A Fop Undone
The coldest day of the year snuck up on me while I was availing myself of the non-coin operated washer/dryer at my Dad's house. When I was younger, I always had visions of what Saturday nights as an adult would be like; I've since lowered my standards so significantly that folding t-shirts on a ping-pong table while watching Denver beat New England on a 17 inch Magnavox is actually an enjoyable evening.
Since my dad was out of town, I was able to pull all the way up his treacherous driveway. After my ill-publicized horrendous car wreck in October, we were forced to either get a new car, or carpool and then probably get a divorce. And sadly - this is what it has come to in our neighborhood. When researching cars, we didn't look at reliability, or which cars keep their value, or horsepower or anything that most normal people look at. We've been broken into 11 times in 5 years, and that's with one car being garaged. My first Acura was cleaned out twice. The second Acura, they stole the headlights. The Accord was just stolen outright. The Nissan 200SX had it's window smashed and radio stolen 6 times, plus it was plowed into by a drunk driver while parked (that one bent the frame). No, our major criteria was: what car is a car thief least likely to want? And that's how I got my '99 Subaru Impreza wagon (98,000 miles). Fire engine red. And as I locked up my Dad's front door and lugged the sacks of fresh laundry down the path, I noticed the previously bare ground was covered in snow, the red car now completely white. And it was cold. I backed down the driveway at 0.00005 mph, as the driveway is about 12 inches wider than the car, it curves, and there's no room for error: too far to the left and you hit the house. Too far to the right and you and your car take a five foot plunge over the wall, before hitting the neighbor's house.
A few hours later, I left the apartment with half a pack of Djarum Blacks and The Zinn Reader and sat on an icy rock outside, next to a parked car. I leaned my back against a streetlamp and read as the brutal cold rendered our usually busy street barren of life. I do this every night, same rock, sometimes with coffee, and I keep thinking that someday someone is going to come up to me and ask me what I'm doing, sitting on a foot-high rock between the street and sidewalk and reading in the dead of winter. Cops, somebody. So far nobody cares.
AFTERWORD: Y'ever notice that cats puke a lot? They do. They puke all the time - eating too fast, hairballs, whatever. But they never seem to puke ON each other. Also, my parakeets used to perch on top of each other, but I never saw one poop on another parakeet. Come to think of it, I've never seen any animal pee on another animal, or poop, or puke. It must be something hard-wired into animals.
It just goes to show you - George Bush is a fucking idiot.