Don't Do Drugs

“Don’t do drugs.” A high-schooler behind me said it to her friend when the commotion started.  “Don’t do drugs.”  A mom said it to her young child as they climbed off the bus with the first exodus of people.  “Don’t do drugs.”  A man said it to whoever happened to be within ear shot as we all moved down the sidewalk to board the approaching bus.  “Don’t do drugs.”  I think I heard that phrase uttered more tonight than in the entire 1980s combined.

I was sitting on the bus minding my own business, reading about verb usage in United Nations Conferences of the Parties decisions as I am apt to do these days during my commute, when a voice yelled out, “Don’t touch me!”

Not the most unusual thing for a rather crowded bus at rush hour.  My passing thought was probably something along the lines of “it’s good she’s standing up for herself.”  But the yelling continued.  “Stop touching me!  Don’t touch me!”  Over and over.  By this point, everyone on the bus was looking, and it was clear no one was touching her.  The woman was sitting in the sideways seats at the front of the bus yelling into the bus in general.

But that changed.  She turned to the man on the seat adjacent to hers and started yelling directly at him.  "Don't touch me!"  He tried calmly saying he wasn’t touching her, a few times.  She kept yelling and started getting up in his face.  Then he got agitated.  “Stop touching me!”  “Stop spitting on me!”  “Don’t touch me!”  “I’m not touching you; don’t spit on me.”

And then the threats.  From her, all from her.  She’d spewed a few into the air before, before she turned on this man, but now they were clearly all directed at him.  They  both stood up.  I don’t know who stood up first, but she started swinging.  He put his hands up, trying to block her punches.  Some guys from the back of the bus yelled, “Don’t hit that woman."  "You can’t hit no woman.”  The man was trying to duck, but there was nowhere to go on the crowded bus.  The bus driver tried to get them both of the bus.  The man backed out, the lady still swinging at him, while he voiced the inequity of his having to leave the bus.

The woman sat down briefly.  Then she jumped up and raged down the aisle towards a young lady who was standing near the back door, looking at her phone, not paying no mind to any of the ruckus.  The lady saw the woman coming and froze in shock.  A man in a construction safety vest jumped up immediately in between the two, blocking the woman’s arms from coming down on the surprised lady.

The man in the safety vest backed the woman up a bit, but she started to send jabs into his gut and swing for his shoulders.  A third gentleman jumped up and tried to pin the woman’s flailing arms.  She fell to the bus floor, both guys going down with her.  They wrestled her off the bus as passengers off-loaded themselves by the back door.

Soon, half the bus was empty, the bus driver was outside with the woman, the two men who’d gotten her off the bus and the man she’d first attacked.  The other passengers mulled around on the sidewalk at the back of the bus, waiting for the next bus.

Those of us on the bus waited a bit.  The driver came back on, but he didn’t sit down.  He pulled a bright green safety vest out from behind his chair, put it on and calmly stepped back off the bus.  The woman was still yelling outside.  Someone hollered that another bus had arrived.  The rest of us streamed off the bus to trade our immobilized one for one that might actually get us to our destinations.

And then we saw why the driver hadn’t come back in, why he got his safety vest, why we weren’t going anywhere.  The woman had thrown herself under the front of the bus, directly in front of the right tire.  She was lying there, in the road, a limb flung on the muddy curb, yelling about how WMATA (the transit agency) better give her something.  The bus driver just stood nearby, nonchalant, waiting patiently.

The rest of us moseyed on down to the arriving bus.  “She spit on me and my daughter,” the man who was first attacked.  “I’m just trying to get to work,” the guy who helped get her off the bus.  “How she gonna hold everyone up like that?” a lady dragging a stroller up the steps of the bus.  “Don’t do drugs,” somebody, to someone, to everyone.

Just another commute home in DC.

Fighting Racism

The other week, I wound up in two separate altercations with angry black women.  The problem is, I saw them as angry black women.

They were being stubborn, and as I saw it, incredibly illogical.*  There are three things that get me super upset, illogicalness, inefficiency and being called a liar.  These two were pushing the first two buttons.  They yelled and swore at me.  Somehow, I managed to stay polite and not do either of those things back (which for anyone who knows me is a big deal and a long-fought-for small achievement).  But even though I was somewhat proud of myself for staying relatively calm, there was this nagging extra anger. 

When I was upset, agitated, riled up, my mind immediately went to racial stereotypes.   The fact that I did that made me even more upset.  At them.   At the women for perpetuating the stereotype.  I was like, here they are, making things worse for… fill in any of the black females in my life.  I was mad at them for being black and angry when I needed to be angry at myself for attributing anything about the situation to their blackness, for thinking of them as angry black women instead of just upset people.

When I was in the middle of trying to deal with these ladies on the street, I started analyzing their behavior, “maybe they are being extra stubborn because I’m white and doing what I ‘want’ would be submitting to the man.”  But maybe they weren’t.  Whether they were or not is on them, not me.  Their projection of race into the confrontation would be on them, but my projection of race into the confrontation is on me.  And I put it there, and then blamed them for my putting it there.

I feel like I start to understand people who join white supremacist groups.  It’s not that their beliefs are correct, far from it.  It’s that it is easier to hate.  It is easier to hate and be around people who justify that hate instead of challenging it.  It is easier to hate than to forgive yourself for being unable to love.

All of us need to battle racism everyday.  The majority of us---and we are still the majority in this country despite whatever Trump may claim---the majority of us have to battle it in ourselves first.

*One was refusing to take the right-away she legally had; the other was trying to take a right-away she logistically did not have.

Under the Bridge

There’s a man under the bridge.  The railroad bridge at M and 2nd Streets in Northeast.  A calm man.  A stoic man who sits silently facing the road, saying nothing, unflinching, a refuge in himself, in the chaos of biking, walking, driving commuters.  Except when he’s sleeping--curled up under matted truck furniture pads or discarded carpet padding and a heavy green tarp.  In the summer, the top of his balding head pokes out, tufts of scruffy black hair visible against the deep green and matted grey of his bed.  And  except when he’s standing in the middle of the sidewalk passionately yelling from his Bible, screaming verses at the top of his lungs, still drowned out by the din of rushing cars echoing within the concrete walls and the clamor of trains above knocking the metal frame of the bridge into itself.  It’s been a year since I’ve seen him reading.  Perhaps it is the times of day I pass.

I try to make eye contact with people sitting on the street.  To silently say “I see you.  You are not invisible.  You exist.”  I rarely have food and even less often have cash.  But I have my humanity, and I try to offer that.

He never glances to meet my eye; I look away so as not to be mistaken for staring.  Some people do not want to be seen.  Some people wish for invisibility; it is the super power they’d choose.

Or maybe he’s just not “on.”  This is his home.  I do not know where he goes during the day.  I know he leaves.  Perhaps he works elsewhere, doing something others would regard as a job or asking for sympathy and help in another place.  I have many friends who prefer to live away from where they work.

I’ve come to think of that spot as his spot--that wide expanse of shaded uneven sidewalk where I must bike-slalom around support poles and city planters, the cement covered in pigeon droppings and ash from the man’s cigarettes, leaving a perfect outline of where he sleeps, that bridge—as his place, as his home.

But lately, others have moved in.  They do not sleep swaddled in plastic tarps.  They have set up tents.  Little pop tents like the kind my cousin’s friend uses camping.  First there was one.  Then two.  Then three.  Sometimes two again. 

I wonder how he feels, the stoic man under the bridge whose presence calms me.  Does he think of that space as his the way I do?  Is his space to him smaller?  The tents are on the street-side of the sidewalk and he is next to the stone wall that seeps water for days after a rain.  The world of DC people pass between the man and the tent row, a mini street on a sidewalk.  Are the people in the tents his friends?  Does he simply tolerate them?  Do they talk to each other when they’re all awake and the men in their suits and the women in their short skirts and slippers-masquerading-as-shoes have all bustled off to downtown and Capitol Hill?  And how long will they stay, the people in tents?

This is the question that follows me most.  Because when those tent people go, I doubt it will be on their own accord.  Tents are for the rich to hide in the woods and pretend they know how to be self-sufficient.  They are not for building a home on public land.  The city will tolerate it for awhile the way it tolerated the mini tent-city on the footpath extension of the bike path for several months.  Tolerated it until the Pope came.  Then it had to be disbanded.  Can’t let the Pope know there are poor people.  Who will come and unwittingly by their coming make the new tent row disperse?  Our next President for inauguration in January? And when the tent people are shooed away, will the man be forced to go, too?  Will the stoic man remain?

Bye Bye Betty?

Goodbyes are so difficult.  I am not ready to say goodbye, but it looks like it may be time.  Betty is at the car hospital.  I had to call the AAA emergency line on Saturday.  We were heading home in the early evening when she suffered a loss of gas to the engine.  (See map; click for points of interest.)

She wasn’t out of gas--I gave her 8 gallons that afternoon—but the gas was not getting where it needed to be.  There was no power to the engine; there was no power steering; there were no breaks.  We coasted until she came to rest on the front lawn of a large house in Davidsonville, Maryland.

An hour or so and 23 miles later, a very nice tow truck driver was unloading Betty from the flatbed ambulance to the corner of a tiny mechanic’s lot in Southeast DC.  (Conveniently, and coincidentally, down the block from my work.)  I said goodnight to Betty and climbed back into the tow truck cab for a ride home.  I haven’t seen her since, and it’s not looking good.  The mechanic is having difficulty locating the part she needs—a flex coupler.

Betty and I have been through a lot together.  8 years I’ve had her.  8 years and 5 months.  That’s longer than any other vehicle I’ve had.  That’s even longer than any home I've had.  (Thanks, Mom and Dad, for kicking me out for college.)  When I bought Betty for $2200 on New Year’s Eve in 2007, Daddy told me she wouldn’t last a year.  My amazing mechanic in Cali said I’d probably get at least another year when I moved in 2013.  In that light, making it to 2016 isn’t too bad.  But still, I don’t want Betty to go.

Betty has carried me through my life in four states.  Together, we did the move to three of them.  We’ve been across the entire country, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and many parts in between more than once;  Highway 40, I-80, Route 66, and of course the gorgeous drive down Route 1 with Munchkinhead.

Betty and me in Wisconsin winter-before-last.  She looked good in snow (it hid all the missing paint).

There was that time in Iowa, when Orgfish’s neighbors called the cops about this unsightly car parked in their neighborhood and the police left a giant florescent pink “WARNING” on Betty’s windshield.  (I sent it to Orgfish as her birthday postcard some years later.)  The adventures with Daddy moving from Cali to Wisconsin when we spent an unplanned day exploring Ephraim, Utah while the hose connecting Betty’s coolant overflow tank to the engine was replaced.  And that infamous time we got pulled over for DWB, also in Utah.  I guess we should have stayed out of Utah.

Daddy and me being the statue outside Ephraim City Hall while Betty was being repaired.

She’s had some tough times, my Betty.  There was that incident where I sort of backed the side of her into a pole trying to get out of a parking spot in Cali.  And that time a week later when I did it again in a different garage.  That first incident was the one that resulted in my having to go in-and-out the window for awhile until a body shop could get her unlocked.

After that, I couldn't lock Betty anymore.  She was ransacked at least once in every town in which we lived, but it was never that bad.  In El Cerrito and D.C., they just made a mess.  But in Cudahy, they took my tape adapter.  I had to fork out another $5 for a new one from Amazon. 

Betty after being ransacked in Cali.

But that was back before I made Betty her very own mixtape.  We've been listening to it a lot less these past few months.  One, I was getting a little tired of it, but more importantly, Betty hasn't been feeling well a lot of the time and it's important for me to listen to her as we putter around town.  She gets especially cantankerous on damp or rainy days and left turns.  I check her fluids at least weekly and keep a storehouse in the trunk of every liquid you could need to put in the car, plus spare clothes and an astronaut blanket in case we get stranded, and bungee cords and sheets for unexpected hauling adventures.  She can really carry stuff!

Taking home my new queen-size bed.  The frame was in the car.  Sometimes going in-and-out the window is a good thing!

Betty hasn't really had a radio in a few months.  The antenna was knocked off by a carwash back in Cali years ago.  The mechanic disconnected the auto-expander and quasi-fixed the antenna to the car.  A few months ago, I walked past Betty on the street and noticed it was gone completely.

Betty with antenna quasi-fixed back in 2014 (after we lost her front trim on who-knows-what).

Betty sans antenna in snowy DC this winter.

DC is rough on Betty.  Besides the antenna loss, the swampy humidity caused the fabric on the ceiling to start detaching.  I pinned it back in place with a decorative pattern of thumbtacks.  Sometimes, they fall off, too.  Backseat passengers, beware.  Parking outside with no shelter these past two years hasn't been great.  The mohawk on her roof that had developed slowly over the years has quickly gone, leaving just a small patch of white amid a mess of unpainted grey and rust.  Whenever AAA asks what color the vehicle is, I say, "well, where there's still paint, she's white."  AAA came out a lot the past year.  In addition to the tow, there were several dead batteries. We eventually figured out the culprit was the glove compartment light, which wouldn't shut off correctly ever since Munchkinhead broke off the latch on a very cold WI night coming home from the theater.  I braided some yarn, looped it through the inside hook and the hole in the door where the latch used to be and tied the door shut, but it wasn't enough pressure for the light switch.  A mechanic took out the bulb and Betty stopped dying.  Somebody took out a taillight with who-knows-what.  (I replaced it.)  Oh wait, that was me.  I backed into a tree trying to do a Y-turn; dented my bumper sticker.

And then there was that time a few weeks ago when Betty got shot.  Just her tire, luckily.  The police tape is still in her backseat, next to the blanket I put in her for when homeless people use her as a warm place to sleep.  (Tho I would prefer if they'd put the seat back upright when they're done.)  The tire shop had to bust off one of her hubcaps in order to rotate the tires when I got her new one.  That put her down to two hubcaps.  We'd lost one in Cali when the mechanic had to bust it off.  She wears the two she has left on her back tires.  The recently removed one rides in the trunk.  I always have to call AAA when I have a flat tire, not because I can't fix a flat, but because I can't jack up the car.  There's no frame left for the portable jack to lift; it just goes right through the car.  AAA has to come out with their big fancy jack and lift her from the frame underneath.

Betty's got character; there's so much that's still so wonderful about her. She floats down the highway--when her engine's getting gas anyway.  I can parallel park her like you wouldn't believe, even on the left-hand side of the street.  Her heater is amazing--the air-conditioning hasn't worked since at least '08, but I hate air-conditioning anyway.  She's very polite--no horn.  Her interior is spacious and comfy.--At least I think so; Daddy thinks her front seat is broken, claims it's lopsided.  He may be right, but since I weigh about 100 lbs less than him, I can't really tell.  The thing I notice more is that one hole in the floor by my left foot that my stiletto will slip into if I'm not careful.  It matches the hole in the seatback from the previous owner's dog.  But I digress. 

Betty is so spacious, Munchkinhead turns into a t-rex when she tries to drive her.

And most importantly, she gives me an amazing freedom.  Not just the standard freedom of a car that allows me to go places far or near whenever I want, but the additional freedom of going places I otherwise couldn't or wouldn't.  I never worry about where I park Betty, if she'll get scratched--who'd notice? or that she'll be stolen--that'd be a very weak joy ride.  I get the prime spots in the grocery store lot, right next to the cart return.  Her heft makes her a great option for snow-covered streets (ok, my Wisconsin training helps a little with that, too.)  And I'm safer in neighborhoods where I otherwise would stick out like a blazing red target.  The combination of Betty and my white privilege allow me to go anywhere.  Betty helps me blend in where it's rough, and being a white girl gets me a pass when Betty raises suspicions in the fancy places.  In a city like D.C. where neighborhoods can change from one to the other in half-a-block, and where it's so easy to get lost, this is especially important.

Betty and I have travelled a long way together and we're both a little worse for the wear.

Betty and I both looking shiny, if not new, back in the summer of '08.

 



Betty turning 170K just over a year ago.

 

 

I'm just not ready to give up.  Not yet.  Not quite.  Not without a lot of tears.  So here's hope that somehow, a 1993 LeSabre flex coupler shows up in D.C., and that the mechanic can then figure out why gas stops going to the engine sometimes.  The flex coupler isn't for that; it's so the steering column doesn't detach from the wheels.  That's why she's been hating those left turns.

Apparently, the Okapi Says “Meow,” Too

People seem to always think my Halloween costume is a cat.  At least this year, it was only one person.  There were a lot of interesting guesses: cat, reindeer, giraffe.  The giraffe was actually the closest.  And I’ll cut them some slack; a lot of people don’t know what an okapi is, unlike a zebra.
So yes, this year, I was an okapi.  My second-favorite animal, after a giraffe.  Okapis are actually the nearest living relative to a giraffe.  They have shorter necks, but very long tongues.  Look ‘em up; they’re pretty neat.

Here’s an okapi.

Okapi CC-BY Charles Barilleaux, available on Flickr.

And here’s me dressed like an okapi.

As is the custom, I made my own (um, custom) costume.

I ordered a brown sweater dress from Amazon, figuring at least when I’m done I’ll have a nice new sweater dress.  I wear my sweater dresses a little longer  than was suitable for okapi-making, so the first thing I did was tack the hem of the dress up quite a bit.   (Right: actual length of  PattyBoutik Women’s Cowl Neck Long Sleeve Knit Dress.)

I had ordered women’s brown tights and white leg warmers from Amazon as well, but the leg warmers were cream and the tights were dancer-leg brown, so neither of those worked.  I decided to go with an old pair of brown tights I had even though I was originally thinking I wanted something thicker.  They worked.  (Left: Okapi legs.)

For the bottom of the legs and the forearms, I used little girls’ tights.  I got size 12-14 for the legs and toddlers’ 2-4 for the arms.  I cut the feet off (and hemmed them and sent them to Munchkinhead) and cut leg lengths suitable for their purposes.  Then, I cut rings out of the rest of the leg.  It worked really well.

For the bum stripes, I used the top of the toddlers’ tights because they had the cable-knit pattern all the way up to the top, unlike the girls’ tights, which had a sort of control-top looks-like-tightie-whities thing going on.  I hand stitched the whole thing with big stitches in back so it’ll be  easy to remove without snagging the dress.  I sewed the bum stripes with the dress on my dress dummy to ensure everything would stretch correctly once on me.  First, I sewed the top down on the full piece.  Then, I cut one stripe, sewed it’s bottom and the top of the next.  Then cut the next stripe, and so-on and so-on.  (Right, above: Okapi bum stripes in progress.)

The bum needed one more thing after that, a tail.  I bought some chenille, fake fur and quilt batting at Jo-Ann’s.  I cut a wide strip of the chenille, making the stripes in the fabric vertical.   I cut a matching width of  batting and basted the two together.  I cut a piece of fake fur about two inches long and basted that to the center of the bottom of the fabric and batting.  I folded it in half, including the fur, and stitched across the bottom and up the long side.  (Right: basting and stitching tail.)

 Then, I had to turn the tail.  This was almost as difficult as turning a Barbie sleeve, and on top of that, I could hear my friends @tromboneforhire and @jackgibson laughing hysterically in my head.  Eventually, I got it fully turned and sewed it to the top of the bum.

Lastly, I needed headwear.  Mommy and I realized while looking at photos of okapis and the stuffed okapis in her zoo, that okapis have horns.  I needed horns and ears.

For the ears, I found giant brown pipe cleaners at JoAnn’s.  Who knew such things existed?!  (Probably Munchkinhead…)  They were super easy to bend into the right shape and wrap around a brown headband.  I have enough left to make a nice monkey tail if anyone ever needs one.  (Right: Ears in progress.)

For the horns, I used another  brown headband and Styrofoam cones covered in brown felt.  I tacked the felt to the cones with small pins and used scraps of felt pinned to the bottom, around the headband, to attach the cones.
 

I found out the day before Halloween that only male okapis have horns.  I wasn’t ready to give up on them because 1) they took some effort, and 2) the cones were expensive!  I had to buy a pack of 6 for $9.  One of my coworkers saved the day by declaring that it was fine, I was just a transgendered okapi.

One thing I know for sure, I was a happy okapi.

Okapi with her friends at their Halloween party.

The Commute

Five seconds.

Five hours?

Five years?

How long is this eternal moment?

How long until you become human?

How long until I become human to you?

We stare through the glass, like a child at the zoo.

But who is caged?

Who is free?

And who is the animal?

Five seconds.

I look for your eyes, but they are obscured by the reflection of my own.

We stare at each other;

In that instant;

In that moment;

In that never-ending five seconds.

We are ourselves and everyone

- standing across from us

- next to us

- all the faces in and through the glass.

Searching…

Searching for humanity.

For a soul.

For an indication that we are more than  forms moving through the world.

Peering.

Seeking.

Five Seconds.

Five pensive seconds.

Five reflective seconds.

Five evaporated seconds;

The doors open.

Whatever we were, we are not.

We are only obstacles in each other’s way, each trying to get from where we are to where we’re going.

Bed Nook

“Are you getting divorced?”  The store clerk asked nonchalantly as if asking how I liked the town or something.  I was at Big Lots, buying my new bed.  Buying a twin bed because it’s all that will fit.

The nook off the main room at my new place, now dubbed “the bed nook,” is exactly the size of a twin bed.  As soon as I realized that, I knew it’d be perfect.  It looked like the previous tenant had used it as an off-shoot of the kitchen.  There was a large shelf with a microwave and an interchangeable basket shelving unit like Munchkinhead has in Cudahy attached to the wall.  I relocated both.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I painted the walls in the nook blue and repainted the ceiling above it with a fresh coat of flat white.  I also gave the alcove near the window a fresh coat of white.  I made sure to put anything I’d want in that storage unit in it before setting up my bed.  And I made sure that would be stuff I wouldn’t want to get to unless I were moving again, because once that bed’s up, I’m not getting into the storage unit.  Luckily, the water meter is viewable from the hole in the side of the alcove.

I use the alcove basically as a nightstand.  In the alcove, I placed a holder of some sort that I picked up at my aunt’s house.  I think it’s for mail or something, but I use it to hold my books so they won’t fall through the cut-out in the wall down into the storage unit.  I also placed my alarm clock on the alcove shelf with a power strip so I can plug my phones in at night. 

The outlet is in the middle of the wall, which is nice.  It’s easily accessible even with the bed in place.  The nook has it’s own overhead light with switch.  (The rest of the apartment, aside from the bathroom, is on a single switch.)  And that switch is in the nook itself but still reachable from the main room.  Perfect.

To help separate the bed nook from the main room, I decided to hang curtains around the foot of it.  I considered a number of different fabrics, including heavy light-blocking curtains, but in the end decided to go with a light beige mesh.  The mesh allows light to flow into the main room from the alcove window, but still separates the nook and the room.  The beige goes well with the main room color scheme and the mesh has sort of a mosquito net feel that works with with the African decor in the main room.  The net is hung from buttonholes in the top of the fabric on a number of  brass cup hooks screwed into the ceiling.

The bed nook is super cozy and a great place for sleeping, especially with the down comforter and four quilts on my bed.  It’s a nice, quiet area away from any work spaces in my home, reserved solely for rest and sleep.  Having a window right nearby is very nice and I am excited for the breezes this will provide in summer.  I love crawling into my bed at night and hate crawling out of it in the morning.  A perfect score in the test of a good bed.

(And for those of you who were wondering: yes, it’s on risers and yes, I have to practically jump to get on it.  The top of the bed is 39” from the floor.)

Making Room for Clothes part 2

Even with my fabulous new double-decker closet pole, that closet can not hold all my clothes.  I generally have kept most of my clothes on hangers, pretty much everything other than undergarments and socks.  Circumstances were dictating a change.

The apartment came with a neat little white bureau of some sort.  It has a large cabinet with two shelves, a smaller cabinet with two shelves and two small drawers.  I also got a white dresser from my aunt’s house.  Between these two items of furniture, I was able to tuck away most of the clothes that people traditionally fold: t-shirts, trousers, handkerchiefs, sweaters, etc.

But what to do with all my dresses and skirts that didn’t fit in the closet and big bulky things like hoodies?  Poles to the rescue!  Poles installed by a partial-Pole. Hee hee.

After making the hanging pole in the closet, I had a length of metal closet pole left over.  I trimmed it down to the appropriate size and installed it next to the fridge.  I’d originally had a tension shower rod running through that space, from under the overhang, but that kept falling under the weight of my jackets.  A mounted closet pole is much sturdier and works great to hold all my hoodies, my shawls, my scarves and my extra winter jackets, including my high school letter jacket.

Original attempt with the shower tension rod.

Mounted closet pole

That shower tension rod went to good use elsewhere, with two other shower tension rods.  The three of them are hung together as a cluster across the narrow part of my Dressing/office/sitting room.  They essentially split off the dressing part of the room from the office/sitting part. 

At first, I just had two rods.  That didn’t work so well; gravity and all.  With three hung all three together they balance out the load by sharing the weight.  One has cardigans, one has dresses, one has skirts and empty hangers from whatever’s in the wash.  Since redistributing the weight that way, they haven't’ fallen.

Quick, knock on some wood.

Making Room for the Clothes part 1

My new place has one closet.  One not-so-very-big but oh-so-very-tall closet.  The ceilings in the apartment are only about 7feet, but for some reason, the bar in this closet is still higher than most, almost near the top of the closet.  “This is awesome!”  I thought to myself, “so much potential.”

First, the tall bar means I can hang up my long dresses and my catsuit without them dragging on the floor.   That’s excellent.  It also means there’s room for a double-decker bar.  So, I built one.

I went to that fabulous hardware store and picked up a metal clothes pole, two eye bolts, two S hooks and two pieces of 6-ft lengths of chain.

I wanted the double-decker pole to only be half the closet so that I still had a place to hang my long dresses.  I measured that space in the closet and cut the metal pole to size with my hacksaw.  I’m not very good at cutting straight with a hacksaw, especially when I’m using my legs as a clamp to hold what I’m cutting.   The edge is a bit crooked, but not too bad.  I used the wire brush attachment on my Dremel to remove burs and smooth out the cut edge of the pole.

Then I drilled my holes.  Well, I tried to drill my holes.  I had a 1/16” drill bit the hardware store gave me for free that was strong enough to go through metal.  But my eye bolts were 1/4” and the only bits I had big enough for that were masonry and dry wall bits.  Neither would go through metal.  I had to put the project aside for a week while I gallivanted all over the country and come back to it when I had the proper bit.  I picked up the proper bit in Milwaukee.

Once I had the holes drilled, I put the eye bolts in and screwed on the nuts.  I put holes in both sides of the bar so that the eye bolts go all the way through, making the bar studier when it’s on the chains.  I put one end of each piece of chain on empty hangers and hung the hangers on the closet’s existing pole.  I put an S hook on the other ends and the other side of the S hooks on the eye bolts.  And there I had it, a second level in my closet!

I have it arranged now so that my long dresses are in the single-decker area, my suits are on the top level of the double-decker area and my blouses are on the hanging bar.  It’s working great so far.

Fleetwood Mac

Mommy and Daddy and I were supposed to go together, in February, in Milwaukee.  But I left.  So I went alone, in January, in DC.  The chance to see Fleetwood Mac, the entire group, live, was something I couldn’t let moving get in the way of.  So I got myself a single ticket, took the bus to the Verizon center, and took my seat between people who could have been my parents instead of my parents.

I don’t know why, but I didn’t expect the band members to look 60.  They do of course, because they are.  I think their clothes haven’t changed, though.  Stevie Nicks wore a black flowey outfit with high-heeled boots.  It’s good to know Mommy isn’t the only senior citizen who can still rock 4” heels.

My ticket said “obstructed view” but I’m not sure what was supposed to be obstructing it, other than the woman with the extremely large head a few rows ahead.  The seats were on the side near the front, waaaay up top.  They were pretty neat because I could see the stage well and see backstage, and see the backside of the screen where everyone appeared in mirror image.

The band opened with “The Chain,” which I found personally appropriate since that’s the song that got me into Fleetwood Mac when Bone Thugs N Harmony sampled it in their “Wind Blow.”  The show was sort of divided into 3 parts, 4 if you count the encore.  The opening and closing pieces were upbeat, high energy, full group songs.  The middle was slower, more melancholy, and  served as an intermission for pretty much everyone but Lindsey Buckingham.  He was joined for a part of it by Stevie.

“Landslide” was just Stevie and Lindsey.  “Landslide” made me cry.  I think it always will.  Music is like a time machine, transporting our hearts and the depths of our emotions to another place, another time, another us.  That song takes me back to a very dark and painful time.  But I still love it, it’s such a beautiful song and a visit from tears now and then is good.  Once everyone came back on stage, they started rockin’ again.

I was surprised when the set didn’t end with “Don’t Stop.”  But, since I could see backstage, I could see the band was coming back on and figured they’d do it during the encore.  And a few songs into the encore, there it was.  An older couple down a couple rows from me got up to dance.  So did some very drunk young ladies at the end of the row.  I thought it’d be the end of the show.  But I was wrong.  Christine McVie took center stage for “Songbird” and then everyone got loud and rambunctious and Mick Fleetwood went a little nuts with some whooping and hollering.

The show involved a lot of talking, something between nearly every song.  -  Much different than the Metallica-style I’m used to where every song bleeds into the next.  Lindsey was trying to talk about all the heartaches the band went through and how the personal meaning of a particular song had changed through the different stages of his life, but the crowd wouldn’t let him.  People kept cheering and yelling “We love you!”  He lost his train of thought; he eventually gave up and just played the song.  I felt bad for him; he was trying to share his soul and the crawd wasn’t listening.

At one point, Stevie was talking about her history, how she joined the band, and her inspiration for “Gypsy,” and she said go after your dreams, no matter what others tell you, conquer fears, chase the dreams, etc.  It felt so perfect, making me not feel alone in this giant brand new city, making it feel right to be here, chasing my dreams, going after that thing that made so many people say, “you want to do what?!” and some very special others say “ok!”

The show was awesome, Mommy, Daddy, and my auntie who got my ticket are going to love it!

New Home

Somehow, I manage to keep moving into smaller and smaller places.  El Cerrito smaller than Nashville, Cudahy smaller than El Cerrito, and DC smaller than all. But it is going to be so cute!

It’s a one-bedroom spot euphemistically called an “English Garden apartment.”  It’s the basement.  It has it’s own entrance out back to the “garden.”  There’s a main room and the other room that’s called a bedroom, and a bathroom, and a hallway, and a nook, and the house’s laundry room and furnace room, and some under-the-stairs storage.

I’ve adjusted things a bit.  The nook is now my bed nook.  It has a window and a very large alcove above a storage area that houses the water meter.  It’s holding the things that would normally be on my nightstand: alarm clock, phone chargers, reading books, journals, etc.   The “bedroom” is now my dressing/sitting/office room.  The main room is combination kitchen and living room, also makes julienne fries, it will not break, it…. sorry.  Too much Aladdin.

It is mostly below ground in front and in back, so the windows are small and there’s an air conditioner in one.  But I’ve found that opening the curtains and the back door lets in a fair amount of light.  The below-ground bit also means there’s stairs to go up when you go out.  They’re under a cement porch.  Duck!  There’s a good chunk of cement missing from all the people who have hit their heads.

It’s going to be a lot of work to get the place set up.  I’m hoping by March.  But I’m already in love with what it’s going to be.  The first thing I did was move the refrigerator out of the main room.  It was taking up almost a quarter of the room.   There’s a very large area at the bottom of the stairs.  I measured the opening between the stairs and the wall, at the molding, and it was just big enough to get the fridge through with some finessing.

Fridge’s new home.  (Above, moving fridge through the gap.)

Then I painted.  It was amazing what a fresh coat of gloss white on the painted woodwork did to the place!  It suddenly seemed bigger and brighter and no longer dingy.  The walls in the place were peach, pretty much the same peach as our old Africa Room in Cudahy.  I painted the bed nook the blue that my bedroom in Cudahy was.  In the dressing/sitting/office room, I painted one accent wall the green that Munchkinhead and I had put in the hallway in Cudahy.  In the main room, the back wall of the room is actually the hallway wall; that side is open except for a pillar.  I painted that wall a dark brownish red that I got at the fabulous newly opened hardware store I found in town.  I was their first paint mix!  It’s going to go very well with my African decor.  I gave the rest of the main room walls a fresh coat of peach.  I also touched up the ceilings.

Main room accent wall

Adventures with Ivory: My Own Nation’s Capitol

It started as a trip to visit Mzzzz Jones (who’s no longer Mzzzzz Jones, but will stay so on here), and morphed into a giant adventure.

Mzzzz Jones is going to have a baby!  And the baby is due when Mzzzz Jones and I were going to be our 5 year law school reunion.  I clearly needed a new way to see her.  Add to that a sale on Amtrak, and a trip to DC was hatched.

The Capitol Limited from Chicago to DC feels super short after so many California Zephyr trips, less than 24 hours.  It was a pleasant ride and I was easily able to navigate my way from DC’s main train station to a park near Mzzzz Jones work.

(—> me on the train)

Mzzzz Jones and her husband graciously let me stay with them an entire week.  Originally, I was just going to visit for the weekend, but as I mentioned, my trip morphed. 

Soon after planning the trip, I noticed American University was offering a number of IP courses for lawyers and law students from around the world.  There was one that particularly caught my eye and it was to be held the week I was going to leave DC.  I decided to go out on a limb and apply for the course.  I got in!  And my weekend trip became a week trip.

Mzzzz Jones and I had lots of fun.  We went to (catered!) happy hour at her aunts’ house, sampled delicious foods from many restaurants, accidentally wandered into an African street festival where a steel drum band was playing “Moves like Jagger,”  checked out a new church in Maryland where they sat us in the handicap seats cuz Mzzzz Jones is expecting, and watched 3 movies.  I finally saw Coming to America.  We also watched the remake of About Last Night with Kevin Hart at her place and went to a cute little theater to see Belle.  I really liked all of them and am glad I went to Africa before seeing Coming to America.  I was shocked to learn that the lead actress in Belle, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, is in one of my favorite movies, Lost in Austen.

Mzzzz Jones also sent me off exploring on my own.  I went to the Newseum, which is huge and pretty neat.  The Pulitzer Prize Photo exhibit is intense and very emotionally draining.  I checked out a few of the Smithsonian Art Museums (because I needed to use their restrooms) and walked, like a dumb-butt, from nearly-at-the-Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial because I didn’t know how far it was.  Then I had to get my tushie back to Chinatown for dinner with Mzzzz Jones and her husband.  (<—Canadian paper example at the Newseum)

I missed the MLK memorial on my long trek because I didn’t realize it was far from the paved path.  But, thanks to a very nice gentleman I was able to see it before I left.  Mzzzz Jones and her husband threw a BBQ while I was there and lots of their friends and people from their wedding who I had met but didn’t really know came, including the best man.  I met up with Best Man my last night in town and we went exploring.  He took me to see both the MLK and FDR monuments.  It was so, so, so awesome to see them at night under a full moon with the warm summer air and a light breeze.

(—> Back of MLK monument and the moon)

The whole trip was absolutely delightful and one of the few times I wasn’t ready to go home by the time it was time to go home.  Mzzzz Jones and I spent a lot of time hanging out in law school and it was wonderful to get to hang out like that again.  I also loved DC.  I’ve been there before but never this long and in a manner where I’m getting around by myself.  I realized one day as I was walking down the street in the downtown area that I’ve spent more time in both the capitols of Zambia and Nigeria (Lusaka and Abuja, respectively) than I have in the capitol of the US.  That struck me as very crazy.  I hope I get to go back soon and spend some more time in DC.

Me and Eleanor Roosevelt.  She makes me look so tiny!

Oh, and in case you were wondering – the class was excellent.