Beachly neighborliness.

The other week at the beach, I was sunbathing and just about to hop in the water, when 2 small kids who were playing with a ball let it get out of their control and it bounced down the rocks and into the lake.

They looked at it a while, and then went back to the group of adults grilling, where they had come from.

The ball began drifting out a bit, so I decided I might as well go in then and get it before it floated out any further, and as I was standing in the water up to my ankles ready to jump in, the kids come back with this adult guy.

"Thank you!", he was like, when he saw what I was doing.

Then, he was like, "Do you know how to swim?".

After I got the ball to him, he said to come over and help myself to whatever food I wanted, if I wanted.

I think I had spoken to him and his wife the past year during the World Cup, and they're Brazilian.

Brazil had played that day and I hadn't heard the outcome of the game, and they were wearing jerseys and so I asked them about it.

A Disturbing Dream of Another:

A woman I know from the beach told me that she's had this recurring nightmare where she's stirring this gigantic pot of hot water with difficulty, and horses and cows and other likable animals stick their heads out and look at her all hurt-like, and she just keeps stirring the pot with them in it.

She said it took her a while, but she realized that she has this nightmare every time she's eaten red meat that day.

Two dreams of decay:

1) I'm holding the depressor button on my toaster, and as I look at the toast toasting, the electric grids grow an incredibly bright orange and it begins sparking out from the inside.

2) I hold up my pricy spring jacket that I'm afraid of ruining and notice that the back has mud sprayed up it from biking in the rain.

Neighbors Listening to Music on the Stoop.

Many times in my neighborhood, you see (hispanic) people just sitting on the stoop, listening to (Mexican) oom-pah music with tubas.

The other day, though, as I was walking to the park, I passed a(n older) (Chinese) man sitting out on a lawnchair on his porch, listening to weird (Chinese) instrumental music with a woman's voice singing along in that tonal, strident way.

Disgust at Economic Obliviousness: Dentist, Periodontist.

You know what really pissed me off this past month?

The dentist said I should come in more often for cleanings, and then after a consultation on gum recession the periodontist quoted me a crazy high price for restorative procedures.

I said it was really beyond my means right now, and would be for the foreseeable future due to my unstable low-wage employment.

"But it's preventative," both were like.

As if that makes any difference!

People who have high incomes really don't understand what a $1000 or $2000 is to people with no stable income and no cash tucked away.

Dream of Time Travel:

A few weeks ago, I dreamt that I was travelling in a car, and was sitting in the backseat, and a second career doctoral student who I know from when I did my Masters was up in the front in the passenger's seat.

The car was crowded and sunlit and the atmosphere was light, and we were all joking about how the student would be sent back in time 400 years in order to take up the position of a queen (at which I had the image flash in my mind of her posed in an oil painting as a queen, and I thought that her face was very regal).

At some point, I began joking that I was her scribe, and put my hands out in front of me like I was writing, and was like, "I [my first name] write this account...", and people laughed.

Neighborhood sites:

In a section where many old storefronts on the main drag have been turned into makeshift apartments inhabited by poorer families, a small part of a brick wall by a bar entrance about a child's height off the sidewalk had every brick colored in a bright solid color of sidewalk chalk, pink and yellow and blue and green.

The kids have no yard, so they must have been playing on the sidewalk out by the bar.