Early Morning Police Reports

Well, we do live in an area with the highest per capita murder rate (in 1992) (not to mention the former stomping grounds of Jerry Garcia!). I guess it’s only natural that we would be awakened at 6:30 in the morning by a very loud yelling match/fight involved at least 5 people. This has happened before. I’d say it’s a thrice yearly occurrence, but this morning was the worst ever. There was banging, like with a bat, and in the end there were tires peeling out. We were the second to make a police report, which made us feel kind of bad. The questions we were asking ourselves included: Why did we stay in bed so long listening after we were initially wakened? Why didn’t we run outside to see what was happening? I’m sure there’s some good social psychology theory on this somewhere. We should have been the first, dammit! We are Obama supporters after all---doesn’t that mean we should be the most socially conscious of our neighbors? I guess this means they’re probably Obama supporters as well.

So I’m waiting for my companion to re-wake up so we can go for a walk in the local foothills, and I thought, “I guess I can either mindlessly surf the internet, or blog”. Reading is kind of a distant memory at this point. I’m taking 4 classes in addition to the full-on work of teaching for the first time ever with absolutely no preparation, so I’m not so much in a reading (or talking, quite frankly) zone. I have big plans for this summer, though. In addition to the trips, I will read. I’m going to start with Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, a book that my friend Rose bought me. It happens to be 782 pages long. I haven’t read something of that girth since I was temporarily obsessed with OJ, and read some really long account of his trial (I can’t remember the title).

What else….I guess there’s a lot of school trauma still occurring, but I think I won’t be able to talk about it until it’s properly digested and I’ve had some distance, like a long summer break. The good news is that I have the first of two spring breaks this week, which is very welcome. I’m going to try to do good things for myself and drink lots of tea. I also briefly entertained the notion of getting a bird. In times of stress, I like to take in more animals. But, I decided that the bird should wait until I do a little more research. I mean, I could get a parakeet, but that was sort of the staple of my childhood—the pet parakeets that I had and then died and were subsequently buried in the yard with much sadness. I'm over it. I want a bird that can talk, though I hear that those live a long time--which might be nice for our turtle since it’s apparently going to live for at least another 30 years.

So not to leave out any kind of visual stimulation, I took some pictures of my favorite things in the bathroom.

First—check out this fish. Who wouldn’t want to look at that thing at 6:30 in the morning? It makes me so happy. It’s technically a tea light holder, but for me it doesn’t need function.

Bathroom scent infuser thing, small drawer thing I got on clearance because Paulina had one, a horse(!)

In my time of weakness, when afflicted with the weird throat thing, I dropped our awesome bathroom tumbler and broke it. When I went to Target for a replacement, I realized that all “adult” bathroom tumblers are hideous and neutral colored. Frustrated, I was just going to leave, but then ran across this child’s cup that seemed like it’d be OK. I’m not in love with it or anything, but when I drink water, the frogs move around, so it provides some early morning diversion.