Is it okay if I'm missing New York?

Pictures of 96 Arden, apt. 2F are below.  For some reason, I couldn't get it all in the same space.

Okay, summer in Utah has been divine.  Now, can I go back until next summer?  Can I go back and work in the temple under Sister Kongaika and teach the gospel doctrine in the Inwood Ward?  Could we find a one bedroom apartment on 215th and Broadway that is a short block from the 1-train (there's one available for $1200 a month).  I could then take the subway directly to 66th and go to the library of the performing arts and work there and not have to walk up from 59th street with my computer.  We could live without the car.  We really could.  Couldn't we?

Is it okay if I'm missing New York?

Enough about me. What do YOU think of me?

Welcome to my world.  The NY Times says that "narcissism" is the new psycho babble word of choice, as in Tom Cruise is a narcissist.  Paris Hilton is a narcissist. _____is a narcissist.  You can fill in your own blank.  If you use the word loosely then we are all narcissists.  Who do we really care about more than our precious selves?  I thought Von Watson when she was out of her mind in her nineties was telling the absolute truth:  when she was told her daughter, Eunice, had died of cancer, she said, "Oh, I'm glad it wasn't me!"  

The summer is wearing down and I am feeling the effects.  It's been almost three months since we moved to Daybreak and the euphoria of moving is melting away as it always does.  I end up being the same person I've always been:  anxious, lazy and morose.  My novel seems silly.  I will continue writing it, because I'm more afraid of being undisciplined than I am of being silly.  I keep thinking there must be something else to write, but I have a feeling it is darker than I want to face.  All that is left is silliness.

The Mennonites have it worse

Olivia gave me a heads-up about this novel.  It's beautifully written, laugh out loud funny and, of course, sad.   A few quotes:  "We're Mennonites  As far as I know, we are the most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if you're a teenager. . . . We are supposed to be cheerfully yearning for death and in the meantime, until that blessed day, our lives are meant to be facsimiles of death or at least the dying process. . . . A Mennonite telephone survey might consist of questions like, would you prefer to live or die a cruel death, and if you answer "live" the Menno doing the survey hangs up on you. "

I checked my copy out of the library.  I'm in a new thrift mode.

The Ed Plummer Family has left Utah

It's a quarter to eight in the morning and I have been missing them since they left at four-thirty this morning.  We said our good-byes last night but I found myself awake at four-fifteen and padding downstairs to get a last look at them and wave good-bye from my lit-up porch.  We never played "Golf" and we never ate at Hires (it turns out Ed doesn't like Hires any better than Sam--this doesn't mean I'm giving it up as a family meeting place). I loved seeing all the cousins interact, the brothers together, and obsessing over our looming deaths with Ed.  I would feel so alone without my fellow hypochondriac.  Thank you, God, for the Cyberknife.  I'm a believer!

And thank heaven, the rest of you are close by.

Pre-talk funk

I'm speaking at the 27th ward summer party next Thursday and I've been driving myself crazy with angst:  what will I say?  I will speak about being a woman of a certain age and what that means.  I will try to keep it light and not mention that death looms in the foreground.  I will try try try to forget that I'm hurtling toward death.

On a lighter note:  Tom and I pulled a box marked memorabilia out of the garage and were happy to find Mohammed Ali's autograph that we thought was long lost.  We got it in Boston about 1968 along with Chris and Bill. I will have it framed.

We went to an open house last night for Tom's 50th high school reunion.  Old people.  Really old people.  Ran into several members from the old Emigration Ward and had our picture taken together.  Tonight:  dinner at the Salt Lake Country Club.  Tom looks better than most of his classmates. A lot better!