Weekend

I'm a little slow getting started this morning. Short on sleep. It was a quiet weekend, but pleasant. Rob and I went to his brother's fiftieth birthday party on Saturday night. We had our family picture taken for Christmas cards and the girls' annual picture taken together yesterday. They turned out really well, and I'll post them later this week when we get them back from the photographer.

By myself, I worked on cleaning up the house last night. Well, just the living room, really. It is just so frustrating: what happens is that Rob starts piling up stuff. If the piles of papers gets too high, he gets a box and shoves them in, and then sticks them in a corner. And then another box gets piled on top, and then another, and then another.

Rob just doesn't see the point of putting things away or throwing things away. He just stacks them, one on top of another. And he brings more stuff into the house that we have no use for, just because it theoretically might be useful to someone, somewhere, someday.

It's a continual state of battling entropy. We don't need that. Don't bring it into the house. Put it away.

He is an inexhaustible source of chaos.

Safety

I like my neighborhood. I generally feel safe here for the most part, although I lock my car and my home.

And I am angry.

There's a little cluster of businesses about a mile from our home. There's Tillie's Bean coffeeshop, a very nice little place which frequently has live music on Friday nights. I have often gone there to listen to the musicians, and when the coffee shop closes at 10:00 p.m., I'll walk to my car. generally right outside the coffeeshop or across the street, and drive home. Kitty-corner from Tillie's Bean is a laundromat. We've gone there occasionally when we need to launder sleeping bags after a camping trip.

A block further up, towards Hiawatha, is the Cardinal, a neighborhood bar. Never been inside it, myself. Around the corner from that is the 38th street light rail station.

A couple of weeks ago, Fiona went to listen to music at Tillie's Bean with her friend Corwyn. Rob dropped her off, and her friend's mother drove them both home when the coffee shop closed at 10:00 p.m.

A few hours later, at bar closing time, a woman who had been at the Cardinal Bar for a night out with some friends left the bar and walked around the corner to the light rail station to wait there alone for a train. This was at about 2:00 a.m.

A man approached her there and stuck a gun in her back. He forced her to walk back a block with him back toward the laundromat, right past Tillie's Bean. Right past where I park my car all the time. Right past where Fiona was less than four hours earlier that evening. He took her in there, raped her, beat her, and stole her purse.

They caught him. Apparently the woman gave a good eye witness description, and they also had the security tapes from the light rail station. According to the paper, this is the first rape that has been associated with one of the light rail stations.

I take karate and Fiona takes karate. But we won't learn gun defenses for awhile yet. I keep thinking of that unknown woman, imagining myself in her place. Being forced to walk away from my light rail stop. Walking past the bar where she had just been having an evening out with friends, with a gun jammed in her back. Past my coffeeshop. Into my laundromat. Wondering if she was going to make it out alive. And then, after it was over, wondering how she would ever feel safe again.

They caught him. They caught the bastard. I keep telling myself that.

But I'm still wondering, too.

edited to add: There was something in the paper today about him being charged. I was mistaken; he didn't take her to the laundromat, but to a laundry room in a nearby apartment building.

It also said that he knocked out seven of her teeth.

Bastard. I'm glad they caught him.

Running the Red Queen's Race

Car repairs. I had some overtime this month, and so I hoped that I would be able to tuck some more into savings to help when the unemployment runs out. (Since learning that Rob was losing his job, I've squirreled away everything I can, and what I've saved so far would tide us over about another three months when there's nothing coming in anymore.)

But no such luck. I have an old Jeep that I can't replace right now with Rob out of a job. It's been a good car, but of course, it's getting old. I already spent $166 this month for car maintenance (new battery, oil change, routine maintenance, etc.) They told me to bring it back in two weeks because they needed to re-check differential and transfer case fluid levels. They also thought there was something going on with the front axle. [btw: this is a mechanic I've used for years, and I'm satisfied with their pricing and honesty.]

Today report: pinpoint fluid leaks are very slow and can probably be dealt with by just re-checking all fluid levels and refilling every time I do an oil change. But the front axle joints do need to be replaced. That's a safety issue (part of the four-wheel drive system) that I can't ignore with winter coming on. It's going to be $300 to fix.

As it happens, I do happen to have the money, because of that overtime. But damn it, damn it, damn it. I really wanted to put that money into savings.