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At least he’s a reader?

28 Jul

Alan and I were 12 hours into a roadtrip this spring when – having exhausted all reasonable topics – I asked, “What percentage of people do you think have pooped in a car?”

To his credit, without missing a beat, Alan simply said, “I wouldn’t even know how to begin answering that.”

“Pretend it’s an interview question,” I suggested. “You know – like how Google asks people impossible questions just to understand how they solve a problem?”

After a pause, Alan engaged. “OK. So I think we need to put some parameters around this, because I’ve got to assume that pretty much every baby has shat in a car. Are you specifically asking about adults? Pooping in a car as an adult?”

“Yes. And you raise a good point. I think we need to narrow the age range, because after a certain age it’s probably pretty likely you’re going to start doing it again. So maybe we say between the ages of 16 and 65?”

“You’re talking about people shitting themselves, right? Not using a toilet in the back of a bus or an RV or something?” he clarified.

And with that, we were off to the races. It’s only in hindsight that I realize I was preoccupied with the wrong question. Had I thought to explore something more useful on the topic of cars and poop, I would’ve added four more letters to my question. I should have been asking, “What percentage of people have pooped in a carport?” But those were more innocent days.

…

I live in Richmond’s historic Fan District. The streets are generally lined with some combination of row houses and standalone homes that date back more than 100 years. Unlike many of my neighbors, I’m fortunate to have off-street parking with a covered brick carport in my back alley. Until Friday, I viewed it as a massive asset because – in addition to parking – it provides a nice spot to throw a party if ever the weather doesn’t cooperate for an outside soirée.

While I’ve been viewing it as something of a “bonus room,” apparently someone else had similar thoughts – but in a very, very different direction, as I discovered on Friday morning.

I started that morning with a pep in my step. It was almost the weekend. It wasn’t raining for the first time in a week. It wasn’t miserably hot. I was off to meet friends for pickleball before work. Life was grand.

… Until I swung open the gate from my backyard to my carport and saw pages of a book crumpled up and scattered across the pavers next to my car. Thinking one of the recycling bins in the back alley may have lost its lid, I naively walked over, intending to tidy things before heading to pickleball.

And then the smell hit me, and the penny dropped. This was not some random litter that had blown into my carport. This was makeshift toilet paper and it was covering up a pile of human excrement. Right next to my car.

At some point in the night, someone had ducked into my carport and let loose. I’d like to think it was a case of gastric distress, with someone facing a panicked emergency seeking out a relatively private spot to find relief. I imagine a poor college student with undiagnosed IBS wondering what hit him, as he scrambled through his book bag looking for something to clean up with, finding only his tattered and underlined copy of Camus’s “L’Etranger.”

While I’m clinging to that – dare I say, optimistic? – version of events, my worry is that my carport has just been designated as a public restroom by the people who panhandle at an intersection a few blocks away. Abiding by the “broken windows” theory, I was quick to clean the mess and bleach the floor of my carport.

As I cleaned, I couldn’t escape the harsh blaze of the motion-detector floodlight above me. Which made me wonder: had the person who squatted there waited for the light to time out, or had they been spotlighted as they shat? It seems like illumination would have offset the privacy the person sought – but depending on the level of emergency, perhaps it was a situation where there was no room to adjust the plan once it was underway.

Later in the day I traded notes with the previous occupant of my house for an unrelated reason.

Her: How are you doing?

Me: Great, other than someone taking a dump in my carport last night!

Her: Oh, that happened to us when we lived there too!

Me: Once or multiple times???

Her: Just once. Right before we moved. They wiped their butt on my husband’s car.

Say what?! How is that even possible?

I guess the lesson here is this: it could always be worse. I could now be driving a Prius with pinstriping. I’m just lucky this person had a book in their bag, and that they were willing to part with a few pages, though it certainly brings new meaning to the phrase, “shitty taste in literature.”

…

I bet Alan is already dreading our next roadtrip.

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So this happened…

30 Aug

My house is 110 years old, so I expected to deal with some “things” when I took it on. Crooked walls and windows, fragile plaster, a dirt crawlspace, uneven floors, and rag-tag electrical that needed to be brought up to code. I had what I’d like to think were reasonable expectations.

One thing I had NOT baked in my equation: squirrels.

Yeah, I know, squirrels are everywhere. And when you have an enormous willow oak over your backyard, you’ll probably see a lot of them. Totally fair. But let me tell you where I wasn’t expecting to see one: IN MY LIVING ROOM.

That’s right. Tuesday I was upstairs working and I heard a noise downstairs. At first I thought that one of my Command Strips (velcro for hanging artwork without nails/holes) had broken loose and dropped a picture on the floor. But as I started down the stairs to investigate, I heard more noise. For an instant, I thought someone was trying to break into my house, and because I lean toward the “fight” instinct ready than the “flight” instinct, I went charging down the stairs at full tilt – only to arrive in my living room and see a terrified squirrel scrambling around the top half of my living room window, dashing itself against the glass in a bid to escape.

As soon as it saw me, it fell down the window and scrambled up into my fireplace, making it clear where it had arrived from. I took stock of the situation and decided that the best approach was to try to help it escape, so I opened the window it had been trying to use and removed the screen. (This was the most stressful part of the operation because I had two large spiders living between the glass and the screen, so I needed to relocate them without ending up with spiders in my house. I managed it, and then left the window open for the squirrel.

Instead of taking the invitation, however, the squirrel started scrambling around inside my fireplace. I assumed he had remembered how to climb and was reversing his way up the chimney, leaving from that direction. After a few minutes of upward-sound motion, it got quiet, so I assumed he escaped. To be sure, I decided to close off the fireplace. I broke down a cardboard box, taped it across the opening, then propped my cast iron fireplace tools against it for reinforcement.

I then took on the nasty task of cleaning up squirrel scat. Because that squirrel, in its panic to escape from my house, had absolutely shit its brains out. And then stomped in it. And tracked poopy paw prints from the fireplace to the window, across the windowsill, up both sides of the window frame and even on the glass. It was a literal shit-show.

I’m pretty picky about cleanliness, so it took a good hour to wash everything down and then disinfect it with Lysol. As soon as I was done, I called a chimney company and scheduled them to come out on Saturday to check all my chimneys and cap them to ensure this never happened again.

Except it did.

The very next day.

It was 4pm Wednesday and I was upstairs in my office on a video call with a client. Halfway through the call, I heard a noise downstairs. I tried to remain focused on my client, but I couldn’t help but wonder: was the squirrel back?

I tried to reassure myself that what I was hearing was simply the tape releasing on the box as it had time to relax. But then I heard a little bit more. “Do you mind if I put you on a hold for a second?” I asked my client. “I have a situation I need to investigate.”

I ran downstairs, and sure enough, the squirrel had punched the box loose and was halfway up my window again. Apparently it did NOT climb its way out the night before, but had instead been lurking in my fireplace, waiting for another escape attempt!

As soon as it saw me, it ran back up into the fireplace, just as it had the day before. I replaced the box, flipped my coffee table on its side and pushed it against the box to ensure that the squirrel wouldn’t break loose again while I was on my call, and then I went back upstairs to finish my coaching session.

“Oh sorry about that,” I explained. “As feared, I have a squirrel in my living room.”

To her credit, my client took that in stride. Though it also makes me wonder if this seems like the type of person I am – the type who just regularly has a squirrel in her house?

As soon as the call ended, I called ASAP Critter Removal to see if they could send someone, and then headed back downstairs to try to remedy the situation myself. I decided to double-down on the idea of giving it an escape route, so I opened the window and lined up my coffee table (still on its side), a large box and a few other items to help “corral” the squirrel toward its preferred exit path. I then loosened the tape on the box covering the fireplace, and waited.

It felt like the squirrel and I were in a standoff, so I decided to recreate the prior conditions and go upstairs so it would have its space to come out, unthreatened. It was so hard sitting upstairs, listening for sounds of a squirrel. But finally, I heard what sounded like the scramble of a rodent. And then I definitely heard the sound of a squirrel trying desperately to get itself up the window.

Curious to know what was happening, but not wanting to scare the thing back up into the fireplace, I gingerly made my way down two stairs, where I could sit and observe without interfering. What I saw confirmed that squirrels are not very smart. The squirrel was, in fact, trying to go out the window. But instead of running out the open part at the bottom, it had again scaled the entire window and was throwing itself madly at the top half of the glass.

Channeling all the patience of a fisherman, who knows that waiting is the game, I stayed on the stairs, watching. Finally, my patience paid off. The squirrel lost its grip and with a cartoonishly squeaky sound, slid down the pane, landing on the windowsill, where it finally noticed it could escape. It sat there for a beat too long, apparently trying to decide if it could make the jump, so that’s when I lost my patience and came charging down the stairs, scaring it through the window and out onto the sidewalk.

And wouldn’t you know, that squirrel sat there chirping and scolding me for at least minute, as if I had some how wronged it, not saved it? The nerve.

I quickly closed the window, initiated my cleaning protocols for the second day in a row (this squirrel might not have eaten for 24 hours, but it still had plenty of excrement to handle), and then – just to be safe – re-barricaded the fireplace, this time with a large, tight-fitting screen and a table.

About this time, I got a text back from ASAP Critter Removal, telling me they could have someone out to me in 45 minutes.

“I think I just handled it,” I wrote back.

“Do you want us to come out and check your chimneys for you? We could do Friday at 5pm?”

I explained that I already had a chimney company coming out on Saturday, and that I was hosting a dinner on Friday night.

Their sign-off/advice, “Cool. Sounds fun. Go nuts!”

That cracked me up, but it’s likely I’m just slap-happy since this is the third time in two weeks I’ve had an animal hanging in my window, crapping itself. Good times. Or as they apparently say in Richmond, “Go nuts!”

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Summer Shovin’ – Happened So Fast…

8 Aug
SUMMER SHOVIN’ – The Pink Slay-dies vs. The T-Birds, July 29, 2023

The last few weeks were super hot in Richmond – we had temperatures in the high 90s and the humidity easily bumped us up into the hundreds. I’m obsessive about hitting 10k steps per day, so this meant I was usually out at 6am trying to log my miles, water my plants and do any other outside activities before the mercury started to climb.

The heat still hadn’t broken by Saturday when Alan came over, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to sell him on any outdoor events (I had my eye on the free production of “Something Rotten” at the Dogwood Dell amphitheater). We rarely hit any crowded indoor events (apparently I’m the last living human who believes covid still carries any risk?) but I decided to see what was on offer that might involve A/C…

Which is how we came to be seated rink-side at Richmond’s Convention Center for – drumroll please – ROLLER DERBY. As you’ve probably intuited, the Convention Center does NOT actually house a skate rink (or velodrome, for that matter). Rather, they create a rink by taping the lines whenever there’s a match. We had no idea what to expect, other than women on rollerskates and presumably some pushing, and we were not disappointed.

We did, however, quickly realize that we knew NOTHING ELSE about the sport. After each team’s introduction, which consisted of them taking laps huddled together in a crouch with each woman popping up to clown when her name [Beast! Sigmund Feud! Baddy Long Legs!] was called, they quickly got down to business.

Each round starts with the two teams creating human barriers, trying to lock the other team’s “jammer” in place so she can’t skate away from the pack. We surmised that scoring occurred when the jammer made it out of the pack and was able to lap it. This means that each time they come around and approach the pack, they have to try different tactics to get through. Sometimes their teammates would be able to help create an opening for them, but more often they had their hands full trying to stop the other team’s jammer from getting through.

It sounds simple, but I’m not exaggerating when I say we watched the scoreboard quickly climb to a 68 point tie and couldn’t figure out what either team was doing to wrack them up. We resorted to googling “roller derby rules” at the first intermission. (Roller derby has two 30 minute periods with a 15 minute intermission. At this match there was a band set up that played and kept the crowd pumped while the athletes rested.) And in case you’re curious, they get a point for every member of the opposing team that they pass.

Only marginally related: when I started to reflect on rollerskates, I felt like there was a well-known joke in the corner of my brain that I couldn’t quite pull. So I googled, and found that there IS, in fact, a rollerskate joke that (pun intended) seems to do the rounds. Maybe you can think of it?

If not, in closing, here it is (sorry, not sorry):

Three men at the pearly gates….

Three men have died and arrive together in the pearly gates.

St. Peter asks the first man “Have you ever cheated on your wife?”

The man proudly answers “Not once in 40 years of marriage.”

“You are a good man” St Peter tells him. “Here are the keys to your brand new Porsche. ” He Revs the engine and drives off.

St. Peter asks the second person “Did you ever cheat on your wife?”

The man shrugs his shoulders sheepishly “Uh, yes sir. But only once at a party when I was drunk!”

St. Peter hmms… “Well we have all erred in our life. Here are the keys to your Buick.” And the man, grateful he’s not being sent to hell, hops in the car puts it in gear and drives off.

The third man is sweating bullets. Before even hearing the question he falls down on his knees and begs forgiveness. “I’m sorry St. Peter. I cheated on my wife many times. I was a traveling salesman, I had a woman in every city, on every business trip, at every airport and field office in the lower 48 and most of Europe. Please, Please forgive me…“

St Peter looks in the book and reflects. “Alright. The good news is you can come in. The bad news is here’s your Bicycle. You have reaped what you have sown.”

The man sighs, and starts peddling, weaving back and forth a bit. He comes to the first guy in his Porsche, on the side of the road crying.

“What the hell do you have to be crying about?,” he asks. “I’m tooling around heaven on a rusty bicycle, and you’ve got a sports car. What gives?”

The first man blows his nose and looks up. “My wife just went by on one roller skate.”

AND SCENE.

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A Week of Affirmation

6 Aug

One of the reasons I moved to Richmond was for a greater sense of community. I loved living in DC and had a strong sense of pride for the city, but at its heart, DC is transient. Most of my friends slowly migrated out of the city – first to nearby suburbs when they had children, then more farther afield as jobs carried them and their spouses to other cities and states. For those who stayed in DC, the addition of vacation homes meant they weren’t around as often.

In any case, as I started to see retirement creeping up in my (verrrrry) peripheral vision, I realized that I wanted to be somewhere that had a hopping cultural scene AND a rich, stable friend group. I also realized that making friends later in life wouldn’t be as easy as it was in my 20s, so if I wanted to be surrounded by good friends before I’m using a walker, I’d need to start actively working to meet people NOW.

I say all of this explain why, Wednesday night, as I sat in a lawn chair listening to a porch concert, I had an overwhelming sense of satisfaction with my move. Let me tell serve up a summary of this past week so you can see why I’m so happy here…

Sunday, 4pm: I met up with my dear friend Kelly (whom I originally met through the Georgetown coaching program back in 2014) for what we thought was going to be a Jazz Concert in Byrd Park… but it turns out I had the date wrong (by a week!) so we just ended up tossing a blanket and catching up for an hour.

Sunday, 8pm: I ran over to Dogwood Dell, where – as part of the annual Arts in the Park program – “Something Rotten” (a Broadway musical that I first saw at The National in DC a few years back) was playing. I didn’t know how long I would stay (since 8pm is often my bedtime!) so I didn’t bother inviting anyone to join me. Not to worry – I was seated next to a nice couple who chatted with me until the curtain lifted. It was a quality production that rivaled the touring company I saw in DC!

Monday, 9am: I met up with friends at Bryan Park to play pickleball for an hour before work.

Tuesday, 6pm: I stepped out onto my front porch and saw my neighbor, Paige, out rocking her four month old baby. I went over to visit with her. Within minutes, we were sitting there with her husband and neighbors from two other houses, sharing a bottle of wine.

Wednesday, 7am: As I finished watering the flowers on my front porch, my next door neighbor returned from walking her dog. We had a quick visit and I offered to babysit her son next week so she and her husband could go to a concert. As we were talking, another neighbor walked up in his pajamas with a mug of tea for a morning porch visit.

Wednesday, 8am: I went to Bryan Park again to play pickleball with two new people I met a few weeks back. At 9am, my other pickleball friends, Paula and Roxanne, showed up to join us.

Wednesday, 6pm: I walked to Byrd Park for my tennis clinic with Coach Victor and two other women who were new to me. We all traded numbers so we could meet up to play some other time together. (I started lessons back in March and have met a dozen women who I see off-and-on twice a week for Doubles and Clinic. A few of us have met up for concerts and pool time outside of tennis.)

Wednesday, 7:30pm: I went to Michelle and Roxane’s house for a porch concert. I originally met them a couple months back at a Coming Together Virginia meeting and invited them over one night. They repaid the favor by inviting me to their porch concert – a really talented musician (Gabriel Wheaton) who is touring the US giving concerts. Check out this video:

Thursday, 7am: I walked over to Byrd Park with my neighbor, David, to play tennis with his friend Rob, and him. While we were playing, completely uncoordinated, Coach Victor showed up to offer some encouragement.

Friday, 6pm: I walked over to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for “Rhythm on the River” – a weekend-long festival celebrating music in Richmond. This event was held in their outdoor Sculpture Garden, and I joined my friends Roxane and Michelle and their friends who were down from Fairfax. While there I also got to visit with two neighbors from my block who stopped by with their dogs.

Saturday, 9am: Tennis at Byrd Park with Coach Victor and three women I’ve played with before.

Saturday, 5pm: Alan arrived for our regular Saturday night date!

OK. I realize this is NOT a pithy post and is more like an accounting ledger, but I’ve had a lot of friends ask me what Richmond’s like and if I’m meeting anyone. Here’s hoping I’ve answered THAT question!

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Pickle– WHAT?

21 May
Photo by Joan Azeka on Unsplash

Since moving to Richmond last summer I’ve been excited to get into pickleball. Alan and I were first exposed to it a few years ago when we visited my former boss in Tennessee and she and her husband took us to a court. If you’re not familiar, it’s played on a court that looks a lot like a tennis court but is quite a bit smaller; it uses paddles similar to table tennis but a bit larger/heavier; and the ball is approximately the size of a tennis ball but made out of open plastic like a wiffle ball. Think of it as the Frankenstein of racquet sports.

But here’s the thing: it’s fun, easy, and social, which is why I thought it would be a great way to meet people and stay active. The challenge is that the scoring is complicated and the rules are not at all like tennis, so it’s kind of confusing for a newbie.

All of which is to explain why I was standing on a court with eight strangers in oddly hot (90 degree) temperatures the first week of April. Richmond hasn’t provided the overall cost savings you might think – housing is much less expensive here than DC, but most other things are about the same – but the one place where I’ve found a deal: the Parks & Recreation offerings. I signed up for beginner tennis lessons: $25 – for SIX lessons, which is insane by DC standards; and pickleball lessons – FREE for what was originally supposed to be six hours of instruction but actually ended up being eight! I’m something of a bargain hunter, so don’t be surprised if I join a soccer league or some equally random shit in an attempt to make my tax dollars work for me here.

The best part about pickleball lessons? The instructor, Diana, who told us on the first night that she’s 75 years old. Good thing she disclosed her age, because I would’ve guessed her to be much younger. She’s spry, sassy, and delivers a mean serve. She reminds me of my mom: short white hair and a bit of a tough-love/smart-ass vibe to her coaching that has big “gym teacher energy” to it.

On the first night, she asked each of us to share what previous racquet sport experience we had. Some people had none, others had played tennis or pingpong in years past. I was last to go. “I just started taking tennis lessons two weeks ago,” I shared, thinking this might accidentally brand me as an over-achiever.

“Oh Lord,” she responded. “Good luck.”

As it turns out, while both tennis and pickleball use a ball and racquet/paddle, the strategies are very different, the scoring is very different, and the rules are very different. Among other things, I was cautioned that I’d probably miss the ball a lot because the racquet is much smaller. Good news? Not a problem on that front. Turns out, I’m still pretty coordinated. Bad news? The rules and scoring are as tricky as advertised – at least to a new person who has just learned about deuces and add-in/add-out.

Of course, I claim I’m coordinated and a semi-decent athlete, but it’s now been a month since my lessons ended and I might need to walk that back a bit. I’ve been playing regularly with two women from my class and if nothing else, my ego is certainly getting a workout: the last two times I’ve played, my *70 year old* opponent has absolutely mopped the floor with me.

I actually just signed up for the beginner’s tennis league, not because I’m itching to play more tennis (it’s exhausting!), but mainly so I’ll have a viable excuse in case I continue to get trounced on the pickleball court. As I tell my clients: it’s all about controlling the narrative. I mean, maybe the real miss here is that I haven’t yet found a ping pong class to join.

And with that, let me go consult the Parks & Rec catalog…

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