Psycho Killer/Serial Mom

Here’s a Hil/Condi Ho down.

I have the coolest niece in the world. She’s just twelve. I made her walk and walk and walk for her present. We did Madison Avenue. They adored her at Juicy Couture—which matches Courting. She wanted to make sure that the sales person who began her purchase got the commission. They don’t work that way, but were charmed. Jacqueline, my niece, wrote something on my computer that I’m going to get framed. It was that nice.

I continued my non-stop celebration of the Dem’s double win. Realized one of their many problems is that I, as a citizen of New York, was considered expendable. But microwave towers Wyoming, they’re essential. When you put pork barrel over people you end up with inedible spam, and when the nation wants sushi—you’re thinking only of your own interests, and so out of touch.. Nobody should ever forget how NY and then Louisiana were treated by our former majority government and lame, lame, lame duck president.

Every living person with a half working brain is essential. May no government ever forget that!!!!! I added the “half working brain” part because if I didn’t over explain, it might come back to haunt me. But there will be no more special Palm Sunday Joint House sessions, over something so absurd as the heart breaking non-life of Terri Schiavo. And it brings me personal joy that Karl Rove is powerless.

I’m sure that the Republicans are banking on the next two years being a mess. We won’t forget who put us in this mess.

This past year has been a victory for the blogger who gives a damn. I don’t have to defend my morals anymore. You have no idea how wonderful that feels. I might even begin to put in sexual fiction because I enjoy writing it. And no longer have to worry about idiots who feel that their morals are worthy and mine suck. I am gloating because as bloggers we did defeat them. I can say anything that I want to say in my blog without fear of repercussion. Damn it feels good. And while I never listened I did a PSC for WFUv so my voice has been recorded before. Plus I had to record interviews–tried never to listen to my voice. If I could only remember how to do a podcast…will go to the Apple store for lessons. Seeing the Apple Store was the highpoint of my niece’s day except for Juicy where we bought a case for her Ipod.

I have been avoiding talking about Adrienne Shelly‘s murder because it hit so close to home. She complained about noise and got into an argument with a man that became physical. They fought. He thought that he murdered her and hung her to make it look like suicide. That’s when she died.

Michelle Malkin still thinks she has power. Thanks Jacob for the Malkin reference

Yes, Shelly was killed by an undocumented worker. The sad and horrible truth is that they do the jobs we think are beneath us. If you’re going to go after people, go after the contractors who sub contract out who then sub contract out again so the original contractor can say “who me?” Go after the buildings who hire the original contractor.

Construction in New York is sub par because it goes through so many layers after the building hires the original contractor. They want to save a dollar to line their pockets. They are the villains because it is such an accepted practice. I know that the workers doing the brick work are undocumented.

I know that the people in my building pay a lot for this work, and the actual workers might see minimum wage, maybe.

Shely’s murderer was scared that she was going to report the noise and the altercation to the police. I’m no bleeding heart, and his being undocumented makes it no less or more a crime. Maybe it exposes how close to the edge we all are. She did hit him, though that in no way justifies him hitting first and back. Damn, it just makes the murder more easy to relate to.

New York and most cities were built on the backs, sweat and health of undocumented workers.

How do we justify our family having been legal for several generations or even a generation, and not justify people who come here because we’re still the world’s biggest hope? Most undocumented workers aren’t violent.

Don’t make one undocumented murderer into something more than he was.

Undocumented workers are a societal problem that we have to confront with real solutions, not a wall, and a send them back mentality. Many undocumented workers will be killed if they go home. I know many Colombians who came here as undocumented workers.

They pay much in taxes now, and support this country with all their hearts. If they had gone back to Colombia they would have had to face the cartels that effectively rule that country. I have seen a video that Lucia’s ex-husband took of the killing of the Colombia Supreme Court. That video won many awards. It also put a price on his head.

Many women sent back to Africa face genital mutilation. But who cares….?

Apparently Shelly’s husband’s a blogger, Malkin has had some run ins with.

Shelly’s murder happened because of excessive noise and yes, fear. I would have felt a bit sorry for him if he hadn’t hung her. Not sorry, let him go with a slap on the wrist, but a bit sorry. I can’t. He’s a murderer–documented or not, just a murderer.

He didn’t run away scared but hung her to make it look like a suicide and might have succeeded had her husband not advocated so strongly—and the police found a foot print that didn’t belong. This was a murder over noise, and it could have been any of us.

This is a city with major problems. Many of us “haves,” can’t really afford our lives here anymore. Constant construction noises add to the non-affordability. Construction that will usually benefit the super rich, not us. For over two years I lived with the construction and reconstruction of the penthouse next door.

They did everything over again until it was perfect and I thought that I was going to lose my mind. But hey, they count. They knew their rights and executed each one of them with no thought about their neighbors. Did they care that my apartment was filled with their debris? Did they offer to pay for my furniture to be cleaned? I suppose that I was supposed to move until they finished. But who would pay for that?

Shelly’s murder did make me wonder if anybody would advocate so strongly for me? It scared me that though I’m a White Woman in a Good Zip Code, I don’t have a husband to advocate for me, or as proof of wanting to live, a small child who needs me. So I’m saying it here: I don’t believe in suicide except when terminally ill.

There is always tomorrow, and suicide hurts the survivors more. I understand how emotional pain can drive people to the brink. But I saw an unexplained, to us kids, suicide subtly destroy my extended family. There were times that I did want to kill my boyfriend Zachary. I was so scared of something, I got rid of all the knives. He did exercise his Second Amendment right to self-destruct later.

I would love to say that I have never thought about physically harming another person, and actually I haven’t, really, other than the Zachary chronicles, and I’m not sure that I would have ever hurt him. Know he was capable of hurting me. So my murderous fantasies are just in my nightmares when I’m being attacked, and lately in my day dreams, both fever induced and real.

And they’re all quality of life murders.

I can’t imagine physically harming another person, but Shelly had a two and a half year old daughter. What if he mentioned having seen her and what he wanted to do to her? Sheet yes, I would want to hit him. She’s from my Long Island town; the one neither of us ever mention, so I did follow her career more closely than others.

My building has been undergoing brick work since the early summer. The dust inhabits my body. My allergies errupted and it turned into bronchitis I guess. I had my first fever in my adult life, and the noise was so shrill I wanted to scream. But I was too bronchial.

And then, when I felt better, I took up really bad, tone deaf singing that I’m convinced is on key. I sang so loudly that I almost dared invite the wrath of my neighbors. Our apartments are sound proof. As every pre-war apartment dweller knows, you can hear your neighbors if they talk near pipes.

I live in a very quiet neighborhood for Manhattan. People come here for the peaceful ambiance. It’s the selling point for people visiting me rather than me visiting them. They feel as if they’re in the country. There are times of the year when I wake up to the chirping of many birds. It feels incredible then. But that hasn’t happened since Spring.

There’s the constant construction. They don’t do a clean job or leave it clean at night, which is strange for my building. But my building is wallowing in all the new money it gets from the absurd amount of money each apartment owner gets when an apartment is sold. The building gets two percent from something called a “flip tax.”

They tell us to keep our windows closed and shut up. Two years ago we were castigated at the annual Board meeting and told that we had no right to know anything about our own building. To get on the Board you need “X” amount of votes. Each person votes according to the number of shares that they own.

That leaves people with small apartments such as me out of the running, but the bitch in the penthouse–this building not next door—can buy her way in. We’re still paying to fix her apartment.

A huge dust ball went on the outside of my new AC in summer, I told the building workers and went away for three weeks.

When I came home it had gotten into the mechanism, and was useless. Several weeks ago we had heavy winds for about a week. My friends call my block “the wind chamber,” in the best of times, and the dust went into my lungs. They also began working six days a week.

My building spent way too much money on a horrible lobby renovation where pockets were lined, including those of a board member or two. But they will skimp on the important stuff as if, if it doesn’t show it doesn’t matter. They leave it to the contractor who leaves it to the sub contractor who leaves it to….Some building residents who live on my wing look ready to explode. What will happen if they do?

My building is super hot. It’s really in my best interest not to write about it. But it does show greed at its best or worst.

I’m the perfect resident. I always pay my maintenance when I get the envelope. I have learned not to complain over anything less than the super walking in unannounced. He stopped that. Now we just smile and say hello. I’m always frigging smiling when sometimes I want to frown, cry and scream all at once.

Even if I didn’t work at home, I would have to open the windows at night as my apartment, the living room faces East and the bedroom North, is hot. I have four Sharper Image fans, but they’re not enough. I should have put ceiling fans in when I first moved, but didn’t realize how stifling the apartment gets.

Construction work made me physical sick but I’m an owner so if I sue the building, I sue myself. When I was sick I couldn’t fall asleep until 5:30 and construction begins between 7:30 and 8 AM. There were a few days I was so out of it I did sleep until 9 AM

I needed sleep, but even the Bose Noise Reduction Headphones could only change the sound from a dentist drill shrill—back in the noisy dentist days–to a more manageable noise.

So I was sick because of the construction noise and couldn’t relax because of it. Damn I wanted to kill. Drilling was going on at night until after midnight. I’m not sure if that was my building or the city doing emergency work.

I can’t complain to the Board or to the Managing Agent because legally they are right—except for the undocumented worker part, and that never comes back to haunt the building. If I said something I would be told that I don’t know all the facts and am not allowed to know them.

As this is a coop, I own shares in the corporation, not my apartment. As a coop owner I have very few rights. I knew this when I moved in, I just didn’t know how dirty it could get.

The Sunday of the time change, twelve kids came out to the deck of the penthouse next door, 9:30 AM, singing with a boom box. I screamed.

Manhattan’s a very noisy place filled with over stimulation. I want my apartment to be a refugee and it is. My bedroom doesn’t abut any other apartment and has both North windows that face the courtyard and about ten blocks further uptown, and East Windows in the bath that overlook brownstone roofs, West End Avenue, and Broadway on a good day.

I love having six windows in what is essentially a two and a half room apartment. The bedroom has a faux hall way, and gives the bedroom a larger, more important look. I know how to furnish my apartment so that it looks twice as large as it did when I first saw it, and I especially love the large marble bathroom painted so it feels that you’re drifting into the sky or sea, with dentil molding Lucia made, and the bedroom also painted sea blue.

This is an apartment that was made to relax in, and until I was sick I didn’t have the time to. And the construction made sure that I didn’t.

Damn yes, I could have been Adrienne Shelly. When I was younger I related to bar murders, now I relate to quality of life noise murders. While I have never had a physical altercation, I never yelled out of a window before.

I was sick. Usually I walk around with that phony smile and pretend that nothing bothers me. But then I went food shopping.

Never realized how much I have in common with Kathleen Turner in Serial Mom. Manners frigging count. I was just in a market and three of the registers were covered with women’s food. They hadn’t finished shopping yet but thought it okay to leave their merchandise. The check out people love it. They don’t have to work. I would never think of doing such a thing. It’s classless, but it’s I who ends upset.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell them how rude that behavior was. I stopped myself. Maybe next time I will snap. Maybe I’m just one boorish incident from the edge.

But I have a blog, and can scream into it, and maybe that keeps me sane on the streets where I need to be. You don’t know who is a walking time bomb, and might just have a gun, knife or steel pipe, and I value my life too much.

It is something New Yorkers have to live with. Charles Sturcken, a spokesman for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, said the No. 1 quality-of-life complaint — “bar none” — in the city was noise “and construction ranks top in every borough.”
Like many cities and towns, New York limits the hours construction can be done: 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends for one and two-family homes.

But under the new noise code for New York City that will take effect next July 1, construction noise must fall below a certain level; it cannot be more than 10 decibels above ambient sound, Mr. Sturcken said. Ten decibels, he said, is equivalent to doubling the average ambient noise, like the sound of a large truck roaring by on the street.

As I live in a large apartment building, the first paragraph doesn’t apply.

Thing is on nights like tonight when the wind comes in from the river and I can feel the salt and river humidity, it feels perfect. This air that is killing me. And I have the much coveted “extra closet,” or storage space in my own building. For only $45 a month, it’s my only always easily affordable “fixed luxury.”

Since I only have one closet in my apartment proper, it’s a necessity. And way too overflowing. I have to spend a day down there going through my life. It’s my garage, spare room and everything else. Somehow my storage cage looks like an exceptionally neat person rents it. Just an illusion.

My brother-in-law said if I move to California, they will come to visit. I think my lungs have made the decision for me. They’re very happy in Santa Monica. The extra space, the lower prices in stores, and I don’t even find the Boardwalk in Venice on a summer Sunday to be overwhelming.

Even at the Bates Hotel, I wasn’t tempted to be a psycho killer.

Adrienne Shelly’s murder should start many important dialogues. But as long as the Malkin’s of the world exist, it will just be about undocumented workers. It’s really about the state of New York City. But nobody wants to go there.

Being a Coop owner in New York can be like being a prisoner. The Board has the right to do what they want to do.

And the only right that I know I really have is the right to sell my apartment.

I don’t want to end like Adrienne Shelly. I don’t know how many steps I am from going over the edge. Anybody who knows me, just a bit, knows how much I hate rain. I have been living for it recently. Can’t have too much steady out door drilling in a downpour.

This city’s not healthy. Apartments sell for fantasy numbers. I can easily make three times what I paid in 97. Why shouldn’t I?

Because it’s part of the problem not the solution, and in my heart I believe that to be wrong. But I have to stop being idealistic. Nobody else is.