We went to see Leo Kottke at Baird Auditorium today. I hadn’t been to this venue before — it’s in the National Museum of Natural History, down what I used to only think of as “the bird hall.” I would recommend it though, especially for great live music without a lot of fanfare. Leo Kottke fits the bill perfectly.

He told a story that still has me smiling today. He was setting up a song from his new CD, and explaining why it wasn’t for sale at the show. He said he feels a little bad that his label sends CDs in advance to the places he’ll be playing, and expects the staff there to set up and sell them. Apparently, when Leo gets to the venue, he just tells the staff to keep the CDs. He said that he would feel much better if he could get it together to sell them himself, because then at least he would feel like it was “part of his schtick.”

But, he said, “I travel alone, I perform alone…it’s a lot of work as it is. And, about 30 years ago my dentist told me I have an enormous tongue, so there’s that.”

Leo Kottke, Julie’s House

…and then I think he got shot in our alley.

People! Shots again last night! What the?!

Shaun and I were making sandwiches in the kitchen and I heard a shot (ring out? Why does that sound too pleasant?) I looked out the window to the alley (as I was heading to turn out the light in my office) and saw flashes of light that corresponded with each shot (as if from a gun). I was actually scared this time…it was no less than 100 feet from me behind our back gate. By the time I called 311 they had already received a handful of calls and patrol cars were on the way. We never saw a patrol car, although I can’t say I spent much time at the window after that.

Sigh. I am, at some level, so tired of living here. It is awful to be afraid…not only of what happens around me, but then afraid of the way(s) I feel about it. I don’t want fear to define me as a person.

Shaun and I were talking recently about The Wire, a show that we have really gotten into over the last couple of years. Great comments and reviews of it here, here, and here. It’s set in Baltimore, which is close enough to DC that we can draw certain parallels. I am definitely more aware, since watching this show, of drug activity that goes on on my block. And, I am more afraid. Of my African American neighbors. There, I said it. Damnit! Not of Willa at the Safeway, or Eddie next door, but of the late-teen, early-twenties groups of black guys (and gals! Don’t kid yourself, watch The Wire!) that hang out at the corners and flash hand signs to each other and then walk, quickly, with their folded newspapers to passing cars for hand-offs.

We’ve even said we need to stop watching this show. My fears build and become more irrational every week. Will we get caught in a shoot-out over some deal-gone-bad? Will a junkie needing money shove me into my house and beat me up for money or stuff when I’m getting the mail? Will someone need my car to get away one day as I am pulling in with groceries and my daughter!? I can’t even think about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I know there are scary people everywhere. And, we are moving to Colorado! Home of Columbine and this other recent debacle involving a school shooting. So, that takes care of it! Instead of being shot by a black hoodlum in our alley, Ruby can get shot by a white nut-job at her school. Or, we could escape it all and move to Amish country. Aaaaaaahhh!

Today is definitely one of those days when I will not be watching the news.

And, if I were an African American person, I wonder how I would feel about The Wire? Anyone? Before you write that it’s “just a television show,” the producers have said that they have had to water down some of the violence they observed in the few years they researched and prepared for the show, to be fit for TV.

I think I need to find that big box of Little House on the Prairie videos and heat me up some apple cider. All, of course, done far from the back windows this morning.

Before we went to bed last night, Shaun decided he wasn’t going to take the garbage out after dark anymore. He added “The good thing about this time is that if there are bodies scattered in the alley, they’re in a good spot for trash pick-up.”

Be safe, people.

Rod Stewart, Young Turks (I have no explanation for this other than it won’t stop looping around in my head)

So we’re back! Home sweet DC Home. The one that now has extensive water damage on the top of the front porch (to the tune of about $2,000), a back yard that looks like the wilds of a Borneo forest, and the same one with completely dead azaleas out front that were alive and kicking when we left.

All that aside (I knew there would be some fix-ups to come home to), the greatest “welcome home” was the visit from our neighbor that coincided perfectly with my parents’ visit to see their granddaughter. Down to our right near the corner is most-certainly-a-crackhouse, and the traffic in and out of there all day is swift-moving but constant. There were actually three crackhouses (compound word? Crackhouse? Crack house? Or Crack House like White House?) when I bought here — so being down to one is actually a relief.

The guy that shares the corner with the crackhouse (backs to it, sort of) approached my parents and me to tell us that yesterday he came home early from work to find two “fellas” in his house, attempting to relieve him of his “stuff.” He went up the stairs, saw a box on his bed (that hadn’t been there when he left), and started backing back down the stairs. He startled the robbers, and one of them pulled a gun on him, saying “Man, don’t be no hero.” They ran out of his house, past mine, and “into the wind.”

There are several upsetting things about this story (and no, I am not ignoring the double negative of “don’t be no hero”). This all happened at 2PM. I work at home, and am always here at what we will now call “the robbing hour,” 2PM. I don’t know how much anxiety I am going to throw at this, but I was more anxious than, say, before I spent a glorious summer far from the city.

At some point when this neighbor was talking, I actually disassociated and went to that happy place in the recesses of my mind. I couldn’t stand thinking about what I would do if I were home when two men popped off the security gates on our house with a crow-bar (happened down the street), relieved me of my “stuff” (not much of it, but still), all while brandishing a pistol. What if I were home with Ruby? I was so terrified by the time this guy finished talking — I had convinced myself that he was actually casing my house and that we all just needed to hop in the car and head west.

Today I am calmer — back into “city-speak” as it were. Who but a city-dweller would think an armed robbery within a block of your house is okay just because the house faces a different street? Or that no one would break in here because it’s pretty well known that I work at home (the mailman, the UPS man, the neighbors), and I’m really nice.

How can I protect myself differently than I do today? How much more aware can I be?

I tell you one thing, if I have to invest in a handgun? We certainly won’t be able to get those upgraded cabinets in the Colorado house.

Paper Lace, Billy Don’t Be A Hero

We got, in the mail today, the list of the students in Ruby’s new preschool class. We fly home Saturday, and she heads to school right after Labor Day. I was so pleased to see the diversity of the list — names like Sibanda, Jayaraman, Mtunguja, and Zinn showed up in her group. I wonder what the other parents thought, upon receiving the list, about MY daughter:

Rubby Fanning.

That chick is the hit in every preschool, huh?

News from our DC Office this morning: the Firehook Bakery right next-door was held up by a couple of wild-eyed city dwellers using tasers as weapons. What the!? “I Need Some Lunchtime Crack” meets “Star Wars.”

This is what I am afraid of people. The Re-entry. Into a place where this is normal!

Monday morning thoughts in DC:

“I wonder if there will be a taser-toting ass-clown in the Firehook Bakery this morning.”

“Another shooting on the Hill? Well, it was three blocks away…we’re completely cool over here.”

“How many of my [trash] Super Cans need to be stolen before I just start whinging trash into the alley from the upstairs window?”

Monday morning thoughts in Colorado:

“How is it that Moose eats the same thing every day, and only occasionally has mind-numbing gas?”

“Do I have time (read: 4.5 minutes) to pick up a coffee on my way to work? (additional note: coffee pick-ups happen at one of three places — none of which have ever catered to a wild-eyed anyone).

“Would I be more comfortable in this outfit with or without underpants? You know, more jiggle, but less wriggle.”

Tasers. Come On!

So we just heard gunshots. More gunshots. It seems to happen every few months — I like to think less often than it did when I first moved in, but I can’t be sure. It’s strange to become numb to things like that, or at least more numb. This time I tried to lower the blinds at my desk, and when that didn’t work I just sat back down and hoped that whoever it was wouldn’t bother shooting through the wooden gate, and that the Japanese maple would block their shot a bit if they did.

Shaun is still a bit more concerned than me (I almost typed hysterical! Lord, I have really hardened up!). He hopped up and said “What was that?”

“I think it was gunshots,” I said, “although I guess I don’t really know what a gunshot sounds like (probably a lot like those other ones those other times).”

“I heard a truck go by…do you think it was a backfire?” he asked.

Bless his heart. Perhaps that’s a West Virginia thing. Jed Clampett’s truck backfires, I think. And, I saw it in a movie once. The last, sad scene of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” where they are clacking along a dirt road with chickens and pigs (and backfires) and lots of love and hope. I loved Shaun real hard when he hoped the shots were a backfire. Perhaps I’ll go with that in my mind too. I’m even leaving it up to the neighbors to call 3-1-1. It’s not like the police are going to send someone right away to check it out. We’ve made that call before — as I recall we were on our bellies on the floor of a dark house when we made it too. Not this time.

This time I thought to myself, “Boy, I hope the errant bullet doesn’t hit me in the face because I probably won’t end up looking like my passport picture when I head for Ireland tomorrow.”

“Go ahead and shoot me, you sack of shit,” I thought, “I am still getting on that plane.”

Why not? Keifer Sutherland does it all the time.

First, solemn props to Katherine for her birthday.

Then on to what we tried to do to celebrate it. Instead of more things, I decided to give her a do (clean it up, people) and go to the thea-tuh. We took in “The Gigli Concert” at Woolly Mammoth, because of the rave reviews it got. Actually, I have a subscription to the season, but we decided to get the subscription to the season because, in part, of the rave reviews this play got.

I couldn’t tell you a thing about it, and I was there. Well, I was there for half of it. About ten minutes in, I thought, “Is it just me, or is this revving up sort of slowly?” Twenty minutes in? “Boy, these two fellas seem to have having a great time, but I just don’t get it.” Thirty? “That woman to our right seems to be having a great time too, but I still don’t get it!” Forty minutes in? “It’s cold in here.” At fifty minutes, I think I was actually awakened by the high pitched weeeeeeeeeeing of the woman on my left’s theater-supplied listening aid (which clearly wasn’t working properly because she kept adjusting the weeeeeing and cursing under her breath). When the lights came up for intermission, I was praying “I hope Katherine thinks this blows too, because I am really tired.”

Thankfully, my girl looked at me sort of like “Whaaa?” and we instantly started talking through what it would be like to just leave. I’ve never left the theater at a live performance. I’ve walked out of movies (most recently, and not very recently at that, was “The Limey” with Terence Stamp, and I think that’s because we were finished with the sandwiches we snuck in), but not a play.

Before we knew it we were rushing down the sidewalk like two schoolgirls trying to sneak in a smoke before shop class, scanning guiltily for the car.

If someone ever reads this blog that knows what happened in Act 2, or for that matter, Act 1, let me know.

I am rethinking these subscriptions to theater, because I am having really hard luck with it. And they’re expensive! Either I am not cool enough, theater is way too subjective, or I am much too cool.

I did see “The Sex Habits of American Women” at Signature Theater recently and really enjoyed it. Sex habits of American women though? Sort of a no-brainer because, well, I have those.

It’s warm outside.  I bundled Ruby and I up this morning for the walk to school, and as I opened the door, an angel laughed, pinged me in the forehead, ripped off our jackets and left us wheezing and giggling as we tumbled down the stairs into the glorious day.

I have the back door open so the intoxicating breeze can waft through the office.  Moose is chasing the sunlight across the floor (read: getting up and laying down again when the sun shifts).  This is bliss.

I can’t wait to go to the park later — I am sure there will be a hum in the air as the bleary-eyed Moms and Dads emerge from their wintery houses and head for the sidewalk.  We’ll all rev up from a trudge to a skip as we approach the various jungle gyms.  I imagine “The Age of Aquarius” playing as we all leap around and shriek at each other, unable to contain our springtime glee.  Me?  I’m just going to introduce myself to everyone and invite them all over to our porch for lemonade and close intimate friendship.

“Hi, I’m Amy.  I love you.”

It’s been a long winter.