Courting Destiny

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I come from a long tradition of protesters.

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

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

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

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

First my niece who doesn’t read my blog mentioned to her mother that I should be famous for certain things rather than most celebrities so maybe there’s hope for my legacy.

On March 5. 2008 I took a Spirit airplane down here and began my unofficial residency.  On March 31st last year I moved into this house!

My taxes were driving me crazy.  Certain items wouldn’t fit into any part of any program I tried.  I refused to send my taxes to my New York CPA on the grounds that I’m pretty sure his mistake got me audited.  The audit sat on his desk for two months because “you sent it to me during tax season,” and he made some mistakes in my tax return.

I couldn’t deal with looking at my taxes anymore and didn’t want to go to a CPA.  So I took them to Wal Mart. Yes Wal Mart.  Where I had to explain what “cost basis” was, among other things, but five hours later between the very nice woman, the district manager who used a remote computer and me we got them done.  It turned out I couldn’t find the places because there weren’t any places in regular programs for them, and the district manager did somethings she explained to me.  I just had some weird stuff.  Not much money but a lot of very weird items.

I can’t explain how happy this made me.  Not only were my taxes done but I was finished with New York, except for the dentist, family and friends.  My dentist(s) and I have gone through so much together I can’t give them up.

I was so excited after finishing at Wal Mart I called my sister who got out of her sick bed to be very excited also.  Maybe when she comes to North Myrtle this summer, she’ll actually go into Wal Mart.  Last year all she did was say “that’s so pretty.  Where’s it from?”  “Wal Mart.”  “What a gorgeous street.  Where does it go?”  “Wal Mart.”

I wrote a truly long post because I began as a long winded self-absorbed blogger.  I’m going through the blog one post at a time.  Not a fun project, but I must do it.  Again I thank Cooper the magnificent.

Courting’s undergone and still undergoing major retuning.

Last week I watched Julie and Julia.  I’ve never been a Meryl person.  I have always appreciated her brilliance but many of her performances have left me feeling nothing.  I watched Mama Mia with eyes and mouth wide open amazed that she would subject herself to that role when I seriously doubt she needs money and her kids aren’t in the pivotal ten to fourteen year old range that would love the movie.  Abba is a band that has always reminded me of the worst of pop.  No it’s not even pop.

Her performance was a revelation.  She not just captured Julia Child but made me love her.  Stanley Tucci!  Wow. He made a little, ugly to be honest, man into one of the sexiest men I have ever seen.  I was captivated.

I have read a lot about how Julie’s (Amy Adams) story was horrible but I’m a blogger and in some ways it could have been my story.  These are the exceptions:  Amanda Hesser of The Times went to her house for dinner.   The book taken from the blog  turned into a best seller.  The subsequent movie was one of the top movies of the year.  And she wrote a new memoir about the affairs she was having during that time that did almost ruin the movie for me as she and her husband seemed so solidly together.

Oh yes we have so much in common.

When I began Courting I didn’t realize people read blogs.  She knew more, and knew enough to have a theme but at first didn’t know if anybody was reading. When her husband read that she was the third most read blog at Salon, they called the people “fans.”  When I became the most read blog at that place we don’t talk about it I called the people who read “readers.”

She felt obligated to post everyday.  My readers know my verbal diarrhea though it has tapered off. Somebody from The Christian Science Monitor called her.  Somebody called me.  You can see we have a tremendous amount in common. She was coming up to her 30′s.  I was in that place called “used to be 30something when it was on.”

It’s not that I’m ashamed of my age.  I’m just so darn immature that I have a hard time believing I’m going to be 60.  Therefore all my friends have been on notice for months they better come up with one giant celebration because it is an age to celebrate.

Julie got nasty comments. Blogs were begun just to diss me.  But hey any publicity….Not frigging true.

Unlike Julie I didn’t get a book contract.   But my life changed as dramatically.  As much as I talked about moving from New York I was scared.  I know New York.  New York knows me.  We went together like seltzer and vanilla syrup in egg creams which contain no eggs, but seltzer, syrup and milk.  I have an incredible support system in New York.  Yes I had been living the life so many dream of down to the luxe doorman building in the heart of the Upper West Side.

But my dreams had changed.  I knew to continue living the life I lived I needed more space in a way less pricey place.  I didn’t count on a house.  That never entered my radar until I found North Myrtle Beach and realized I was capable of buying, renovating (not with my own hands) and maintaining a house.  My house isn’t architecturally significant.  I could get a lot more house that has higher ceilings, is fancier, and has more room for much less money just across 17 but it wouldn’t be a five minute walk to the beach or a two minute walk to the center of town.  My house has decks, lots of decks and I love decks.  It thrills me to sit outside in the middle of the night looking at stars.  It thrills me to be able to run to the beach for just a few minutes whenever.

I haven’t been a “good” blogger these past three years and I’m not just talking quality.  Too much was happening in my “real” life to seek out new blogs, to make new blogging friends.  Julie didn’t have to comment, email, chat up people.  I’m not saying that all that is bad.  It was difficult for reasons my readers are all too aware of.  The problems I had were all interrelated (something I had intuitively known) had a name, and I operated at a level where I had compensated for almost everything.

Blogging brought the problems back. I couldn’t master the computer language of blogging, HTML.  I couldn’t blog socialize as much as many people wanted yet I couldn’t set limits.  I political blogged long after I knew it wasn’t healthy for me.  When I found out about NLD I began to take charge of my life.  Yet I had never felt “disabled” before.

Damn I was smart.  I had been eligible to skip grades but my parents didn’t believe in that.  People always took me for bright.  Yes I had gone through this before but blogging once so great for me began to make me feel like a collection of symptoms.  It’s not OK to have a space to pour your heart out into, unedited.  Since I generally wouldn’t talk about my friends in the present, blogging about NLD filled up space and let me vent.  Something I probably needed to do.  But will never know if the venting led to feeling worse.  I very much believe in the power of positive thinking, and not dwelling on problems, yet….Did it have to be so public?  I love having less Google entries.

So I lost readers, didn’t court new ones, and do you know how many blogs have begun in the past three years?  Many millions.  When I was “on top,” I think there grew to be sixty million.  I alone had five.

Yet it was the greatest feeling in the world in the beginning.  People read me!  People who weren’t classmates or relatives.  An illustrator/cartoonist said to me: “you have the feedback I have always craved.”  I was shocked as I’ve known him all my life and thought he was a person who shunned the spotlight.  And he makes mucho money.  But I knew what he meant.  There’s nothing like that first feeling of wonder; of going to a from “blogger to writer” seminar knowing I had a higher Technorati rating than the speakers.  Yes of course I looked.  I was hung up on stats then.  I have always resented that title.  I was a writer a long time before I was a blogger.

I didn’t know how to handle that recognition.  It came out of nowhere and at times, many times, felt undeserved. At times it made me want to jump up and down with joy.  Other times I wanted to ask people if they knew who I was.  Like they cared. I lived in New York where everybody really does have their fifteen minutes or their best friend did.  Everybody was famous for something real. Not having a money losing blog.  Everybody was younger and better looking than me.  I take that last one back.  But I had begun to feel that I was living in a theme park and I just ain’t a Disney or Rouse production person.

My life was unsettled.  Maybe I will never have that recognition again but hey, I’m prepared for anythng.  I’m settled now.  Everything I have done in the past three years has been to improve my life.

So Julie went onto fame and fortune and I went on to home ownership.  OK she’s lived my dream.  My dream didn’t die.  It went on hiatus.  The long drawn out saga is over, and the fun’s about to begin.  Stay tuned.

My next posts will be at the max half this length.  As usual I reserve the right to change my mind.

I heard a noise this afternoon and thought “the neighbors.” Then I remembered I live in a house I bought during the worst housing market in modern history and have been in slight (OK crazed) shock ever since.

The noise turned out to be thunder. I’m a T&L storm fanatic and miss the ones I saw from my east facing living room and north facing bedroom in my coop on Riverside @75th Street. My apartment was on the ninth floor–the so called “architects” floor for Manhattan pre-war buildings. It gets the best light and yes I loved that part.

Here I have an upper floor deck and deck that wraps around half my house, and I don’t have the magical light and sky that went on forever. It was the best part of my apartment except for the bathrooms, floors, nine foot ceiling, and general adorableness but that began to cloy.

My ceiling @63rd & Fifth was eleven & half feet high but I only had three windows–granted a bay ceiling that had no view and the light had been cut off by the shadows of the old and differently named AT&T and IBM buildings that were actually built during my tenure there.

Here I don’t have the great light. Nor do I get to see spectacular T&L storms unless I run into one of the two upstairs rooms and I do. Also I don’t think they play as well as they did in New York because of the absence of tall buildings. I have seen it from the beech and it’s incredible but I have to get home as I’m scared.

Have to meet people with ocean beach views, and oh I have to invite myself during a storm to a house that looks over the Inter coastal–it’s common to have Inter coastal views. Not as great as the inlets in Miami (I am a fussy guest) but doable.

I knew before I decided to move here that if I lived here I wouldn’t have an oceanfront condo. I haven’t found one I think “attractive.” I look at real estate for a hobby. It’s normal for me to go house hunting as soon as I first visit a place. Between that and walking everywhere I get much more of a feel for a place than most people. I recommend both as low or no cost activities.

Most of the foreclosures in North Myrtle itself are ocean front condos that, I assume, people bought to flip. There are many more “regular” house foreclosures in the surrounding towns. Summer season really ended two weeks ago–school began inland and last week here.

Main Street was very busy at times. Now it feels a bit desolate in evening. So many people depend on tourists and/or newcomers for business.

I’m having Eldon make me a bamboo dresser and bamboo, in front of bed, bench. I have to find white furniture on sale for the sunroom as i want to do one room all in white as a contrast to the color in all the other rooms. Now Eldon must understand I’m not the National Bank of Pia.

People here are hurting big time and currently. It hurts too come into a community and see so many people doing so poorly. I’m not a soup kitchen kind of volunteer. The volunteer work I will be doing entails courts and people who suffered at the hands of….It’s what I do best so.

I feel incredibly insecure and will until new health care legislation is passed. I planned and began this move under one economy….I have developed a love for buying stocks that seem incredible and do or promise to do great things but if I buy them they begin their long descent into failure. People my age aren’t supposed to buy that much stock but I come from a long line, well my father, of people who love the stock market.

Thing was he bought most stocks before the day of the institutional stock investor and warned me repeatedly that an individual doesn’t really have a chance. However….I fear getting sick or needing an operation and the insurance that I pay $505 a month for will refuse to pay. It’s a valid fear these days. I hope any kind of reform is passed this session because frankly I will have more energy to fight for universal health care–a phrase that shouldn’t exist in a void–knowing I’m fully insured.

I’m sorry if I have been harping on this but getting off the meds gives me slight panic attacks and I stay up at night thinking about health insurance when I would rather think about anything else

My friend the former soap star is going to be back for the end of Guiding Light This did make me tear up as I think they treated him like shit. I thought soaps were the medium you could grow older gracefully in, and Jay looked incredible. I will be watching on 9/17 and maybe just maybe will finally be able to understand the show.

My court or cul de sac or enclave, whatever, is off a sort of major road. Sort of as it doesn’t even have stop signs yet. An old lady who lives in the court can’t believe I cross the road all the time. I can’t believe she drives so…..

About four PM the rain stopped and the sun came out. Really came out as in the rain we’ve been having off and on and enough to ruin days has gone somewhere not here.

I couldn’t believe the amount of traffic coming down my street. I went to the beach and walked to Cherry Grove pier and back. Here’s the thing. I saw groups of African Americans, East Indians, Latins. In three Junes I have never seen that before and it was wonderful. Well I have but I’m related to them not by blood but by long term friendship that has become family.

The beach past the Cherry Grove pier, way past is incredible. So’s Cherry Grove. It looks like an actual beach town. I didn’t move there because I’m so darn practical and didn’t want to pay more insurance, but I love it and walk around Cherry Grove as much as possible.

This is going to be a bitch of a summer. I hope to have much walking around. walking on the beach, sitting on the beach, going into the water, writing, and company time but I also have unpleasant things to do that I’m not going to write about other than it cuts into my time. I wanted this summer to be perfect but I guess that perfection is a goal never really achievable and I’m not going to go all new agey on you.

The air was perfect this night two days before the Summer Solstice Sand fine for walking barefoot with cute Crocs in my bag. (Yes there are cute Crocs.) The ocean was warm and I wish I had my bathing suit on as the waves were just right.

I walked back via Main Street. I realized that no matter how much time I have to spend on the unpleasant things, ok a law suit, I will always have early evenings.

There was so much I thought of saying when I was walking on the beach but my mind’s fading now. Tomorrow begins a heat spell—I guess a lot of people came for a long weekend. It’s really going to be the first time rain doesn’t get in the way. I have gotten used to the rain. When my cousin was here for a wonderful visit we would get to the beach by eight in the morning so we would have beach time and really we had more than enough though it rained almost every day.

I do so love it here. But when I go to New York, sort of unwillingly, for nine days in July I’m going to find the cash cab. That’s CLo, W and my summer game. We DVR it and play along. We can easily watch six or more episodes. We’re all excellent. I finally found a game I’m truly good at–it tests general knowledge but I’m sure if I got in the cab and was alone I wouldn’t remember my own name. It’s fun when three or more people get in because they discuss everything sometimes to the point of going from the right to the wrong answer. Two young men who had that particular New York look of “could be any ethnic group,” got every question right and they had some tough ones. I’m bad at body questions. We all thought the answer was “nodules” and I forget the question but who knew the head had so many sinsues?

I become New Yorksick watching it. But in New York I wouldn’t be able to say “I want to go to the beach” and be there in five minutes.

Wow I had a life time goal of moving to a nice beach town before I was old and I guess I achieved that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was written a couple of days ago. When I was getting a cold. EldonOne and Jimbo find it amazing how when the weather is rainy, cloudy and rain humid, I’m congested. After the sun comes out, I’m fine. Unfortunately sometimes I can’t beat it, and the folowing was written under the influence of foggy skies and foggy chest. With the dreaded head cold next to come

I’m in a ninth inning slump. I hate baseball metaphors but it so describes how I feel.

Nobody has acknowledged my role in bringing rain to the South–it rained for the first two days I was ever here almost two years ago.
Despite the fire it’s been a rainy two years. It does dry out quickly even near the ocean and can feel almost desert like. However we’re having a rain spate–I was in New York when it was beautiful here–and it’s supposed to rain for the next ten days. I have many people praying for good weather when my cousin G gets here. It’s been a long time since we have spent any time together and I want her to have a great time.

My friends think I’m ignoring them and put me on notice last night that they will no longer call me. I have to initiate all contact. I tried explaining that my ears are stuffed and I did sound like a fog horn. The allergy turned into the dreaded cold and went into my nose which made me very happy as well these days you just don’t want lung issues especially if you were in Queens several weeks ago. LaGuardia Airport and a cab ride but I’m pretty sure that counts. I also took the train out to the Island one day.

So I called my friends this morning and they didn’t answer. I’m really not in the mood for games. Really all I want to do is get back into bed but the Eldon’s are finishing the mulching, the hardware for the outdoor shower and well they overload my trash cans making it impossible for me to take the trash neatly to the curb. They’re going to take it away in the trailer later today.

I do trash in large kitchen bags and then put them neatly in big trash bags in the adorable trash cans with wheels. This way I will never go over the 50 pound weight limit if you want your trash picked up by the city–part of the water company. Most people bring their trash to the dump or drive around looking for city owned bins and throw their trash into them. When I was new here I thought this was a city of hoarders who would get fed up and drive their trash to different locations. Now that I know what they’re doing I spent a pleasant move in weekend driving from one trash bin to another.

I know most people couldn’t care less about the above but I lived in apartments most of my life and this is new and kind of interesting and a bit less fun but….I have no idea what I was attempting to say. Head colds apparently affect my whole head and brain

It’s bike week which is a bust this year as Myrtle Beach, not North Myrtle, instituted helmet laws and some other things. Older bikers are staying in the house across from mine. Both male and female have long braids, kinda like Willie Nelson but unfortunately they’re not Willie. They ride trike bikes which are becoming increasingly common as bikers age and suffer damage to their knees. Apparently having good knees plays a large part in bike riding.

Obviously I’m learning a lot of new things. Just wish my friends were speaking to me. Feel as if I did something very wrong. That could be my cold as they make me feel guilty in general and specific

My Riverside Drive apartment was the subject of a thread on a real estate blog. It’s strange to read about something I owned even if nice things were said. It’s even stranget not to participate in the discussion because…I don’t know, it just wouldn’t be right
I haven’t closed yet so I have no idea why I wrote this as if it were a done deal. The contracts have been signed. I gave “earnest” money, and next Wednesday is the closing.
“Patio” houses are ubiquitous here. They’re adorable. What the rest of the country calls a deck, North Myrtle calls a patio. I bought a house with a patio off one bedroom and a Carolina room (indoor/outdoor room with heat, AC, ceiling fan and lights) off the master bedroom.

It’s in perfect condition and if I didn’t hate carpeting–it’s even in the bathrooms–and love color so much I could move in next Wednesday after the closing.

Why the uh? This is a horrible time to be spending money and the guilt gene in me is running OT. I shouldn’t be buying furniture. I shouldn’t be buying flat screen TV’s–I’m waiting for all that for the after holiday sales.

The house is on one of the best streets in town and very very walkable. Last Friday I happened upon a music award radio show at a bar in beach hotel while I was walking on the beach and couldn’t stay as the dark night sky was approaching rapidly and the temps fall from almost beach like to almost winter like.

If I had lived in this house then I could have gone home for a sweater and come back quickly.

It’s in a not quite alley and only one fifth can be seen from the street. The house is about four direct blocks from the beach, about five from Route 17 and literally around the corner from Main Street, a street I have come to love. It’s directly across Route 17 from the North Myrtle Fitness and Aquatics Center and I’m very psyched about that.

My best friend’s supposed to come this weekend and I was going to wait for her but I have been following real estate here for eight months very intensely and know that the best houses are taken within a week of being listed. Other houses languish. I coveted another for different reasons but it’s too far from the town center, and doesn’t have patios.

This was originally a FSBO (for sale by owner) for 100K+ more. I coveted it greatly but didn’t want to spend the money. It had this funny sign “no dogs or cigarettes allowed.” No cigarettes I can kinda understand and like but no dogs? There’s no homeowner association, and there’s nothing in the contract but….I plan on getting the strangest yet coolest pets and will post pictures of them here

At the price I paid it’s a good buy. I know that yet the little voice in my head is telling me that I could have rented a luxe townhouse for $1200 a month or less. But I like owning, and am at the enthralled with having to set up a water bill account stage.

I don’t know if real estate will ever be “the best investment anybody made” ever again or in any of our lifetimes. It cost a bit more than what I paid for my city apartment eleven years ago.

I do know that this will make a good home and I plan on enjoying it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

crossposted at ThoughtCafe

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.