So, somewhere in the archives is a sorta transcript of a sorta actual conversation my mother and I had only using the word “so.” We could tell what the other was really saying from each so’s inflection. OK we were a bit extreme but we weren’t alone in using the word “so.”
I’m having a hard time focusing on my memoir and I can’t blame 92 degrees at 7PM. Actually that I can–weather like this makes me hyper. It’s good for house projects. Don’t ask. And don’t ask about my need to drink seltzer with ginger powder. That was an integral part of a post I threw out and means absolutely nothing in this one. Oh the vanity of the long time blogger.
No I have been going through a crisis of “my birthday’s in a month and a few weeks and I haven’t accomplished anything important with my life.” It’s a pivotal birthday. One that makes 50 look like a walk in the park.
I fear that I’m becoming old and my experiences aren’t relevant anymore. That the gist of the stories buried within these pages are sooo yesterday.
I understand why I’m going through this and a lot of it has to do with being burnt. I thought it was almost four years ago that I found out about non verbal learning disorder (nld) but it’s only been going on three years. The same year I decided it was time to get out of Dodge, renovated to sell, sold, bought a house, renovated, lost a lot of my resources, and well….It finally hit me this past month….
I no longer live in Manhattan. As crazy as it made me it was my identity. If I accomplished nothing with my life I was a great New Yorker. Yesterday I saw an ad for menupages and almost began to cry. I consulted it as if it were the bible. With menupages you didn’t need to have ten restaurants on speed dial though of course I did.
It’s different here. I couldn’t really serve my Anna Nicole Smith Trailer Park Dinner, that later became the Anna Nicole Smith Memorial Trailer Park Dinner. I no longer eat hamburgers, wouldn’t serve on the styrofoam containers, and people here are a bit more politically correct in someways or at least more material in very strange ways. The Anna Nicole Smith Memorial Trailer Park Dinner wouldn’t be funny.
OK honestly only Rafe found it funny. Lucia was aghast that I would serve company on styrofoam, but I would use company napkins. Made of paper yet pretty.
Now I use real plates, and cloth napkins and it’s better for the environment but I’m beginning to feel that we’re doomed anyway so why….
I didn’t use these things often in New York as I owned neither a dishwasher nor a washer/dryer. I don’t miss that part. No not at all. Though I’ve been trying to find a clothes line and can’t find one at Wal Mart. I might have to go online. It will be so nice to have clothes dried outdoors.
I like it here. I certainly like being able to walk to the beach when I want or not walk to the beach and read in one of my decks. I like the friends I have made and the friends who are coming.
But Pia doesn’t live in New York anymore, has done absolutely nothing of worth with her life, and was already an adult when her parents, who had children late for then, were her age.
For somebody who has done nothing of worth with my life I’ve done a lot in the past three years and am so mentally fatigued I can’t tell when I’m writing something good or not. This is a half pity party. Half just the truth. I don’t use “so,” on my own. I use “just.” I’m going to stop that. Just as soon as I find what’s left of my mind.
I want to write fiction as I love it but feel a memoir has a much better chance of being published. I’m just so over myself
Pia, I don’t believe that you’ve done nothing in your life and that you stuff is dated… but I knew the feeling of getting older. Enjoy the beach, let the fresh ocean air clear your mind, be thankful the gulf stream will keep the oil slick offshore along much of the east coast (that’s a joke, i think). And I’d love to attend one of Anna Nicole Smith Trailer Park Trash Dinner!
You don’t need Manhattan for an identity, at least not to those looking in.
You are Pia, not Pia from Manhattan.
http://www.laundrylist.org/index.php
If I accomplished nothing with my life I was a great New Yorker.
So many great lines, as usual, but that one stood out.
I’ve thought that exact thing about my parents before. When they were my age, I was 14, so…
Your stories will never seem outdated or irrelevant to me. I love reading them.
Perhaps if 50 was a walk in the park, at 60, life is a beach. Here’s hoping your beach isn’t covered with oil. (There’s may be some unintentional symbolism in there. Or maybe not.)
OK, ” I thought it was almost four years ago that I found out about non verbal learning disorder (nld) but itβs only been going on three years,” is really funny. I hope you don’t mind.
@sage
Thanks Sage. My ANS dinners were some of the best. Usually we got fish from a real Greek restaurant, not diner or NC barbecue–actually long before I knew I was moving to sC
@cooper
I hope so Cooper π Thanks for the laundry line place. Can’t believe they don’t sell them everywhere
@Bone
Uh Bone too symbolic. And thanks. What lines? And yes a walk on the beach a day….but tomorrow I might actually sit on it
@Doug
Just for you Doug–wrote that line. It is funny!
Also, it’s probably best you don’t throw your annual Memorial Trailer Park dinner in the South. You never know who and how many of us might show up π
@Bone
That’s the good part of Styrofoam. It lives forever. And if I got the hamburgers from McDonalds so would they
Miss good NY diner burgers and river burgers–or burgers that are grilled near a river
Try a local hardware store for a clothes line. That might be better than Wal-Mart.
TC that would be wonderful. But our one local hardware store is mostly out of business. Too many big box stores
so pia, glad i stopped by…. washing machines and dish washers are scary only when they rumble… not that that has anything to do with anything… but im sure there’s something deep… with regards to a clothesline…i was so excited that i could finally hang my clothes out and let the wind natural dry my clothes thinking that a wonderful state of mind would somehow take place once i put them on…. and one by one each piece of clothing had big holes in it… took me awhile… bugs…in northeast texas bugs are everywhere… so much for living the life… now i live near water again and everything is fine…