Arbordale

Maple tree in the middle is already starting to turn red.

cn i buy u lunch @ zingRmans b4 u go?

Lawyer P. is leaving Ann Arbor today. True to his free-spirited nature, he informed me of this development via text message while I was out of town Saturday night. I wish him well on his new endeavors, tho' I did point out he is depriving me of a cat-sitter.

Streetlights

Art Fair

State Street Area Art Fair. Difficult for a short photographer to get a picture of anything down in the fray.

Late Night Streetcorner Fireworks Sales

Rock On

Meandering the west side of Ann Arbor this morning, I discovered a yard decorated with large rocks. Not boring old rocks, but interesting ones with shiny veins of ore, deep glacial grooves, or unusual shapes. This one, flecked with sparkling mica, was my favorite.

Hiding in Plain Sight

My art teacher/mentor sent me this clipping from the hometown weekly. We kinda got a kick out of me being missing, since we all know I'm right here.

Waiting

Road Closed

Ah, orange barrel season in Ann Arbor. You can't get there from here.

Because Ann Arbor Needed Another Place to Get Coffee

Enjoying the weather with newly-minted Lawyer P. at the newly-opened Primo Coffee on Liberty.

None of the Trash Visible in this Picture is Mine

Dear neighbors,

It really wouldn't be any skin off my nose to take my daily VitaminWater bottle out to the curb and discover you've stuffed my recycling bin with coffee cans and Reddi-Whip cylinders, except that I'm kind of concerned that you might've put a #5 plastic container in there, because the city only takes #1 and #2, and if there is a #5 plastic container in there, the san man won't just happily toss it on the garbage truck, but your #5 plastic container will end up left behind in my recycling bin, at the edge of my yard, with a big fluorescent pink sticker on it declaring to all who pass by that the City of Ann Arbor Does Not Accept #5 Plastic Containers, shame shame shame on me, and then your trash becomes my trash, for me to dispose of.

Please get your own recycling bin. They're free fer cryin' out loud.

Yrs very truly,
Kimmijo

Ann Arbor Snooze, Part Deux

Dear Ann Arbor News:

Stop it. Just. Stop. Please.

I have a Sunday. Only. Subscription. Why did I get a paper every day this week? Since I get home at 9:30 or 10:00 pm three of the five weekdays, they accumulate on the step as I am too aggrieved by the sight of the horrible orange bags to even pick them up. I was aggrieved enough by the house centipede scuttling across a wall that I did utilize one of your papers to dispatch said pest to multi-legged glory, but it's not often I see a house centipede (I suspect the cat finds them a delicacy) and so this stack of papers is simply going out with the recycling. After I debag them. Which annoys me. Because I agreed to debag one paper a week. On. Sunday.

Ann Arbor Snooze

Dear Ann Arbor News:

This is a picture of my front step. Something is missing. Do you know what it is? Yes, that’s right, the Sunday morning newspaper is missing. For the third time in eight weeks.

Without your newspaper, how will I reread all the AP wire stories I read online last night? How will I know where Madonna had lunch in 1977, or whether students still put tatty old couches on their porches? How will I even know ZOMG!!! THERE R STUDENTZ HEAR!!!!1111 if I don’t read your columnists? Will I survive art fair without a two-page Art Fair Survival spread?

I acknowledge that when I called two weeks ago about my missing paper, I received a Monday and Tuesday paper that week, even though I don’t subscribe to the daily. That was sweet of you to try to make up with me. But here I am paperless again.

Look, I subscribe to a Sunday morning newspaper because I like the experience of perching my glasses on my nose and rustling the pages around while I sip a mug of milky breakfast tea. Note that says breakfast. Not lunch. You have to understand that your newspaper is not my source for news. Rather, it’s part of my personal experience, my weekly glasses-perching, tea-sipping ritual. Whether I’m rustling the pages of the Ann Arbor News or the Detroit Free Press doesn’t make all that much difference to me.

Catch my drift?

Found: Gypsy Wagon

Mysteriously appeared in the ginky weeds behind the Coney Island in Scio Township. Owner may claim in comments.

Drive-By Shooting

Was in Chelsea today for the first time since October. The new library is finished and I would have liked to have gone in, except I had the cat's insulin with me and needed to get it to a refrigerator. I always enjoyed walking to the library in Chelsea, which, even though it was small, usually managed to get the books I put on reserve to me within a week. In contrast, I can never find anything I want at the Ann Arbor libraries and placing items on reserve means a month or more wait.

I coudn't resist driving by the old apartment on the way out of town. I miss the porch, the tall windows, and the birds that came to the windowsills for peanuts. I miss the bathtub and walking up to the corner store on Sunday to buy the newspaper and a day-old Zingerman's muffin.

Seed catalogue arrived today. Will need to figure out where to put in a garden here. Six months later, I still think of this place as "new."

The Ann Arbor School Board Has Never Been to Cincinnati

This is the first thing I thought of when I heard they named the new high school Skyline.

Poor Pachelbel

Reduced to his Canon
"that wedding music"
according to the girls at Borders
who called me ma'am

ugh

An Addition to the Neighborhood Wildlife Siting List

Skunks.

After another evening endured in my sweltering cave, windows closed, drapes shut, fan blaring to little avail against the heat and humidity, I finally threw the apartment open after sundown to let the breeze in. It's finally cooler outside than inside.

To give myself a reprieve from heat and work, I shut off the computer, mixed myself a kimjito* (the Kimmijo recipe for a mojito, since I have no idea whether or not I'm making it correctly), and sat outside for a spell, watching the fireflies wink on and off and offering up my smooth white skin to the mandibles of Michigan's state bird, the mosquito.

I heard a faint squeak. I looked up to see a strip of black shag carpet undulating across the street. I saw a white dot at the trailing end. Ah, a wee skunk. It wiggled over to the shrubbery at the end of the driveway belonging to the Mexican landscapers. ("That's really stereotypical," new friend N. commented, eyeing me somewhat suspiciously. "I can't help it," I replied. "It's what they do. See, it's right there on the side of their beater pick-up truck.") Shortly thereafter, an even smaller skunk emerged from beneath the neighbor's fence and took a similar path to meet, presumably, its sibling. I smiled and issued a prayer that neither of them will be hit by a car.

* Kimijto recipe

Put one teaspoon sugar in glass. Squeeze juice of half a lime over sugar and stir to dissolve. Add five or six good-sized mint leaves and muddle with a wooden spoon until scent of mint is released. Fill glass with ice. Pour over ice 2 oz. light rum and 1 oz. sparkling water. Stir, put on Tito Puente, and enjoy.

Officially an Ann Arborite

The days since my last post have been blurry. There was quite a bit of sweating and grunting over a period of three days whilst wrestling furniture down the stairs of a 100-year-old Victorian house. The matress and box springs came out the window a la Monty Python's Holy Grail. The first night in the new place I had no bed and no hot water. I made several vaguely remembered sad and lonely late-night phone calls. The following day, still hot and sticky and feeling extra-bummed about leaving Chelsea, I sat down on the only box-free surface - the toilet - and wept like a five-year-old.

But I still managed to get a date that week! After beers at Arbor Brewing, we went over to Top of the Park for the free movie, which turned out to be Monty Python's Holy Grail.

Most of my time has been spent at the apartment, making it look more like home. In my first week I have already run over and completely crushed the downspouting in the back yard with my car and put more nail holes in the walls than the landlord probably anticipated. The front of the apartment is a Gobi desert of hardened earth, with street-tough thistles clawing their way through. Pots of coneflowers and daisies await transplantation. They seem happier than they did in Chelsea, having come into full bloom in the last three days.

On my first perambulation around the neighborhood, I poked into Eberwhite Woods for a minute, and found a downy woodpecker feather. Otherwise, the inventory of wildlife around the new place is something like this: house sparrow, house sparrow, house sparrow, house sparrow, starling, starling, starling, sub-adult robin, cardinal, cardinal, house sparrow, house sparrow, juvenile Homo sapiens, house sparrow, little bunny rabbit, starling, starling, house sparrow, house sparrow, house sparrow, house sparrow.

And spiders. I have many spider friends in my new place. And earwigs who want to live in my magazines and I'm afraid I'm going to have evict them.

The cat was a little jumpy for a day or two, but she's doing well. The anti-histamines prescribed for her allergic skin have not been working, probably because they aren't particularly effective when Itchykitty Skinnybutt spits them out under the refrigerator.

And yay! for the post office. Law School P's key found its way to me. He asked what he could do for me for taking care of his cats. I told him to bring me a shrubbery.

Last Post from Chelsea

Here it is, hawklets, my last night in Chelsea. I am sitting beside the astonishing number of boxes it took to pack up the desk. Sylvie watched the operation with whisker-quivering curiosity and couldn't wait to explore the terra nova of the empty shelf.



I believe the move will be positive. Still, it's hard to embrace a change like this when the kosmos thrusts it upon you, rather than letting you think you made a decision and that you have some control.

Jim Morrison is growling "The future's uncertain and the end is always near," somewhere in the vicinity of my right ear. I wish he'd stop.

This morning I walked up to the farmer's market and heard the train whistle blow. I almost cried. I hope the train whistle doesn't blow while I'm turning in the keys to house's new owner. I really don't want to almost cry in front of her.

I am thankful that my new swingin' pad is near enough that I can move stuff carload by carload over a few days. Gives me some time to get used to the idea. Looking at my tv and stereo and yarn in the new place, I felt a little bit at home there already this afternoon. And I'm reading up on how to care for hardwood floors, 'cuz my new ones are filthy. I Swiffered them, but walking in bare feet still turned my soles sooty.

I have dishes to pack yet tonight, so I'll be ready to roll when B & D get here tomorrow with the truck.

Let it roll, baby, roll.