I smelt the Pine Sol and found my future

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.

Every year I think I won’t go through it and….I believe it would have only been bad last Thursday if it hadn’t rained yesterday and today. I need serious beach time. It’s a need not a want. I have begun putting my chair in the water where I know it will be enveloped in waves. Pure coach potato serious meditation. I don’t let myself go to the beach until I have done five miles on the recumbent Exercycle.

Back, way back when I was in my 30’s I did six miles in 30 minutes so I think five miles in 30 minutes is a great start. I’m starting to make it more difficult for myself as it doesn’t feel like exercising.

I thought cycling really fast at two minute increments aside from the 30 minutes. I thought that would negate the 9/11/dead mother blues. I guess it helps.

I would never tell a blogger what to blog about or not to but if you think you have an insight or story about 9/11 that hasn’t been told, don’t tell it. They’re trying to call it Patriots Day here which I always thought was a Spring holiday in Massachusetts honoring a few battles in the Revolution. I understand that history is always evolving but it’s called history for a reason and I don’t like my holidays tampered with.

I wouldn’t want 9/11 to be a holiday but I’m glad 9/11 is the first day of Fallshag week I like living in a city where everything centers around music.

In New York I would find this sickeningly old fashioned. I call myself and equal opportunity parade hater as I hate all but the Thanksgiving Day Parade. When I lived on the East Side it was across town but all other parades were in my front yard–Fifth Avenue. Wasn’t fun to be asked for ID every Saint Patricks Day by policeman who had me confused with an IRA activist and I didn’t even wear orange. Every parade had its own horrors, and I couldn’t stay in bed all day. Or if I were trying I would wake up to Telly Savalas singing “God Bless America” in Greek. Not fun.

Anyway, here the parades are small and cute but never cloying. And I will go to the memorial service as a lot of firemen retired here and they do deserve never ending thanks and gratitude.

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…..