Existential Laziness

So I just came across a very lovely picture of a deciduous tree all lit up in a field of snow and I know that it was the very tree that graced the cover of Living, Martha Stewart’s impeccable magazine.  It is all white lights with big white star lanterns hung in strategically casual places.  It is glowing.  It is wonderful.  It is beautiful.  And I hate it almost as much as I hate stepping in poo. 

                Without a doubt, last year’s Christmas tree was a flop.  It never quite felt like Christmas at my house and I strongly suspect that is because of my choice in trees.  This picture was came along after I started my decorating process and made everything I was trying to do look like crap.  This year I will be back to the old drawing board.  And why not?  This is a new Christmas, and it’s our first Christmas renting a new house in Tacoma … our first Christmas in Tacoma!

                But what is this Christmas going to be?  Joseph and I have been straying away from our normal “make all the gifts and even if they’re crappy they still mean more than something from Nordstrom’s” mentality.  We aren’t made of money (duh, we’re in the bottom ninety-nine percent in this country).  But I have very little love in me for knitting, or sewing, or canning jams, or any of those crafts that used to contribute to the bulk of our gift-giving.  Joseph mentioned yesterday that he felt like knitting more rugs for this year, but I think that just might be the cold weather giving him a burst of energy. 

                And that got me thinking, too.  I’ve identified myself so much with trying to be a would-be crafter, I haven’t really thought of what I might be if I’m not a knitter or a canner.  Maybe I’m just lazy. 

                Well!  The television isn’t going to watch itself!

Barbie Dolls

When I was little, I used to be fascinated by the Barbie doll commercials that played on Cartoon Day, the day also known as Saturday.  I’m aging myself a little here, because as a nation we’ve become so indulgent that now there is never any day when there are not cartoons on the TV on some channel. Kids are no longer taught that they must wait patiently for six whole days until they see another cartoon.   But I digress. 

I was a boy.  Boys did not play with Barbie Dolls.  I had to ask my mom why they showed Barbie Doll commercials to little boys when we weren’t allowed to play with them, and my mom’s answer was that it was the same reason little girls were shown commercials for boys’ toys.  This was a non-answer, sure, but it quelled my line of questioning.  I was a boy, boys didn’t play with Barbie dolls, and that was that.  But why did I want to play with them so bad? 

Then one day when I was four or five, something amazing happened.  I was watching cartoons (which meant that this was a Saturday, because, as I’ve pointed out, that was the only day with cartoons on TV) and a new Barbie commercial came on.  This, my friends, was the best Barbie to ever be made, and the commercial made you KNOW it.  She was Peaches and Cream Barbie, and she wore a devastatingly beautiful gown with a sequins bodice and full, peach skirt.  She had a wrap of peach tulle which you could style in a myriad of ways to suit the occasion she was going to.  This, my friends, was the forbidden fruit in my own personal Garden of Eden: it was not an apple, it was a peach. 

My cousin Nita is six years older than I am, and her birthday was coming up.  This meant that she would have been turning ten or eleven years old.  My Gram decided she would take me shopping so that I could pick out a gift to give to Nita.  I was excited.  I knew we weren’t shopping for toys for me, but shopping for toys period was enough to get me going.  And this would be shopping for girl toys!  This was truly going to be a magical day!  And when we got to the toy aisle, there she was: Peaches and Cream Barbie in her shining cellophane packaging.  She looked into my eyes, and I looked into hers, and she winked at me, I swear it. 

“Gram,” I said, “this is what we HAVE to get for Nita.” 

Gram was not only down with my decision, she one-upped me.  She said we should get the doll and a package full of accessories to go with her!  It was almost too much.  I can still feel my heart swelling up in my throat when I remember driving back to Gram’s house to wrap our gifts up.  If it was possible, the real, live Peaches and Cream Barbie in my hands was even more beautiful than the model they used for the commercial.  She had a California tan, naturally wavy blonde hair, big blue eyes, and lips tinted peach.  The accessory pack included jewelry, a mink wrap, some brushes and hair clips, and a few more pairs of shoes.  This would be the greatest, most wonderful birthday gift anyone every received.  This was f***ing Peaches and Cream Barbie!

We went to the birthday party and Nita was playing with all her friends and I waited.  We had to all eat dinner, and I waited.  We had to sing happy birthday to Nita and she had to blow all the candles out, and I waited.  Finally it was time to open gifts.  Why couldn’t she open Peaches and Cream first?  Why did she have to wait?  Couldn’t she feel the energy radiating from the package I had helped Gram wrap with curly ribbon and a bow! 

Finally Nita opened the package. 

She looked at Peaches and Cream Barbie. 

She looked up at Gram, and she said thank you.

And then she dropped Peaches and Cream Barbie into a pile of  other presents and never looked at her again. 

I was a boy.  I wasn’t allowed to play with Barbie dolls, but I could barely eat my slice of birthday cake because of the lump in my throat.  I wanted so badly to see her again.  I needed to free her from her cellophane prison and hold her in my own hands.  Why didn’t Nita see that this Barbie wasn’t just any Barbie?  This was Peaches and Cream Barbie!  The Best Barbie!  She had her own commercial where she danced with Ken in the pale moonlight!

Gram came to my rescue. 

“Sister,” she said.  Gram always calls Nita Sister.  “I think Frankie might like you to open your doll so he can see her better.” 

Nita obliged.  I wasn’t allowed to play with her, boys can’t play with girl toys.  But for a few shining moments on my Aunt Sis’s couch, I sat silently and held Peaches and Cream Barbie in my own hands and stared into her deep, blue eyes.  There was love between us.  I knew it.  I could feel it.  Peaches and Cream Barbie and I were meant to be together.  But I was a boy and she was a girl toy, so I had to leave her behind and never see her again. 

Many years later, after relating this story to my friend, Judy, I received a nostalgic remake of Peaches and Cream Barbie for Christmas of 2010.  Thank you, Judy.  She is, to this day, one of my most prized possessions.  But it set me to thinking about girl toys and boy toys.  We know as children that they are separate.  If we are one gender we can never play with the toys of another gender.  But what if we divided up the toys based on skin color, or ethnicity, or religion?  What if I couldn’t play with Peaches and Cream Barbie because I didn’t have the right social status? 

Marriage, for me, is like a beautiful Barbie doll.  I can see it, I can want it, I can look deep into its eyes and know that I would love it dearly.  But because of my gender, and the gender of the one I love, I can never have it.  Marriage must be protected from boys and girls who play with the wrong toys by a shining cellophane package.  You would never think to deny me my marriage rights if I picked a spouse of another skin color, another ethnicity, another religion.  But because of the gender of the participants, we all look away when it is denied.  Why is it okay to deny a right in our society because of gender? 

I see so many marriages thrown into a pile of presents and never looked at twice by the people who are allowed to have them.  All I want to do is sit on my aunt’s couch and hold a marriage for a while.  I would love it.  I would treasure it.  I would make it my own.  But I can’t, because I’m a boy, and boys can’t have marriages to other boys.  Grooms are a girl’s  toy. 

Funky Tut

I was looking forward to this weekend so much.  First of all, I was going to the King Tut exhibit at the Pacific Science Center with Joseph and my friend Katie and Katie’s sister.  Katie and I are enthusiasts for all things Ancient Egyptian.  And my most favorite thing of all Ancient Egypt is the goddess Isis.  I love her!  Katie and I decided we were the new Priestesses of Isis, which mostly involved us bothering our super-Jesus loving coworker Taylor with pagan slogans we made up and using Isis-code-names for each other.  I was Frankertiti and Katie was Katiepatra.  We are pretty cool, I know.  Joseph was almost willing to be seen with us for this trip. And then I was going to go to the Zoo with one of my most favorite nuclear family units in the whole wide world on Sunday. 

So here are my complaints:

First of all, I’d like to apologize to the Pacific Science Center’s cash register cashiers.  I am so, so sorry I spent money that goes to pay your salary.  I could tell you hate customers, and I have to tell you that the feeling was mutual.  I am so sorry you had to help me.  I am also sorry that I found my way to the exhibit despite your directions mumbled at top speed.  (I’d like to seriously thank the HELPFUL PSC employee who directed us to the bathroom and the exhibit, you are amazing, I was totally lost! Don’t tell your jerk-face coworker.) 

Second of all, I can’t believe I didn’t pass out when, after waiting in line in the August sun I was herded into a small dark room with forty other people where the temperature was even hotter than out in the sun.  I am also at a loss as to why the little park ranger with the microphone felt the need to speak in a movie trailer voice. 

Third of all, I am an adult.  I can chew gum without getting it all over ancient statues.  Don’t police me, police the four year olds.  I can keep a stick of gum off offfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

Ghack!  I was holding my gum in my fingers to prove a point and kind of got it stuck on my F key!  I think it’s good now. Fff, yeah, pretty sure.  Sorry about that.

Fourth of all, I have never felt so underwhelmed with ancient statues.  I didn’t even have an overwhelming urge to touch one just to say I did it.  Everything was so overly lit and dimly encased in glass that I felt like I was in a boring jewelry store.  The black draperies were a little overkill; if they had gone with a turquoise or a powder blue I might be reporting a different impression right now.  And yes, King Tut’s statue was a little pudgy and black is slimming, but Tut has a reputation for opulence, and he could have used some Tiffany Blue, just saying. 

I will take a little time to report on my favorite piece.  It was a cat sarcophagus, literally a stone coffin built for a cat.  It was also Katie’s favorite, because she’s a lover of cats.  For me, though, it was the one place I found what I was looking for.  Joseph and I were admiring an Ancient Egyptian toilet seat (seriously) while I was telling some random guy that I’ve been trying to get my toilet seat in a museum for years, when I looked over at the Cat sarcophagus and saw a carving of a goddess with a certain house-basket hieroglyph on her head.  I knew from the Discovery channel that this was Nephthys, the sister-goddess of Isis, and that on ancient sarcophagi the sisters were depicted on opposite ends of each other.  I grabbed Joseph, pointed it out, and excitedly exclaimed, “If my calculations are correct, Isis is just on the other side!”

And she was.  Isis was hiding on a small cat sarcophagus waiting for me to find her.  I know King Tut’s father disbanded the worship of old gods in favor of a monotheism based on the Sun God.  One of Tut’s few accomplishments as a young Pharaoh was to turn the power back over to the priests and allow the traditional gods of Egypt like Isis to be worshipped again.  I didn’t expect to see much of Isis during such an exhibit focused on a time period trying to hush up old gods.  But I was sad I saw only one small depiction of my favorite Egyptian goddess, who stood facing a corner of the room like a punished toddler who tried to chew gum at a King Tut exhibit. 

And then I woke up on Sunday super excited for the zoo.  My GI tract was also excited, but not for the zoo.  So I had to miss it, and my favorite little nuclear family.  I’m super sad about it, but someday I’ll make it to the Point Defiance Zoo, which is in T-town, go Tacoma!  (Although, I kind of blame Tacoma City’s water for my GI problem.)

Athena Polias

 I grewup in Small Town, USA.  The people wholived there were complex, and simple, and wonderful, and awful in the way onlysmall towns can be.  Growing up, I alwaysfelt like an outsider looking in.  I sawfriendships form that I should have included me.  I saw causes and stands made that should havebeen my causes and my stands.  And when Ilooked at my wonderful, crazy, and very beautiful family, I wondered why I wasa part of it.  I never felt at home in myhome.  I never felt at ease in myskin.  And I never felt like I was givingthe world all that I could offer it. This may have been because I was gay, and being gay—especially in SmallTown, USA—meant being an outsider.  Itmight have been because of some kind of ambition that fought with my internallaziness.  Or it might have
                I firstmoved out at nineteen.  And then, when Iwas twenty, I moved to Europe to be with a boy. That went as well as you might think it went, and so I moved back inwith my parents when that European experience went sour.  But I moved out as soon as I could.  Being at home, for me, isn’t the same as itis for my brothers (who are so at ease being at home, they have no compunctionto move out, let alone to raise their children anywhere other than my parents’house).  I have an ingrained need to bemy own person, to be other than my family. Don’t get me wrong.  I love myfamily very much, but I need them to be my background, my foundation.  They are the place I come from so that I cangrow from them.   And I did have a driveto grow from them. 
                When I wastwenty-one, I moved from an amazing rental house I was living in with threeother roommates, two of which are very good friends of mine.  I had had enough of the small town, and Iwanted more from life than Sandpoint, Idaho could offer to a young gay guy inthe year 2000.  I wanted the big bang ofa city, but not too much bang.  So whenmy friend, Carr, offered me a place to sublet in her apartment in Seattle, Ijumped at the chance, and made the move of my lifetime. 
                I movedto the city. 
                On thethird day of the ancient Greek month Skirophorion,the people of Athens celebrated a festival in honor of their patron Goddess,Athena Polias—Athena of the city.  InSeattle, I became Frank Polias—Frank of the city.   I worked in a shop on the corner of 5thand Pine.  I made my home in the U-district.  I drank vanilla breve lattes like they weregoing out of style.  And I fell into theGap and started rocking tight, black, ribbed sweaters.  I saw Seattle for all its worth, its possibilities,its seediness, and its triumphs.  I fellin love in Seattle, and I did the most Seattle thing one could do:  I moved with my love to a small farm outsideof Seattle. 
                I mademany wonderful memories on that little, two-bit farm.  But now I am back in a city.  This time, the city is Tacoma.  But I want to do this city living justice bywriting about it in my blog.  I am goingto be Frank Polias, again, and I am going to harness all my identity as anoutsider looking in to give my blog a taste of Tacoma the way I see it.  Each week, give or take a week, I plan onwriting up my experiences with T-town and publishing a blog about it.  Athena Polias willing, I will give to you myinsights and observations in a yummy little funny story for all of you to eatup and enjoy.  I thank you in advance andlook forward to our future correspondences.

Clan of the Cappuccino

As you might have guessed, I am a fan of Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children series, a group of books that includes The Clan of the Cave Bear.  When I first encountered these books in high school, they burned me alive with inspiration.  I wanted nothing more than to run out, hunt for my meals, and make medicines from teas.  I read up on survival and other Paleolithic ideals and conventions, and I was itching to put this into practice.  The only problem was, I had a soft heart and could never be a hunter.  Although, as a hoarder, I’m pretty sure I’ve got gathering skills. 

            I just discovered the final book of the series was published last year.  Some super fan I am.  I will say that the fifth book in the series, which was published in 2002, left me a little flat.  It didn’t have the drive or passion of the first two books, and it lacked the interesting dynamics of the third.  The fourth book was a long read, and a little too contrived, but it was a story about traveling from the Ukraine to France before the euro rail was invented, so I cut it some slack.  Rereading the books, however, has begun to light that same fire in my belly for all things Cro-Magnon!

            I am a white American, which means I love borrowing ideas from cultures that aren’t all about the Gap and Starbucks.  So while reading the books, which have a heavy theme of animals as totems and spirit guides, I began wondering what my totem would be.  Surely the Gap isn’t my totem … but maybe Starbucks is!  I do love coffee, and I’m already marked with a mermaid tattoo! 

            Joseph is already sorted on this issue.  When I met him, he already had pictures and wall art in his apartment depicting the gray wolf he identifies with.  Joseph has wolfish qualities, too.  He’s loyal, fiercely protective of his pack, and he’s a bit aloof.  (Don’t worry, he gave me none of that “lone wolf” crap when we were dating.  I would have socked him in the stomach for it … maybe my totem is the Boxing Kangaroo!) 

            So all the while I was rereading my way through the series of books, I kept thinking which animal would embody my spirit?  Which animal do I have such a kindred connection to that other people would recognize the qualities that connect us right away?  I have a few favorite animals, but favorite animals aren’t necessarily totem material.  For instance, lately, I have liked owls.  But I like owls as decorative motifs, and I don’t think I embody the wise owl spirit.  I have a list of animals it MIGHT be.  And I have a list of animals I would WANT it to be.  But even these “small” lists just make me feel like saying Noah’s Ark is my totem.  Why not?

            My desire for a totem has been getting to me.  I even tried a couple of YouTube meditations to find my Animal Spirit.  But the voices on these videos are too annoying and too fast for me to really get into, and (didn’t think of this) I don’t know how to meditate.  It was very frustrating.  I had to form an image of a “happy place” and when something came to mind like my bed, the narrator would say something like, “perhaps it is a meadow near a babbling brook, or perhaps it’s a mountain side with trees all around.”   Crap!  I was supposed to be in an outdoorsy place?  Okay.  Hang on.  Okay, there, I’m in a forest. 

            “Now, you see a path,” the narrator tells me. 

            Uh, no I don’t.  Hang on.  Thinking … thinking …

            “You start down the path,” the voice continues.

            I said hang on!  Geez!  Okay, I guess I’ll just make a path, stomping through some forest I made up in my head.  Why do I see a refrigerator in the tree branches?  Never mind, ignore it. 

            “You encounter an animal.”

            Oh, this is it.  Whatever animal I think of will be my totem forever … why can’t I think?  Think think THINK!!!!!

            “Now ask your animal …” oops!  Gotta hurry, I guess I see a Muppet!  Wait, a Muppet?

            “… if it is your Spirit Animal.  If the animal is not, continue along your path until you meet the next animal and ask it the same question …”

            Nope!  Lame!  Way too hippy for me!  I have a religious view.  I have ideas about the universe and how it works.  Why do I need to do this 1970’s I-wish-I-were-an-Indian-so-I-can-pretend-I-have-more-culture-than-Starbucks-drinkers crap?   Why do I NEED a Spirit Animal?  It just seems like something people make up to make themselves more important, anyway.  It’s not like I’m going to be attacked by crackheads some day and will be forced to call out, “By the power of EAGLE!!!” and have an eagle swoop down from the sky to carry me into safety, and scare the crap out of the crackheads at the same time. 

            And what would I do with a totem?  Meditate on it?  Paint pictures of it?  Get a tribal tattoo of it?  That just seems so … AWESOME! 

            But here’s the kicker.  One of the websites said if we can’t find our spirit animal, we have to RELAX, because being stressed out may scare animal spirits away from us.  Well, that’s just great.  How can I relax when I don’t know what my totem is? 

            Well, I give up!  I will never be an awesome caveman.  So much for The Clan of the Cave Bear showing me how to live my life.  I’ll just have to drown my totemless sorrows by shopping at the Gap.  I may need a cappuccino to get me through this difficult time in my life.  Spirit of Starbucks, take me away! 

The Call of the Mammoth

When I was in high school and going through all of the career counseling classes they make you take to see what jobs were right for your personality, there were only two jobs I was interested in.  The first career choice I picked was to be a puppeteer.  (The fact that I made my own hand puppets from my own designs made me super popular with the ladies.)  And the second career choice was made after I read Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear at the age of fifteen: I wanted to be a caveman. 

            I figured I would take a year after high school and move myself up into the mountains to survive on foraged and hunted food.  I would make clothing from the animals I killed.  I would make medicine from the herbs I found.  And I would surely find a cave somewhere in the wilderness of Idaho which would make a good home for me while I lived on a sabbatical away from humanity and technology. 

            I wasn’t stupid.  I knew this was going to be a lot of work, so I began preparing for it right there, as a fifteen year old boy, by reading every book I could get on survival, herbal medicine, flint knapping, and cavemen!  It became one of my many obsessions in my life.  I learned about the Venus figurines of the Aurignacian sites.  I learned about the painted caves in France and Spain such as Lascaux.  The Chauvet cave was discovered my junior year and I had a folder filled with information about it.  English class was dedicated to writing short stories about cavewomen and art class had me busy.  I painted rocks my Art Teacher, Mr. Shook, brought down from the mountains for me.  I sculpted my own Venus figurines from clay and Mr. Shook taught me to use the small kiln to fire special glazes on them.  I also began sculpting small, votive mammoths which I glazed in browns, oranges, and terracotta reds.  I wore a mammoth pendant I made for myself around my neck, had a raccoon tail on my backpack, and sported a faux fur vest which I wore in my senior portraits. 

            I’m not sure why, but the idea of Cro-Magnon humans living in a world of ice and winter with all of nature against them filled my mind for a long while.  My art was their art.  My dreams were to go back in time and breathe that primeval air.  I was a scrawny little guy who went hunting every fall with his dad and his brothers and never killed anything due to a combination of clumsiness and a soft heart.  But in my mind, I could survive an ice age. 

            The idea still flavors my existence.  My mom buys me mammoth figures when she comes across them.  Joseph bought me a mammoth ivory pendant as a gift one spring when we decided to rent a cabin and get away for a while.  And I still love looking at those cave paintings in books and on the internet.  But the idea of being a caveman hasn’t struck me for a long while until now. 

            In T-town, with an icy Mt Rainier looming above my new front porch, I have begun to hear the call of the woolly mammoth again.  I take my dogs for walks, and almost every time, someone (crackhead or otherwise) has to stop me to ask if my dog Dinky is a wolf.  Dinky is Siberian Husky mixed with Border Collie, and he is usually in a state of shedding his fur.  But he’s half the size of a regular wolf, and his eyes are brown as can be, not yellow.   

            Sally, my other dog, receives no such attention. 

            So I’m not sure how this inspiration will manifest itself this time around, but it was much of my culture in high school the last time it hit.  Perhaps I’ll take up painting rocks again, or maybe I’ll get a mammoth tattoo.  Until I know for sure, though, I will walk with my wolf and carry a spear in my mind.  (Maybe I should carry the spear in my hand, it might cut down on the crackheads who talk to me on said walks.)

Don't Flush Diapers Down the Toilet, and other things I've learned while moving to T-town

The island I lived on with my love and my dogs and even my little cat was a dream in more ways than one.  In some sense, it was the ideal place for us.  It was a crumbling little house that needed lots of love in the middle of an orchard long overgrown with blackberries and nettles.  It was full of birds and flowers in the springtime, apples and deer in the fall.  The friends we made opened themselves to us as though we were family members and old school friends they have had for a very long time. 

But in another sense, it was a dream we had to wake up from eventually.  We didn’t own the place, nor did we have the money, time, and know how to bring that poor house back from the brink of death it stands upon.  The very sensible thing to do was to pinch ourselves and move back to a city and why not the city I’ve been commuting to since I started nursing school in 2010 where I now work?  It seemed like the likely choice.  So we moved to Tacoma, which the locals colloquially call T-town.  Joseph and I have lived in Seattle, it was where we met and where we lived before we moved to the island.  But living in a city was a second nature for both of us and much of the city habits we developed were quickly shed when we crossed the ferry to our new home eight years ago.  Coming to T-town has been a rude awakening in some senses, and also a bit of a dream in its own right. 

So living amongst packing dust with our life scattered about us in poorly labeled boxes, Joseph and I found ourselves trying to conquer our fears and concerns one small job at a time.  And I’ve come to learn a few things:

1. Don’t flush diapers down the toilet.  The plumbing in the new house was speaking to us.  Literally.  When you flushed the toilet the bath tub gurgled.  When we ran the dishwasher--good gods, a dish washer!  I was beginning to think such things were myths!--the sink wheezed.  Finally, after two showers and a toilet flush, the plumbing had had it and everything backed up and pooled in the bath tub in a rather disconcerting display of color and texture.  I texted my landlord (a woman I work with who is a godsend) and within a 24 hours we had the men out here to router our septic line. 

The day was windy, the dogs were going nuts having to live in a new house and a new when the smart, upstanding guy and his slack jawed helper came to clear up the house’s old pipes.  There was a mess in the living room I was working on to make room for our couch and the dogs had to be shoved in the laundry room with the baby gate we bought for them in place.  The guys had me turn on all the water and flush the toilet multiple times to see if anything would back up again, and as it turns out, they did a top-notch job. 

The slack jawed guy showed me what he thought was a handy wipe and said, “You can’t flush these handy-wipes.” 

The upstanding guy called from across the yard, “That’s a diaper, turn it around.”

The slack jawed guy obliged and we both saw that it was indeed a diaper.

“You can’t flush these diapers,” the slack jawed guy told me.

“Good to know,” I said.

“Hey,” said the upstanding guy, “they just moved in, it’s not their diaper.”

But the advice was taken, I will never flush a diaper as long as I live.

2. Have ghosts, will travel.  It was well documented both by my landlord and other people who have lived in this house that this house is not haunted.  So my only explanation for why we’ve still been having spooky little events like the feeling someone else is in the bathroom while we’re in the shower, or my dog Sally being completely freaked out in an empty room by herself is that the ghost from the old house came with us to the new house.  But that’s okay.  I’m used to the ghost and having a friend in a new place is always welcome.  My landlord made me promise her that if the ghost turns out to be a poltergeist, that I wear a helmet if I allow it to slide me from one point to another on the floor.  She’s a nurse, so she’s all about safety. 

3.  “Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other’s gold.”  The new place is full of potential friends.  A lady at Safeway greeted me like an old friend, even though I had not seen her before in my life.  I then realized, when she greeted me again as I walked the dogs one day,  that she lives a couple of blocks away from my house. 

On another dog walk, a woman yelled to me from across the street, “Alan!  Hey, Alan!” 

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m not Alan.”

“Who are you, then?”

“I’m Frank,” I told her. 

“Oh, well, you walk just like Alan.  I’ve been thinking you were Alan for two days now.” 

Oh, great, so she has not only been watching me walk by for two days, my walk isn’t as unique as I thought it was.  Guess I’ve got a new walk to work on! 

There was also a roommate of sorts living in her car along side of our yard for the first couple of days we were here with her dog on a chain resting on our grass, but before I could learn her name or even pet her dog, she left.  Probably for the best, I don’t think she would have liked chipping in on the rent. 

4. Neighbors are always looking for a fight.  Our new neighbors have been very, very nice and have made it clear that we can come to them if we need anything, but just when I was starting to be very glad for better neighbors, the unthinkable happened.  I was minding my own business on my porch when one of the neighbors climbed up into the fort they have by the fence and took aim at me with a huge gun he had constructed with PVC pipe at some sort of camp last summer (he had the courtesy of telling me about the weapon he was using to shoot me).  So, now, I have to shop for Super Soakers to stash under the porch rocker just in case poop goes down in the hood. 

Armed with these new insights I will continue to make my home here in T-town.  I might have to be mindful of what I flush, or realize a creepy feeling that comes over me when I am alone is just an old friend saying hello; I may have new friends to make and new neighbors to dodge bullets from, but I am here and I am staying.