Here’s a link to an article I wrote for The Long Island Press’s award winning series: Our Children’s Brains.  Of everything I did this past decade this article was personally the most meaningful.  If I increased awareness of non verbal learning disorder (NLD) just a bit then I did a lot.

I meant to end the year decade with a salute to bloggers because I think we’re at the forefront of a major revolution in communication.  Without blogging there really couldn’t have been Facebook.  Without Facebook there couldn’t have been Twitter.   I don’t know whether I fear or look forward to what comes next.

I began this decade, and I believe decades truly begin when something significant happens, in deep agony.  True the Trade Center had imploded and my mother died suddenly the next month but it was more than that.  I felt as if I were losing my grip on sanity.  I didn’t know about NLD then.  Had I known when I was a decade younger, ha, the worlds I might have conquered.

But I have to remember that I put this blog together and if I have been harping on its former glory lately it’s because it opened doors I never knew existed.

I became friendly with Bone over four years ago.  His writing amazed me and still does.  He keeps getting better.  But it was Bone the person who helped change me.  When we became friendly I realized that I didn’t have to fear the South.

My first three days visiting here I was more than a bit scared.  Actually it rained the first two days and I was glad I could bring my incredible rain making skills to a then drought stricken area.  (Not glad I have that talent now as this is shaping up to be the rainiest December on record.)

The third day I ventured out and nobody bit me.  North Myrtle, so familiar now, seemed like another country.  I knew the New York metro area, South Florida, parts of New England and California.

This is a new world.  My world now and I go into a new decade knowing I can face whatever comes.  I might be a decade older and one of the oldest known bloggers but that never stopped me….

I thank you all who have taken this journey or parts of it with me.

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 walk home from the grocery store. People always offer me rides and I refuse. Which actually isn’t nice when it’s somebody I know who really really wants to drive me. Yesterday I was carrying three bags filled with such things as a head of red cabbage, acorn squash, a bag of red onions (I’m into colorful vegetables) and much more. It was the first time I almost couldn’t make it and was too contrary to call a cab which would have been the sane thing to do.
I was a block and half away from home when a man was getting into his car. He offered me a ride and I gratefully accepted. I told him where I live–a major street, just a block….”I don’t know it. We just moved two months ago and I’m still feeling my way around.” “Oh where did you move from?” “We lived in Myrtle Beach for eighteen years.” I restrained from saying I thought he had to learn his way around The Grand Strand, and that my street abuts his. He then went into a long discourse about the differences between Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle. My favorite part of the discourse was when he said “I would tell you more but you’re such a lady.”

He’s right. Not about me being a lady particularly but the differences between the two cities. North Myrtle does everything it can to make living in it a pleasurable experience. Who can’t love a city that has festivals for every occasion it can think of and some more. Nobody gets the Irish/Italian festival but the music’s good.

While shag music still reigns here there’s more rock and soul. I don’t feel comfortable talking about Myrtle Beach’s problems as I’m such a lady.
••••••••••••••

My health insurance will go up $185 a month beginning in January.. I don’t qualify for the “healthy habits” discount as I take psychotropics. I’m trying to get off them but need a doctor to help and insurance here won’t cover that. Apparently being in therapy or taking medications for bioneurological problems aren’t healthy though many people would go off the deep end without them. It’s crazy because my answers to the other questions make me a great healthy habit person.

The letter said the insurance went up so much because of the dramatic rise in health care costs in the past year. I do believe they mean the cost of lobbying. I assume the dramatic rise is because they assume some form of health care reform will pass.

Though I will be paying almost $700 a month for health insurance much of my body and all of my mind isn’t covered. And as I have stated often I have never been seriously ill. It’s ironic that I was supposed to prove I haven’t been hospitalized as at the worst moments of my depression over NLD I asked to be hospitalized. I also asked to be sent to rehab. I would tell doctors it felt like an untreated brain injury. They would disagree as I’m so cognizant. Now of course it’s known to be a brain injury.

I pay as I have resources I would like to keep. This policy covered the most hospitalization and stuff like that I could find. In New York the limits were almost limitless. Not here.

While the odds of me being hit by a bus in North Myrtle are almost nil, being hit by a car is a distinct possibility. (I, being my father’s daughter, take uninsured drivers into account.)

I’m still glad I moved here. It’s a whole different world than the ones I’m used to and most of the time I love it.

I’m sick of NLD and sick of health care reform. Start or continue the party without me. There is much else I would like to focus on. And I’m a lady. I have no idea what that has to do with anything but I think it means I’m not supposed to be political. Oh can the whole lady bit.
•••••••••••

The whole time I was in New York I was obsessed with the color blue. My sister painted my old bedroom an exquisite blue, so beautiful I can neither really remember it or describe it. Yes it was weird when they first bought the parental manse but time and many changes have taken the weirdness away.
Lucia’s (the best of best friends) kitchen is a true sea blue, if your sea is in a very hot climate.

I couldn’t stop talking or thinking about redoing my living room. It’s pink and took ten coats to come out right. The downstairs bedroom is an ice blue. The study is turquoise and the guest room is teal. Obviously I love blue.

Then I came home and loved the coziness of the pink. I also said to myself: you’re so frigging crazy. Painting the living room is an excuse not to write. You spent the last two years moving. It’s time for some peace, and even more to get serious before you’re demented or somebody beats you to the weirdest story. Anyway you don’t have the money and every time you begin a home improvement project the stock market goes wild.

Yes, I’m the reason for the recession. Me, me and only me. It’s enough to make me ignore my house but I love it and weirdly I truly enjoy the “burdens” of home ownership.

The heating and AC guy was over today for the winter checkup. He said everything was perfect, and didn’t try to sell me something to enhance the performance. The exterminator came next. He didn’t tell me I had termites (I know he checks and gets a commission if he finds any.)

In New York both people would have tried to sell me a thousand things and would have had their hands out. OMG, was I supposed to tip them? I can’t help but think about the $1200+ I would be doling out this month in tips.

I enjoyed seeing people in New York. The city itself I wasn’t so crazy about. My last night I had a dream that I owned a cottage but couldn’t remember where. Great Neck? A cottage would be way too pricey. The Hamptons? In my dreams literally. It became a nightmare. I woke up and remembered; I do own a cottage, I do. In North Myrtle Beach SC. Oh the relief.

And I have a living room that will stay pink for a while. Hopefully the country will stay out of red.

We finished day four of boot camp. My pressing on is a metaphor for something but I’m too darn tired to figure that out.

It’s as different from a New York health club as a cold is from swine flu. In New York it’s everybody for herself, here there really is a feeling of solidarity. I think boot camp is going to be very good for me but I’m too tired to think. I should explain it’s not boot camp that’s making me so tired but gray skies. Yesterday it rained all day–we met at the park before the heavy rains but I’m a princess and rain and I don’t mix. At the same time I’m a fresh air fiend so I slept with all the windows in the sun room open and the sun room is connected to the bedroom. Sometimes I think about taking down the wall to the sun room but I love that room for itself.

It’s the only room I still have to furnish. I kept saying I wanted white wicker but I realize that I want all different white fabrics.

It’s not that New York seems horrible to me but I find I miss it less and less. It’s been a year today since I handed over the keys to my apartment and in return got a fairly substantial check. Actually two. I’m so glad I was insistent on selling when I did. A year or two earlier I could have gotten much more but now……

I own a house!!!!!!! That still thrills me. And because I’m about as handy as I’m athletic I have a house husband, Eldon. My cousin who is divorced and very handy actually came up with the phrase when she looked at something outside and almost cried out: “you have a house husband!!!!!.” Apparently he has done things she wouldn’t think to do.

Eldon and I redid the front “yard” on Tuesday. A lot of the plants hadn’t taken so I went for more ornamental grasses which I realize is what I really wanted originally but didn’t realize that yet.

I’m not being sexist when I talk about a house husband. My father could have used a house husband. I think, no I know, he was afraid to change a light bulb–electricity can kill you, you know. My athletic smart father looked as if he should have been good at somethings besides taking out the garbage but…..

My mother was handier, and did the little little jobs. Everything else was foisted off onto professionals. Or family friends. So I’m just continuing a tradition.

I think this move is going great and I’m actually looking forward to cold days when I don’t feel obligated to run around and can sit in one of my decks in ten layers and just write. Though I don’t like how it went from AC/beach weather to cold seemingly overnight. I think it’s going to get warm again. I know, we all know,(how could we have missed the articles and news casts?) how colds and flu’s are transmitted but I will always believe chronic weather changes and rain play a part.

Selfishly I don’t want it to rain again until boot camp is over–and my best friend is coming a week from today so it would be nice if it’s warm and sunny. But I don’t want to tempt the gods by asking for too much.

This is a small town, in many ways. Eldon’s been telling me about somebody who goes to boot camp but is away this week practically since we first met.

I don’t usually wish I were in my 20′s or 30′s now but I do today. So that I could fill these pages with pictures of moi and write pithy sentences mistaken for oh so clever because back then I could recite the phone book and six out of ten people would be enthralled.

In October of my freshman year in college I forgot I had to give a speech the next day for speech class. It could be on anything I wanted. Fortunately I didn’t have to take the remedial speech class “losing your LonguyIsland accent.” I so wish I had a copy of the catalogue to show that I’m not making this up.

I was helping my boyfriend and his friends roommates guys he sort of knew and I was to know much better then he did* clean their new house on the Long Island Sound. House sounds grand. It was a basement apartment. Over them lived the biggest dealers on the Island but we didn’t know that yet. Or maybe the guys did but I sure was clueless.

My mother only used cleaning products like Ajax. I found myself enthralled by the Pine Sol bottle. It smelt so good. It was a liquid. It wasn’t on the Savage family approved list. As much as I lusted after my boyfriend I think I lusted after this bottle more. It was in the province of “I don’t have to be like my mother, and when I have my own apartment I’m going to use all the fancy cleaning products I can find.” I know–pine sol? I’m just telling this story not editorializing.

I read the back of the bottle to my boyfriend and his roommates. They loved it so I read it the next day. We had many friends in that class and they all reported back to my boyfriend. I was a complete success and got an “A.”

Unfortunately I never went back to class again and failed it. I, Miss Priss & Proper, do everything as soon as you get it, never let a bill sit, treat life as if it’s one big test, was a total screw up then.

But I can’t remember ever having so much pure fun. Well yes I can but that was the first time since grade school life was uncomplicated yet complicated.

*It was complicated.
I’m having the 9/11/dead mother thing again. After I got over thinking she was my father’s appendage but loved her much anyway, she became my go to person for just about everything. And in the revised family history I was always perfect.

I’m really looking forward to the illumination of the Shagger’s water tower. Sheet, I’m turning into the Sylivia Miles of North Myrtle Beach. Look her up. Oh she was a kinda actress turned older who would go to the opening of an envelope I can’t believe who came up with that line. Wiki has been wrong before…..

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.

This article’s on the death of old media as exemplified by a party Tina Brown gave. Now she has The Daily Beast which I read.

A lot of bloggers went to its launch party. Not this one. I don’t feel very blogger like. Nor do I feel very writer like.

I’m coming face to face with who I am. Smashing head first into the giant thunder cloud she was lost for two decades. Or so some think. Not really. This blog will be five years old next week which isn’t really an achievement but I gave up being a multi award nominated reporter for it.

Not really again. I couldn’t go any further at that particular paper for the most personal of reasons and being me didn’t apply anywhere else–or send in clippings. I have two books and should scan them in but first I have to set up my whole office so that my life can easily be found and one of the bad side affects of going off this med is that I’m ADD’d to the max. No frigging patience for anything boring and most of life is. Though I can clean….and water plants if it ever stops raining.

Tomorrow there is only a 20% chance of rain and I’m going to the beach–the four blocks I live from it? It’s four long blocks when you take a chair and something to drink, maybe something to eat, and a book–hard covered or trade paper, of course.

I’m not doing well if I’m trying to prepare for a lifetime of poverty, but I’m betting on me, to come through for me, as if I don’t who will?

I unpacked my last two suitcases yesterday. Then I remembered why they were still packed. (I still have about four boxes–Mexican things, cd’s, dvd’s, and books–no shelves to put them on.)

The bureau which was supposed to come immediately has been back ordered four times. The items I didn’t need and were supposed to be back ordered came immediately.
I received an email stating that the bureau was being shipped on a certain day and should have arrived at least two days before I called customer service. This was the fourth email referring to a new delivery date.

The customer service rep assured me that this is normal and she knows not only the furniture business but retail in general, the Internet, and all customer service a lot more than I do. (She said this with no knowledge of who I am or what I do or have done in my life. It struck me both funny and sad that a person would make assumptions so readily.)

Obviously I should understand that they didn’t mean what they said in any of the four emails. She actually stated that and then stated that she understood this process so much better than I ever could.

I don’t expect to be treated as a total idiot. If a person is lucky enough to have a job right now, they damn well better treat every person who calls with dignity. I have no idea why the bureau was back ordered so many times nor why I got an email saying it was being shipped when it wasn’t being shipped, and neither did the customer service person.

I furnished my entire house off the Internet and didn’t have one other problem. I don’t do ebay or Craigs List but I’m kind of an expert on finding things in a store and buying it on the Internet. I usually save much in shipping and taxes that way plus any extra “internet only” sale–and there usually is.

When I was in New York I went to “high end” (as they call themselves) lighting stores and noticed that they all used the same catalogue. That catalogue’s even larger on the Internet–over a thousand pages. It took three weeks of three hour days and three days of eight hour days to find the simplest lighting in the world.

It took five minutes to find the perfect dining room pub table, chairs, and sidebar–and two days of looking in stores and two days of looking online–just to make sure.

I kept the pivotal furniture from my apartment in Manhattan–the couch is in the study; the coffee table in the guest room and the bed, uh, in the bedroom. I haven’t furnished the sunroom yet–just stuff from my apartment and I used furniture from Kroger’s for the downstairs deck. I want both the room and the outdoors to be truly special and haven’t figured out what I want yet.

An all white sun room. OK I ran out of steam and can’t stand the thought of paying anymore money for anything here.

In the suburb I come from the worst, very worst thing you could say about somebody is “they have no furniture.” It implies and infers a world of things. Here I can tell people are confused by how sparse I keep most rooms. I like bold colors. I like collecting things. If I could live without furniture I would. This is all in defense of “I know how furniture stores work and I sure know how the Internet works.”

I no longer get angry when I speak to stupid people. I ask to speak to their supervisor who in this case asked whether I wanted a store credit for $75 or a credit on my credit card for $57. I chose the later as a store credit is meaningless.

That still doesn’t solve the problem. My bureau hasn’t arrived and I have two densely packed suitcases of clothes in the washer, dryer or waiting to be placed in one. Fortunately I have huge closets and a former night stand with six drawers that’s in the bedroom walk in closet. Unfortunately I find organizing closets on a par with going to the dentist.

I just began the litigation process over my plumbing problems. This isn’t the way I wanted to begin in a new town. Fortunately I have bought built up a lot of good will here. I don’t feel as if I’m doing it just for myself (or I would never do it) but on behalf of single women everywhere who have the audacity to upset what some men and I guess some women believe is the natural order of things and buy a house.

Having to be in litigation depresses me. I really would rather forgive and forget which is why I invented the “this isn’t just for me” excuse. I believe blogs were invented so that I could get whatever is bothering me out and go on with life.

In this case I can’t–then I remember that I was denied full coverage in health insurance though pay as much as somebody who has full coverage. I couldn’t work on that because just then I got a notice from the IRS stating I owed them my life and spent three and a half weeks finding obsure information so that my accountant could send the results to them in a timely manner. Then I found out he forgot to send it…I always thought he was a good dependable accountant. His letter to the IRS made it seem that both of us were working on it for months as it was so complicated and so wrong in so many places. No I worked on it for three and a half weeks.

I know you’re thinking any person with a modicum of intelligence could have worked on the IRS notice and the pre-existing conditions at the same time. I couldn’t work on two tedious things, one (the health insurance) that was set up so I couldn’t answer their questions properly. It just angers me so much that I’m willing to pay–and I know I’m being selfish in only looking at the “me” aspect of this. But one major sickness and everything I have….

I try to stay healthy so I won’t have to be denied claims. I refuse to feel stressed as that could lead….so if I whine into my blog please excuse it. I do feel stressed. I try not to bring up the disability I suffer from, as I have accomplished so much despite having it. It’s another unsolved problem and there are times I just want to bury my head in the sand.

This is a fascinating “obit” for Robert S McNamara.
Here’s Paul Krugman on health care. I’m getting real sick of hearing about Michael Jackson and Sarah Palin.
The humidity’s so thick I want to pick and hold it. Last night, I think, it rained. I think because when it’s dark I close the blinds in the kitchen, living room, and upstairs office (or all rooms that look to the front or side of the court). When I lived in Manhattan I never had to do that. Manhattan can be an oddly private place.

I was recovering from a wonderful weekend. In a world where almost every woman I know didn’t become a mommy until her mid-late 30′s (if she became one) CLo was a mommy in her late teens.

I always treated her daughter as a little adult because I haven’t really met a kid who wants to be treated as a kid. Consequently we became friends when she grew up.

Niece Kelly and a Gay family friend, Roberto–not Hispanic, were in for the weekend. I only bring up the Gay part because it’s a long time since I had one–mine all died and I remembered why I used to like Gay men so much. I kind of specialize in straight male friends but Gay men make me laugh easily and forget that the world has problems.* Niece Kelly and Roberto are Black and if we ran into people I knew I was planning on introducing them as my niece and nephew. I choose to think most people aren’t racist but too many people have said things about Black Bike Week…

Friday night we had a BBQ at CLo’s and W’s. Saturday night I made a BBQ–salmon marinated in V8, horseradish, onions, lemons and garlic–I developed this recipe one rainy day as it’s equally good roasted or poached. I sauteed onions, three types of mushrooms, peppers, and grape tomatoes in a bit of olive oil and when it was two thirds cooked added vinegar–any kind is good. It reduces the sauce and the vegetables can be a side dish or a sauce. I do that with chicken breast that I cook in apple cider, and fishes. I just don’t want it said that I have never given a recipe here.

I made a salad of course, and bought a coconut custard pie–deserts aren’t my thing. But everybody in the CLo&W family loves good pie (and are all in perfect shape anyway) and we’re sort of in competition to find the best. When I saw this one, I knew….and there wasn’t even a slice left over.

CLo & W are on dog with lung cancer duty so CLo drove us a block away from the fireworks and we walked onto the beach with our beach chairs, found a good spot and waited for the real fireworks to begin. They were magnificent. I had been a bit upset the NY fireworks were going to be on the Upper West Side–and I kept getting reports from New York on how they found the perfect spot etc. Of course they left at five PM, were the first people on the closed West Side Highway and the whole evening was devoted to fireworks.

The fireworks here were that way overused word, amazing. I sat there and thought “there’s no place else I want to be, and had I been in New York, I would have missed this.” We sat for awhile after the fireworks but people began setting off homemade ones and we’re citified enough to be scared of homemade ones.

W picked us up and we went back to my house where we sat in the side deck (the one that used to be toilet of Pia but is now all decked) looked at the sky and talked for hours. The house punch (I decided every house should have one) went quickly–firefly sweet tea vodka, stoli vanilla vodka, one quarter more limeade, and seltzer with cinnamon–basically because I add cinnamon to seltzer and don’t care what anybody thinks! The punch works.

I have loved the idea of long languid Southern summers since I first began to read and see movies. The sitting home and relaxing without feeling guilty or thinking “I really should be doing this…” The whole concept is new to me and I love it. I have rediscovered my inner cook and hostess.

If I didn’t have to walk my garbage three blocks to the nearest dump life would be perfect and that’s just a minor inconvenience. North Myrtle does have pick up services but you can’t leave the garbage in a trash can and possums do have a habit of tearing into the garbage. Eventually everybody is going to be issued a “roll” can and a recycling one. Since I tire of asking people if they could drive me and my garbage….

*This isn’t the time or place for a diatribe about AIDS, government inaction and how I lost two thirds of my friends and became very suspicious of “new people.”

I thought at the fireworks and after “this is it. This is the night I have begun to turn into a Southerner.”