2008.....What a Year it Was

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I'm horoscope addicted, probably because I seem to live with one foot hanging off of a cliff all of the time. That doesn't mean I don't have faith. It just means I've always got one eye in a telescope toward where that faith may lead. So while I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of the 2009 horoscopes. 2008....what a year it was!

After eight fun and frantic years (longer than I've ever lived anywhere), we packed up and moved 3,000 miles east. Actually, we packed, re-packed, un-packed, downsized, packed again, unpacked, called in the recruits(neighbors and strangers) to carry off anything and everything that wouldn't fit into 8 boxes, then threw the rest in two overheaped dumpsters outside our building where it was all scavenged some more. On the way out, one neighbor called in her boyfriend to do some additional dumpster diving for her. And on our last trip to the trash at 4 a.m. we met the SWAT Team coming in our building door. Wrong address! Thank heavens!

Our Arab landlord, in the country courtesy of a 20 year, no questions asked work visa via Beliz, drove us to the Downtown Los Angeles Greyhound Bus Terminal blasting some "I hate America" radio station courtesy satellite radio. Minus my thoughts on his choice of radio stations, he was a very nice man to take us where licensed Taxi cabs wont travel and carry our bags in and see us off like an old friend. We had just barely met.

A sweet and sympathetic ticket agent at Greyhound kindly fixed our bags with handicapped stickers. Probably more out of sympathy for the the other Greyhound employees than for us. Adept at carting big, heavy luggage through crowded bus terminals we are not. Graceless and a potentially catastrophic hazard we are.

Starting out with 3,000 miles ahead of us and $21 to our names we landed in Lubbock, TX with $6 and four suitcases "WITH WHEELS", filled with hair barrettes and chenille teddy bears that we had made to sell for money to get us the rest of the way. In Lubbock, my long lost Rusty Daddy was waiting with a car that got us the rest of the way and then some. Lucky for us the suit case wheels weren't necessary afterall.



Our first night in Tennessee began at 4 a.m. searching for our new address, "The key is in the mail box.

When you get there you can't see the driveway so just drive through the trees across from the box." She failed to mention it was potentially off of a mountain. That took some doing. And after navigating that, we arrive to a strange man following us in on our front door - drill in one hand, hammer in the other. Bonnie demanded that he leave and he refused. Demanded the key, he refused. Demanded his name, he refused. We locked ourselves in the car, called the cops in this little tiny town of less than 6,000. More Mayberry than L.A.P.D. He saw them coming and got in his van and lead footed it out of the house. The local Barney Fife chased him down and sent him back to our house the following afternoon to introduce himself and apologize for squatting on our property. Oh, I just love the South! Thankfully, he was harmless and very polite when ordered by the police to be so.

A week later, we ran into our local WalMart (in this tiny, conservative, Christian town of only 6,000) when passing the jewelry counter I see us passing a very tall man in spandex biker shorts with a very big erection. WOW? I wasn't expecting THAT in small town Tennessee. Only to exit the store and finding the same man crouched down behind a van in the parking lot, butt naked and at full salute. I called the police from my cell phone. Awe.... that poor, unsuspecting 911 lady. In spite of the small townness of it, there is video surveillance in the WalMart parking lot that the police department could access while I was on the telephone with them. Note to self: Don't let your guard down just because you're not walking around alone in Downtown Los Angeles.

First day of summer was also first day of river tubing for us. Freezing cold water and a beautiful ride until we found ourselves, along with all of the other tubers, in unnavigable rapids. I only lost my glasses and shoes. A sweet 7 year old recovered my tube from downstream. Bonnie broke a few ribs and dislocated a shoulder. It was still a really fun ride! We did take our tubing to Splash Country after that though. Good thinking. 2008 was a record year for river accidents and deaths in this part of Tennessee because of the higher than normal water levels. Did I mention that I can't swim?

California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia....... no grass growing under our feet this year. That's for sure! Certainly an exhausting one.

Gas went to $5.49 a gallon. OUCH! And just when we thought we had eaten the icing on the cake, $5.49 a gallon gas dried up all the pumps and we were, for a while, immobile. Oh fun times. NOT!

Have you ever lost a tampon up your hoo ha? I did. And I didn't even know you could. String came out - tampon didn't. Thankfully it found it's way out but don't make the mistake of thinking those things are defect proof! Lucky for me I didn't have to explain THAT to my gynecologist after the silver nitrate up my hoo ha incident.

Well, maybe a ghost has been haunting me or maybe not. The jury is still out on that, but that Saturn cycle that began in 2006 and was suppose to bring me health problems for many months sure came through. Staph infection, e-coli, and klebsiella pneumonia all in one. Good bye Saturn - I hope.

CornBread and AppleJack came to live with us!

Such cute little boy kitty cats! AppleJack is a cross between George Hamilton and Pepe le Pew. Cornbread is more of a real estate tycoon. He found a new condo in the kitchen. Nice choice! He picked the cabinet just under is food drawer, across from his treat door, and next to the water dish. We were all in the living room when we heard clanking sounds coming from the kitchen. Apple Jack looked at me. I looked at Bonnie. Bonnie looked at Jack and then we all headed for the noise. At the end of the kitchen cans were flying out of the cabinet and into the center of the floor. Little 2-and-a-half-pound Corn Bread was chucking 16-ounce cans out to make room for his new digs. It took Bonnie about 5 seconds to evict him. Now he's eyeing the dishwasher. Somehow I don't think waterfront property is what he really has in mind. Applejack is more of an architect. He moved the 4-foot step ladder across the living room and next to their kitty condo. I guess it was an expansion project. Now if only I could teach them to knit!

I had a crazy downstairs neighbor that broke her lease. As her excuse she told the landlord that, "her boyfriend can't screw her because we work too much and the scissor sounds are distracting to him."

WHAT?!

Oh yes she did. And she came upstairs on her way out to tell us the same thing. I replied, "And so, how do you figure the Hooter's waitress with the big butt in the blue car that comes over every night when you are gone figures into this?" She had no response but they all moved the next day. hmmm....

2008.....what a year it was!

Bah Hum Bug....but, Merry christmas Anyway!

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This is never the time of the year to confess this but, Christmas is my least favorite holiday. Oh!, don't get me wrong; I believe in the spirit of it; the meaning of it. I just think it is a holiday that brings out the worst in us. The crazy driver rushing across the store parking lot but not paying attention and flipping off the innocent driver that was nearly crushed. The woman checking out ahead of me at the self check out today and pounding every item in her overloaded cart on the scanner and cursing it for not beeping while her granddaughter watched helplessly and ashamed. And most of all, the drama with gifts, both giving and receiving.

My loathing of all of this began in my pre-teen years. Our little family had evaporated in divorce and Christmases became a fractured nightmare of a Circus with no ringmaster and far too many side show antics. There was the lunatic aunt with the same list every year, 40 or so items repeated year after year: black boots, brown boots, gray boots, black gloves, brown gloves, gray gloves, 12 pair pantie hose, coat, etc... All of Sears. All the same. Every year. All opened one, by one, by one for hours and hours and hours while the audience, not captivated, was held captive. The uncle who showed up with his check book and wrote checks out while gifts were being passed around based on his idea of how much he liked each individual that particular year. It might have been funny if it had been in jest. He was serious, and I grew up to understand that his Christmas spirit had probably gone by the way side of this family farce many years before. There are dozens of characters in this annual tragedy but you get the idea. After a few years I quit going. I think I was 16 when I first had the courage to stay home alone rather than subject myself to the gluttony of a mutinous excuse for a family that wasn't really mine anyway. My other options weren't so great either. Divorces and holidays are a bad mix.

What I have come to understand over the years though is that, what most people want for Christmas, or for anything really, is to be included, thought of, not forgotten. While many seem to need the spotlight and even a stage, most people would just love to be included in some small way.

While we still lived in California, I had a string of thankless and forgettable jobs. One year I was working for a telemarketing company - a boiler room actually.

300 people on the floor each shift. Clock in, take all the calls you can take, clock out. Speak and get fired. I never really knew people there in spite of the fact that I worked there for nearly two years. I would hear snippets in the ladies room and coming to and fro. Baby daddys, single moms, fractured sentences of incomprehendable lives. It was a miserable place and I honestly didn't really want to know anyone there. The pay was hideous and the bits of holiday conversation were beyond sad - women turning tricks to buy inexpensive toys for their children for Christmas dotted holiday conversation every year, others facing jail time for writing hot checks or stealing toys. At Christmas, the bosses (4 young, rude men who owned the place) hung 3 foot tall, cardboard dollar bills from the ceiling rafters for Christmas decorations and nothing else. I protested loudly about the sacrilege of that - "Bloody, money grubbing, BASTARDS!" and the next year they did actually put up a cheap, plastic tree. It's a wonder they didn't fire me but it was a testament to their gluttony. I was good at sales.

I found better options after that but I returned for a short time the next Christmas with my Bonnie Mommie in tow to deliver 300 tiny, wrapped Christmas presents and 300 bags of home made cookies: rum cookie trees, pepermint candy cane cookies, coconut snowmen, and iced santa cookies. 300 bags with four cookies in each bag. We had spent a couple of weeks making and wrapping all of them. The gifts were mostly inexpensive jewelry, purchased wholesale in the Fashion District, near where we lived. It was just a gesture really but it turned out to be one of the greatest gifts we ever gave ourselves. People I had worked with for two years wrote me notes and stopped to speak to me at the risk of their jobs to tell me that, they had grown up in foster care and had NEVER in their entire lives had a wrapped present or a home made cookie. Most of them took them home to save for Christmas day or share with family. It is among the best Christmases I ever had because just thinking of their joy, their joy is still with me.

Los Angeles will always be with me. I was surrounded by so much poverty there. Poverty I had never known. Poverty I would have turned my eyes, not to mention my nose, away from in my life before it. But there is the poverty we know, financial poverty. And there is the poverty we also know but turn our heads from, poverty of spirit. I know now for a fact, I would rather be poor that have an impoverished spirit.

My favorite Christmases in Los Angeles (the past eight years) were spent donning our goofy holiday hats



and carting baskets of cookies all over my downtown neighborhood to the homeless friends we had come to know, the street vendors who sold us our daily food, the bus drivers that got us to and from safe and on time, the Asian family that owned the liquor store, my dentist and orthodontist, and the mish mash of gang members that served as neighborhood security and took it upon themselves to watch over us as well. For eight years, Mr. Roger's song, "Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood?" rang in my head. They were people of little money and immeasurable spirit.

My first Christmas in Los Angeles, I had a great new job for a theatre but it was only a 6 week gig.

We had just finally secured our apartment after living for months in a hideous motel. Dead broke, we were out over $3,000 in deposits and rent. So happy to have a place to live we didn't care or even think a thing about it. We moved in on the 23rd of December and hung a string of Christmas lights on the wall in the shape of a Christmas tree.

On our last day of work before the holiday a woman we worked with brought tiny wrapped presents for everyone. They were little bars of imported soap; inexpensively purchased from an import store but the sweetest gesture. Several people in the office snarked but I will forever remember it being one of the most enjoyable baths I ever had - scented like exotic Indian spice and in my very own tub!

Looking back on Christmas stories, I knew a woman briefly when I was in my twenties. She was in her fifties and on the losing end of liver transplant list. Her health was failing. Bonnie and I helped her wrap her gifts that year. Her husband brought them to our apartment by the car load every couple of hours for several days and nights. She had 3 grown children and a grandchild but literally hundreds of gifts. About half way through wrapping them all she chuckled and asked what we thought of the gifts. We hadn't looked. They arrived in plain boxes with sticky notes to identify who they were for but we hadn't looked inside any of them. She was stunned, then she explained that none of them cost over a couple of dollars, some just pennies, but they were all useful things. She said that they had lived through both financially flush and financially slim times and with her illness she had learned that the Christmases her family remembered the most were the ones that were just an all day party. It had nothing to do with the big, expensive gifts. Most people forgot what they got after a year or two whether it was something big or something small. What they remembered was the event, being included, having fun. When she came to realize this they changed the rules. Christmas would be cheap - period. They purchased things throughout the year that were useful and novelty and inexpensive. The focus of their Christmas was the party and everyone was included whether they had expensive gifts to give or not.

Until then, we had been guilty of overdoing Christmas. Or, well, maybe putting more into it than we should have. I think it's what you do when something is missing but you don't know what it is. You reach for every spice in the cabinet and double it. Christmases with us have always been hand made. My mother always thought she could give a better gift with her money if she made it than if she bought it. She hoped the recipients would feel doubly rewarded. As I grew up, it became a tradition with both of us. Then one day a relative said, "I know what you sell this stuff for. I would rather you just sell it and give me the money." It was a crushing sentiment and a waking moment. We turned our efforts elsewhere.

These stories ring in my head all of the time, throughout the year. And this year, as we have moved 3,000 miles we are finding our way in continuing old traditions in new places with new and unsuspecting neighbors and friends. With this year's economy, most people are struggling. Not just in the states, not just in a particular state but people and businesses are struggling globally. I am conscious of this but in my head I just keep hearing John Wayne, "Don't let the bastards getcha down."


I know the spirit of my old Los Angeles neighborhood is not lost without me. Although I don't keep up with anyone there I do see them in my heart every day. I am still donning my kooky Christmas hats and sending Merry Christmas wishes to my Feliz Navidad neighbors of old. I know in their hearts, they are doing the same.

I remember my childhood aunt who sent packages every year with a handmade Christmas ornaments instead of a bow because I could save it and remember her every year. Her packages were always packed with chocolate jingle bell candies. Yummy packing as I recall. The ornaments were lost in a fire but I still remember each and every one of them as if they were here. Her holiday spirit is contagious through the ages.

So no, it's still not my favorite holiday, but like all of these people, I aspire to be infectious and contagious too. Whether or not your pockets be empty, may your spirit be wealthy!

Merry Christmas,
Angela Catirina