littleghettoblaster

To answer a question in the comments: yes, I did come back from Hawaii. More to come, but this site is pretty broken and needs an overhaul. More coming soon.

Leaving for Hawaii in under 20 hours.

T-minus 50 54 days. (oops, missed part of a workweek in my haste)

We live in the downtown area of a medium-sized semi-major city. There is no news in stating that there are home/houseless folks all around any downtown area, and if you’ve lived in Seattle long enough, you know specific neighborhoods where they tend to hang out. There’s one church-run women’s shelter about 5 blocks away from us, but really our neighborhood is just a transit area. Between major neighborhoods, but not really in one itself. We’re barely Belltown, sitting 2 blocks from the Space Needle. Some call it Uptown, or even group us in with Lower Queen Anne. I think the best way to describe it is to say we live behind The 5 Point, a local dive bar-slash-greasy spoon-slash-laundromat with a sign up front that reads: “We cheat tourists and drunks.” I love that place.

Anyway, my point is, we don’t often have the same people hanging out in this area for long, most are just moving through from one shelter to the next, maybe stopping in a park along the way. Or, hey? Instead of a park, how about that courtyard at night? It’s not that nice, but it’s got giant flower beds in the middle for trees and plants and it’s completely surrounded with benches. I do not blame someone for seeing this little bit of greenery with enough space to lie down and thinking, “Hey, that might be a nice place to chill out.” Because it is. What I do blame them for is waking me up on too many nights, and last night deciding our wall would make a nice bathroom.

Every now and again we hear shuffling in the courtyard that is obviously not someone coming or going, or even stopping for a cigarette. There’s a certain hushed sound that comes with someone trying to remain inconspicuous. Normally, I don’t care. Go ahead, sleep on the bench. Just don’t cause any problems.

A few weeks back, when I thought the guy outside our bedroom window was just warming up by standing near our fan, that was fine. But when he started making all kindsa loud, grunty monster noises — I couldn’t tell if he was trying to poop, getting himself off, or just incoherently fighting loudly with voices in his head — I was no longer ok with it. And I was a little scared (another paranoid thought in that moment: what if all the grunting was him trying to open a window?). I woke up Luc and made him knock on the window and tell the guy to move along.

Then this morning, I walked out to see a brown smear down the brick wall near one of our windows. It was unpleasant to say the least. My eyes followed the fecal trail from the wall across part of the courtyard before I put together what had happened. I didn’t hear anything last night, thank the lawd, but I could picture it. Someone needing a place to sleep laid on one of the benches, then started to have some serious gastro issues, and lost control while trying to get to the wall. Not sure why the wall is any better, but I’ll tell you that having two blast zones connected by a thin trail of shit is worse.

This is the kinda thing that makes me feel negative about people. I don’t trust civility. Or social responsibility. I feel kinda bad blaming the unfortunate unknown who had some serious bowel troubles while sleeping in the courtyard of an apartment building downtown. I know on some level it’s an institutional problem, that we need a better system to help the homeless and houseless. But don’t be surprised if I kick out the next person I see loitering outside my building.

On some level, I’ve been looking forward to today for years. Maybe since high school. I remember being really antsy to just fast-forward through what I knew would be a tumultuous decade — Mom warned me about the mid-mid-life crisis that every twenty-something goes through (“Why?” I asked her. “Because you hit 18 and think you’ve got it all figured out. Then over the next few years, you realize just how much you don’t know.” SO. TRUE.); I remembered stories of Dad’s youth that I wasn’t too excited to follow (fall in love? run away!); I watched my brother struggle through his twenties (and early thirties) with the hardest of life’s multitudes.

Plus the stories from friends. It’s like people became adults and gained an inherent freedom with that, but it was tossed together with a certain recklessness (Calling Captain Obvious). That combo creates all kindsa opportunities for bad decisions and what some call youthful indiscretion. It seemed like people I knew in their 30s had less of that reckless feeling about them. (Little did I know how much I would enjoy some parts of my own excitement-filled third decade; or how much I would be saddened by other parts of it.)

On some different level, I’m probably a tiny bit terrified. I mean, 30 = Adult. At least it did to me as a kid. That means this is my last year as a kid, or at least as a Non-Adult. It seems a bit silly now, but I still kinda feel like that. I’m sure when I actually hit 30 next year it won’t seem that way — it will be like any other “monumental” birthday wherein I remember how slow and gradual growth and change usually are and I will again notice that the 27th of January can feel like any old day of the year.

But today? Today feels special. Maybe because I’ve been creating change in my life over the past half-year; maybe it’s because I talk to a counselor once a week now; hell, maybe it’s just because I took the day off from work. Doesn’t really matter — it just feels good to have this day for myself.

Today I begin the final year of my twenties.

Tags: indulge me - i do

Like I’ve said before, lots of the people who come here are people I know personally, but they’re also mostly people who I don’t see in an average week. Or month, even. The rest of the “readers”  land here from search engines (including, I’m pretty sure, one Mr. “Jimbo” Wales who was looking for info on my man after lil’ Twitter incident), or the occasional trackback link. I bring this up because this post is not for any of the latter folks.

This week, I :

• learned a little about Fascia
• went to two yoga classes at a gym (thanks, Bailee!)
• adhered almost religiously to the diet my new doc put me on (I’ve got type A blood)
• watched “Candy“
• started reading “Ballistics” (thanks, Mom & Dad! (*cough*siteneedsupdating*cough*))
• noticed that my body is a little feeling better, faster, stronger

That is all. You may now return to your regularly schedule Sunday afternoon. After you tell me what you did this week…

(Edit: Also, finally scored a parking spot in the building. Goodbye, parking tickets! Hello, leaving the car untouched for weeks at a time!)

I don’t have some really insightful piece to say about the last year. But I have spent some of today uploading photos from it. Head on over to my flickr photostream to look at everything from a bachelorette party to a Utah trip and many things in between, like NYC and hiking by Mt. Rainier (ok, Rainier pix are still to come…).

Hope you had a good holiday, whichever one you celebrate.

I now believe that blogging (for the general masses) is dead. Doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything different around here, but just thought I’d share that I’ve finally come around.

Also, I lost my wallet after falling down on the slippery streets. Know what I say to that? Screw you, ice! I still have xmas shopping to do.

That’s all I got.