End of Long WKND. in These Foolish Things

Well, it’s hard to get into this Tuesday. Bluh. Where’d I leave off?

Sunday. After debating back and forth about going to the bridge vs. trying to find a patio for 4th of July fireworks, [Athena] and I agreed that she’d drive to my place and we’d walk over to the bridge. We had to cross a couple of iffy spots and jog around under the freeway, but it was a decent walk and we made it to the bridge and, though the crowd got a little thick at one point (something we both wanted to avoid), we stopped our walk through the crowd when the fireworks show started and had a good view of the fireworks.

Really weird thing is that they stopped the display immediately after a couple of songs worth of your basic roundish yet colorful bursts. It was almost as if they were avoiding a grand finale for some reason. It was like…Okay, that’s all folks! Now GO HOME.

So we did. It was cool to be walking across the bridge that had been closed to traffic - something that very rarely happens. I think that was the coolest part of the whole deal. It wasn’t particularly fun to be walking in a crowd (nor was it fun to think about what an easy target we all were - thousands upon thousands of people all standing together on a bridge!), but the crowd thinned out very quickly and soon it felt like we had a whole highway to ourselves. It was surreal. I took a lot of photos of the underside of the beautiful bridge structure. It was spectacular.

We walked back to my place and [A] and I said goodbye and she drove off for home just in time to avoid a HUGE THUNDERSTORM! It was pretty massive, and I believe it rained alllllll night and into the next morning, but it was a good one for sleeping. The dog and I slept in for a long, long time.

Monday, the actual 4th, was super mellow.

After the rain it was actually cool out, so I decided to take the dog for a nice long walk. And because we walked to the bridge the night before, I’d realized that I had missed walking along that pedestrian portion of the bridge, so we went back!

This time I noticed some things that I hadn’t the night before during the sketchy parts of the walk. First of all, I started to come across a man on the sidewalk, and he was positioned in such a way that it looked like he was urinating on a wall. As I got closer, he fixed his pants, but yes, he was definitely peeing all over a road blockade. Neat. I got even closer and started to walk under a highway underpass, and took a look up the embankment. Guess what I saw? A whole village of people living under the bridge. Super!

There used to be a tent city of homeless people living under some downtown bridges that[my city] was so proud that they had “taken care” of…but clearly the residents of Tent City simply relocated. Some to this other downtown bridge, some have moved closer to my apartment because I’ve been approached/harassed more lately next to the train station.

The Pisser wished me a Happy 4th of July, and I wished it right back to him, but I knew what was coming next - a request. But I didn’t get one and kept walking. By this time I was very close to the pedestrian bridge and I was thinking that I’d need to call a taxi or a Lyft on the way back to my place. But the walk was so nice and pleasant and we walked all the way to the end of the bridge and back and I thought it would be fine to walk back under the bridge since no harassment happened earlier.

This time, walking back under, seems the whole community wanted to wish me a Happy 4th, so I waved at them and then the requests of $$$ started pouring in. Luckily, it was hotter out at that point and nobody seemed to want to move any closer to me to work for it, so I was able to just keep walking on by… it felt like I was in the land of lazy zombies. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Walk up the embankment and hand them cash (which I don’t carry anyway)?

I hope that I don’t sound cavalier with regards to the homeless situation - it’s truly not that I don’t care. It’s not that at all. I believe I’ve written about sharing food with (or buying food for) as many homeless as I can. Sometimes they take it - sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they splash their drink in my face. Sometimes they yell at me. Sometimes they say god bless you. I do care. I worry that I will end up in the street somewhere, somehow. I think about how they got there. I think about mental fragility. I think about a million things.

And then I think about staying safe and doing the right thing and avoiding trouble. We live in the same place, so they can’t be avoided. It’s less about NOT doing something than it is about not stirring up shit - live and let live and please let me pass by your “space” without incident. I will leave you alone, so please leave me alone. Does that even make sense?

Okay. Enough of that.

The dog and I made it home just fine (though I was a tad sunburned by the time we got back). The rest of the day was a relax-fest of puttering around the apartment, snacking, reading, Netflix and chill (heh, not really)…until it was time to go to my Monday night workout! I was excited to go.

Reasons I am firing my Monday/Wednesday Bootcamp Class:

1. They CHANGED the days from Tues/Thurs to Mon/Wed at 11PM the night before the series of classes was to begin. Now. I don’t think I’m abnormal when I say that I like to plan my evenings. How does one plan when a big chunk of their evenings just switched days? It screwed up my Tuesday night walk which I changed to Monday night because of this class! Then I had to change it back? All the while thinking that I’d made a mistake? Nope.

2. Teacher can’t TEACH. Nothing makes sense. And I’ve explained it here before. It’s not ME…it’s HIM!

3. Nobody knows WTF is going on in this class.

4. More than one person asked him about having class on the evening of the 4th of July. Dude said (and I quote), “WE NEVER CANCEL CLASSES! SEE YOU ON THE 4TH!!” Guess what? He canceled class.

5. Teacher tried to argue with me when I told him that he verbally said that we would have class. Sent me a long, long text about how I should have checked his FB page. When I said I DID check his FB page he said, NO not that one…the FB page specific to the park. WTF????? There are multiple FB pages that I’m supposed to check before every class? No fucking way. No more. No how. That’s 5 good reasons. You’re fired.

I’m going to contact the teacher from Saturday morning’s freebie. I’ll gladly pay him for extra motivation. I’m so angry about this dumb class I could spit.

Anyway, I went home and did my own little workout, which sucked because I was mad.

Went to bed in a weird mood.

MASSIVE STORM hits at around 1:30 AM and keeps me awake until approximately 3AM after which I have vivid dreams about traveling to a foreign country and being attacked by ISIS via a spectacular plot that had to do with my pilot friends and hotels and all kinds of stuff that’s all a jumbled mess. I bolted straight out of bed (I’d overslept, too). Woke to the news of cars being swept away in the floods, mudslides, roads closed, destruction!

Okay, enough of that. Tuesday after a holiday is always weird.

I gotta get going.
xo, GS