Chepooka

Happy Day, Earth

I celebrated Earth Day by picking up trash around my neighborhood. Within two hours I had four, count them four full heavy-duty lawn bags of garbage collected—and I didn’t even make it past the immediate area surrounding my building. This ain’t the downtown district anymore, this is the hood*, but still. Man it was gross.

* I just bought a condo and moved the beginning of this year, more on that later.

Picking up trash isn’t a major contribution to solving the world’s energy crisis or anything, but it makes a big difference in my universe. And you know, it ended up being a nice day. I got outside, got some exercise and fresh air, and socialized with my homies.

I met a Anita who lives across the alley, super cool. She said that I’ll enjoy living here, that the people are really very nice. She’s always lived in neighborhoods like this she said, and once you’re in it’s fine, it’s only scary to outsiders. Haha that’s awesome.

I am a home girl now. \m/

I chatted with another neighbor, a guy that lives in my building (I’m becoming fast friends with all of my neighbors, they’re teh awesome). He borrowed my squeegie and bucket so he could clean his windows, I continued to pick up crap around the block and we talked about planting sunflowers and how the people that rent the one remaining unsold unit are real assholes for letting their dogs shit everywhere and dig holes in the landscaping and when are they going to get an owner in there anyway.

Across the street there’s always a lot of walking traffic. I’ve not yet quite sorted out where they’re coming from or where they are going, but I believe a lot of them are homeless. Every one of them had nice things to say about me cleaning up the street, “Thank you” and “Good job” and “How nice of you” and “If you find any money I lost it last week.”

I had a 15 minute conversation with a Vietnam Vet who stopped to chat. He “knew this place when there was nothing here but dirt roads.” He said “You know it’s just disgusting how all the homeless people walk by here and drop their trash.” Then he said, “I was homeless once, but I’d never do that.”

I crashed a party on the corner. We have this corner, the city built a nice gazebo type structure and it has big ceramic pots for flowers and landscaping and stuff. In the winter I think it’s a hangout or a meeting ground for people to party, or to buy drugs, I don’t really know I’m naive about such things.

So anyway, there were these two ladies with some groceries sitting on the flower planter, with a half-eaten sandwich sitting on the dirt and some Monarch Vodka and I think some beers I was trying not to be nosy. I said something along the lines of, “Hi ladies, I made a clean spot and now I can’t stop, how are you today?” The first lady was friendly enough, eager to engage me in a conversation about a puppy that she just met three blocks over and about her last puppy that she got from a box dropped off at Costco. She reeked of alcohol, it was about 11:30am by then. I didn’t want to spend all day talking about puppies, nothing against puppies, so I bent down and continued talking while picking up garbage. I reached over to a big pile of something that turned out to be vomit. I started to hurl, in fact I’m starting to hurl right now just thinking about it, and I reacted by saying to the woman, “Oh my God, I guess I can’t pick that up” and she didn’t miss a beat, more about that puppy. Maybe it was her vomit and she was embarrassed.

It was nice, getting out and cleaning up a little bit, talking to some characters. I feel better having done something for Mother Earth on her special day. But I draw the line at touching stranger vomit.

Posted by chepooka on 04/22 at 12:47 PM