So I was out on the lawn (if you can call a few brown weeds amidst the mildly green weeds a lawn) playing with Nande last night after work when someone up the street a little ways started their 4th of July celebration a little early. Lighting off random firecrackers and bottle rockets without any regard to the cacaphony of dogs going berserk up and down the block.
Luckily, Nande is a dog to bark like that so I was not worried.
A few more crackers went off and then I heard a woman shouting. At me. She was out in the street and thought it was me lighting the fireworks. When she saw it wasn't me, we ended up talking for almost an hour. She's lived here in the neighborhood since 1990 and has seen it all. The good news? The most drastic crimes in the last decade plus have been breaking and entering a few car break-ins. No running machine gun battles amid the Latino gangs in their dropped, chopped and popped Civics and Escalades. No major drug deal gone wrong fiery shootouts with the cops. Nothing too terrible. The bad news is that she lives in a constant sheath of fear, fed by shit like Dateline and those forensic science shows.
She was scared to walk around the neighborhood alone, she was scared to walk along the slough with her dogs, she doesn't answer her door after dark if her husband isn't home, she distrusts most people she doesn't know. Kind of sad because she's exactly the demographic that Michael Moore spoke about in Bowling for Columbine. Someone who fears the unknown, fears the known and harbors alot of dislike and distrust for everything.
But I got some of the local dirt and that was valuable. News about the association of homes that she's a part of and the news is that no one follows the association rules for improvements on their houses. The houses look mostly similar but they've got different window, different doors and more. Technically, they should all look the same but they don't and that's good news for us because I want to put a real window in my office. I want to think about other stuff to the exterior of the house that had been previously vorboten by our CCNR's (homeowner's rules for engagement).
I also learned that her husband broke his neck last year while skiing and that's sort of cut into his ability to work. He was broken for five months and, I'm assuming, has only recently begun working again. She was out of work herself, she used to work for the county but was retrenched.
Overall, pretty interesting stuff and, although I'm pretty sure we won't be best friends anytime soon, it is nice to get to know more and more people in the 'hood. She was unable to give me any intel on the people who'd owned this house before us. My guess is that they were not all that social folks with a kid that mangled his toy soldiers with disturbing regularity.
And she had no insight into our shared asshole neighbors but I did give her some juicy gossip about P tagging the mama bitch's car and the ensuing stupidity she inflicted on us. By the way, the dent in the door? Still hasn't been repaired, I guess she can drive the car with that horrific dent in the lower driver's side door. I'm just glad we learned early on that they are frauds and liars.
And, last thought, the Plain Layne disappearance saga has been MetaFiltered. Not a huge amount of discussion but some interesting thoughts and alot of that really aggravating MeFi "so-whatism".
Time to bust it out and get to work because today is going to be a long day with work, a Santa Cruz 4 Kerry meeting and then birthing class. I sleep well tonight!
0 comments:
Post a Comment