An hour ago I woke up to go to the bathroom and smelled smoke. It seems that Party Girl or someone who attended last night’s party had thought it would be fun to burn the pictures off of her apartment door. (She hangs her kids’ art work on her apartment door, which looks more like a dorm door than anything.) There were little wisps of charred paper on the floor and half-burned pictures still hanging up there. Parts of the door itself are darker than the rest, though there doesn’t seem to have been any actual burning of the door. Oh, and there’s a little puddle of water on the door jam, so they must have had to put something out down there.

So basically, I’m terrified and confused. In her drunken state she might think starting things on fire is hilarious, but I’m completely and utterly terrified that she’ll burn the building down. But at the same time, I don’t think there’s an actual fire going right now, so I don’t feel right calling the fire department, and everything’s absolutely quiet in her apartment and I don’t know if burning your kids’ art work constitutes a crime, so I’m hesitant to call the police. But I’m scared, and there’s no one to tell.

What I really want to do is call my parents, but they’re asleep, and I’m not actually in danger now. Everyone’s asleep. Except me. And I’ve got a HUGE day tomorrow and now I’ll be exhausted. but I’m too upset to sleep now.

When I moved here over a year ago it seemed so nice. There was only Party Girl to disturb the building, and I never heard a peep from anyone else. Now there’s Party Girl and Mr. and Mrs. First Floor (who moved here this spring), and suddenly the building seems sinister. I still don’t hear a peep from any of the other 9 tenants, and haven’t even met most of them, but the whole building seems less safe now. I’ll talk to the main office tomorrow about getting smoke detectors in the hallways, but I’m seriously thinking of moving when my lease is up. I don’t know where I’d go, but this isn’t the living situation I thought it would be.

[Update: I ended up calling the office and leaving a message. Then, this morning, I went and talked to the assistant manager there who said that she had actually called the police on Party Girl last night. When I got there, she was on the phone with the property manager relaying all the gory details.]

When I got home today, I noticed Mr. and Mrs. First Floor’s two-year-old son sitting all by himself in his car seat in his parents’ van. He was sitting very quietly, but looked pretty subdued. I had to walk past him on the way to the apartment door, and just as I was about to pass him he turned greedy eyes on me and started kicking his feet nervously against the car’s bench seat under him and making that whiny, moany voice toddlers make when they want something but don’t want to ask.

I would have walked on past him, but he was just sitting there, the van door open beside him, all alone. So I walked over to chat with him until one or the other of his parents should see fit to come out and keep their own child company. I really couldn’t see how any parent could just leave him sitting there for minutes on end… but then I haven’t understood much about either Mr. or Mrs. First Floor.

While babbled mostly incoherently about a cat he’d seen and hearing a train he’d heard earlier, I tried not to think of Mr. First Floor boasting to my neighbors that he makes Mrs. First Floor pay for things (like their new van, which Baby First Floor was now occupying), but that he makes sure everything gets signed in his name only. It just makes me sick to hear them fighting and hear him threaten her with immediate dismissal or abandonment, “and then see how you like it when you’ve got NOTHING.”

I must have stood there with Baby First Floor for at least 10 minutes before his father came out. (I might mention that the First Floor’s live at the back of the apartment building, and the car was parked in the front, so there was no way of keeping an eye on him.) In that time, I got a headache from the fumes the car gives off, and I noticed that he had car oil smeared on his hands and back of one ear. I also noticed that he wasn’t buckled in at all. He could have gotten out at any time, and he knew it, but he didn’t even try.

What a good little boy. What poor parents. I don’t know whether to cry or yell.

My town really knows how to throw a party. It seems like every month or so they close down the main street to traffic so that people can flock to the downtown area, walk around, shop a little, eat a lot, and generally have a grand old time. But none of the parties my town throws compares to the party that’s going on right now. Right now, just like every year at this time, there’s a whole carnival in town, complete with a tilt-a-whirl, ferris wheel, pony rides, cotton candy, and historical reenactment.

Along with traditional carnival fun, this festival includes a grand showing of vintage cars. I’ve never lived anywhere before where so many people had vintage cars, and I’ve never lived anywhere before that took such pleasure in showing them off. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s someone on the city counsel or events planning board or some other such group who’s a vintage car devotee because no matter the occasion, there is ALWAYS a parade of cars. In fact, I think there’s been a parade of cars every day of the current festival.

I’ve been here just over a year, now, so I think I’ve seen the full array of street-closing, vintage-car-boasting festivals now. But yesterday I realized that I really am NOT from this town when, while driving home from some excursions to a near-by town, I thought to myself, “I might as well do my grocery shopping now, while I’m out of the house already.”

This is a very small town. It is heart-shaped and bisected by a highway. I live at the top of the West lobe of the hear, my work is at the top of the East lobe, and the downtown area runs through the East half of the heart. Just to the east of and parallel to the highway (which is currently under construction, by the way) is the main street which gets closed off for each of these periodic festivities. So with highway traffic, vintage car parade, and carnival traffic all clogging the highway, getting from my end of town to the shops one mile away was a slow affair. I had twenty minutes to contemplate the sparkling chrome detail of the 50s-style pick-up truck ahead of me, the children laughing on the merry-go-round, and the milling teenagers who were trying desperately not to show their friend that they really would have liked a ferris wheel ride or two.

And yet, there’s no way to resent this type of traffic. Even as I made my way back, ice cream melting in the trunk, chrome bumper in front of me blinding me with every new angle of the setting sun, I wished this carnival would last for a week rather than three days.