This week has been made up of a bunch of crappy jobs.

The accountant with my tax info.When I got there my CPA , who I believe has been married 30 or so times, put his arms around me and said “Men can be such bastards”

Getting my name on our lease from my landlord who is dying to get me out of my rent stabilized apartment. He is demanding an original copy of my marriage certificate and questioning why I want my name on it at all. Don’t get me started on this. These guys have done everything but hire a hit man.

Going to the County Clerk’s office to get said copy.

Going to the doctor. You gotta give this guy credit. He knows that after these visits it’ll be another million years before I see him again so  he’s throwing a load of tests at me.

Since I refused to give him any clues as to what might be bothering me and I lied about everything from my daily 2 mile run to my 3 times a week salmon intake, he’s testing me for everything from  bubonic plague to hammer toes.

I gave him a few blood tests but if he thinks I’m going to let anyone who doesn’t look like Tom Selleck invade my private flower he’s sadly mistaken.

David tried to give me comfort this morning before I left by telling me that the doctor asking if my affairs are in order is a routine question and I shouldn’t let it alarm me. I had to tell Liz on him.

Not everything was bad. I got a voice message from my little nephew Jacob asking me to donate to kids with cancer and telling me that he’s going to shave his head for the charity.

I finally finished getting my taxes ready for the accountant.

While I looked it over I noticed that one of my expenses was “money for dave and his slut”.

I was going to change it but why not call a craphead a craphead?

Since dave, always taking the high road, didn’t want to use our mutual money on his lowlife girlfriend, we sold a bond and split the money. Hence the slut depiction on the check memo.

I was still angry then. As you can see, now I’m over it.

Actually I realize that I don’t hate him. I would like to never see him again but I wish him well.

I always used to think women who were left by their husbands and blamed the other woman were stupid.

He’s the one who had a pact with you. He’s the one who lied and betrayed you. Why blame her?

I realize now that logic has nothing to do with it.

She knew that he was in a long term marriage.

Most of the people she met while she was with him knew me for years yet that didn’t stop her.

Plus she sent those filthy letters to my home.

Still, she owed me nothing.

So why do I hate her and wish her ill but not  him?

I can interact with him. I am angry at him but I also feel pity and affection for him and I’m protective of him.

If he were sick or died I would grieve.

Yet he is the murderer of this marriage not her.

Maybe it’s as simple as he and I have a history.

Or maybe it’s what all those other women wanted to think when their men left them for another woman. That she lured him away and if she weren’t there he would have stayed.

Though I’m not out of the woods health wise because something could come up at any time I have decided that even if I find out I’m dying I will still continue with my blog to keep a record of my slow painful demise.

That is what is known as a ‘brave face”.

Now brave is not something that most people in my family associate with me.

I started making a list of all the things I’m afraid of but I ran out of space so here’s just a few.

Losing my parents – done

losing any of my sisters (this is a big one) – 2 down and with my fragile mental and physical state I’m sure I’ll go before Marcia who’s a health bird at least that’s what I hope.

Getting any slow growing illness – I know something is brewing

Planes – don’t get me started

Being poor – thanks for nuthin dave

snakes – make what you want of this

farting in the elevator – no comment

doctors

the IRS or any government agency

Being scared- this is a big one

sailboats in motion especially tipping.

Interestingly enough I’m not afraid of nuclear war, terrorists, killers or sharks.

Oh I forgot, since I heard that leprosy thing I’m really afraid of armadillos.

Well I dodged a bullet this time but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t pick up something in that hell hole filled with sick people.

Maybe I’m speaking too soon because he took a bunch of tests, none of which will come out good. I had to go to an actual lab today for blood tests etc.

And he wasn’t a specialist of rare tropical diseases so there’s a blank page filled with question marks on that subject.

Now that I’ve gone to a doctor and no obvious terminal illness was apparent I’m going to have to go back to my usual free floating anxiety.

Of course since the blood test hasn’t come back yet, aids and all types of cancer are still on the table. But if I get an all clear on that, that doctor is going to have to run fast to catch me again.

By the way, he poo-pooed all my up to now very effective preventative  health measures.

For some reason he claims sleeping with a fat chicken under your pillow doesn’t do much to halt bird flu.

I’ll take his word on that but I know turkey bacon in your shoes works. I’ve yet to get even a hint of rickets.

Remember the story about my dentist?

I heard his voice and knew I wanted to go to him.

Well when I took dave to the doctor for what I thought (and kinda hoped) was an end of life examination, the doctor and his nurses were so kind and familiar sounding that I said to myself if I ever can get myself to a doctor this is the place.

I am an unusual type of hypochondriac. No symptom I have is not terminal yet I rarely go to a doctor. I’ve never had a cough that wasn’t lung cancer or a headache that wasn’t a brain tumor.

I suffer from heart disease, high blood pressure, some kind of brain thing, Alzheimer’s, a serious joint something and strong symptoms of neck cancer. At least I think I do. I’ve never had any of this checked but I’m no dope. I can read a symptom as good as any doctor.

I can live with a great deal of pain because I’m more afraid of being told something bad and being scared than anything.

I’m fairly sure I once broke my hip because I fell on the ice twice in one day while walking Willa, Steph’s dog, and for a year I couldn’t turn over in bed without screaming  How I held on to my husband for as long as I did I’ll never know.

My sister Marcia is always saying that she’d hate to be in my head. Like there’d be room for her there with all the tumors.

The point of all this is that I’m going to the doctor today. YIIIIIKESSSS

I can no longer ignore my symptoms of beri beri and even my go to medical advisor, my friend Susan is stymied.

I just want you all to know that this blog has been a blessing to me but if it’s as bad as I think it is  you won’t hear from me again so this is good bye.

Yesterday was the day I set aside to do all the paperwork for my taxes, my divorce and dave’s tour, things I hate doing.

First thing in the morning I barged into Liz and David’s house since she had mentioned that she was making pancakes the night before.

I listed what my plans were for the day and Lizzie told me that she was putting up a peg board in the kitchen.

I was more than happy to put my stuff aside to become her ‘sous- chef’ for the day.

First we went to Home Depot to buy a saw. She wanted one of those round blade things run by electricity. The salesman was really uncomfortable selling it to us since she’d never used one before but we assured him that it didn’t look that hard and any idiot can cut astraight line.
Just to be safe we also bought a regular people saw that we’d try first. In fact  we bought 2 different kinds.

We came home with all three saws and some goggles only to hear the voice of doom (David) crab about our buying power tools and thinking we could put up a peg board ourselves, actually it was all Liz, I was just holding stuff and handing her stuff.

Since he considers himself more of an intellectual he made it clear that he’d have nothing to do with it and promptly sat in his chair watching “Wagon Train” on his Kindle and working on his list of racial and religious slurs.

I can’t tell you how hard it was. Mainly because I didn’t do any of the hard stuff but Liz had to take an Aleve in the middle of the task.

Anyway it was finished and beautiful.

This morning I was waiting for the microwave repairman since my fairly new microwave oven hadn’t worked properly since I got it.

Liz came over and suggested I get her the instructions while she stuck her skinny arm behind my refrigerator and unplugged it and plugged it in again.

After reading the manual it seems there was nothing wrong with my oven. I am just a pea brain.

Who knew that the answer to my future lived right down the hall.

Now how do I get rid of David?  It won’t be easy. If it was he’d have gotten rid of me years ago.

We were having cocktails at The Mark hotel bar.

We decided to dine there since Steph had read in People that Cameron Diaz went there the other day and she was hoping to run into some celebs.

It was after a perfect day. Lunch and shopping with Stephanie and Julie, facials, cocktails with Liz and David (which clearly was the tipping point for how we felt the next morning) followed by our evening out.

We were both dressed to the nines and since, though he insisted not from personal experience but because he was relying on a friend that knew a lot about hookers, David insisted that that bar is filled with ‘working girls’, we were either hoping to pick up some pocket change or lure some unsuspecting older gentleman in with my ‘good girl’ personna.

Steph is happily married so she wasn’t interested for herself but since as she says she’s bound to get “stuck” with me in the end , if she could pawn me off on someone else she’d breathe a sigh of relief . That’s why the night was on her.

Only I look on her statement as a vow of love because I know that Steph wouldn’t get stuck with anyone unless she wanted to. She’s the mean girl in the family.

Anyway it was after my third cosmopolitan that I mentioned that my life was so much more interesting and fun now than it had been in years.

Steph said “he really gave you a gift. You’re only on this earth for a short time then you’re gone for ever and ever”

The “piece of shit” and “scumbag whore” were my words but I know she concurs.

Actually I was going to add  “cocksucking” but I didn’t want to scare away any new readers.

Every year on my birthday my mother would call me up and say

“I wasn’t feeling so good 10, 27, or 30 years ago today” and then she’d reminisce about the day of my birth.

Well 37 years ago today I was in the car with my parents on the way to the Essex House to get dressed for my wedding.

I can’t say I wasn’t feeling so good but I certainly was nervous.

I was the first one in my family to marry someone who wasn’t jewish, something that if I wasn’t 31 and clearly over the hill my mother never would have stood for.

Although she seemed to accept that I was marrying dave my mother did feel it her obligation to remind me that it was only a matter of time before he called me a “dirty jew”

My in laws had been in town for several days before the wedding and the glaring difference between them and my parents really jumped out at me.

My mother was, let’s face it, like me.

My mother in law wouldn’t have said the word ‘shit’ if she had a mouth full of it.

My father and my father in law, a Methodist minister, got along quite well. They were both intellectuals and since my father had traveled through the south extensively he knew how to speak southern.

My mother and me, not so much.

My mother in law never felt that  comfortable with me either. I was constantly saying things that would make her head itch.

I had no ability for small talk. She, on the other hand, could do 30 minutes on the weather.

I won’t say my mother in law got to love me because I don’t think she ever did. But she did appreciate my strong feeling for family.

When my father in law retired, since he had been given housing as part of his salary, they had no place to live.  It was me that insisted that we buy them a house. For the first time in their married life they knew where they’d be living from year to year.

My mother in law wanted to love me. She loved everyone. She really was a good Christian. And she was grateful to me but I just wasn’t her cup of tea.

And I was no angel either. If I had my life to live over again, I would have been kinder. I would have let her win sometimes.

I remember one time they were visiting around Christmas.

I had been telling dave I wanted to give them $500. He kept saying $250 was plenty.

We were all playing cards and after a long game I won. My mother in law misunderstood and thought dave won and started cheering and patting him on the back. dave corrected her and told her I won.

Her face fell and she said “darn” ( I never heard anyone say darn before).

dave and I went into the bedroom to write the check.

“$500 ?” he said.

“Nah $250 is fine”

That “darn” cost her 250 bucks.

I’m ashamed of that now.

Today being an iffy holiday I heard from Captain Hugh again.

“Hi Captain, how are you?”

“I can’t get around at all any more” He did sound terrible.

I had my niece, Stephanie on the other line so I cut to the chase.

My family came to visit this weekend so I haven’t written in awhile.

My niece Julie got her picture and a blurb about her new book on friendship in the New York Times this Sunday.

I don’t want to pat myself on the back but she’s only following in my footsteps.

After college I worked as a caseworker in the south bronx.

During that time I too was quoted in the New York Times. It was in an article on lousy caseworkers.

I just don’t want you to think Julie is the only one in the family with creds.

I loved the Grammy’s last night. Just to show you how lame I am I started taking notes thinking I’d tell you all my opinion on several of the acts. All of a sudden I realized. Who gives a shit what I thought of the Grammy’s? I’m 67. oops 68. Remember I had a birthday.

I will say that my nephew Paul, who used to be the head writer at Pop Up Video, always said that I had the musical taste of a 15 year old girl.

Anyway my fingers are crossed that I’ll meet Bruno Mars in Gristede’s and he’ll fall in love with me and we’ll dance and dance.