(Phaysis)

Drove around tonite for a bit, just long enough to get a little wound up. Went home and made a valiant effort to sit down, relax, meditate, breathe and try to think of nothing.

It was successful until about 10 o’clock, when my neighbor decided to crank up his bass car and visit with buddies in the parking lot beneath my window.

If I only had balls.

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It looks as though I’ll be going to Texarkana by myself this weekend. :sighs: It’s par for the course, really. It’s great to make plans, but shit always happens. I’ll get to visit with my mother, my family, and some of my friends, but if left up to my own devices instead of being driven to show someone around town, this same damned scenario will play out:

I’ll wake up late saturday, shuffle around the house, watch some TV, eat something, lazily take a shower, and by the time I leave the house to visit with people it’s 8pm. I zip by Moderne Primitives just in time to say “hi” before they close, and then I go to my friends’ clump of houses to hang out until too late, usually doing nothing but talking or watching TV. If it’s 1am or something, I might go to Denny’s. Elsewise, I drive back out to the country to slump back onto my mother’s couch and nod off.

I usually get woken up Sunday by visitors or something, laze around, chat with mom, fully intending to see more friends or maybe extended family, then I have to shower, pack up my things, and leave town around 7pm, which becomes 8pm, which becomes 8:45pm, etc., etc. By the time I reach Austin, it’s around 3am, I’m tired as hell, and the distance from Georgetown to my exit in Austin grows longer and longer. After pulling in, I grab my stuff, haul it back upstairs to my apartment (usually in 2 or 3 loads), check my spam, say “hi” to a few folks online, and then pass out to wake up 4 hours later for work.

Believe me, I know this routine.

The greatest things about having immigrant hispanic neighbors:

• Never having the same parking space twice
• Never a quiet moment (except on nights before the workday)
• The occasional birthday party underneath my window, complete with piñatas (even more entertaining if only just to see if the kids will accidentally whack each other in the head or their fathers in the nuts)
• Even more frequent barbecues, complete with rising smoke and with blaring, distorted conjunto playing from a car with raised trunk lid, underneath said window
• Leering glares as I cross the parking lot to my car to leave the noise
• The constant and interesting stream of fresh young cholos moving in with their scary driving habits
• Having kids playing near, around, and on my car with nary a chastisement from their parents
• The random and sometimes frequent chirping of hypersensitive car alarms going off when the dumpster gets emptied or the kids play too close to those cars
• A constant flux of roofing and carpentry detritus either scattered across the parking lot or piled dangerously near the dumpster
• The here-and-there appearance of an empty cerveza bottle, a pair of children’s shoes, or a metal ladder
• The wafting scent of boiled chicken blowing around when I get home from work
• The loud talking, frequent yelling, and occasional shrieking of young and old without being able to comprehend a single word
• And, finally, the dead car, with borrowed sandbags, stolen from a nearby road construction site, in front of the tires, rotting in one of the few prime parking spaces.

Ah, never a dull moment. God bless ‘em.

¡Vaya con Diabolo!