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Friday, February 11, 2005
Spring Weather
Sunshine and warm temperatures. Across the street on Wednesday the police made three visits between 5:00 P.M. and midnight. At one point from my upstairs office window I counted 38 young men fighting like lunatics. A young girl wore a bikini top and short shorts and was bumping and grinding her way through the throng of fighters. It was completely crazy.
I, on the other hand, am extremely sleepy. If I sit down for a few minutes, I fall asleep in the chair. Two different ways in which spring fever may reveal itself.
Tuesday, February 8, 2005
Those Least Able
How God avoids discouragement, is beyond me. Consider all the beautiful, and talented children God makes each day, sets them on their way through life with more than sufficient advantages. By the time they're grown up, how many of those special editions of the human race are of a mind to do God's work in the world? Almost none. Most gladly take credit for their superiority to others, spend their lives patting themselves on the back, and chiefly contribute to their own well being. God's work is so seldom done by the A Team. It is done, however. Those least able are the willing ones. Whoever places him/herself on the path to God's goals finds him/herself skilled to do the necessary work. Weak and sick people find themselves strong enough. Those born without gifts discover that they can sing, draw, speak, entertain. The too-shy see themselves talking to others in need of well-intended human contact. The poor begin to give in spite of their lack of resources and discover that they have more than enough. The unattractive begin to smile where a smile will do some good and those who see the smiles think, "What a beautiful face." Often I remember the story of Jesus' disciples on their walk to Emmaus after the resurrection. The important words in the story are these, "While they were in the way, He met them." Exactly. God meets the willing as they place themselves on the way to do His work...and He makes them able. So there is never an excuse to avoid doing what one's heart indicates should be attempted. Once a person starts, is "in the way", God provides all the necessary ability. As I'm older and more delapidated, I forget this and allow myself shirk. So here I remind myself..."Walk into something impossible."
Good News
Good news; After toiling through paperwork since last night at about 6:00, I finally found all the items the department of motor vehicles claims to need in order to issue me a new driver's license and auto license plate + registration. Scene fraught with gloom, horror, tension, loudly uttered terms of oppobrium, etc throughout the search period. Now, I am under no illusions. Whether or not I have all the "necessary" documents, no doubt I will find that I need MORE of something or other. However, I have at least gone over the first hurdle and am on my way toward licensure in the State of Virginia.
More good news; the sun is shining and outside the temps are in mid 60's. This is a beautiful day.
More good news; it's Shrove Tuesday and tonight is the church Pancake Dinner and Pancake Race. Since all church dinners are prepared by a church member who could be chef at a gourmet restaurant, this means that although the menu only features pancakes, they will be really good. I have no clue about the Pancake Race, but it sounds goofy...and that's a good thing.
Monday, February 7, 2005
I Don't Care Why
Big on the front page of Section A of the Sunday paper was the case of a person sitting on death row. He's important because a few years ago his case went to the Supreme Court which ruled that he could not get fried because he's stupid, IQ lower than 70 at that time. Now, sadly for him, he has been retested and he's smarter so the state is going to send him back to the store. Yes, his IQ has gone up about 18 points, due, it seems, to association with his attorneys over the years. Yes, that was the claim. Anyway those smartenizing attorneys of his say that his IQ NOW is irrelevant. The important score according to them was the one he racked up during the appeals process after his original trial. Whatever. I don't care why he did the murder and the other 16 horrendous crimes prior to his arrest. He did that stuff so he has to go. Strict liability about sums up my attitude.
Further, this doctrine should be applied locally to those who merely annoy me. I am not entertained by the residents across the street. Yes, yes, no doubt they are all completely pitiful, probably IQ deprived, did not have an advantaged childhood, etc. So what? No mercy. They have to go.
Why am I so cranky? Well it's about two of their recent offenses. For one thing they have lately got a thing going where one of them with a car sits out front waiting for all the others going on whatever mission has 'em up and about. The one in the car honks the horn and then does it again and again. It has gone on for as long as 48 minutes. Seems like all weekend long, they were waiting and beeping. In a fair world their car battery would expire, but nothing about 38th Street is fair. Then their second offense. Those people are loud, supernaturally so. Several of the young male specimens are loud enough to set off a seismograph in China. So on Friday afternoon I discovered in the middle of making dinner that I needed milk...the stuff in the fridge had gone left. The store on the corner is only a half block away. I nerved myself up and set out. The loud persons were outside, saw me and started yelling their entire vocabulary which did not require them to remember more than 5 words. Nothing they said made sense. They just made noise. When I came level with them, they crossed the street to my side, two behind me and one in front. The one in front shut up because while walking backwards, he was precision spitting at me. Kind of like those old westerns where the bad guy shoots around someone's feet to "make him dance". The boys behind roared their senseless dirty-word noise into my ears; the one in front walked backwards and spit. I was hemmed in by hatefulness. What did I do? I plastered a vague smile on my face and began to hum...and kept on going toward the store on the corner. All the way, they roared and spit and I smiled and hummed. At the door to the store, the two behind me went in with me. Spitter stayed outside. I grabbed a box of milk and got in line at the checkout. The two from behind me had each taken a bottle of pop and got in line in front of a huge fat woman. Mistake. She yelled at them everything a normal person would think who observed their performance. At first they laughed and acted tough, but she got to them so bad they set down the pop and went outside. Changing of the guard. Spitter came in and shoved into line in front of her. She went ballistic, just shrieked at him all kinds of perfectly fair abuse. He couldn't take it and HE LEFT TOO. Whew. My hat is off to the fat lady but she is not enough. I want the beepers, the yellers and the spitter to all get a capital sentence and have it administered regardless of exculpatory circimstances. Soon. There is no excuse for human conduct of this nature. Yes, I know that I am ranting, but I have been sorely tried of late.
More Crabby Ranting
Things I do not want or need, they're breeding in the dark at the back of every closet in this house. For instance unidentifiable cords and outmoded peripherals...I have piles of that stuff. Any time I wade in and get rid of a lot of olde electronics, I seem to have more of it the next time I notice such stuff. When did I become the owner of at least 300 zip disks full of home made graphics and animations? That's crazy.
On the other hand, what I absolutely can not live without, where is it? For instance, where is the remote for the upstairs back bedroom TV? I haven't seen it since moving in here. This can not be the fault of packers for the moving company because they conscientiously packed even dirty kleenexes. Another for instance...where is my ratchafratch, refried birth certificate???@%$^&#* At one time in the last month I had it and everything else necessary to take along when getting a license plate and car registration in this state. Now I have searched for two weeks and WHERE IS THAT FILE FOLDER?
Friday, February 4, 2005
Fat, Useless Toys
I HAVE GOT TO VISIT THE TOY STORE!!! Have you seen the new Inaction Heroes? Out of shape loser adult dolls? Is that for real? I saw a commercial and wanted to rush right out and buy. The mom makes her adult son ride in the shopping cart so he doesn't get kidnapped. Pull the string and Mom says six different guilt-inducing things. Tell me this wasn't just a bit of comedy.
Thursday, February 3, 2005
You've Got To Have A Dream
Here's a problem; how, if at all, might one go about getting all the people to move from the apartments across the street, and then getting those apartments torn down? Surely I have not spent a lifetime crafting answers and solutions only to be foiled at the last by that shabby pile of yellow brick, crack heads, prostitutes, child molesters, welfare frauds, and burglers. I need workable ideas. Anything. I'm not getting anywhere.
One day a Jehovah's Witness came along wanting to chew my ear. I told him that before I'd listen to him, he'd have to go over there and convert at least one adult in each of the twelve apartments. No, he has made no progress. As a matter of fact, he looked across the street, scratched his head, and said, "Not me." Some kind of chicken missionary he turned out to be.
Then I thought of setting up a web cam in my office window and recording the video feed every night until I got enough evidence for the police to finally and forever bust that dump. First, of course, I would have to get the necessary hardware and set up a wireless network reaching the upstairs front. Given the pace at which I adopt new technology, this is never going to happen.
OK. Then completely screwball ideas. For example, I remember at one time spending quite a while reading web sites re. homemade propulsion devices. There are many varieties of hand-tooled potato launcher and catapult. I wondered if, should I spend time collecting roadkilled small animals and trapping rats, it might be feasable to launch dead animals onto the roofs over there, onto the porches, between the buildings...and just keep it up until the smell drove everyone away. Aha. Now you begin to recoil in horror. You say to yourself, "This Doubledog is crazy. She's going, sooner or later, to become a resident of the loony bin." Well, hey. I just thought of it. I didn't do it...chiefly because I couldn't think of a way to do it without being caught sometime in midlaunch, a dead rat hurling across the street from a spot on my porch...and me trying to cough up a sensible explanation for what would be completely idiotic to anyone not really fed to the teeth with the wretched Cracke Arms.
Another wacko idea was the incentive program I imagined. I thought, "What if I made up a lovely, official-looking bit of mail and sent a copy to each apartment...proclaiming March to be 38th Street Home Improvement Month on behalf of a nonexistent neighborhood do-good society. I could announce prizes for the best-maintained residences of various sorts on this street...a house category, an apartment category...with prizes to be window boxes of flowers or something. The idea was that if those freaks were competing with one another re. whose frontage was the best maintained, they might experience a corresponding improvement in behavior. Yes, I know. Crazy idea. I didn't do it. In order for that idea to have a hope, the intended letter recipients would have to be able to read...something I seriously doubt is true.
So there you have the cream of my cogitations..all of it crazy. I need some sound thinking of the sort that would lead to the desired result. No, don't e-mail me brightly, "Why don't you buy those places, evict the tenants, and demolish the buildings yourself?" Someone bought one of the buildings just before Christmas, got rid of half the tenants, repaired and refurbished...and now has even worse tenants than those who were turfed out. Apparently there is some ordinance in effect which will keep The Cracke Arms badly occupied in perpetuity...something to the effect that once a landlord qualifies a place for low-income tenantry, he is not able to pick and choose new customers, must take whoever is at the top of the waiting list at the welfare office. Also, the landlord may not evict except for egregious offenses scrupulously documented over a long period of time. AND it is nearly impossible to get all the tenants out at one time, so given that a landlord would have to maintain the building for at least one crackhead, he'd no doubt feel he owed himself the rental from all available units.
In the paper the other day was an article about some minister who made a practice years ago of doing a daily walk through a terrible neighborhood. As he went, he made the sign of the cross and prayed for each house and it's residents...every single day. Now, it seems, that's a great place to live. Very nice. Given how long it took for his idea to work, though, I would not survive to see results should I set out to pray 38th Street into submission. I don't know what to do. Officially stumped, here.
Plow the North Forty
In the case of my home, that north 40 would be feet, not acres. However, it IS time to get out and plow. How do I know? Because I have a deep, irrepressible need to go outside and dig up the dirt and then plant seeds. I just got an e-mail from Gurney Seed Co. that my five little seed packets are on the way. Yay! Lettuce, cucumber, purple beans, squash and tomatoes. Seems there's a type of tomato which is tough. You can just plant the seeds as though they were beans, and the tomato plants grow right there in fairly cool weather, producing tomatoes within 57 days. The question is, "Within 57 days of what?" Planting the seeds? The first blossom? I don't care. Now about that plowing...I do have an extremely old, frail spade. Must get out and give it a try. If the handle breaks, I'll just trot down to the hardware store and buy a newer version and press on. There's something about the quality of light outside which makes me itch to plant stuff.
You know, my backyard is a pretty sheltered spot. Just after Christmas I noticed new growth in the middle of the yard, went out to inspect and it's Dieffenbachia(sp?(. No kidding. There's another patch of it volunteering by the garage. Imagine a tropical house plant like that growing wild in my backward. Someone must have tossed out a houseplant which just went ahead and naturalized. It's lush and green and thriving, has been unaffected by a couple of cold snaps. So I decided that a yard hospitable to Dieffenbachia(sp?) should be reasonably kind to vegetables. Time to plant the garden. This year I want to be the first person on 38th Street with homegrown tomatoes.
Last summer I warmly admired a yard in the 100 block of 38th Street. Bean vines ran riot over the picket fence. A couple of days ago I was stuck in a slow line at the ghetto grocery checkout. The old lady in front of me told me that the house with the bean vines also has a huge garden out back. As a matter of fact, hoping to be able to avoid use of pesticides to control bugs, those homeowners got a few chickens to run loose in the yard. All was going great when some complainer called the city to whine about a rooster waking him up. Wouldn't you know it? In a neighborhood with prostitutes, crack dealers, child molesters, and burglers as far as the eye can see, some dummy went to the authorities about a few chickens. This is a place where it's easy to be bad and hard to act normal. Can you believe it? Call the police about chickens doing nothing worse than staying in their yard eating the bugs in the garden.
Tuesday, February 1, 2005
Give Eggs A Rest
Most of my computer time occurs as I eat breakfast, so breakfast is the topic today and I say, why eggs all the time? Not that eggs are bad. My favorite breakfast is a pat of butter, eggs, cheese, and hot salsa scrambled together in a fry pan. Today, though, I woke up thinking, "Fish." Chronically a victim of special offers at the ghetto grocery, I bought a huge sack of 130 frozen fish sticks during the first week of Lent. That was the day I left my glasses at home and accidentally bought horseradish sauce instead of tartar sauce for all those fish sticks. My next trip to the store was an afternoon at Walmart with Lydia and the kids. I got the tartar sauce that time, but forgot and left the jar in the back of Lydia's Honda Odyssey.
By the way, interrupting here and speaking of Walmart, I probably never would go there by myself; it's just too enormous. Toiling along from what must surely be weather system to weather system and time zone to time zone, soon my only goal is to get out and it's still this week. I'm old and a lot of hiking wears me out so Walmart is not really for me. On the other hand, it is a cheap source for little luxuries like lavendar soaps, lavendar bath salts, and lavendar-scented house cleaning products. Also, I got an excellent palm tree there for just $6.00, yes, a real and quite big palm tree, the kind that can tolerate Norfolk winters. What a deal. Oh, and Walmart was the only place around here with a Nintendo DS game thing available...Benny's birthday party.
Back to breakfast...eventually the tartar sauce arrived home and I realized that unless I intended to throw away a lot of fish sticks, I'd better start using them. I made a little tiny dent in the supply just now. What else do I like for breakfast? Well, I like the Heidi breakfast...cheese melted onto toast. Another good one is cold, left-over spaghetti. Cold, left-over pizza is probably my second favorite. Peanut butter on toast is good, too. Baked beans on toast is good, but it leaves a partial can of leftovers sitting forever in the fridge. Sausage gravy on fresh hot biscuits is just way too good and therefore probably qualifies as a sin.
What do I NOT like? Cereal. Blecch. All packaged cereal has a peculiar aftertaste. How about good old oatmeal? I may never again feel that desperate for the good old days. Oatmeal is best when cooked like this; first simmer raisins in a bit of water until the raisins plump. Then add water, oatmeal, butter, salt, and cook until the oatmeal is thick but not too lumpy. Add brown sugar and cold milk. Yes, that is good stuff, but it takes too long and requires more than one step.
Whatever I eat for breakfast needs fresh-brewed coffee to wash it all down. That's what I'm going to make right now.
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Yesterday's yellow apartment report...
someone over there stole a little child's training wheels bike. It has been kicked around on the sidewalk for a few weeks. On Saturday a man threw it into the yard of the green house across the way, the one being rehabbed. I have several times thought, "I should call the police to tell them about that bike because no doubt parents of the child from whom it was stolen would have reported their loss. If the police know where the bike is, they could notify the owner." Course I never call the police about anything.
Yesterday evening I saw the big police van pull up in front of the green house and thought, "Oh, good. They've noticed that bike and are going to pick it up." Nope. Five policemen and a drug-sniffer dog got out of the van and sheltered in the bushes just before the yellow apartments. It was a miserably chilly, rainy evening. The policemen shivered and rubbed their arms. Finally the rest of their contingent arrived. They spread out, covered every inch of ground around the apartments and also went through the hallways from back to front. They went over and over and over the area. After about half an hour, they gave up and left without making an arrest. Even the dog looked disappointed. Residents watching from their balcony porches laughed and jeered.
About a Seven on the 38th Street Scale
Hey. I'm up and typing at a quarter til 2 A.M. because the yellow brick crack apartments just erupted a little while ago and woke me up. All of a sudden every adult member of the crack fraternity over there was outside baying at the top of their lungs, just an inexplicable gobbledegook of sound out of which the only thing I could understand was "F---your ass!!!" yelled repeatedly at the small army of policemen who poured out of the seven police cars in the street. I went upstairs to my office where I watched in comfort as the drama unfolded. They managed to wrestle one drug dude into one of the police cars and he was screaming, "HELP!!!!" so loudly I would not have believed a human voice could produce so much noise. Meanwhile all the porches were jumping with yelling, screaming bozos. Out front about 10 male residents were trying to provoke the cops into fighting them, jumping up into the cops' faces and screaming more of the, "F--- your ass!!!" I couldn't tell what it was all about.
Then finally a thin white woman who looked like her clothes had been torn up got out of one of the police cars, hobbling, and trying to hold her clothes around her, she came over and started pointing out people. Although I would not have thought it possible, the noise went up about two hundred percent. Incredible noise. Amazing, astonishing noise. The police put another dude in one of the cars and helped the white woman into another police car. One resident was screaming to the two in custody, "Don't say anything. Don't tell them anything. Keep your mouth shut. I'm callin' yo' lawyer."
Then the police left and the baying multitude roared gleefully and chased them down the street shaking their fists.
There's nothing between those freaks and me but two lanes of pavement. Sometimes, like just now, that doesn't seem like much of a fence.
The police are very, very experienced in dealing with the denizens of that hell hole. When they come to arrest someone, they come in strength...tonight it was seven cars. I think it would be horribly stressful to do that kind of work.
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