Valancy Jane

….. to the couple handcuffed together on the street corner, reading a map, “I dunno what the game is, but I sure hope you had a chance to pee before it started.”

…. WalkScore.Com

My neighborhood’s great score is one of the things I love most about living there.

In fact, I really didn’t think about much of anything.  Is that bad?

I think I’ve shared my method of picking wine before.  Look for the bottles with an animal on the label, then narrow it down to the least appetizing animal.  Presto.  There’s your wine.

But something I’ve learned in the little Italian markets around my house is that Italians rarely put animals on the label, and that I’d need a new system.

So to pick an Italian wine, look for the faggiest looking guy on the label.

And there’s your wine.

Bellydance.  Naked.

Dye the couches pink, throw doilies everythere, and teddy bears, that are wearing bow ties and top hats.  Insist that this is now “the FORMAL living room.”

Hang in the living room large portraits I’ve painted of them.  Naked.  “You said you wanted more color in here.”

Write ValancyJane.com on the roof of my house, advertising to the passengers of the planes flying overhead.

Dye the cats blue.  “You said you wanted more color in here.” 

Fill all the empty space in the fridge with books.  Insist that those books were upsetting me, and that I couldn’t sleep until they were contained.

Rehang the doors in the house to swing the other way.

Switch the hot and cold water taps in the shower.

Put a window in the wall between my bedroom and Roommate A’s bedroom.  Wake him up with puppet shows.

Leave a big row of large muddy footprints from the front door, across the living room, into the kitchen stopping at the fridge.  But not leading away.

Last thursday morning I was running late for my train.  And I really can’t miss my train, it throws the whole morning commute off.  For me, and other people too, I like to assume.  So I was walking as fast as I can.  Which is, incidently, surprisingly fast for my short legs.  But anyway.

I passed two pigeons pecking away at a scrap of food in a wrapper on the sidewalk.  I smiled because they seemed to be enjoying it a lot, ignoring me as I passed pretty close.  Several steps later it flashed into my mind that they were eating a bite sized Hersey bar.  And then it occurred to me that chocolate is deadly to birds.

I’d passed the point of no return, really.  I was already too far past them to go back, without missing my train and having to explain to my boss that I was late to work because apparently I’ve taken on the role of caretaker to wild pigeons.

And with each passing step I became more convinced that I should have stopped, I should have realized, that I’d failed some sort of cosmic test.  Almost a week later I still feel like I’ve let those pigeons down.

Because it’s much easier to obsess on dead pigeons that what’s really bothering me.

So if I seem flat, or distant, I’m sorry, but all I’m really ready to talk about are the pigeons.

A man who lives in a loft apartment in a building I pass on my way to work hangs a bucket out his window to just a few feet above the sidewalk, for the newspaper guy to put his paper in.

At least, I’m assuming it’s a man that lives there.  Hanging a bucket out your window for your newspaper seems like a guy sort of thing to do.  But I’ve never seen him or anything.

Anyway, I add things to the bucket. 

Things like a flower from the rosebush around the corner (”Special Events”), pennies (”Finance Section”), flyers I find as long as they’re interesting (”Ads”), an apple (”Food”), cute bookmarks, stuff like that.

I suppose there’s a chance that I’m annoying him, but as long as he keeps casting the net, I’ll take the chance, and make sure he doesn’t pull it back empty.  After all, he must want to know what’s happening around him, if he reads the paper, right?

And baby, I’m what’s happening.

For example, I like old-school Madonna.  Never really noticed that before.

Also, I’m surprised to discover that I’m a total city girl.  I didn’t know that.  I wouldn’t have guessed that.  I was raised to think of myself as a country girl.  I can make rope out of yucca plant leaves and navigate by the stars.  I can quilt.  I can treat a horse for snake bite.  I’ve cooked with stuff from my own garden and given the leftovers to my chickens.  I guess I took it for granted that I’m a country girl, and that if I left it for long, I’d miss it.

This has not proven to be the case.  I have not found city people to be any less kind.  I think there are just as many animals in my new neighborhood as my old one, and I don’t just mean because I brought them.  Skyscrapers towering over me doesn’t feel suffocating, I actually like feeling so small.  The dial of solitude is much more finely tuned here, I can be exactly as alone as I want to be, no more and no less.  There are sidewalks, and nobody spits on them.  I like the airplanes flying overhead.  They make me think I’m ever so close to darting off someplace.  Although sometimes one will rattle me awake at night, so loud that I have to put my faith in the blinking red light on my neighbor’s house, that the plane is not going to actually land on me, but then I thought the same thing about monster trucks back home.  I wonder at times where I got the idea that the city wasn’t a healthy place. I don’t think The Big Bad City is corrupting me or making me more materialistic.  Although I do brush my hair more.

Speaking of that, I have polished up a bit.  In my old neighborhood, it was perfectly acceptable to go to Walmart in your PJs.  (I once saw a woman wearing nothing but a shower curtain.)  In my new neighborhood ….. well, there is no Walmart.  And you put on lip gloss if you wanna sit on your own front porch.  I always said I had no style, that I only liked outlandish things, but now I think it was more a case of the country never really being ready for someone like me.

And I think the city and I bring out the best in each other.

…. as I rubbed the ears of a puppy so cute it can only be described as the Miss America of puppies, which was wearing a guide dog in training vest, “GAWD, I hope I go blind.”

A couple of days I walked home for work past a house that had been very recently moved into. The curtains were open just enough to see that they had in their living room a Christmas tree. A large, elaborately decorated Christmas tree.

I wanted to knock on their door and ask if they wanted to be friends, but I didn’t want to scare them.

In hindsight, anybody who puts up a Christmas tree in June would prolly be happy to make a friend that way.