Saturday, August 30, 2008

A Little Interlude, After a Long Silence

This is a picture of the house that I helped burn down.

Let me explain. One day earlier this summer, I stayed home from work, not feeling very well. I had to get to the post office, however, to mail my already-late rent. On my way to the car, I looked over the fence in the backyard and saw smoke coming from the backyard of the house behind mine. It smelled like burning wood, and there were no flames. It was only a little smoke, and the little voice in the back of my head, which I affectionately refer to as Murphy, for reasons I'll have to explain some other time, said, Maybe you should call the fire department. What if it's a real fire? But the rest of my voices were saying, Ha. It's just a chiminea or something and I'll look stupid. So off to the post office I went.

An hour later, I turned back onto my street after running a few other errands, and saw flashing lights at the other end, where my house is. My first thought was, Jesus Christ, Crazy Magdalena the downstairs neighbor lady has called the cops on me again, and this time I wasn't even home. (I'll have to explain that whole story soon.) Turns out, though, I saw as I got closer, that it was just that the house behind me had burned down.

It took me a minute to realize it was in some way my fault.

This is a nice allegory for myself lately--letting things burn down around me because I'm some combination of too overly cautious and lazy.

But I'm actually doing better after the last three weeks or so. More detailed updates soon, but first...

This is a picture of the kitten I temporarily adopted in order to train it to be a good cat for my dad. His name is Willy. He is in J's Pirates hat.

And second...

This is a picture of my new nephew at a month old, on my first baby sitting venture. He survived. I can't wait to do it again.

So there have been nice things in my life lately too. Just regarding the bad things--I've let them get really bad, and it's time I actually tried to do something about them before it's too late.

Like with the house behind mine.