played a part in Jeffrey and I meeting. It’s not even absurdest or ironic humor but truly funny.

Be careful what you wish for had been my motto since I began college eleven years earlier. I should have remembered it as I walked through the various districts Manhattan had then. The sky was a vivid blue; a perfect blue. It was hot but not humid. I was wearing new jeans and stopped at Macy’s to buy some Willie Smith clothes. I didn’t yet know why I went out of my way to buy clothes but they would play a part in the story also.

Then I walked through the flower district so gay in every sense. From his perch on a human’s shoulder, a parrot asked if I was happy and did I desire sex. Yes, I thought, but not with you. I was happy though had you asked me I would have analyzed the thought to death. I tended to over-analyze every facet of my life.

Was it Lucinda William’s debut at Folk City? I’m not sure though I have post upon post, unpublished article upon article about that day; the last truly uncomplicated day of my life.
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*In the 90′s I saw the Roches perform at Steven Talkhouse in South Beach. They asked how many people in the audience had been in Folk City’s basement–kind of infamous. I didn’t raise my hand but almost everybody else in the audience did. The people I was with looked at me as if I were crazy, but I didn’t want to be part of a pretend party.

That’s it. Photos in a few days.
Two Iranian Christian bloggers are missing. As I’m four fifths on an incredible natural high, one fifth scared I left the townhouse not perfect and three fifths crazed by the money I have been spending when I should be saving, truly horrible things are happening. I know my math was off; it’s just the way I feel
This is a photo of me and the boyfriend I call well lots of things. If it doesn’t link properly I will have it later.

We’re in Folk City in the late 70′s. I met Jeffrey (his real name) when one of the soon to be new owners of Folk City, Robbie Woliver told me I had to come back the next day to see a girl who was better than incredible. My friend Helena and I had stopped by after dinner at Panchito’s a greasy horrible cheap Mexican restaurant that was very beautiful (I think) and everybody loved though if you didn’t eat your food in two minutes it congealed. Most people really went for the endless chips, dips and frozen Margaritas.

People liked hanging with me because well I hope they enjoyed me and I had contacts at all pivotal clubs in Manhattan. It was strange. I even knew Marc the doorman at Studio.

Helena lectured me because I was working twelve to fourteen hour days six days a week. I had recently been promoted to supervisor in a computerized litigation company and loved my job. But Helena was right. I realized the next day I wanted a boyfriend and set out to get me one. I have written in depth about the walk from 63rd & Fifth to the Village. How I stopped at Macys and bought new clothes–as it turned out it wslucky for me I didn’t have to go to work in the same clothes.

Yes those were the days I would think “I want a boyfriend” and despite my extreme shyness one would appear. The same thing happened with weight. “I want to lose 20 pounds,” and I would. Now–well I really try with the weight thing and it’s more manageable but the other thing….If you don’t try….and sadly I didn’t have to learn the skills.

The girl was Lucinda Williams. She and Jeff were friends from New Orleans and he suggested she send Moses Ash of Folkways a demo tape. Jeff had a recording contract with them. She didn’t become real famous for another decade at least but Rob was right; she blew the audience away. It was a star studded audience; filled with recording artists, producers, reviewers. I was in music groupie heaven. Problem was I could never be an actual groupie type. I was more the girlfriend type. I was shy. Robbie would come over and tell me that so and so wanted to meet me–he would come over constantly. I would smile demurely. Sometimes I want to hit the girl I was and tell her–all you had to do was smile at the guy–not Robbie. I always said I had to be hit over the head.

Jeff was the only one who came over and told me a bad joke. I’m a total sucker for bad Polish jokes. It was the 70′s and Jeff and I moved in together two days later. I plead the 70′s defense.
The thing was Jeffrey was sexy. Real sexy for the time. I felt as if I had been hit over the head by–I’m not sure I can describe the feeling. All my girlfriends were impressed. Very impressed. All my male friends disliked but tolerated him.

Jeff was the only one who came over and told me a bad joke. I’m a total sucker for bad Polish jokes. It was the 70′s and Jeff and I moved in together two days later. I plead the 70′s defense.

I have written a lot about Jeffrey. I did love him. For about six months he made me happier than I could imagine being. I think I did the same to him. I really didn’t mean to write this much.

This post was written under the influence of “I bought a house, sweated the renovation, and paid for everything, and wow, my life is becoming exciting once more. Only this time I’m in charge.”

Ms. Maya Hunt was sitting at her computer watching her rapidly dwindling portfolio. She thought she had $600 every day this year in unrealized (not sold) losses. One 07 statement she had to give her accountant showed 200K in (sold, stock or money market fund never to be seen by her again) realized losses. When times get tough…She poured a triple Absolut and thought she should really invest in liquor companies.

Just as she finished pouring the phone rang. Her cousin Madison didn’t even say hello but began screaming about AIG and Warren Buffet. Madison was walking down West End Avenue and couldn’t care less who heard. She hung up and realized Maya hadn’t said a word. Not even “how are you?” Ill mannered her mother had always called that branch of her family.

Madison saw her pot dealer Frankie who kissed her and began talking about how his brother was walking away from a 300K condo loft deposit. When Frankie and Madison parted ways at 97th Street, Frankie saw his clfriend (client friend) Henry. Damn if Henry wasn’t screaming to himself. Nah, he had a bluetooth on.

Henry, an intellectual property lawyer, was on the phone with his clfriend, Neil, who had just had the last of his margin called. He didn’t know how he was going to tell his wife. Henry tried to sound encouraging as he tried even harder to get off the phone so he could buy some weed from Frankie.

Neil bought a bunch of tulips from a Korean grocery and almost fell on the slushy icing up snow, and walked up the 12 flights of stairs. By the time he arrived in the apartment he thought of something to tell his wife but Maya was sprawled on the couch face down, a drink knocked over and an unlit joint in her hand.

We can. We will. It’s our time. If not we go down fighting

Yes, We can. We will. Or we will go down fighting.
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My middle name is Tani. I like to think the store was named for me though they refuse to admit that”

Dave will never let people forget who canceled an appearance. Bad McCain.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
New York seemed so much more innocent then
People talked about real estate, Obama and the election.
Now people talk about money, real estate, Obama, the election, how McCain is losing it and Sarah Palin who abuses her power and seems to believe that anybody who went to four or fewer colleges is an elitist.

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.

Caroline Kennedy on VP vetting. I have a friend who is going to vote for McCain because Hillary didn’t vote. She lost her job recently and is very much suffering the consequences of the past eight years but….
One very hot morning i saw a bus with the legend “God’s Country Tours,” on it. “That’s strange,” I thought, “I don’t know any groups called God’s Country.” Which would be a good name for one–but I had forgotten I was no longer living two blocks from The Beacon Theater where i see tour buses constantly. Rock, blues, etc. I long ago stopped noticing people on tour buses. Well I see them also, of course, but they’re not usually named except with exact geographic locations. Nor for that matter are the music tour buses. You just cleverly know from the sign on the theater.

This day began horrible yesterday when I went for a mani/pedi. I wrote a post about it but in the scheme of life it’s very unimportant.

I thought that I was through with my New York apartment except for packing. My friends were going to take over dismantling the wall unit, redoing the wall and painting the living room.

Only my building doesn’t let contractors work on Friday’s. New rule I was unaware of. My building insists that contractors buy building specific insurance–I was aware of that but nobody believed me as most buildings don’t have that rule.

I’m paying the profits before I even get them. Then my building takes two percent in what’s called a transfer tax. Add six percent to the realtors, and that’s eight percent +without even thinking, and trust me I’m trying not to.

I am totally not relaxed and feel that all the good these months have done for me have been mitigated. I should have said that if they wanted the apartment they take it “as is.” But no.

I don’t feel grateful to have sold in “these difficult times” as the $400 rebate check from Mayor Bloomberg always says, for owning and paying way too much in taxes.

I was feeling nostalgic for Manhattan; I was feeling that my entire identity was as a Manhattanite. I was devouring any junk I found on Manhattan and was wondering if I would feel like an outsider looking in

I have lived in Manhattan over half my life and in the city for most of it. That gives me bitching rights for the rest of my life.

I haven’t left here yet and can’t wait to return.