Blonde Roots Red Tangles

It's tough to be Humanling.

Her little butt is sitting on one side of my Leg Magic, which came out of bedroom retirement into semi-use in the living room. She's sliding on it like a side to side rocker. And holding her eye.

She poked herself in the eye about two centuries ago earlier and is milking the injury. So as she is now not aware that I'm looking at her not holding her eye and clearly watching the Spongebob movie, I can see that she's gonna make it. And as I wrote that last sentence, she turned around to look at me, hand automatically magnetically covering the eye.

I can't find my Gameboy. A few people know how precious Mario and his environment of blips, turtles and Luigi are to me. It's not the equivalent of the nightly glass of wine for some. It's the paddles that bring a person back from the dead during heart failture.

I'll admit that I haven't actually looked for it either. But I haven't looked for Azrael and she shows up and crosses my path all the time.

I had one of my neighbors over today. He fixed a window that I had busted with my foot. No, no, its not like the PMS post. The window was stuck and I tried to stand on the bottom of it to unstick it and hoped that it would gently get the idea. Instead my sneaker went straight through it and it shattered. It's been like this for about 2 months. I adapt to my surroundings. Darwin would love my form of evolution.

We just don't use that room and keep the door shut. That's my method of living with it. My neighbor however, thinks like most other responsible folk and offered to fix it for me. He also fixed my bedroom door, which wouldn't tightly close. Azrael the Evil was in and out of my room to bat the guinea pig in the face or knock over plants at her repeated choosing.

Well HA!!!! It's fixed now AZ! Now you have to be a CARD CARRYING MEMBER to get in.

So I made us some lovely millet rolls, toasted with a pat of butter, freshly cut garlic, bruschetta and soy mozzarella cheese on top. It was fabulous.

What isn't fabulous is the Texan Tumbleweed of hair that I've combed out of my scalp tonight. Humanling loves to play with my hair in her various stages of semi-consciousness while sleeping. I just combed out the huge Knot Curl that she created and almost constructed a bald spot from pulling out all the tangles. She's too damn cute though and I'm sure there's a man out there who likes bald spots created on a woman for the love of her Ling.

Speaking of, she is now leaning on me, fingers in my hair in almost the same spot that I just rescued from impending dreadlocks.

I tried to create a new dish tonight for the perpetual rotating menu. It's called Mesir Wat and its Ethiopian. It has fresh ginger, garlic, onions, red lentils, turmeric and paprika. Yet somehow, I tasted, in my imagination, fish. That's grounds for recipe failure. I should not taste something that I didn't put in there. So I have a large saucepan full of Stuff We Aren't Going to Eat. I'm sure its fine and someone else wouldn't taste it but I'm me and once I've made up my mind that I Ain't Gonna, then its a done deal.

Grilled soy cheeses on rice bread it is....

Well, the alarm that is my right butt cheek falling asleep, just went off. Time to clean dishes and try not to eat too much chocolate.

Brother Can you Spare 600 Dimes?

I may have mentioned that the little Humanling and I live in a neighborhood that has access to everything that a private island could possibly put on their rider. Including panhandlers. Make that singular - Panhandler.

I've worked in NYC and have dealt with professional dollar diggers. Eventually, it is possible, even for a Save The Worldish weeping willow like me to callous up the retinas and look past these people while also ignore the handout speech of anyone who isn't touching you. Where I live, the same protocol seems almost bizarre.

It's a small town, focused primarily on its downtown. Everyone to be seen sits lazily outside on the green, walks up and down the main strip or looks penetratingly unapproachable sucking down their coffee at the eccentric coffee house. Anyone that I haven't listed is probably ordering a dollar draft and a jagermeister shot at the bar next to the railroad tracks. At one point if I had installed a camera in Cavey's primal head of hair, I would have had the much awaited Beer Channel, in said bar's exotic locale.

After a packed day, Humanling and I decided to go for a walk while it was still light out. It took us about 25 minutes to go about 50 yards since she decided to bring her flimsy plastic skateboard with her. When we passed a church that we pass reguarly, we decided to look in the door, which we've never done. Through the window, like a literature stalker, I was checking for pamphlets that I would take sometime when the church was actually open so that I could learn about one of the 5000 different denominations of Catholicism. A woman came and opened the door. It's basically near 8pm on a Saturday night. She invited us in and gave us a tour of the church. She also told Humanling to go right ahead and tickle the church ivories and get right up to the altar to check things out. She had no fear of HL's little potentially destructive fingers tainting anything in the centenarian building.

In the middle of listening to HL's musical staff defiance, a man walked in the door and started talking to the clergy, who had been showing us around. As I coaxed my musical genius off God's piano bench and made our way to the pew where the plastic skateboard had been sitting, the man looked over and asked clergy for six dollars. He must have. It didn't register with me right away but I did hear her say no. Then without a beat, he named me "Miss" and asked me the same question.

It's amazing how our brains work in a matter of mere seconds. I stopped myself from asking "What for?" because.....well....we're not married. I don't know him. I suppose it doesn't matter What For. My next thought was "Only if you don't buy booze with it. And give it to my ex husband". I really was thinking about a booze restriction clause. And again, realized that I was fighting controlling the situation somehow. And then the absurdity of it all. I am invited into a closed church, a man walks in during my pre-date with church and asks me for money. And not even a dollar. Six dollars. Without saying another word, I took out my wallet and pushed past a $50 bill. I found seven dollars and gave him the six.

He did say thank you - not overly and abundantly expressed, but mentioned nontheless.

I wasn't bullied into this. I could have said no.

I could have said sorry, don't have my wallet on me.

Sorry, I am a single parent trying to keep my head above water while I am going through an expensive divorce that so far has siphoned $3500 out of me and resulted in me dropping my lawyer and most likely obtaining a shiny new ulcer while I go Pro Se and represent myself against my ex's lawyer who does double duty as a Judge.

But how do you turn down 'helping' someone while standing in front of a stained glass mural of Jesus? Plenty of people reading ths would have an answer for that. I am fortunate enough to have the money to give. By no means am I with disposable income. But I did have six dollars to spare, next to the $50 that was given to me today during a moment so rare, it could have been the 8th wonder of the world.

The man left with his huge backpack. The clergy woman apologized to me and insisted on writing me a check for the six dollars, while telling me how nice that was. I felt like that moment when you bump your head on the car after trying to duck into the back seat to get something. That moment where you know something happened but for a second are trying to register the what and the how.

I told her not to worry about it. That the whole thing was so random - the tour and the man - that it was meant to be that way for whatever reason, that I can pay it forward because people have helped me.

Tomorrow morning we may just be checking out this new church. Especially since I cleared it ahead of time that we are allowed to be incognito and that no white spotlight will land on us, prompting me to tell everyone who we are and why we are there, while showing off my favorite shade of crimson.

I could be called a sucker, and that's ok. Believe me, if that's the worst thing I can go through, I'll start monogramming the towels now.