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.

I’m sitting here on my porch having the second of two lovely porch days this weekend. Yesterday was lovely because it was so peaceful. It rained most of the day, but the rain was gentle, and there was no wind, so I was able to sit on my porch for hours reading, listening to the rain, drinking tea, and curled up in a blanket. It was just what I needed.

Today is lovely because it’s been so beautifully sunny outside. A few puffy clouds have floated by, and the current cloud dropped a few rain drops. But it’s still quietly sunny and peacefully out here.

Apparently, one floor down from me the weather is very different, though. Ms. 2nd Floor just came out onto her porch to have a cigarette while talking on the phone.

“The sky’s just black,” she whines. “It’s been such a rainy weekend and now the weather’s turnin’ real nasty. … Yeah, I know. … No, I was just sayin’ that all of a sudden the sky’s goin’ real dark. Dark, dark, dark. … No, I was talking about that before, but now I’m talkin’ about the weather. … Right. Well, it’s just too bad because now I think I’ll just stay home. … Yeah, I know. I was lookin’ forward to seein’ you too, but I can come out tomorrow. It’s just too stormy here for me to travel.”

Meanwhile, I put down my mug of tea, lean back, and listen to bird quietly chirp to each other as they move from tree to tree against a blue sky.

One of us is losing her mind.

p.s. Now she’s taking off in her jeep all dressed up, made up, and looking anything but rained-on.

I haven’t been able to get to the computer much. This is not just because I’ve been too busy doing Absolutely Nothing to squeeze in much time for doing A Little Something, but it’s also because my little brother has taken up about 20 hours of every day playing his WWII game online. But I just got to the computer before he could after brunch, so he’s now sitting around waiting for me to get off. Bwah-ha-ha. Now’s my chance to write The Great American Novel while he twiddles his thumbs.

While he waits, I think it’s important that you know that it’s a miracle I’m here today. My dad’s cousin, cousin’s wife, and cousin’s daughter came over for dinner last night (the daughter goes to the school where my dad teaches and today’s move-in day). They started telling stories from their childhood, and now I live in wonder and awe that either one made it to age 18. Mark (my dad’s cousin) was at one point explaining that most of the things that happened to him weren’t his fault. I’ll let you be the judge.

“Things weren’t really my fault ever,” says Mark, a big Harley-riding son of a South Dakota farmer, in his soft, slow voice, dimples digging deep into each cheek. “They really weren’t. I just always got in trouble for them. Take the time we were sittin’ on the porch. One of the porch chairs had some stuffin’ that was fallin’ out. I don’t remember why that stuffin’ was so interesting. It must’ve been callin’ out to us. Anyway, my friend couldn’t get that cushion to start on fire, but as soon as I tried it went poof. We ended up havin’ to throw it off into the yard to keep the house from catchin’.”

No, that wasn’t his fault at all. And there seems to be a sentence missing from his story: the one that tells us why they thought there was nothing for it but to set that stuffing on fire.

Ok, I can’t take the “music” Jesse’s making (voice, piano, and guitar by this point), so I’m going to let him back at his computer.