This is the street I grew up on. In the middle of the picture you can see the concrete wall that protected our street from the larger two lane road. To the left of the center light pole, in the distance you can see a small bridge that was part of the overpass for the train tracks.

There were four apartment buildings on my street. The rest of the block was taken up by a factory. In fact this area was full of factories and because of that coupled with the railroad tracks, the other kids at school weren’t allowed to come to my house to play. As a child my friends and I would go around to the factory workers at lunch time to collect bottles which we could turn in to be recycled for a nickel and then we would buy candy.

I lived on the third floor and I remember looking out the window as a child, at the trees, wishing I could go over that wall and sit under one. At night I often dreamt of flying, out my window and over that wall and landing in one of those glorious trees. In the spring after I turned eleven my mom decided that it was okay for me to go home for lunch, instead of staying at school. I had to walk past the factories and since it was lunch time the workers would be outside sitting on the ground eating their lunches.

Walking past them had never bothered me before but somehow this time something had changed. They watched me. They stared at me. It made me feel very self conscious. As the weather got warmer and I stopped wearing a jacket it got worse. They started saying things, like oh baby, and making weird smoochy noises and whistling and saying stuff to me in Spanish. It really bothered me, so I put my jacket back on. It was too hot for a jacket but I brought it with me anyway and put it on when I got to the corner. It made me feel safer and less exposed.

My mother never asked why I was wearing a jacket, but one day when I got home my father was there, he had come home for lunch too. He saw that I was sweating and asked me why I was wearing a jacket. So I told him that the factory workers stared at me and said stuff and made me feel funny.

My father got this weird look on his face and turned bright red. He didn’t say anything else about it and he drove me back to school after lunch. When I got home from school my mother told me that he went to talk to the factory owner and to let her know if the workers ever bothered me again. It was a long time before they ever even looked at me again.

I wonder if this is why I get so annoyed when I go out and so many people are speaking Spanish, perhaps the child in me still thinks they are saying bad stuff about me.

My computer is really slow today, and its driving me crazy, at least it is working though. I am really hoping that we do not lose power due to Ernesto.

Two years ago we had three hurricanes in my area. My husband had borrowed a generator from work and had to go out and get gas a few hours before the storm hit. All the gas stations were already sold out, but we got some at a friend’s house. It was vital that we run the generator because I needed to use my electric dialysis machine. It was like driving through a ghost town, really eerie, most homes and business were covered with plywood, there were no cars on the road and not a soul in sight.

During the first storm, we kept hearing loud noises and things banging against the house. We have storm shutters, but a tree fell against the house and broke through the bedroom window.

When the storm died down we went out to survey the damage. The ground was covered with shingles from our roof and those of our neighbors and many trees and power lines were down.

My husband went up and patched the roof, but it didn’t hold up well during the next two hurricanes. I felt a sense of impending doom as the rain leaked in, we used all the buckets, pots and bowls we owned to try and catch the water, and then little pieces of ceiling started falling. As the wind howled outside, I started worrying more about our safety then I did about our possessions. Luckily we got through it physically unscathed. We only remained without power or water for days because the guy up the road is a big shot at the power company, but for some it took months for power to be restored, which is quite distressing in the hot, sticky, Florida humidity.

Our house remained livable, although the repairs took a few months, we needed a new roof, new carpet, and some new walls and ceilings.

Last year the generators at my husband’s job were stolen so if we lose power we’ll have to go see if we can find one to buy or try to find a hotel room.

Right now it warm, humid and breezy outside and I am not feeling well today, so I think I’ll try to take a nap.

Oh no, they just closed the schools for tomorrow

The block I grew up on had three small 3 family apartment buildings and a two family house. For some reason our block seemed to attract the strangest people. My father owned our apartment building, but the other families were renters and the man that owned the building on the end was a real slum lord. I had a few good friends that lived there but I have only been in the building a handful of times, because it smelled really bad and I was afraid of all the roaches.

When I was around 10, my friend Patricia and her two sisters, ages 8 and 7, lived on the top floor of that building. Their mom was divorced and always in a bad mood. The girls were always outside because they liked to stay away from her and she usually just let them do whatever they wanted. Except when she had a date, then they would have to go upstairs before she left. Their grandfather also lived with them and they called him Beep-bop.

On night Beep-bop was supposed to be watching them, but he fell asleep so the 2 little sisters were hanging out the windows yelling down to us. Then, being little kids, they made up a game where they threw stuff out the window and we tried to catch it. Well their mother came home unexpectedly while this was going on. The next day Patricia came to my house to return a toy I had lent her. She was covered in big red welts, her mother had beaten them all with a belt.

But Beep-bop was really nice. On summer evenings we would wait for him to get home, because he would always be drunk and it was so funny to see him Beep-bopping down the street. When the ice cream man came Beep-bop would give his granddaughters money to buy ice cream. That is until my other neighbor shot the ice cream man.

Mr. Softee had a sign on the back of his truck that said DANGER, in big red letters. He told us to stay away from the back of the truck because we might get a shock from the wires up on top. One of the girls on my block used to climb on the back of the truck all the time, and try to ride on it while he was moving. She thought it was funny that he would have to stop the truck to get out and yell at her. Well one night she must have touched those wires because she started screaming like a banshee, and then she ran upstairs. The next night when Mr. Softee came down the street, her dad came running out with a shotgun, yelling and cursing and then he started shooting.

After that we had to go around the corner to get ice cream, Mr. Softee never came back.

Once upon a time there was a young man who met a young lady online. They talked via instant messaging once in awhile at first. As the months went by their conversations became longer and more frequent until they were talking to each other several times a day. And the conversations also became more meaningful. After almost a year they had decided that there were in love and could not wait to actually meet in person.

So the young man decided to go across the country and see the young lady in person. He got on a bus and traveled for two days, 1900 miles, from North Dakota to Florida.

Now isn’t that romantic?

Yes it’s very romantic, but there’s one problem. The young man is only 16 years old and the young lady is my 15 year old daughter.

Their friends were very helpful in orchestrating the plan. He’s friend got him the money for the bus fare. My daughter has a friend whose mother went and picked him up at the bus station, no questions asked. They dropped him off at another friend’s house where the mother let him spend the night, again, no questions asked.

I keep a close watch on my daughter because I know that her friend’s parents are total idiots who shouldn’t be raising pets, much less children. But I had no clue that this was going on until Thursday when the police showed up at my house looking for this runaway boy.

The police questioned my daughter and her friend at school and then found the boy in a nearby park. He was arrested and taken to a shelter for the night until his father could come down to get him.

So we all went out to dinner together to talk, J and the rich lady, the boy and his father, me and my daughter. (we went to the best restaurant in town and the rich lady paid, I love that) and we tried to impress upon the kids the foolish of their actions. We agreed that they could still talk to each other online and that next time they want to see each other, the parents will make the arrangements, possibly over spring break.

The boy has to get a job to pay back all the money his adventure cost his family. But he can never pay back all the worry it caused his parents. I spoke to his mom on the phone, she had her sisters fly in from other states to help her look through all his computer files that they obtained from yahoo. Meanwhile the father and brothers had been searching the neighbor, and going to child molester’s houses looking for him.

I have been stressed out thinking about all the horrible ways this could have turned out, but thank God both children are safe.