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Little Missy
The waitress apologized on her third coffee refill trip because she evidently felt she was interrupting me staring intently with furrowed brow into my plate at the mountain of refuse I had piled there. A napkin on top of plastic butter cups on top of a plastic syrup container on top of the silverware and the plastic creamer cups and the sugar packets. I was really thinking hard while the yellow colored sun rays cut a path through the partially shuttered window to heat the back of my head and neck in a warm non-human embrace.
Little Missy was being told if you think I'm going to bend down and pick that up everytime you drop it (and on cue she would drop it and)...
The sun had lit up the old woman's face as she was mis-interpreting my direction towards the diner--thinking I was heading for the post office--while she held the door for me wearing a welcome smile. It was a smile of the class that had me considering total and complete reorientation.
But considering and doing are two different things so focused on my plate I considered the value of company versus isolation as the other diners prattled on in a way that would be perfectly acceptable if I were the one prattling. The waitress was talking baby talk to grown ups.
I'm downstairs at the bighouse avoiding those two bathrooms upstairs, off of which I have stripped the wallpaper prior to at least the idea of painting them. I say the idea of because damn it to hell they are giving me some hellish problems during the prep if your idea of hell is pedestrian and diluted from the full strength of possiblility. What problems you ask? Oh, bore me with your queries why don't you?
Outside is the type of weather (and scenery for that matter) that would tend to make a person happy if happiness were that easily achieved. I could do some outside work but putting those bathrooms off ain't getting it done. Hey boy, you ain't getting paint on those walls just sitting there. Mighty expensive bathroom.
The colder outside air is pushing the smell of fires past down the chimney flue and into the realm of my inclination towards procrastination.
Jimmy came and put the cover on the pool yesterday. I was swimming in it four days ago, in the rain, after a hard day working, although right now I can't imagine I've ever worked or will ever work again. Forget about swimming for now. It might as well be winter.
Honestly, I don't even know what day it is, but it's probably Tuesday.
I'm reading a novel by Murakami in my spare time. It seems as though I will complete it which we ( meaning me me me) hope will signal the beginning of a new passion for reading, a thing dormant for some time now.
Emails From NOLA
Headlines in the metro section of the Washington Post transport me back to my former home city, New Orleans, where the Times Picayune could be counted on to report not every violent crime, god forbid, but a good sampling.
In DC this year the murder rate is down 26% and the District is expecting its lowest total murder count in over 20 years.
Today's Post headline--Four Hit in SE Drive-by Shooting--is testament to at least the pertinent statistic that while perhaps murderous intent is not down by any significant amount, the aiming ability of those now with guns is not what it was in previous years. Those four hit in the SE drive-by shooting, including the 4-year-old boy, can be grateful for this.
I had often complained that a (specially trained, compassionately conservative?) National Guard should have been brought into New Orleans to assist in the curbing of violent crime but it hasn't happened there yet. In DC's tony Dupont Circle neighborhood a waiter was shot dead after a botched robbery recently and the Guard was brought in for a few days after that. That's a NW neighborhood. In the SE (in DC, synonymous with poor urban ethnic neighborhood) the people are still waiting for the Guard to show up.
So, the nerve of that upstart VPresidential wannabe to suggest that there are two Americas, one for the rich and one for everyone else.
Now I would like to share a personal email or two I received yesterday from New Orleans:
j-
i left a message on your cellphone about keys to your house. a kid had them, but they've been returned. so, nothing to worry about. mario is getting better. whoever shot him didn't have much ability to aim. let me know if there's anything you want me to do about your house.
--m
I responded--who shot Mario and why?
j--
mario doesn't know who shot him. he was on his porch in the next block at 3am waiting for kevin (new kid) to bring home popeye's chicken from where they both work. a 4X4 drove up and some guys asked him for cocaine. mario said he didn't use and didn't sell. then somebody in the car started shooting him. he's in ICU about to be moved to a regular room. i've seen him every day. he's grumpy and high on morphine, but he'll live.
--m