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All Around the L.A. River

2008-11-08 - time to move again

One of my friends called me by my anticipated new last name today with a big goofy smile on her face. I didn't have the heart to tell her that while I would love to say that I've changed my name by now, I don't know when/where in the hell I'm are supposed to do it. No one handed us a note card with a blank spot for my new name at our wedding. Either wedding. We got married twice, once because we just didn't feel like waiting anymore, and once for the big party that didn't look like at all like our first skid row vow exchange, which was practically written for us behind someone's cubicle. I will miss her name when she's gone. People have been calling me by my last name for years, and I would hate to have to repeatedly correct them till they get it right. I also feel bad for my Dad, he must be slightly regretful that all of these years I've been using it just fine, and then suddenly I'm just going to banish it into dust. I would be happy to give it to someone, but we don't do that here in the U.S., and Ebay doesn't appear to have a market for last names yet. Aside from that, Ebay is systematically editing most of their sellers out anyway, with weight to dollar fees that could effortlessly crush a small post office. It would be nice for women to have the option of an intimate kind of funeral to say goodbye to their name, at the very least.

Wifeville is good, and I love my husband, as you might expect. We have two dogs. They have no yard, but there is the L.A. river down the street and we take them there, where the homeless are able to feel a little better about their current living situation. If they can stand up, they can fish there, although I wouldn't. Our dogs enjoy eating dead geese at this river too, so they all get along well. One of the homeless guys lit a pretty noteworthy fire in the trees there a few weeks ago, and was arrested. He did get his name in the paper, but they didn't quote him, for some reason. I don't know what the city is planning to do, but banning him from the river would probably be the preferable thing to jail, because the trees are now black. I would imagine he couldn't pay any fine, if suggested to. He might be more of a disturbance and give the other guys arson generated ideas in jail, so moving him to a different neighborhood would take my personal vote, and as a second but not likely option in this area, a rehabilitation of some kind. We have a neighbor down the block with a remarkably similar belly to Santa who never makes much sense, but does tell us very engaging river stories, at least. He told us that the reason we often see peanuts and fruit scattered down at the river (we never have) is because the Santaria like to sacrifice animals there, so there's the clear proof. Also, the murdered goats he always has to remove from the area has solidified it for him. I suspect it stems from the years of military training he endured when he wasn't playing darts at our state funded neighborhood Assisted Living house for local oddities.

Everyone else on the block is decent enough, and it looks like there are a few additional characters who are managing to make themselves apparent, through no fault of their Mothers. Across the street, a guy lives with his parents, and he's in a wheelchair because years ago he was in a gang and got jumped, so now he doesn't walk or talk. It has not stopped him from pulling out the plastic alphabet sheet and typing up a storm on it whenever he sees me on the street. One of my dogs fell asleep on the curb while we waited the five minutes it took for him to spell out his email address. It was less attributed to his abilities, and more attributed to him forgetting which email address he wanted to give me, and then he'd keep starting over. He enlisted my next door neighbor as his therapist, because she is one, and he is understandably bitter that his ex wife is trying to take his kid away for good. Aside from that, he seems pretty miserable. I would be too, if my mom continually finished my sentences which took me three minutes to type out with my shaky finger on a 10X7 sheet of laminate .

And then our three doors down neighbor is an artist who was originally nice enough, but was coming over a lot to ask us random things like "Is that barbeque on, because my mom smoked all my life and the died, and now I have lung problems," and he always appeared to have some kind of important business in our front yard, like looking at crows, or seeing if his cat wanted to play with our dogs (by dangling her over them). When my husband was in the shower one morning, the guy knocked on the door to give us his art show flyer, but never looked up at me once when pitching the gig. Naturally I was curious about what in the hell he was painting, and the flyer gave little clues. It turns out that 99% of the time he paints women's genitalia, and so I assumed that must have qualified him with some point of view to talk about in public. I'm all for neighborhood support, but really had no interest in the show, I had lost count after the exhaustive battalion of pussies on his website. My husband went a bit further and told him the next day to never come by again, not ever. Now when he sees me he says hello like he's throwing it at me. But still, the sudden awareness of his work in the neighborhood did prompt one the girls on the block to ask me

"Why won't he ask to paint mine?"

I suspect he most certainly would, but then that's a box I would never open.

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