The Break Up

The "boyfriend" of my trifling downstairs neighbor has discovered her infidelities.

I use the term boyfriend very loosely because I honestly thought he was just one of her more frequent puff-puff-pass associates. But I have changed my mind because of his drunken (or drug induced?) antics outside our building last night.

Methinks a once in awhile jump off would not be drunkenly yelling at 1:30 AM, "Skanketta, let me in!"

Skanketta did not obligingly open the door and instead took to screaming profanities out the window and dropping profound tidbits such as, "Get it through your motherf***ing head! I don't want you anymore!"

Boyfriend didn't agree that he should vacate the premises so he took to banging on the door, crying and yelling, "Skanketta, Chad says you give good head!"

He repeated that piece of information I really didn't need to know about ten dozen times, occasionally throwing in a pitiful, "Why'd Chad say that, Skanketta? Why???"

Boyfriend worked himself into such a frenzy that he collapsed in the grass under my window, sobbing, "Chad's my best friend! Why'd you do it? Why???"

I kept waiting for Skanketta to yell out something like, "Cuz I'm a ho, you know I'm a 'ho. I rock three different freaks after every show!" -- But alas, she probably wasn't even born yet when that song came out.

Sigh. I feel old now.

Anyway, just when I was wondering how much more insane could the situation get, 5-0 rolled up with their sirens flashing. Two burly cops jumped out with their hands on their gun belts.

At first the Boys in Blue had Boyfriend's hands behind his back, handcuffed, and all that. But after a certain point, the conversation became one of the cops essentially turning into therapists. "You're out here crying and causing all this drama because of a girl? Grow up! Be glad you found out she's fooling around with someone else! You'll find another girl. A better girl!"

Therapy Cop talked Boyfriend down to some semblance of calmness and then uncuffed him (No, Boyfriend is not black). Boyfriend promised to go home and behave. Of course he did. And then, the cops drove off.

Guess what happened two minutes later?

"Skanketta, open the f***ing door!"

Boyfriend started throwing his body against the door. Skanketta began threatening to call the cops again and she started yelling out the window like a total psycho. I felt like I was stuck in that Bill Murray movie, Groundhog Day! My neighbor across the hall got up and yelled out the window, "Shut up or I'm gonna come down there and BEAT YOUR ASS!"

Boyfriend was deaf to this threat. "Skanketta, why'd Chad say you give good head? Why? You better f***ing open the door!"

This kept up for like 20 more minutes until another car pulled up. Not the police again. Nope, Boyfriend's dad and sister jumped out. I guess Skanketta had called them up to come fetch Boyfriend.

The dad was thoroughly pissed. "Open the f***ing door so I can get Boyfriend's stuff out of the apartment."

Skanketta complied and of course, the minute she opened the door to our building, guess who tried to bumrush? It was a total madhouse! Boyfriend was trying to climb over his daddy to get inside. Skanketta and her roommate started screaming and the sister was hanging onto Boyfriend's waist, begging, "Boyfriend, just leave her alone! Get in the car! She's not worth it!"

Boyfriend wouldn't listen to his sister and began crying even louder about what Chad said.

By this point we were all downstairs in the hallway. My neighbor across the hall had his baseball bat and kept yelling out, "You come in here and you're gonna meet Sparky!" I had a moment where I thought, oh my god, I live across the hall from a guy who names his bat Sparky!

The dad finally managed to get into the building and Skanketta started handing him trashbags filled with Boyfriend's clothes and other belongings. He made several trips back to the car and every time he opened the door to the building, it was a fight to keep Boyfriend from getting back in. Finally on the third or fourth trip, my neighbor from across the hall went to the door, brandished his bat and said, "You wanna take me up on my offer?"

My neighbor's a big dude so thankfully Boyfriend slunk off to the car, hanging on his sister's shoulder and crying all the way. His dad got the last bag of Boyfriend's stuff and then told Skanketta, "You're the worst thing to ever happen to my son!"

Skanketta told the dad to go to hell and then went back into her apartment and slammed door. The dad apologized to all of us for his son's behavior and then left.

Funny, no apologies to all of us from Skanketta. Instead she's been loudly gossiping with a couple of friends about what a loser Boyfriend is, and mocking the way he kept crying. She's got her door and all her windows open so the sound is really carrying. I'm about to go down there and tell her to please shut the door.

I hope Boyfriend doesn't come back around here again because I have to agree with his dad. I think she'd be the worst thing to happen to anybody.

Behind the Wall

Yesterday afternoon I came home and, despite the aches in my knee, I couldn't stop myself from heading back out to take a very slow stroll around the neighborhood with my sons. However, almost immediately my walk was cut short, not because of knee pain but because I was absolutely shocked by what was going on across the street.

For as long as I've lived in my neighborhood, one of the houses diagonally across from me has been completely obscured. The house being set far back from the sidewalk and being built into a down slope, strategically placed trees and an extremely high cinder block wall have all ensured that for the nine years I've lived here I've never actually seen the entire property. I've only seen part of one corner.

The cinder block wall was painted a gentle shade of light green and was, almost year-round, covered with a flowering vine. It blended in beautifully with the rest of the neighborhood's scenery, so much so that it was easy to forget that a wall was even there and that something might exist beyond it.

Sometimes though I've wondered what was behind the wall. The secluded nature has caused me to imagine the property as the neighborhood version of "The Secret Garden". I've pictured two worn and weary lovers escaping the cares of the day, quaintly holding hands while sitting on a shaded bench. There's a peaceful silence in their secret garden, the noise of the city magically unable to cross the green-painted concrete barrier and the aroma of honeysuckle wafting through the breeze.

But when I stepped outside yesterday and looked across the street, I saw that this magical wall was completely gone. The entire thing had been knocked down, a yawning space left in its wake. Four workers with sledgehammers were quickly breaking up the few remaining pieces of green rubble and loading it onto a junkyard truck.

My eyes immediately moved past the workers to the house behind them. Revealed at last was the mythical place that has been obscured all these years, a rather quaint one-story craftsman cottage. And the romantic yard of my imagination? It has a neglected air to it with some ill-kept grass. The honeysuckle bush and shaded bench from my imagination were both absent.

But my jaw dropped when I saw a small sliver of blue rippling in the sunlight. Unbelievably, a small, oval shaped sunken swimming pool is in the front yard.

It was too much for me to process all at once, so I stood and gaped at the spectacle in front of me. My sons began to excitedly chatter with each other about how they were going to go and swim in the pool.

I immediately thought that somebody better have plans to put up a new wall or fence so that the neighborhood kids don't drown themselves. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of my neighbors who lives down the street walking my way. She's lived in this neighborhood for at least 25 years and has seen more changes then I have.

"Someone must've bought it," she said as she approached, her face wrinkled with disdain. "It must be house flippers. Who else would tear down that wall?"

I nodded my head in agreement, disappointed that indeed, some thoughtless newbies would tear down such a neighborhood fixture. Then I figured that perhaps the new owners don't want as much privacy. So many of the newer residents of my neighborhood seem to voyeuristically forgo curtains over their front windows, as if they enjoy being seen and admired from the street.

And then a wave of guilt washed over me. I hadn't even noticed the property was for sale, and moreso I'd never even seen the previous owners. "Who used to live there?" I asked. "I never saw anybody coming in or out."

"No, you wouldn't have," she replied. "It was a much older gay couple and both of them were very ill for the past few years. AIDS, you know. One of them died a few years ago. The other must've either finally died or had to move."

I wasn't expecting her to share such an unhappy and tragic story. Sometimes it seems like we never hear anymore about people in the States dying from AIDS related complications. It's like we're all lulled into believing folks can live a normal life with the right medication. We no longer really talk as a society about the pain and suffering of AIDS. And so I could only murmur inadequately about how horrible it was.

My seven year-old son chimed in with an innocent, "What's AIDS, mommy?"

Our neighbor leaned down to pinch his cheek. "It's a disease that you'll never get if you take care of yourself."

"But do you get it from swimming pools?" he asked. I told him no and gave him the "eye" to shush his curiosity.

My neighbor continued. "They used to throw wonderful parties when I first moved here..." Her voice trailed off and I could see she was being taken back in time, perhaps remembering sitting around that pool, chatting with them. "But then one of them cheated, got HIV, gave it to the other. You know how it goes."

"They stayed together?" I asked. Such an incredulous thought seems against human nature. I couldn't imagine doing such a thing. I'd be too angry, too bitter to wake up and be civilized around someone who is the cause of my mortality, all the while knowing that sooner or later the medication wouldn't be enough for either of us.

She nodded sadly. "Yeah, but they pretty much cut themselves off from everybody after that."

We watched the workers for a few more minutes, chatted a bit more and then parted. I didn't feel like going for a walk anymore after that. I had too many visions in my head of two 40 or 50 something year-old men dying in that house. I pictured them sitting inside, holding onto the last precious moments of life, looking out on that swimming pool and remembering the days of their youth, the days of their innocence.

By dusk, a hideous wooden fence was in place, hurriedly erected by the four workers. It's not as tall as the wall it replaced so more of the house is visible. These new owners, however long they stay, will certainly make the house their own, erasing the memories, erasing the pain those walls have surely seen.

I can only hope they don't meet the same tragic fate.

Voices Carry

Sound really carries in my neighborhood at night. I don't know if it's an effect of the hills around here or if smoggy air has more sound conducive properties, but I'm constantly overhearing the most random conversations.

I just heard one of my neighbors talking to a guy right underneath my living room window. She and her roommates aren't particular favorites of mine. I readily admit they aren't as bad as Crazy Claudia, the compulsive vacuumer who used to live across the hall. Claudia hated Black people and loved to stomp up and down the stairs as loudly as possible. Nothing can top Claudia's madness.

But, these current neighbors just have that vibe that they're really trust fund brats who run a meth lab out of one of the bedrooms. One of the guys spends a lot of time hanging in front of our building in his wife beater t-shirt. The other guy always looks totally wasted and only grunts when I say, "Hello".

The girl who lives with them is the type that thinks she's hot because ages ago some delusional soul told her she was the stuff. Oh, and her favorite outfit is a pair of cowboy boots with bare legs and a baby doll mini dress. That goes over really well when she walks by my sons.

I imagine she had on one of her baby doll dresses while she was having her little chit-chat right beneath my living room windows. I wasn't 100% paying attention to her inanity about some audition she screwed up and how depressed she was about it. What did catch my ear was that there was a weird pause where they suddenly weren't talking. I hadn't heard footsteps walking away or heard the door to our building slam shut.

Hmm...No one walked away. No one went inside either. No one was talking.

I don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to guess they must have been kissing because the silence was broken when I heard him say, "So can I come in?"

Ladies and gentleman, it was a classic case of a guy trying to charm his way into a woman's apartment so he can get some!

I couldn't help but think, gosh, is that how easy it is? I guess straightforwardly asking works because next thing I knew, I heard her seductively ask,"What about your girlfriend?"

He had the decency to pause before he chuckled and replied, "Well... she's not really my girlfriend anymore."

Whoa! Hold up, neighbor gal! Come back down to earth! He's LYING! If you ever hear a guy say such a thing, you know that his girlfriend is probably sending him unsuspecting text messages like, "Do you want me to pick up some flowers for your mom on my way home from work tomorrow?" That's why his phone is on silent and why he was gone in the bathroom for 10 minutes while y'all were out to dinner. You see, he was talking to his "not really my girlfriend" girlfriend! Besides, if you need to ask about a man's girlfriend, that's a sign you need to repeat three times, "His girlfriend may be crazy, track me down and slash my tires!"

Not scary enough for you? Okay, how about, "His girlfriend might be crazy and try to cut up my face with a razor blade!"

Before you say that sort of stuff only happens in the movies, trust me, I've known people it's happened to. So I'm just saying, it's something to think about. Is 10 minutes of fun worth getting your face scarred up?

Obviously to Tramp-o-La it is. She upped the booty call ante with some more purring. "All you want to do is talk?"

Eww! But that's when I heard her keys jingle. He started giggling like a goof ball and so did she. I heard the downstairs door open and slam shut and then they tramped through our hallway.

I think I might shut my windows and throw on my iPod so I don't have to accidentally hear any other, ahem, noises tonight.

Discarded

This morning, I walked down my hill and, feeling a slight chill, I stuck my hands into my jacket pockets. My fingers brushed against several scraps of paper that I have, over the past week, hurriedly folded into the jacket's dark, forgotten corners.

It's not unheard of for me to find cash forgotten in a pocket, but money has a very distinctive feel to it. I did not feel that texture against my fingers. Still, though, in the hopes that one of these scraps of paper might just somehow prove to be a forgotten twenty dollar bill, I turned out the contents of my pockets to see what was there.

There was no money. Instead, my pockets merely held:

1) A crumpled Barnes & Noble receipt from last Sunday's purchase of Diane Setterfield's "The Thirteenth Tale", three Star Wars books, and a grade school-age appropriate biography of Barack Obama, specially requested by my seven year-old,
2) A grocery list and receipt from last Saturday's grocery shopping at Trader Joe's in the amount of $122.57, and,
3) A business card from someone I recently met but will never contact.

I confess am hopeless when it comes to throwing small pieces of nothing like this away. I suppose I'm always worried I'm going to eventually need whatever it is I've tossed. After all, what if I eventually wish I still had the business card I only accepted as a gesture of politeness?

This morning though, I put such worries aside and determined I was going to toss these bits of nothingness away. I was in luck because it was trash pickup day on my side of the hill and all the blue and black rubber trash bins were sitting out on the curb. I halted for a moment and popped open the lid on one of the bins.

Right on top of the ubiquitous white plastic trash bags, I saw a heap of matted brown fur. It's odd how quickly our minds deduce what it is that we're seeing. Within about three seconds, I went from thinking I was seeing a cast-off fur coat, to realizing I was actually looking at the golden-haired carcass of a dog.

Shocked, I immediately dropped the trash bin lid and backed away. Perhaps 30 seconds ticked away as I stood there, unsure what to do, the receipts, list and business card still in my hand.

I don't remember exactly when I stuffed it all back into my pockets. My mind was too busy wondering what kind of person tosses a dog into the trash. Was this the work of a psychopath? Or was it simply the result of city living? Not everyone has a yard to bury a dog or the money to pay a vet to dispose of the body.

I contemplated whether I should call the police but imagined the snickers on the other side of the phone.

"You want us to come check out a dead dog in one of your neighbor's trash bins? Oh, yeah. Sure. We'll do that in between tracking down murderers, child molesters and drug dealers."

I quickly discarded the idea of phoning LAPD and decided, for once, to not involve myself. I selfishly continued on my way.

The scraps of paper are still in my jacket. I know I'll throw them away eventually. I wonder if it was as hard for someone to throw away their dog.

Did My Neighbors Break Up?

I'm beginning to suspect that my neighbors across the hall have broken up. I've been so busy over the past couple of weeks that I only realized last night that I haven't seen the female half of the duo in at least that amount of time.

I swear, no one who lives in that apartment can stay together. It's like it's got bad relationship karma oozing out of the walls. It doesn't matter if they're seriously dating, get engaged, have a baby together or are married. It all falls apart. Over the past six years that I've lived here I've witnessed lots of antics by my neighbors. Here's a summary of the relationships:

1) Crazy Claudia and Tattoo Artist: They were living together. She got pregnant, had the baby, and then for reasons unknown, he moved out. (Probably because he realized she was CRAZY!) She later moved out too...which I was psyched about because she was...crazy! I did not miss her obsessive compulsive vacuuming at two in the morning.

2) Save the World Girl and Smokin' Hot Guy: She'd been working for an NGO in Haiti and left that life to come to LA to be with Hot Guy. I mean, he was smokin' hot...and, unsurprisingly, things did not work out. Heartbroken once more, she left to go save the world again.

3) Snobby Brunette and Friendly Boy: They moved in together. He was friendly when I'd see him in the hallway. She could barely speak. And then he proposed to her her. There were a few doors slammed and some yelling in the hallway. Nothing major. But then I came back from being away from two weeks and they were gone. Someone else told me a year ago that she'd broken off the engagement.

So that brings me to the current pair. And did I mention, she's my landlord's daughter.

4) Landlord's Daughter and Guy of Unknown Status: We've never been sure if they're married or if he's just the baby daddy and they're living together. She's nice. He doesn't talk much.

They've had those moments when she was yelling, "Pendejo!" out the door and throwing his clothes into the hallway. But eventually they'd kiss and make up.

Come to think of it though, we haven't seen her or the baby in like a month. I suppose she could be on vacation, on some sort of exotic getaway. But I don't think so because we have an unspoken rule in this building: Only one tenant at a time gets to take a cool trip and my neighbors downstairs have already filled the "cool trip" spot. They went to Morocco for three weeks and they came by before they left to let us know they'd be gone.

Guy of Unknown Status is still over there though. And his beer guzzling buddies have been over to hang out quite frequently. That's another sign! You can't turn your place into a bachelor pad if your girl is still around. No woman is going to put up with a bunch of guys rolling through the door with cases of beer every other night.

Yes, I have a distinct feeling it's over and I wouldn't be surprised if he moves out sometime soon too.

For real, I don't think anyone who lives in that apartment can stay together.

That Old Black Magic

I got up bright and early this morning and finally got to uploading some of the video I took at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe last Friday night. The time I spent listening to the poets was really good for me, really artistically nourishing. I'm so glad I got a little footage to remind me of the experience.

On the night that I went there, I was having such a good time that I didn't leave till around 2 AM. I gave my husband a call right away so I could rave about the experience. And then I asked him how his day had been.

He didn't want to tell me because he said he didn't want to put a dark cloud on my evening. I made him talk though and he told me a story of complete and total insanity. So crazy, in fact, that it made me feel a little sick to my stomach. Okay, maybe that nausea was just the lurching of the taxi I was in, but still, I'm completely convinced that out here in LA, we definitely do crazy much better than anyone else.

Let me tell you about it:

My eldest son has been friends with a girl we'll call "Emily" for the past two years. He's had an innocent crush on "Emily" since they met in Pre-K and he sometimes tells me he's going to marry her. She's a sweet little girl and they get along really well. They mostly see each other in school but occasionally, since she lives right down the hill, we run into her and her family at our neighborhood park.

Since she's my son's friend, he wanted to invite her to my other son's birthday party a couple of weeks ago. No problem, right? Her entire family came and they had a great time, etc. Emily's mom, "Lucy", suggested that we all go trick or treating together and the kids were psyched about that. Sure enough, the entire family did indeed come along on our annual trick or treating jaunt through Los Feliz.

Emily's father, "Nate", seemed to be in a weird mood on Halloween but I didn't pay too much attention to him because I figured he was either tired or didn't really want to be there. Either way, there was nothing I could do about that. Besides, I spent most of my time talking to the mom about family, balancing life, the neighborhood...you know, "mom" type stuff.

Well, Friday morning, my husband ran into Nate when he took our kids to school. Since they were going the same way, my husband walked home with Nate, and Nate decided to drop this bomb: Lucy cheats on him with other women and has done so for twenty years. She practices the "dark arts" and casts spells on other women so that they're attracted to her. Once Lucy's cast a spell, there''s nothing the target can do because the spell's so powerful.

I'll admit, when I heard all this, I laughed a little because it just seemed so ridiculous. Clearly, someone's been inhaling too much car exhaust. I have never gotten this kind of vibe from Lucy at all. She seems like a nice lady and I've always felt like she was just genuinely friendly with no kind of weird, dark arts type stuff going on. But my husband assured me that Nate is dead serious.

And guess who Lucy's latest target is? Um, yeah. Yours truly! Great, just great.

I said to my husband, "Did you make it clear that he has nothing to worry about since I'm not down for that kind of thing?"

Apparently that doesn't matter because according to Nate, Lucy's going to put me under her spell by cooking for me. She'll cook and then create a situation where it'd be socially rude for me to not eat her food.

What's she gonna do to the food, you ask? That's a GREAT question!

Here comes the NC-17 part so you can just skip to the next paragraph RIGHT NOW if you don't want to know the "how" of this. But for those of you who are like me, the train wreck watching type, Lucy apparently cooks these special dishes using some "juice" from "down there". (Eww. I'm grossed out just typing that.) Then once the victim eats this doctored up food, they go bananas for Lucy!

I'd be more inclined to believe that her secret ingredient is some of that date rape drug. But that's what Nate claims she does. In fact, Nate talked to my husband for quite some time and told my him all the sordid details of Lucy's past exploits. I'll spare you all the graphic details but it apparently started after Lucy began investigating Scientology. Apparently, she got extra close with her Scientology teacher but finally decided not to become a Scientologist when she moved on to someone else. Nate says he stays for their kids but he just wanted to warn us because he's seen this happen for 20 years and really doesn't want me to fall victim to Lucy's spells.

So after turning this over in my head, I've decided:

Option One: Nate's crazy and making it all up because he's a weird controlling type, and doesn't want his wife influenced by me. After all, when they were over here for the birthday party, I did tell them how I don't really do dishes because my husband has two hands...maybe he's abusive of her and doesn't want her to have friends that don't believe the woman's place is in front of the sink.

OR

Option Two: Lucy's crazy and really believes she has some sort of dark magic power. Yeah, maybe Lucy truly believes she's going to turn me out. This is just so laughable on so many levels, but you never know what fantasies folks can cook up in their heads.

OR

Option Three: They're both crazy and are hoping me and my husband are swingers or something. Maybe Nate was trying to feel out my husband to see how receptive he'd be to some sort of threesome, foursome type ish.

Regardless, the first thing that ran through my mind is that there's no more of my kids hanging out with the little girl, Emily. I don't know what the heck is going on in their house but my primary responsibility is to protect my kids and all that dark magic mess is just a little bit too out there for me.

Like I said, we clearly do crazy really well here in Los Angeles. It's going to be really interesting when I see Lucy and Nate again. I'm sure it'll be this afternoon.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Do you want to be my neighbor?

If you're willing and able to pay $3500 a month, then you can move right across the street from me. Well, technically, you need $10,500 to get started since they want two months deposit plus the first month's rent upfront.

I know. That's a whole lot of cash. But, if you're just dying to move to LA and you happen to have the money sitting around collecting dust, then seriously, you should come be my neighbor.

Let me tell you a little bit about your potential new home. It's a small, one-story house that used to be so ridiculously run down that cobwebs and black cats hung off the front porch year round. I was never sure what color the house was before. After all, the paint looked like it used to be a peachy beige color, but it was covered with such a thick layer of dirt, that I just couldn't tell.

Some old lady that we never saw lived there for a long time. She bought that house around 25 years ago, back when houses went for $50K in this neighborhood instead of for $800K like they do now. And then she died and her kids chose to sell. The new owners decided to rehab and rent out the place.

These invisible owners hired these gross contractors to slap up some stucco siding on the outside and replace the windows. I've watched these guys work all summer, sweaty potbellies on full display. I was grateful when they migrated to the inside of the house. Eww.

This morning, I finally saw a big "For Rent" sign hanging out front. Since the door was open, I strolled over to check things out and ended up meeting the new owner. I told him I live across the street and asked if I could check the new and improved house out. He showed me around, proudly pointing out the hardwood floors and faux marble countertops. There are three bedrooms and two full bathrooms. Gosh, I could really use that second bathroom about now because I am sooo fed up with living with three males who seem to need some Cheerios in the bowl for aiming purposes. There's also good storage space but in the bedrooms, the closets have those mirrored sliding doors. I positively hate mirrored sliding doors.

I also found out that whoever lived there would still have to pay all the utilities. And the big backyard that used to be behind the house? Well, they're building a small apartment building back there so the yard is completely gone. So if you're longing for grass and a garden, this might not be the place for you.

The owner asked me if I thought he was asking too much money for the place. I told him yes, the price seemed high to me. Then again, I shared that I moved to this neighborhood eight years ago, back when one bedroom apartments were $500 instead of $1800 and a two bedroom was $650, not $2400. He laughed and told me I was lucky I have rent control.

I absolutely agree.

He then told me he's pretty sure he'll have the place rented within a week, no problem.

I wonder. Has LA really come to this? Will folks really pay $3500 to live in a house with a torn up front yard, construction going on in the backyard, and mirrored closets?

I suppose so. Some trio of hip, young artsy types will move in. They'll maintain their LA slimness because they aren't eating. Nope, the money that would go to food will be going to pay the rent. They'll park vintage BMW's out front. They'll throw a party where someone strums an acoustic guitar and tries to channel Alanis Morrisette. They'll fall in love and then have very loud, public break-ups that I'll overhear at two in the morning.

Then they'll move away from LA, disillusioned with the sparkle and glitz that at one time seemed so promising.

Yes, the new landlord will have no problem renting that house. Folks will pay the money for the rent because the only "affordable" option is somewhere in South-Central LA. And, um, that's not really the hot neighborhood right now.

So come be my neighbor if you'd like to take a whirl. In eight years, it'll be your turn to marvel at someone else paying way too much for a place to live.

Sage Burner

"I was burning some sage and I put it in the trash and then I went back into the living room. I was reading and I started to smell smoke. I guess it wasn't out all the way. I don't know. I'm so sorry."

So said our now homeless neighbor after I asked her how exactly the fire in her apartment started.

To me, it's pretty logical that if you burn sage and put it in the trash while it's still partially lit, your fridge might end up looking like this. Doesn't that seem logical to you as well?

Still, I felt a little sorry for her, watching her standing outside our building in a sweatshirt, sweatpants and a pair of tennis shoes the fire fighters were able to salvage.

I wasn't even home when it all started. I'd done my parental duty and taken my eldest son to roller skating class. I was just pulling out of the roller rink at a little past noon on Saturday afternoon when my husband called me up to tell me that he and my youngest son had been evacuated from our apartment building by the fire department.

"How bad is it?" I asked.
"Pretty bad. There are six fire trucks."
"Which apartment?"
"The one down on the end, three apartments away."

You are probably a little bit afraid of fire. But you probably don't have recurring nightmares about being trapped in a building that's on fire. I do. I'm afraid of fire to a point that borders on paranoia. I've never even been able to even watch that movie Backdraft. So imagine my drive home from the roller rink. Imagine me seeing all the firetrucks as I drove up the street.

I was freaking out.

I drove as close as I could, jumped out of the car, dragging my eldest son behind me. I ran up on one of the firefighters, questions pouring out a mile a minute. "What's happening? I live here. Is the fire out?" The firefighter calmed me down and told me that the fire had been contained. Thank God.

I found my husband and my other son, and got to talking to my other neighbors, and then finally to our sage burner.

Fortunately, we were able to go back inside pretty quickly. Still, the firefighters stayed for another couple of hours. Some were out on top of the roof for awhile, axes in hand, just in case the fire had gotten into the walls or spread through the attic that connects us all. They also went into what was left of the kitchen and tore it apart during their investigation. That's how the refrigerator ended up outside. And the stove, the remnants of her dishes and all the charred remains of her knick knacks.

Turns out, she lost everything since she didn't have renter's insurance. Like I said, I feel sorry for her, but I know I wouldn't have the same level of empathy if the firefighters hadn't managed to squash the blaze before it spread to other apartments in our building. I'll be real though. If my family lost everything and was now homeless because of some wanna be hippie burning some sage...well, I don't even want to imagine that reality.

I'm just really grateful that the LAFD got here so quickly and handled business in the way they did. Otherwise, my laptop would probably be burned to a crisp and this post wouldn't even exist. Oh, and if you want to burn some sage, please, for your own safety and that of your neighbors, don't put it in the trashcan when it's still lit.

Different Year, Same Cuss Words, Same Kiss And Make Up

2007 is finally here! Happy New Year to you and yours! All the celebrations are over and it seems we're all supposed to be figuring out ways to improve ourselves over the next twelve months.

I'll have to give that self-improvement memo to my neighbors across the hall. They started the day off by lovingly calling each other the same sweet, affectionate names they've called each other over the past year.

"Pendejo!" she shouted down the stairs.

"Puta!" he yelled back.

By this time I was making great use of my peep-hole (should I add "stop spying" to my list of resolutions?) and saw her momentarily dash back into the apartment. The cuss words were flying at a furious pace. Then stuff started getting pitched out the door.

I assume she was throwing some of his things out into the hallway to fulfill her resolution to declutter their place.

He stomped back up the stairs and threw the stuff back inside the door, swearing alternately in English and en Espanol. Apparently he has issues with letting things go. Perhaps these are deep-seeded issues from his childhood. Maybe his mother wouldn't let him have a Barbie because she claimed, "Barbies are only for girls." It's probably a lost memory though and he doesn't know that all he needs to do is buy a Barbie instead of hoarding various random objects.

I suppose she understands his issues (or maybe he's the rare man that understands her issues) because ten minutes later, they were kissing and making up in the hallway. She was whispering in his ear and he was actually giggling before he said goodbye and calmly walked down the stairs.

What do you think she was whispering into his ear? For some reason, I don't think she was saying, "Happy New Year".