We live on a street caught in the middle.
One block to the West (or is it South? North? East? I really couldn't tell you, even after living here for a year I get totally disoriented in our backyard) is a subdivision of apartment complexes and condos filled with college students (from Plano, no doubt, because the rent for those places is astronomical, and there is more than one Hummvee among the parked cars.) There are probably five to six hundred people cohabitating in that three-block radius.
One block to East/West/South/North is a neighborhood filled with houses that doctors and entertainment attorneys and upper middle class families call home, with meticulous landscaping and grand entryways lining streets so quiet after 9 p.m. that the police are called if you accidentally drop a straight pin on the sidewalk.
Our street is a blissful, curvy road filled with duplexes. Nice, pretty duplexes, just the right kind of places for young adults stuck in the middle of figuring out their careers, or newly single middle-aged adults stuck in the middle of figuring out a new life, post-divorce. It's all middle ground on this one hilly street in South Austin.
A yellow school bus has been parked on one side of our street for the past few weeks. It's the kind of bus that the Dead Kennedys would sing about, that others might refer to as "the short bus" when making a joke at the expense of the developmentally disabled. I drive past it often, and have cursed it once or twice when an oncoming car approaches and only one of us can fit though at a time.
Today when I drove past, the suicide doors of the bus were wide open, and two guys with dreadlocks and hats made out hemp were sitting inside on top of a bunch luggage and camping gear, passing a joint.
So Austin.
I love neo-hippies sometimes. They're so friendly. The two guys waved at me, smiling smiles that said, "Peace, man. What a lovely afternoon." If I had stopped, maybe they would've offered me a drag, passing their happiness on to a stranger.
Maybe they were getting ready to embark on a summer journey of road maps and outdoor concerts and festivals and grilled cheese and parking lots and colorful blankets and roach motels and little plastic baggies and panhandling and using gas stations restrooms as showers and Antelope Crossing stickers and spending travel days sitting Indian-style on the floor of the happy bus making macrame purses.
Or maybe they were just stoners with dreadlocks about to go camping with their trust fund money.
So Austin.
Tomorrow I'm off for a long weekend with The Fam. My little sister is performing in her yearly dance recital, and I get to meet the upstanding young gentleman who took her to prom this year. Tonight I'm sitting here typing this instead of cleaning out my car, doing laundry, checking my oil, cleaning the house, and buying "bachelor food" for Brad. (He said that at the grocery store last week when he saw chicken taquitos on sale. "Gotta stock up on bachelor food for next weekend." It still makes me giggle.)
Not to dwell on The Funk I've been talking about forever, but I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Summer is here, and I am actually pretty excited.
Have a wonderful holiday weekend!
Lucy loves you |
