Sometime, you just have to leave

Cookie has shared a great deal with all of you, and I expect one of my life experiences to end up in a book someday so I can sue someone for my original writings.

"What the fuck was that for Cookie?" you are asking.

Well, I am in a Mood.

And this latest storm last Friday was the catalyst for that mood.   "The winds breed depression," according to Paul Bartell's Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills.

To understand what happened, we have to go back, back, back, back in time to what happened about 18 years ago with one of our old neighbors, Mary Merry, who was in a relationship with a woman name Nurse Nora.  They were a cute couple, but...

There is an old joke that goes: How many dates does it take before two Lesbians to move in together and form a household based on shared common beliefs and egalitarian values?  Answer: One.  On the second date, they hire a U-Haul and move in, on the second day, they cats together, then they spent the remainder of the relationship trying to figure out how to move out without hurting the other womyn's feelings.

Well, this happened to Mary and Nora.  They met, fell in love and then one day, Mary came home to find Nora's stuff and the cats are gone and note saying that she was accepted in a Masters of Nursing program in South Dakota, and "It will be better this way."

Suffice it to say that Merry was no longer Mary, she was, understandably very hurt and upset.  Inconsolable, actually.

Fast forward about three months and Cookie - that is I - and the husband gets up on a summer morning, he to take the terrier for a walk and I go out to get the paper on the porch when I spot someone who looks like a monster from Where the Wild Thing's Are mucking about in a freshly poured cement sidewalk section.  WTF?

So I see Merry Mary's next door neighbor and we meet on the sidewalk and I ask what in the name of all that is righteous is that beast doing in our new sidewalk?

"Oh, that's Jerry - he is an Anarchist.  AND is squatting in Merry Mary's house," says Neighbor.  "Last night he was screaming "FUCK YOU" you at 3AM and pissing from the front porch roof.   It woke us up and when I opened the window to tell him to pipe down, he called me "a Fascist Pig ready for slaughter."

Where is Merry Mary, I ask?   I wanted to ask more, but I think our neighbor needed a drink and I was afraid at 8AM, telling me more would drive him to crack open the tequila.

"Mary went to Africa."

"Africa? What? Like Africa Road up by Alum Creek State Park?" asked I.

"No.  The real thing.  Mary went to Africa. To forget."

"To forget?"

"To. Forget. It's this Nurse Nora thing.  She felt she had to leave everything and clear her head.  So she is spending a month in Namibia.  So she leased her house to her friend Connie, and Jerry is Connie's boyfriend, and two weeks ago Jerry tried to sell Michelle's furniture and moved all of his anarchist friends in.  There is nothing we can do with Mary being in Africa. Because she is not reachable.  Because she is in Africa. To forget.

And in fact, it was a Hellish three months for everyone on the block because Jerry turned into a 300-pound 40-year-old man-baby who should have been medicated years ago. Even Connie left him - LEFT HIM - in her friend's house, unchaperoned.

He destroyed property, he graffitied our garages, threw trash in our yards.  When Mary arrived, she could get him out because, under Ohio law, he had squatters rights.  So she had to cohabitate with Jerry until the process to evict him went through.  He even told sweet Mrs. Houston to "go to Hell, Imperialist!"

Mrs. Houston looked like Judith Lowry. Her late husband Ned taught labor rights at Ohio State.  And she had a mouth on her that would either spin pure sugar or saltwater.

"I told that vile man that he could 'fuck off'.  I told him I have lived in my house for sixty years and he could shove that Imperialist shit right up his ass," said the 90-year-old woman.  "Then I told him that I was a progressive Democrat and I won't stand for that Mother Bloor bullshit. He doesn't know his head from his ass."

"And I told him if he thought he was going to shock me with his language he had another thing coming."

So what did he say, I asked.

"Oh, he tried to outshout me, so I turned the hose on him and told him that was for urinating in my geraniums.  Hit the bastard in the face with the power nozzle. He squealed like a  stuck pig."

Finally, the police carried Jerry down to the jail, feet first, out of that house and was charged with destruction of real property (Mary's house and our garages) and grand theft when he gave away all of Mary's stuff claiming she had abandoned it.   And then Mary listed the house, mad at us for either calling her parents and demanding that Jerry be dealt with or not calling her parents and letting Jerry get away with this.

It was a no-win situation.

Except for Mrs. Houston, who also put her house on the market as well.  "Now that the fartless wonder is gone, I'm moving in with my son Sidney and his wife.  I am just too old for this bullshit. And I couldn't put it for sale with that jackass next door. Poor Mary - she tried to pull a Margaret Mead and it backfired on her and all of us.  Well, he's gone.  Piece of pie, dear?  It's peach.  Made it myself."  The Husband had two helpings.

But Mary damned us if we did, and she damned us that we didn't.  She would glower at us if she saw us.  Maybe she was embarrassed.  I don't know.  Cookie was no longer "Poor Mary," but was more "fuck that."

Seriously - if you go to Africa - to forget - and you don't get your legal affairs in order, you create the opportunity for all sorts of bad ju-ju.

So today, I am just going to leave my story at this point, and in Part II in the next couple days, I will explain why Mary, going to Africa - to forget - came into play last week in Cookie's life.