oh the oddness!

the funniness of hearing ms. d.'s voice on the phone. how odd it will be to see her!

I keep falling asleep - I think from the over the counter allergy meds.

We went to the one semi-naturey place around, and saw egrets and herons and many turtles. I have been taking a lot of photos of strip mall parking lots. Huge, huge, huge expanses of empty parkinglot everywhere. It's so pointless. Without geographic pressure and with no zoning laws there is no reason to have a parking garage or be compact or conservative or not use a car. But it's so ugly and the pavement bakes so hot and nothing could live there.

At the almost-nature spot there were ditches and drying up mudpuddles swarming with tadpoles and green vines everywhere. The twisty roots of what I think were cottonwoods coming up out of the fine sand fine as ashtray sand overlying the very hard flat clay dirt. It was hot as hell. The cicadas chirred.

"home" again. the next door neighbors were out contemplating their yard, which had been wrapped in the night. Some of you may not know about wrapping but I loved the joy of sneaking out and it was J.C.'s mom who would buy us the toilet paper in bulk. We'd steal the shaving cream. the rolls of toilet paper would rocket up and streamer joyously down from the tall loblolly and sugar pines. "Did the wrapping have some social component to it? Did it mean you were on a sports team?" "No. We just would think, as we wandered around, Amy lives there, let's wrap her. It was meaningless."

I notice it did not occur to anyone but me to stop and chat with the neighbors. My parents didn't even know how many kids they have or how old they are or anything. so weird. I'm not kidding about the introversion.

Comments

[Jo]

My neighbors get TP'd on a regular basis. All their kids are high school age, and it seems to be a prerequisite. It turns out quite beautifully. Going out to get the paper in the slanty early morning light and the toilet paper stirring slightly in the breeze. They even added a snowstorm of shredded newspaper at the house across the street.